I was thinking more an electrical/electronic attack rather than computational but a buffer overflow could be just as likely...

You are probably right... Either that or its a brute force attack and they just throw lots of codes at it in a short time and hope one works which is unlikely.

My guess is they have radio/microwave transmitter that is causing a computer reboot/corruption or messing with the sensor information being fed from the mechanical parts of the lock and tricking the computer into thinking the mechanical key was used which triggers the central locking to open. As for the passenger side thing it could be that side is more vulnerable due to longer/shorter wires or the actual location of the computer.

A while ago I came across a writer that was making reasonable money with ebooks but couldn't get a deal with a dead tree publisher but really wanted physical print runs of his books for his own satisfaction. He typeset a book, arranged artwork etc himself and paid out of his own pocket for a (small) print run. He then *gave* the books away for free from a stall at local markets, literary events etc and invited people once they had read the book to either buy it if they liked it or give it to someone who they thought would buy it if they didn't. I enjoyed and bought it and got a thank you letter back that indicated he had made a reasonable profit on the venture and about 60% of the books were eventually bought by either the person he gave it to or someone further down the chain.

I also then gave the book to a friend who (knowing that I had already done so) also 'bought' it.

If people feel that something has value and can afford it they are often willing to pay money for it.
If people have no money or feel that something is overpriced, or has no value, or are morally/socially lacking they are not willing to pay.

So Much hate. I'm guessing you tried to sell your Steam account and they noticed which is your own fault for breaking their rules.

As for resale - Once, many years ago, when I was a poor teenager I resold games I no longer play and now I regret it.
I often think "Wow, [old game x] I haven't played that in years and it was great" then realise that I sold it and can't even attempt to try and get it running in DosBox. Lending to friends is more or less the same as selling, but without financial gain as I didn't care about getting it back at the time or forgot who I lent it to.

Steam's best feature is convenience. It allows me to install, uninstall, and install again (next upgrade is a bigger SSD!) , on any of my current PCs, games that I last played 5 or even 10 years (which is 4 or 5 computers/major upgrades and 1 OS upgrade) ago without having to dig around in the back of the cupboard for disks that probably got scratched and a manual with a code on it that I probably accidentally threw out. Add this to a DRM that doesn't get in the way of playing games (as long as you remember to switch to off-line mode if you don't have a connection) and you have a no-hasle DRM.

In the future? Just about anyone... Kindle DRM is fairly easy to break with current computers and in 40 years time it won't even register on a CPU usage graph...

I bought a kindle a few years ago now and if it ever dies I'll likely buy another, and even if I don't there are many ways for me to get at my books.

Not only does the Kindle DRM not bother me, the books are available, readable and automatically sync up over most portable, **non Amazon** devices with no real effort on my part. The lack of portability between non Apple mobile devices was probably they only thing that really fuelled the fire for Apple to drop DRM.

There are of course the 'lesser' DRM schemes that were never going to work out for technical or commercial reasons (Micro$oft DRM anyone?) however the truth is you need to back a long term commercial winner in technology in general [see Laserdisk, Betamax, MiniDisk, HD-DVD etc for examples of how not to back a winner].

Also there is a difference between music and books since while you tend to listen to music repeatedly, most people only ever read a (fiction) book once then move onto the next one so long term access is less of a concern. (before buying my kindile I used to frequently buy books, read them through once (or possibly not if I didn't like it) and most then ended up going to a charity shop to make room for more... Of maybe 50 or so books I bought in a typical year I probably retained 5 or so 'really, really good' ones.

Also add testers that don't really understand what the things they are testing are supposed to do to that meeting...

While not all, a good number of the offshore houses WERE regulated in their respective countries. It was just the US government not liking that others were getting a slice of pie and they were going hungry.

Haven't you heard? Online poker is on its way back but now the government gets its cut by licensing and taxing it which was what the ban on offshore online poker companies was all about...

The Drama was friction between the fast levelers (who were mad at the slow levelers and wanted to kick/replace them so they could raid more but. Slow levelers were mostly either the guild officers or their friends.) and the slow levelers (who were mad because they wanted the level 70s to help in 5 mans, quests, defence from gankers (it was PvP realm) and the like) in addition to the usual loot Drama from the first few times a boss was killed etc.

