Gel214th

Yes, we know why anti piracy systems exist. And this one, StarForce, is flawed and causes a lot of problems. The thread is about a possible future problem and further consideration for the technology which is one that would require even more future upgrades to allow gamers to keep playing their games. What's your point? And no, I think ISPs reporting all large file downloads is a stupid idea.

And irrelevant to a thread on the SF technology itself.

That's just so ridiculous. Even more reason for people to want, and for the Groupz to produce, No-CD cracks for these games. The idea behind SF protection just doesn't work. It's flawed. It can never work at the system level, and shouldn't be at the system level.

"Users report that the software gobbles up computing cycles, slows CD drive read-times, creates CD-R read errors even after removal, and is responsible for a number of device conflicts - particularly with external USB drives. Users who have tried to remove the product manually have often damaged their systems to the point of needing a fresh OS install. If users aren't irritated by the system issues, the unannounced installation, or the privacy implications of such a program, they usually are bothered to learn that the drivers are not removed when a user removes the host application. Users also aren't alerted to the driver installation by the end-user license agreement present in most of the games that employ the protection technology. " Who else is going to report these things Dmut? If software messes up a computer, who reports it? Not the users? You expect StarForce to report these problems with its software? Starforce already has in a way by admitting to needing patches to fix 'compatibility problems'. You shouldn't have to release several patches for system compatibility problems for a darn game copy protection. It's that simple. That alone should show anyone employing some degree of critical thinking on the subject that there *are* problems with Starforce. Security sites *have* released warnings about the software. What more proof that all isn't a-ok with this copy protection, and it is the ONLY Copy protection mechanism so criticised, and it is STILL cracked within a short time after game release? You lend more credence to the Company's own PR? You must get ripped off a lot as a consumer if the only thing you pay attention to is company PR. Since you don't consider with what your fellow users say I suppose you would never visit E-pinions.org, and hold no stock in the findings of Consumer Report and Consumer Review. The company's PR that its products haven't been cracked is bs. I wonder what else is bs?

There is a No - DVD (if it makes you feel better) patch for SH3 out already. The copy protection,whatever it is, has been cracked. If one is to ask 'how' the pirates managed to release it when it only went gold and think this is some sort of protection or timeline for when games are released to wares, then one isn't very informed about how these warez circles and distribution networks work.Countless numbers of games are available on Warez sites before they are even released in stores. Do you know a game by the name Half Life 2? How about Doom 3? Those ring a bell? By the time the games hit the P2P they have already been available for sometime on other dedicated warez servers. So the fact the game only went gold X days ago, is absolutely no reason why it cannot be available over P2P networks, newsgroups, or dedicated warez servers. As for the rest, consumers should fight hard against any legislation or moves that limit the freedom of their Fair Use rights to the products which they purchase. Whether it is broadcast television and manufacturers being FORCED to support a 'broadcast' flag which effectively prevents you from recording a show off television, or mandatory digital rights management on everyone's computer. These measures are draconian and are in no way meant to protect the consumer, the artists, or the developers. THey are meant to protect business monopolies that currently exist and which are fighting to preserve their monopolies and legitimise their way of doing business through legilature. In the end it is the consumer that will suffer tremendously if these measures are passed. It is the reason why several artists are grouping to provide a counter lobby group to allow P2P networks to grow and flourish, because the smart among them see it as a legitamate means of getting out from under the thumb of the RIAA,the MPAA, and the major game Publishers who take the majority of the profit from these artists, developers, movie producers etc. The stupid buy into the propaganda that P2P file sharing so drastically harms the music industry, when every independent survey ever taken shows totally the opposite, and DVD and CD sales continue to climb.

This is part of the problem. Why the hell do I have to download drivers to update third party copy protection on my system to prevent compatibility problems with my other stuff!???

Re: Polls with the same amount of voters? to buy or not to b I thought the first poll's question was very badly phrased, and neither option suited my response. So I didn't vote on it. Similarly this post doesn't make much sense. It asks if you would buy it even with SF protection. How about 1) I will buy it with the StarForce protection 2) I will buy it with the starforce protection, but I would prefer if it used a different method of Copy Protection 3) I will not buy it with starforce copy protection. 4) I will not buy it irregardless of what copy protection is used. Now wouldn't that give a more accurate reflection of people's opinions?

