Lynx

Uhhh, why on earth would you pay that much for a server to host Continuum. I mean, really... That's complete overkill. I'd have understood perhaps 5-10 years ago when hosting was a little more expensive/harder to come by but a 100MBPS Unlimited with Dual Intel Xeon 3.06Ghz CPUs 4GB RAM, 160 GB SATA Drive for £100 a month is complete overkill for (in reality) 50 or so players. Continuum needs the bare minimum when it comes to processing power and RAM (for ASSS at least); and if anything it needs a server with a stable ping; which is relatively low for the majority of it's players (which is usually the case whenever a server is located at either a major server barn, or NJ/NY etc.) I mean, even when Trech Wars was in it's peak of 500 or so players a night, the total bandwidth wasn't even too excessive. 500 * 60 * 60 *24 *31 * 2KB = 2678400000 KB = 2615625 MB = 2554 GB = 2.49 TB In reality, playercount wouldn't even ever be that high at all times, so it'll probably be something more like 1.5TB/mo which is still nothing.

Just because Jason Chen is a journalist, it doesn't mean that he's except from the law - fortunately the aforementioned laws that protect journalists are except if the journalist is thought to be breaking the law themselves. Gizmodo paid $5,000 for stolen goods. That's breaking the law. Apple is just based around secrecy, it always has been. They adopt security via obscurity, and have a large legion of knee-jerk buyers. If the market knows that a new iPhone with better features is coming out soon, they'll likely wait before purchasing (more so, not purchase the current iPhone - leading to losses on Apples end). Pretty much any technology company works like this. I do call bullshit to your marketshare:profit theory. Give me an example of how the iPhone has ever been a generation back in technology; or the iPad, or the iPods. As far as I can tell, the iPhone still has a far superior OS to RIMBB/Android/Symbian/WinOS etcetera from a UI point of view, and from an accessibility point of view. It's also doing far better in terms of sales (in the smart phone category), and of course profits. Perhaps you're talking about the actual hardware; but I think we can both agree that's a pretty moot difference. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors in that paragraph, as well as a lot of speculation. I really do have doubts to your theory. Uh, if you read more of the coverage on the story it shows that pretty much everything in the last para. is rhubarb.

Yeah, that's where it's cloudy. According to CA. law you have to report anything found to the police; or the law will consider that you stole it. You also have to take into account that the finder of the iPhone also contacted Wired about a review of the phone, but wired declined after they noticed the finder was after money. It's pretty clear (to me at least) that the finder clearly knew what he was doing, and was looking to make a few (thousand) bucks out of a quick story. I've no real pity for Apple, or the money that they've lost (if they have... ) over this getting leaked. I only feel sorry for the Apple engineer who will probably have a hard time finding another job. Who I'd like to see suffer over this would be Gizmodo, for not only paying 5K for (what is technically stolen goods) to just put out a story. Not only did they report on the phone, but they dismantled it, too. They also named the engineer, publicly shaming him just for credibility. Of course, Powell was a fucking dumbass for taking a 4G out of the campus, but people do make mistakes. It would be shameful (but not unexpected) of Apple to fire him over this... But Apple is an asshole company; they'll definitely (if they haven't already) fire him.

Mhmm, I've been following this on Wired and Slashdot. Personally, I feel that both the seller of the iPhone and Gizmodo deserve their just deserts for this one. The engineer (Gray Powell) will probably struggle to find another job within any large corp after this screw up.

Go to the PayPal website, sign up, confirm your address with them, link a credit card and you're done.

Sorry to hear that, when the University pays me I'll try to donate some cash. How much do you need to raise?

Haha, but srsly, that should be changed. http://www.ssforum.net/public/style_emoticons/default/blum.gif

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1907543

When SSCU moved from EU to East Coast it was because only 1/3 of players were EU, with 2/3 USA (PriitK said this). I'd still stand by east coast of USA being the best, that's where I've situated my SS server and it gets on average 90ms pings for myself (and other UK/EU players) which is more than reasonable, with even the west coast only getting only around 50ms... Either way, it's not how low pings are, but how stable they are. If it's a good server, even a ping of 150ms shouldn't hurt too bad as SS will account for the time skew. It's only pings that fluctuate too much that cause a problem.

What do you expect, it's Microsoft.

In my experience, east coast servers are best. That allows pretty much everybody to have a stable, low ping. I've had a few different servers over EU and London and they've always been pretty poor for players in America (the majority).

