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Comment Boycott is the wrong answer... (Score 4, Interesting) 261

We're going about this the wrong way. We should all buy copies of the game and then return it the next day because it won't play without the internet. That will cost Ubisoft thousand of dollars handling returns / RMA's from their various vendors and send a clear message about the DRM.
Media

Low-Level Format For a USB Flash Drive? 252

Posted by timothy from the back-from-the-living-dead dept.
Luyseyal writes "I unwittingly bought one of these terrible flash cards at Fry's and have managed to nuke two of them, successively. I have a USB flash card reader that will read/write the current one at USB 1.0 speed, but it locks up every Ubuntu and XP machine I've come across in high-speed access mode. I have read that if I low-level format it that it could be fixed, though my current one doesn't support it. My Google-fu must be weak because I cannot seem to find a USB flash reader that specifies that it will do low-level formatting." Can anyone offer advice for resurrecting such drives?
Security

Critical Flaw Found In Virtually All AV Software 279

Posted by Soulskill from the if-only-there-were-something-more-monolithic-to-blame dept.
Securityemo writes "The Register is running an article about a new method to bypass antivirus software, discovered by Matousec. By sending benign code to the antivirus driver hooks, and switching it out for malicious code at the last moment, the antivirus can be completely bypassed. This attack is apparently much more reliable on multi-core systems. Here's the original research paper." El Reg notes that "The technique works even when Windows is running under an account with limited privileges," but "it requires a large amount of code to be loaded onto the targeted machine, making it impractical for shellcode-based attacks or attacks that rely on speed and stealth. It can also be carried out only when an attacker already has the ability to run a binary on the targeted PC."

Comment Re:WAT is Voluntary and Doesn't Impact OS Usage (Score 1) 819

by cypherljk (#31104344) Attached to: Anti-Piracy Windows 7 Update Phones Home Quarterly

1.) Voluntary in that if you know what it is then you can decline it most people won't
2.) All functions that are not 3rd party apps are part of the OS including minuscule ones such as the wallpaper
3.) I don't have an issue with that if there is an issue with the original activation
4.) That is bogus. The goal is increase revenue by cracking down on illegal copies which I don't necessarily have
a problem with as a developer
5.) Who in their right minds reads all that "fine" print? Those are only there to lay out legal escape clauses for these Orwellian tactics
6.) M$ does not want to piss off their business consumers. This is strictly a business decision and they could really care
less really if it was pushed out to biz's if they thought they would not complain

I don't have an issue with protecting product and I have designed many systems but after you validate your license, serial etc
it should not continuously "phone home" period. It is intrusive regardless of how much info is or is not transmitted back.
My main problem with this is it "detects"...!

"validate your Windows 7 system against Microsoft's latest database of pirated system signatures (currently including more than 70 activation exploits known to Microsoft). "

This is bogus. If it would check against a valid serial or key then it OK but it attempts to detect how and if your system was altered. As a developer I constantly and doing things to as I'm sure we all are. Now some change may trigger a "reduction" in functionality for a possible threat to Microsoft revenue stream. That is B.S.
Games

EVE Online Battle Breaks Records (And Servers) 308

Posted by Soulskill from the blame-it-on-the-torrents dept.
captainktainer writes "In one of the largest tests of EVE Online's new player sovereignty system in the Dominion expansion pack, a fleet of ships attempting to retake a lost star system was effectively annihilated amidst controversy. Defenders IT Alliance, a coalition succeeding the infamous Band of Brothers alliance (whose disbanding was covered in a previous story), effectively annihilated the enemy fleet, destroying thousands of dollars' worth of in-game assets. A representative of the alliance claimed to have destroyed a minimum of four, possibly five or more of the game's most expensive and powerful ship class, known as Titans. Both official and unofficial forums are filled with debate about whether the one-sided battle was due to difference in player skill or the well-known network failures after the release of the expansion. One of the attackers, a member of the GoonSwarm alliance, claims that because of bad coding, 'Only 5% of [the attackers] loaded,' meaning that lag prevented the attackers from using their ships, even as the defenders were able to destroy those ships unopposed. Even members of the victorious IT Alliance expressed disappointment at the outcome of the battle. CCP, EVE Online's publisher, has recently acknowledged poor network performance, especially in the advertised 'large fleet battles' that Dominion was supposed to encourage, and has asked players to help them stress test their code on Tuesday. Despite the admitted network failure, leaders of the attacking force do not expect CCP to replace lost ships, claiming that it was their own fault for not accounting for server failures. The incident raises questions about CCP's ability to cope with the increased network use associated with their rapid growth in subscriptions."

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