I have to disagree here..

Mainstream games *DO* need exposure (just like any product to be sold).

However, they use another venue for this : commercial advertisement.

Just 2 different angles to address the same problem. One is going for the upfront lump sum approach (mainstream), the other one is going for the progressive scheme : If the product is a flop, nothing lost - if it's a hit - then the revenue is probably less than if it would have been a mainstream company.

Just my .02 (of whatever you currency is)

--Ivan

It's possible the "internal" cost is simply some form of rudimentary metric to measure the relative usage that is made of the IT dept by each of the other depts (so each dept is charged accordingly).

--Ivan

Whatever happened to Habeas Corpus ?

I thought this was a basic principle in the U.S. legal system.. Whereas, a person could not be held in custody without a court order - and I can't think how a court order can go beyond the age of a sentence of imprisonment.

Does this also mean that peeing in the improper place can now be turned into a lifelong sentence without parole ?

Well - at least we seem to agree on that ;) (I was just saying it differently).

The only difference, is that - imho, once the judge agrees that you weren't facilitating, then the "security device" performed its function - at which point - whether the villain went around it or through it is moot.

And I hear you.. Yes, there is sometimes a way "around" (but not necessarily "through"). But that's independent of the "security device" - it's dependent on the "security system".

What I am saying here is that the statement "all security devices can be circumvented" is a tautology, and not necessarily a bad one though - it serves as a reminder that a security device within a poorly designed security system is useless - or rather - a security system is only as good as the weakest device that comprise the system.

And what I am saying, with all due respect, is that the notion that "virtually all security devices can be circumvented" is misleading.

If you take it into a broad and global sense, that's of course true - but becomes very impractical after a bit. If you can't break the Wifi, you break the house. If you can't break the house, you break the ISP's premise. If you can't do that, you start a revolution and take over the country, then nuke the country, start an intergalactic war, etc..

However, you can only talk about the validity of a security device by the scope of the resource it is protecting. And in that respect, a Secured Wifi setup can only secure *ONE* thing : your wifi connection (but not any underlying resource - your house, your DSL modem - or your kitchen stove).

The whole point of a security device is to make it so that it is not economically viable to go *through*.

And in the respect of the OP context, the proper setup of the WiFi as a security device would seem to have been enough to secure both his WiFi and his internet connection and thus is liability with regard to German law. IANAL, but if someone broke in (thus - in your term - circumvented the security device(s) - the WiFi protection, the door lock, the window glass, whatever) and downloaded whatnot from the DSL line - he would have not have been liable since he would have put reasonable effort to prevent the misdeed from happening - and thus, the security device would have performed its function.

The security device in itself wasn't circumvented.

The security device in this case is used to prevent unauthorized access to the WiFi - NOT to prevent access to your Internet Connection. The WiFi access in itself was never broken in - and if this is what you are trying to protect - then it has performed its duty - and was never circumvented.

Now, unfortunately for your hacker, my house is protected by flying sharks with friggin' lasers - so once you enter my house, you are blown to smithereens (Humm.. is that a word ?) by my *secondary* security device !

But I hear what you are saying. Unfortunately, your post seemed to infer that proper securing of WiFi access points is moot to start with (and can be easily bypassed) - when I believe it is not. Breaking sufficiently large symmetric ciphers is NOT trivial (like you'd see on TV shows).

Also - on a side point - Mr "Elite Hacker", not wanting to be indicted for larceny, will probably just go do his road warrior thing a bit more until he finds a more accessible access point to perform his mischief.

Citation needed...

Don't you think a 'random bot' would post AC ?

I'm going for the browser - or more likely - an issue with the entity between the chair and keyboard.. (never happened to you eh ?)

--Ivan

Yup.. Apparently I commented on the wrong thread indeed.. (blast ye Ajax - or my recklessness)..

So my -1 off topic is commended for my comment.

Oh well, I'll survive ;)

When I was 12, my buddy swashed me with a flashlight, which resulted me in being abducted by aliens.

I therefore sue the company that extracted the minerals necessary to build the metals that subsequently were turned into the casing of the very flashlight that caused me to be abducted.

--Ivan

Do you mean *Bing* it on ?

(I know.. sorry.. you may mod me down as appropriate).

Says WHO ?

--Ivan

Right now, I'd tend to say a house fly is many orders of magnitude more "inteligent" (whatever that means) than the most powerful of machines - in a package weighing less than a gram that is self-sustaining, flying, with superior evading capabilities.

We're not even close.. not even..

I'm not even sure you could. making even a simple object such as a needle or surgical tool sterile is a complex matter. Doing this on a WHOLE PLANET would not be a simple feat !

Life is insidious. Once it gets there, it seems quite complicated to extirpate it. That's because biological matter is not static..

It *EVOLVES* - and that's why it's so resilient !

Bathe earth in a 300F environment for a few years. I have no doubt that a couple billion years later, earth would again be teaming with life - all you would need is a few procaryotes to have survived under a few thousand feets of rocks.

The problem with life is not how to sustain it - it's how to get it there in the 1st place.

--Ivan

Earth *WILL* remain habitable (maybe not by us though) probably for at least the next 1B years. Earth has sustained numerous catastrophic life annihilating events (major meteor strikes, giants volcanoes, etc..) and *YET* life remained. I very much doubt the amounts of CO2 we release or how much we curtail biodiversity (it will recover once we are gone) will be more threatening than a global instantaneous event.

Look at how hard we try to eradicate some basic forms of life (and some say they aren't even "alive") like viruses - and fail miserably.

Life is *WAY* more resilient that you might think. However, the human race might not be (although I just read some recent study showing that the Homo family was reduced to ~18.000 individual some 1.2 M years ago and yet did manage to survive..)

--Ivan