Ah, I forgot it moved. http://www.ssforum.net/public/style_emoticons/default/blum.gif

You firstly need a means of getting onto Slashdot, and chances are we won't. Also, if SSFN server got slashdotted I'm pretty sure it would overload the site; I dunno if TT has changed anything since the last 'incident' but getting on the /. main page is a big deal of bandwidth. A really big deal. GL tho.

May as well just subsidize whatever information there is on sscouncil.com onto subspaceonline, and then make a privileged forum here for what (if anything, really) discussion happens on the forums. The centralisation of information will probably make things a lot easier for anybody in the community looking for information, anyway. Just my 2pence.

I live about 10 minutes from Heathrow airport, and usually my area has loads of traffic and a lot of air pollution etc... Been great lately tho. http://www.ssforum.net/public/style_emoticons/default/blum.gif

Students get Taxed in America?

That game kinda reminds me of Descent... I miss that game.

Jianwei Wang wrote this paper (this paper is part of the reason the bill was drafted) describing how a cascading attack could disable not just one grid (I don't care what the proper terminology is, and stop being a douche) but could disable multiple grids. For evidence that cascading issues can occur refer to the 2003 incident where ~100 million homes were left without electricity due to the failure of just one plant during a high energy use period. And seeing as there was malicious software that [according to security officials from the attacked providers] could have damaged plants, I'd be inclined not to believe you. Nope, you've just made an unrelated analogy. The bottom line is that relying on only one point of failure is naive. I'm not arguing that the security personnel at the plants should become redundant, but I am arguing that getting butt-hurt over the Government lending a hand is nothing short of ludicrous. Clearly, the department of homeland security is lying to us all.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123914805204099085.html It wasn't a small story, and the underlying factor is that national security professionals have said that the grid has been compromised, and the malicious software left behind could have disrupted the grid. I'm not going to dilly dally over what damage could have been done; but leave it as damage could have been done. Whether you think that this damage could have been fatal to peoples lives, or injure people, or just be a pain in the arse isn't something I am going to argue over because in all honesty, I don't know enough about all the problems that could arise to have such an argument. I do know, however, that if critical infrastructure goes down, there will be problems. Due to the system already being compromised, it's clear that the engineers overseeing security at whatever grid that was attacked aren't doing a very good job; and simply relying on one point of failure (which has already failed) is naive. To make a bad analogy, you get a pilot and a co-pilot. If the pilot has a heart attack, at least there's somebody else to take over when shit does inevitably go pair shaped. Another thing that irks me about the whole situation is that many of the security attacks against critical infrastructure aren't caught by engineers working for the grids etc, but by Government Intel. agencies; which you seem to be demonising so much. And just for the record; bills are changed, often many times before they're finalised. Yes, arguing over a non-issue like the kill-switch is a moot point.

Yes, Desert Storm is currently on SSC (although is still merging from Subgame to ASSS), Command and Conquer will also be joining and so will The Complex.

How does that happen? I thought bad sectors only occurred via physical damage... ? bad sectors occur when parity checks can't be made/corrected, and can occur due to shitty software or hardware failing, and probably an array of other reasons. And I just noticed what you meant by MentalOS now. http://www.ssforum.net/public/style_emoticons/default/blum.gif

And if you'd have paid any attention you'd note that the 'kill switch' you keep yabbering on about isn't in the bill, and the fact still remains that critical infrastructure has been compromised, so therefore your whole point is moot. Focusing security within a network alone is always a bad idea; hence why common sense applies here. Also, just because when grids were compromised and it never ended in catastrophe, doesn't mean that further safety measures should be put into place for the future.

The US water, electricial and sewage grid has already been hacked, the bill is there because common sense applies.

Kernel = file manager, schedular, dispatcher, memory manager and device manager (to keep it broadly simple). Oh, and apparently Internet explorer according to microsoft... Memory dumping falls into none of those categories, memory dumping is just convienient output. And wow. Windows like operating systems. Do they run win software out of the box?? If they don't, then they fail epicly.

The kernel doesn't call a memory dump, the operating system does. It's impossible to exceed on execution threads. If you've had to memory dump, you wouldn't "see" your memory desaturate. Go outside. http://www.ssforum.net/public/style_emoticons/default/blum.gif edit: what would a windows-like operating system be?