Heh, back when I was a wee college freshman in the before times, one of my first jobs was helping a delivery company implement a new trial computer logging system for their trucks. Cadec. It had a steel computer terminal mounted on the dash with an LED display and numeric keypad and a slot for a large steel cartridge that contained the memory for the log. The truckers took the cartridges in the morning and handed them back in at night. I then downloaded the data to the, ONE, PC the delivery company had for logging and printing the nightly reports. That lasted just under 10 months when 80% of the systems broke the speedometers/tachometers in the trucks. Because they had spliced in the analog sensors to the cables... by design.

The problem is games distributed on physical media is a thing of the past and newer consoles have no disc drives at all. Nintendo has physical media with memory cards still but many of their newer cards are just empty cards with download codes for the digital copy (and you still need the card in the unit to play the game!).

It'd be one thing if you could download the title and be done with it but now they increasingly want you to stay connected to the mothership and re-authenticate your purchase.

I'm trying to figure out why they're requiring a "check in" every 30 days to retain your digital software that you PURCHASED.

Is this some sort of piracy prevention so users can't copy the games out to other consoles? That kind of piracy can't be any worse than the physical game copying or yore so what kind of money could they possibly be saving by screwing over their customers like this?

[tik tik tik] - "Hi, I'm Clippy. It looks like you're being sacked. Would you like help transferring your 401k to a personal IRA? I can notify security to give you up to an hours delay before they escort you off the premises!"

"Run awayyyyyy!!!!"

"Why doesn't Microsoft want an independent encryption program running? "

Mr. Dillinger I'm so very disappointed in you. I can't afford to have an independent program monitoring me.

Oops - read that wrong - prices start at US 7K/year!

Huh... so the kid who's the CEO of his own botnet monitoring company (with prices starting at US 7k/month) looking for threats "stops" one of the most virulent botnet attacks in recent history?

"Benjamin Brundage is founder of Synthient, a startup that tracks proxy services and was the first to document Kimwolf’s unique spreading techniques. Brundage said the Kimwolf operator(s) have been trying to build a command and control network that can’t easily be taken down by security companies and network operators that are working together to combat the spread of the botnet." ...

"Meanwhile, Brundage said the good news is Kimwolf’s overlords appear to have quite recently alienated some of their more competent developers and operators, leading to a rookie mistake this past week that caused the botnet’s overall numbers to drop by more than 600,000 infected systems.
“It seems like they’re just testing stuff, like running experiments in production,” he said. “But the botnet’s numbers are dropping significantly now, and they don’t seem to know what they’re doing.”

How... convenient...

Dr. Gillian Taylor: "Do you like Italian?"
Spock: "No."

One of the writers for The Island: "Alex Kurtzman".

Oh, of course.

Also, The Sixth Day https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0...

Interesting... I'd be surprised that Sam would leave a BILLION on the table. I wonder if Disney pulled the plug with the new CEO trying to curry favor with the actor's union and that's why OpenAI decided to "refocus"

"Focus on core values"

Yeah, BS.

Disney made a major investment and had them shut Sora down so Disney can use it in house exclusively.

Or are we officially admitting that doesn't really work and trying to decide if a quarter of a bicycle wheel in a tile counts as the bicycle or not?