All Things News

Ubisoft, publishers of Rainbow Six Vegas 2, didn’t have a ‘no-dvd’ patch for the new direct2drive 1.03 version of the game; so what’s a game company to do? They steal the ‘no-dvd’ game crack from the RELOADED pirate group, and supply that to those that ask for the 1.03 patch.

Keep in mind that Ubisoft doesn’t allow anyone to discuss cracks, warez or link to torrents, etc. on their forums. This is also the same Ubisoft that was banning users from their forums for threatening to boycott the draconian Starforce protection scheme Ubisoft insisted on using, while at the same time gushing over the necessity of protection schemes. Now they are stealing a pirate ‘no-dvd’ patch that defeats their copy protection and distributing it to the users themselves.

Proof, and more proof.

Digg Comments

Straight from Discover Magazine: “Regular readers know I am deeply impressed with astronomical imagery, and I tend to be a little over-the-top on occasion when describing it.

However, having said that, let me be very clear: the following is just about the coolest thing I have ever seen.

First, the setup. The Deep Impact spacecraft was the one that smacked a chunk of copper into a comet so that we could see what materials were below the surface. After the impact, the spacecraft kept going (with the mission renamed EPOXI), and it’s being used to do all sorts of interesting observations.

In late May, 2008, it turned its cameras back to Earth and observed us over the course of a several hours. During this time, from EPOXI’s point of view, the Moon passed directly in front of the Earth! The images were put together (by my old boss, Don Lindler!) into, well, one of the most astonishing animations I have ever watched. Ever.”

Straight from Slashdot: “For the past 2 years, the RIAA and its attack dog SafeNet (formerly known as MediaSentry) have been trying to avoid disclosure in UMG v. Lindor by telling the judge that MediaSentry is NOT an expert, that it does not use any technical expertise to get the ‘evidence’, and that it does only ‘what any other Kazaa user does’. We have just discovered that in administrative proceedings in Michigan, attacking it for engaging in the business of investigation without a license, MediaSentry has taken the exact opposite position, comparing itself to chemical engineers, surveyors, physicians, geologists, and other expert witnesses who rely on their technical expertise. Today we went public with some of the contradictions. Now let’s hope Michigan’s Department of Labor and Economic Growth finds out about it.”

Straight from Slashdot: “While most of the US was celebrating Independence Day, the true fellow geeks over at TrueCrypt released version 6.0 of TrueCrypt over the long weekend. The new version touts two major upgrades. ‘First, TrueCrypt now performs parallel encryption and decryption operations on multi-core systems, giving you a phenomenal speedup if you have more than one processor available. Second, it now has the ability to hide an entire operating system, so even if you’re forced to reveal your pre-boot password to an adversary, you can give them one that boots into a plausible decoy operating system, with your hidden operating system remaining completely undetectable.’ The software has been released under the ‘TrueCrypt License,’ which is not OSI approved.”

Straight from Slashdot:”Orion Blastar tips us to an AP report that 550 metric tons of “yellowcake” uranium has successfully been removed from Iraq. The operation lasted three months, and it required 37 separate flights and an 8,500-mile trip by boat to reach a port in Montreal. Quoting:

“While yellowcake alone is not considered potent enough for a so-called ‘dirty bomb’ — a conventional explosive that disperses radioactive material — it could stir widespread panic if incorporated in a blast. Yellowcake also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment. The Iraqi government sold the yellowcake to a Canadian uranium producer, Cameco Corp., in a transaction the official described as worth ‘tens of millions of dollars.’ A Cameco spokesman, Lyle Krahn, declined to discuss the price, but said the yellowcake will be processed at facilities in Ontario for use in energy-producing reactors.”

Straight from Slashdot: “Multiple sites reported a while ago that Comcast was using Sandvine to do TCP packet resets to throttle BitTorrent connections of their users. This practice may be a thing of the past as it’s been found a simple rule in the Linux firewall, iptables, can simply just block their reset packets, returning your BitTorrent back to normal speeds and allowing you to once again connect to all your seeds and peer. If blocking the TCP packet resets becomes a common practice, on and off of Linux, it’ll be interesting to see the next move in the cat-and-mouse game between customers and service providers, and who controls that bandwidth.”

Straight from Slashdot: “NASA’s replacement for the shuttle, the Orion, is slipping behind schedule:

“‘We’re probably going to have to move our target date,’ NASA exploration chief Doug Cooke told The Associated Press on Wednesday after Nasawatch.com posted the 117-page internal status report (PDF) on the moon program. The cost problems include an $80 million overrun on a motor system. The Orion spacecraft’s design remains too heavy for the proposed Ares 1 rocket. Software development, heat shield testing and other complex work remain behind schedule or over budget. There are dozens of such serious challenges, many of which are ‘worsening.’”

Straight from Slashdot: “The war against the alt.* hierarchy of Usenet continues as NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has convinced two more ISPs to drop access to part of Usenet. They’ve also set up the website NY Stop Child Porn, and convinced California to join them in the fight. In some sense, this is rather like bulldozing the slums to fight crime; sure, it might get rid of a lot of undesirables, but it also affects many innocent people, and everyone will now start migrating elsewhere in droves. The article notes, ‘Cuomo’s new web site signifies that he’s clearly not done yet. It includes contact information for 20 ISPs that presumably operate in New York, and text of a letter to send to them to urge that they sign on to the campaign.’ And you thought the Eternal September was bad…”

Straight from Slashdot: Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have found a galaxy producing an average of up to 4,000 stars per year. They contrast this with the Milky Way, which only produces an average of 10 each year. Nicknamed “Baby Boom,” it is a young starburst galaxy, and its stellar birth rate conflicts with a commonly accepted model for the growth of a galaxy. Quoting:

“‘The question now is whether the majority of the very most massive galaxies form very early in the universe like the Baby Boom galaxy, or whether this is an exceptional case. Answering this question will help us determine to what degree the Hierarchical Model of galaxy formation still holds true,’ [said Peter Capak of NASA's Spitzer Science Center] ‘The incredible star-formation activity we have observed suggests that we may be witnessing, for the first time, the formation of one of the most massive elliptical galaxies in the universe,’ said co-author Nick Scoville of Caltech, the principal investigator of the Cosmic Evolution Survey.”

Straight from Slashdot: “Michael Benson is proposing that NASA send the ISS to the moon instead of leaving it in low earth orbit. (While we’re at it, we should re-brand it as the ‘International Space Ship.’) He points out that it’s already designed to be moved periodically to higher orbits so instead of just boosting it a few miles, strap on some ion engines and put it in orbit around the moon instead of the earth. That would provide an initial base for the astronauts going to the moon and give the ISS a purpose other than performing yet more studies on the effect of micro gravity on humans. Benson concludes: ‘Let’s begin the process of turning the ISS from an Earth-orbiting caterpillar into an interplanetary butterfly.’”