I've just been dealing with a fair bit of stuff. In gaming news, I just beat the single player mode of Portal 2 a couple hours ago. I'm looking forward to co-op mode with my brother after PSN finishes maintenance.Oh, one minor achievement I'm glad about: I got the "Preservation of Mass" trophy. I won't spoil it by telling you what it is.
13 comments:
Ohey, I remember that trophy. Effin' GLaDOS...
Currently actually working on co-op mode. My exploits will eventually be on YouTube when the guy I'm playing with posts his LP. Wheee!
Cool. Post a link to the playlist when you get done.
Sony's network being down is really odd. They're currently saying some hackers are responsible, but really, I have to wonder what redundancies they have in place if that couldn't be taken care of in a couple of hours.
I got the PC version, well actually someone got the PS3 version and gave me their PC version, so yeah that works pretty well. Unfortunately I'm dealing with down time of my own, as my PC's motherboard is acting up. It randomly freezes, completely and totally, and during things like the BIOS or linux live-cds. I removed and/or replaced every last component connected to the motherboard and have eliminated it down to that, so right now I'm just double checking to make sure a screw didn't come loose behind it and cause a short or something, and then if that's fine, I'll flash the BIOS again (hopefully it won't freeze during that) and then see if I can get a warranty repair from the motherboard maker. My approach has basically been "it's probably something I did" until I can determine otherwise.
Hope you get that fixed, DJ.
I read a short snippet about the hacker thing. Anonymous didn't claim credit, though I think they had a bit of friction with Sony for banning people from PSN for using custom software. The Daily What: Geek site speculated that it's bad network design, and the nonspecific hackers are scapegoats.
Either way, it's annoying to be separated from co-op games and Netflix on my big screen for this long.
I just beat KOTOR and Dragon Quest VIII.
I've been about six years behind since the PS2/XBox generation (though I had a GameCube).
I've heard a bunch of stuff about these "anonymous" folks for a while now (first time I unintentionally ad-libbed a "Who's on First?" routine with someone over it). I really think they're overblown. There's plenty of other hackers out there who don't announce themselves to the world, and honestly that makes them a bit more dangerous to me. These ones just have a cute shadowy name attached to them. So far all I've seen out of them are disorganized random DDOS attacks on various web sites. They don't even seem to have a clear agenda or anything. I'm not impressed.
I've been paying closer attention to the lawsuits between Sony and the other hackers making that custom firmware and the homebrew stuff. I've got a pretty libertarian view on this particular issue. Sony's got the right to kick people off their network for using custom software, because that's a threat to their network (cheaters have apparently become an issue lately). However, I think the consumers that own the PS3s have the right to do whatever they want, locally at least, to their own hardware. I don't see how Sony has a legal case against someone for customizing firmware, even if it "enables piracy", but then again I've always had a problem with certain part of the millennium copyright act.
Well anyway, whoever's mad at whoever, it doesn't really justify trying to hack into Sony's network. The latest announcement from Sony, yesterday, is stating that some sort of intrusion was detected and it's down due to a determination to fully upgrade their entire network to prevent this sort of thing. Well, that's good and all, but it would have been nice to have said something before taking it all down. Oh well.
So as it stands, I guess we just wait out the storm. If you've got a Wii or 360, you can play on there, but on the 360 you'll need an active gold account (which is a whole other kettle of fish, I really don't get why that's needed when MS doesn't host the Netflix service).
I'm okay with homebrew in principle. Want to make your own games? Cool. Want to add some useful functions to your machine? Cool.
Piracy? Not so fast. I'm not a fan of draconian or eternal copyright laws, but game makers should be able to get money for producing worthwhile games. At least for a finite number of years. I can have some understanding of Sony being overly paranoid. They want to be able to sell products, and the partner companies who make PS3 software should expect some level of effort on Sony's part to prevent piracy.
What really gets me about this particular hacker is that he gives homebrew fans a bad name, and as he does so, he's hurting gamers like me and my brother who just wanted to play a little co-op this weekend.
If he wanted to hurt Sony and stand up for gamers, he should be doing something to protect benign homebrewers, like making a program to let hacked PS3s pass inspection.
Instead, he conveys the image of a pirate who's whiny about getting caught, so he takes it out on the world. He's not doing this for the gamers, he's doing this for his personal shits and giggles.
The guys who make homebrews = hackers.
Hi, used to be one of them. In C++. My skillz are completely non-l33t now.
The guys who pirate software = crackers.
And I don't like them either.
Oh. Hi. So. How are you holding up? Because I'm a potato!
:D
I realized I might have given the wrong impression above. I too am against piracy. The hacker I was talking about who got sued, as near as I can tell, wasn't actually promoting piracy. It's simply a fact that whenever you open up custom firmware, piracy becomes possible. I believe that's what Sony was suing over.
Personally, I think a fair middle ground that hackers could try to reach would simply be to allow local backups of games (for the standard reasons one would do that), but with a signing tool that prevented it from being loaded on any PS3 but the one it was backed up to. Technically Sony could also implement this, and MS already mostly does, except for the disk in the drive requirement.
My objection isn't to finding piracy illegal. It clearly is so don't copy that floppy. It's just to the parts of the law that prosecute people for defeating anti-piracy protection for legitimate reasons, or Sony's current position which is that the very act of making piracy possible makes you responsible for the potential losses to piracy that results in. To me that's similar to when VCR makers were being sued because of the potential use in illegal copying.
FOR BRAINDEAD IDI*T PZ
graveyardofthegods.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=11371
we're going to TORTURE YOU F*CKERS...
Ah, yes. Torture. An act that can be unambiguously described as evil. DM continues spreading the gospel of moral nihilism.
Since you requested a link to the playlist... 'ere you go. It's towards the bottom. http://www.youtube.com/user/UberPhishStudios#p/c/081AC4B37F600255
(I sorta forgot how to actually insert a link in a comment while I was gone...)
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