TL/DR: Its too easy now.

I agree.

Back in the day getting to 60 was a challenge but by the end of it you understood the game, knew your way around the world, had covered a lot of lore content, had plenty practice working with others, in your class role, in 5 mans. At any time you had about 40 quests available across both continents, of which you could probably do about 15 and the rest would need to wait to next level. You had to travel to level, exploring the world, finding things as you go. Getting to 60 was in itself a challenge, something to be mastered.

Then when you got to 60 and completed the attunements it was still interesting. I did 40 man raid stuff with the top Horde guild on the server and it was a challenge. Not just for the gameplay but the whole social thing and dealing with such a large group of people. Then Blizzard started the switch to 20 man raids which caused a lot of friction as we couldn't consistently run two raid groups since on different nights different people were on and we often ended up with neither group having the right numbers due to people being tied to the other instance. Drama ensued. People left, splinters formed.

I left the guild to try an alliance character and different class on a different realm I got to 60 about when BC came along and all our work was pointless. People got to 70 over a very long drawn out time leaving the players with less time behind while most of the guild were running the new 20 man stuff. Drama ensued. People left, splinters formed.

I got sick of the drama and quit WoW with some of my friends and went to Eve Online when it was young.

----

Recently I had some time so I decided to see how the game had changed. I upgraded my account all the way to MoP, started a Monk, Forwarded 500g from my old char to my new one since gold was always short for new characters last time I played, and expected a challenge. What I got was hand holding and no challenge, There was no running around looking for quests, every quest target was close to the quest giver, there was no real way to deviate from the set quest path, I didn't see over half of the old world even by the time I got to 60. The only thing that was interesting was the way the world had changed with as a result of the old content being in the past (such as how the Wailing Caverns storyline caused so much overgrowth and corruption) I kept wanting to skip forward as quests were too easy but this wasn't possible due to the way every quest was following another. Apart from initially buying 16 slot bags the gold transfer was pointless, by level 10 my character was already in surplus. I was glad that when I got to 58 that I could switch to BC as there might be mobs that I don't two hit but that didn't last long, then the same again at 70 and again at 80. As such I never got to any of the various expansion 'conclusions' I have no idea how any of the stories from the older expansions actually finished. I still don't know why Helscream is in charge and Thrall is wandering the world. Towards the end every quest reward was just that little bit better for my current spec which is great for leveling but now I want to try Healing but I have almost no good gear for that. Before level 90 I never set foot in a dungeon or scenario. I've tried a few guilds but unlike the old times there is no 'top raiding guilds' but just a huge mass of guilds that do varying amounts of raiding and finding the right guild for my playstyle/ability/timespend has been near impossible. LFR is chaos and unpredictable and unchallenging as there is no try again, refine tactics, improve gear as a group, try again loop that was something to work toward and ultimately no sense of achievement for killing a boss.

Then there is the other stuff Blizzard added. The farmville clone, The pokemon clone, The daily quest grinds... none of these are a challenge in any shape or form and are just 'something to do' but don't have any real sense of reward at the end due to the ultimate result being down to how many times you repeat the same simple set of tasks and completely unrelated to my skill or my guilds skill at playing the game.

I just can't wait until I can open my monitor and get some fresh air into my flat...

So even back in the 1800's the patent system (while a little slower) was broken?

And you forgot this is /. and you made a sweeping statement that is only correct in some cases and the incorrect cases were considered obvious by some.

Expect the pedantic to jump on you and pummel you with their plastic lightsabers.

Every time they release one of these my companies IT department insists on the new version being mandatory and installs it on every PC without any testing.

This then breaks one (or more) of our externally provided and supported, business critical, small user base, Java client/server systems. After a few days of frantic phone calls and manual un-installs of the new Java version (which have to be done by IT support due to security lockdown remoting into PCs, after senior signoff) we have to keep doing to combat the overnight updates) we end up with an emergency change to install a very alpha version of the client/server system.

The updated client is normally so full of bugs that it gets several further emergency updates over the next 3 months and is just about stable and almost bug free in time for Oracle to release another patch...