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Comment Re:So correct me if I'm wrong... (Score 1) 563

by Thoggins (#32372846) Attached to: Blizzard Boss Says Restrictive DRM Is a Waste of Time
You're wrong. Blizzard's BNet2 keeps a profile of games you own, similar in a way to Steam's - once you activate your game, via CD key or whatever else, you own it. After that, what media your copy of the game came from (your own CD, your friend's, or download) ceases to matter. Your Battle.net account is what gets you access to the online game. I imagine that, in order to play only single player, you will simply need an internet connection to confirm the legitimacy of your copy every time you have to reinstall the game. Re-validating once per install isn't a real tax on a gamer's time or emotional stability.
Books

Your Favorite Tech / Eng. / CS Books? 517

Posted by kdawson from the art-of-computer-programming dept.
chris_eineke writes "I like to read and to collect good books related to computer science. I'm talking about stuff like the classic textbooks (Introduction to Algorithms 2nd ed., Tanenbaum's Operating Systems series) and practitioners' books (The Practice of Programming, Code Complete) and all-around excellent books (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Practical Common Lisp). What's your stocking-stuffer book this Christmas? What books have been sitting on your shelves that you think are the best ones of their kind? Which ones do you think are -1 Overrated? (All links are referral-free.)"
Music

The RIAA's Rocky Road Ahead 542

Posted by kdawson from the bring-checkbook dept.
The RIAA's new plan to enlist ISPs in its war on file sharing, once it announced it was calling a halt to new consumer lawsuits, is running into rough sledding. Wired reports on the continuing legal murkiness of the RIAA's interpretation of copyright law. And one small ISP in Louisiana asks the recording organization, "You want me to police your intellectual property? What's your billing address?"
The Courts

Dutch Court Punishes Theft of Virtual Property 276

Posted by timothy from the pick-a-fight-your-first-day-with-the-toughest-avatar dept.
tsa writes "Last week, the Dutch court subjected two kids of ages 15 and 14 to 160 hours of unpaid work or 80 days in jail, because they stole virtual property from a 13-year-old boy. The boy was kicked and beaten and threatened with a knife while forced to log into Runescape and giving his assets to the two perpetrators. This ruling is the first of its kind for the Netherlands. Ars Technica has some more background information." In Japan, meanwhile, a woman has been arrested for "illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data" after (virtually) killing her (virtual) husband.
Government

US's First Internet Votes To Be Cast This Friday 143

Posted by timothy from the but-counting-commences-thursday dept.
longacre writes "If you thought online voting in America was a distant pipe dream (nightmare?), think again: the nation's first Internet-based voting system goes online this Friday, just days after the release of the Damning Report On Sequoia E-Voting Machine Security we discussed yesterday. In the first real world run of the Okaloosa Distance Ballot Piloting (ODBP) test program, election officials from Okaloosa County, Florida have set up kiosks in Germany, the UK and Japan where 600-700 absentee voters — mostly military personnel — are expected to cast ballots. Security experts still have many questions, of course, particularly on the potential for interception of voting data while it travels across oceans (via 'secure VPN'), the security of the kiosks ('hardened laptops' with no hard drives and other sensitive components disabled) and the security of the three data centers (one of which is itself housed overseas, in Barcelona, Spain), not to mention the fact that Florida doesn't exactly have a stellar record when it comes to vote counting. Florida's Dept. of State also has a fairly detailed outline of ODBP's components and processes [PDF]."
Space

No Naked Black Holes 317

Posted by kdawson from the also-no-hair dept.
Science News reports on a paper to be published in Physical Review Letters in which an international team of researchers describes their computer simulation of the most violent collision imaginable: two black holes colliding head-on at nearly light-speed. Even in this extreme scenario, Roger Penrose's weak cosmic censorship hypothesis seems to hold — the resulting black hole (after the gravitational waves have died down) retains its event horizon. "Mathematically, 'naked' singularities, or those without event horizons, can exist, but physicists wouldn't know what to make of them. All known mechanisms for the formation of singularities also create an event horizon, and Penrose conjectured that there must be some physical principle — a 'cosmic censor' — that forbids singularity nakedness ..."

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Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do. -- R. A. Heinlein

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