Law is a giant hammer you want to perform as a scalpel. It doesnt work that way.

Being beaten to death with a heavy rock or just bludgeoned into a puddle of mush with a stick or with bare hands and feet - dead is still dead. The lower tech versions usually involve a lot more time in agony before the merciful end. Even if you had a magical button that could eliminate firearms entirely, the end result would be more, not less, pain and hurt in this world. In a world of melee weapons the larger, younger, and stronger individuals have an even larger edge. In a world with firearms, the small, older and weaker folks at least have an equalizer.

The only thing you are even partially right on is that it doesnt trick you into installing it. However fanboys like you sure try to. What the company actually tried to do was *coerce* me into installing it by holding products I already purchased from them hostage (technically just degrading them to the point where they were worthless,) which is similar but different.

Just because people to some degree "know" they are installing it doesnt disqualify it from being effectively a rootkit. I can install a rootkit on my own computer for testing that doesnt make it any less a rootkit just because I know what I am doing. In this case there appears to be some trickery and social engineering going on here as well - in the form of a rabid pack of fanbois resorting to name-calling and mod-swarming to try and silence anyone that criticises your beloved steam.

I am not talking about the main executable. Look closer.

Firearms manufacturers certainly do have an incentive to make their products safer. Just not an incentive so powerful as to completely over-ride other concerns, as the poster would like. Everyone would like a safer firearm and most are even happy to pay extra for it - IF it still functions reliably, IF it isnt TOO MUCH more. Systems currently available tend to be very expensive and have serious drawbacks, which limits their sales. As those systems are refined and perfected people sales will improve. But the manufacturers have to actually provide a system that the customers are happy with, rather than rushing to break things that we rely on in order to make victim-disarmament advocates... well, celebrate and then go right back on the attack shortly after, I am sure.

This is what really eats him up. He doesnt like firearms manufacturers offering what firearms buyers want in the first place, and he'd like to see any law passed that would interfere.

A new OS is difficult to get, install, and learn for the average user, whether it's Slackware 14 or Windows 8.

Seriously, how could it possibly be a good idea to have a state so omnipresent and intrusive that it has to specifically "let" you do something before you are able to do it?

In the real world, technology and technological objects exist just as surely as the sun and moon do, and the legislature is no more able to uninvent the firearm than they are to forbid the sun from setting or the moon from rising.

Weapons exist and some people will have them regardless. Better for everyone to have them than for only criminals and thugs to have them.

Ultimately the problem is not the technology, it's human behaviour. It was the same problem when we had flintlocks and the same problem when we had swords and spears and the same problem when we were bashing each others heads in with rough rocks. That is the problem we need to solve and victim disarmament laws not only dont help they are actively counterproductive, because they increase the rewards and decrease the risks for those who indulge in the problem behaviour.

It's very funny to see you make the ridiculous assumption that I am removing malware from my own machines. My own machines havent been infected in decades, outside of deliberate testing. I clean machines for employers and paying customers. If I relied on scanners to do my job I would be unemployed tomorrow - scanners only work on old threats and my paycheck depends on handling new ones quickly and efficiently. You dont have the first clue what you are talking about.

It doesnt hide the fact it's installed. Neither does Reverton. That's not the point.

It hides what it is doing. Why do you think it has to have constant super-user status? It abuses that status to mess with things that dont belong to it and to obfuscate and hide what it is doing from the system. Just like every other rootkit out there.

And you can tell me it isnt doing anything bad and should be trusted all you want, it's hot air. You cannot demonstrate that this thing is safe. It's not just a binary it's a deliberately obfuscated binary. *If* the source code were available and *thoroughly* audited then perhaps the argument would have some merit, but as is anyone making it is a fool. Unless you work for valve and have access to the source yourself, very free access so you can spend many hours auditing it in detail, and unless you have the expertise to do so, and have in fact done so, you dont know anything. Any guesses you make are just that - blind guesses. And even if you were in that position, you would be appealing to evidence you arent allowed to share, so why would you expect anyone to believe you?

Yes, anyone that disagrees with you is clearly trolling.

I think the entire article is a troll.

How many of those were already ported to linux without this? All 36 you say? That's what I thought.

I cannot understand how you cannot understand. Would you celebrate if someone ported Reveton as well? How could anyone that has gone to the considerable effort to get and learn to use a free operating system then turn around and install this on it? Why bother? If you want someone else to control your computer you can get that result much more quickly and easily with Windows.

Seriously, you stop the bullshit. It is what it is. If you so desperately crave the privilege of paying them good money to take over your computer and maybe let you play some games, if you pay for them and for as long as they feel like it (or until the next time they change the deal) that you dont mind to install this crap on your computer that's fine, your computer, install away. But quit trying to shout down the voices of those with better sense, thank you.

Hrmm. First definition google offers:

"A rootkit is software that enables continued privileged access to a computer, while actively hiding its presence"

So your comments appear more apt as self-commentary. Yes, it has a specific meaning, and yes, it fits, and no, there isnt an exception for things YOU like.

I have probably been removing malware from PCs since you were a baby. You are not insightful you are clueless. I damn well know what a rootkit is.

There is no technical distinction between a malicious rootkit and a 'normal' one - a 'legit av' uses the same techniques the rogues do. If you intentionally install an antivirus (for example) that uses rootkit techniques then it's a rootkit, it just might not be a malicious one. For some values of malicious. Deep subject there.

If an antivirus program tricks you into installing it and 'doesnt support uninstallation' it goes from 'legit' to 'rogue' but the only difference is that removal techniques were made more limited. Whether it 'doesnt support uninstallation' on install, or lost that ability due to damage and brittleness, makes very little difference. Removing tdss and removing a damaged or incompatible installation of $big_av or cleaning that Sony crap off is all pretty much the same thing.

Personally I wont install that sort of AV on my machines either.

Don't assume that just because you posted the feel-good crap that people want to read and got moderated accordingly that you actually know what you are talking about. And get the fsck off my lawn.

Even if there were some way to guarantee that they wouldnt die or pull anything 'draconian' they are still requiring you to install a rootkit to access the software you bought. I wouldnt even install it on my windows box, and I wont give another penny to a company that already ripped me off in the past.