There is a trojan that remotely accesses a computer through a local user account. If the StarForce vulnerability is present, a trojan could therefore escalate its priviliges to administrator and have full admin privileges. I am not aware of any trojan that specifically uses these tried and true methods to gain access to the system AND also checks for Starforce vulnerability. But it *is*possible, and it escalating privileges is a common method by hackers to gain access to a machine. I don't know how much you have read up on computer security or how much knowledge you have on the subject, but my understanding is that any vulnerability that allows privileges on your machine to be escalated from user accounts is a serious vulnerability. You may want to look at past IE vulnerabilities which have been classified as 'serious' and patched for reference that most people would be familiar with. Here is an article you can read to better acquaint yourself with the subject matter: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=102181 This is a simple example, but it should alert you to the fact that a program, already ON the machine which can be accessed remotely, that has the vulnerability to escalate local privileges is a serious problem. If you still cannot understand the relevance and seriousness of allowing a program with a known vulnerability, especially one that runs at the system driver level onto your machine you do not comprehend the ways in which vulnerabilities and flaws in system drivers can be exploited to install malicious software onto your machine.

Good to know other options are being considered. I don't know if the Dev team saw the post I made on Games Xtream service which seemed perfect for digital distribution of this sim. http://www.gamexstream.com/ Also, StarForce itself is not a virus. What it does is introduce vulnerabilities into the system which a trojan or worm designed to exploit those vulnerabilities can take advantage of to install itself onto the machine. You all must have read about 'Exploits' in programs such as Internet Explorer. IE itself is not a virus, or a spyware package, but under the right conditions someone could use various 'features' of IE to maliciously install unwanted software and programs onto a system. My understanding of the StarForce system drivers is that versions of them have vulnerabilities and can be exploited to install trojans and spyware. This is particularly troublesome since the StarForce copyprotection operates as a system driver that boots with the system from what I understand. I am not sure if any Worms have been released that check for these vulnerabilities to spread trojans/spyware to machines, but it does introduce a vulnerability to your machine which you would need a seperate,properly configured firewall etc. to prevent against. The firewall also may not help if you have already allowed the StarForce protected game access to the internet to allow for Multiplayer play. I'm surprised that StarForce hasn't acknowledged these issues and posted some sort of response other than providing a StarForce Cleaner for people that want to remove the driver files from their machines. The exact text of a warning on one vulnerability is here : This is not a hacker site etc. but a legitimate site that posts vulnerability and security warnings. Anyone that said that StarForce does NOT have any known security vulnerabilities is sadly incorrect. At least one version does and AFAIK it is the latest version. One should also note that on the Security Tracker website StarForce is the only Copy Protection company that is listed. i.e. Securerom, Laserlok et al do not seem to have these vulnerability issues whether they use some sort of .dll or not. It is clearly the way in which StarForce chooses to effect copy protection that leads to this issue being a possible problem with their Copy Protection software, because it seems to tie itself so closely to the system.

I read about this on CNN when it happened. An AirForce General gave a statement to the press, which stated that he felt the exercise showed that the US cannot afford to let up on pilot training programs and the exercise showed that much needs to be done to bring pilot training back to where it used to be. From the article I recall that according to the General, the US fighters performance was much lower than expected against the Indian Air Forces. Saying they won/lost is just semantics next to that statement. Here is a post of text from the article from WPS: It should be noted that the F15s did not have their usual AWACS support. Maybe this is a prerequisite to America winning any air war against a similar equipped opponent these days? http://www.af.mil/stories/story.asp?storyID=123007057 If you can find any quotes or press releases that do not say that the Americans were outflown and at least partially outmatched by the Russian technology I'd appreciate if these could be posted so I can see :) I also heard that the exercises were a cover to garner support for continuing development of the F22 fighter, hence the reason the US forces lost.

Re: PC Gamer praises Flaming Cliffs I'm not saying that LOMAC 1.1 isn't going to look fantastic, but you're way way in the past if the last big thing you remember is the Unreal 2 engine having 3000 polygons. Have you heard of Half Life 2? Doom 3? Or the awaited Unreal 3 engine? Come on...don't try to compare LOMAC to a past game engine. It can be compared to the latest engines out there and still hold its own.

As an avid gamer of several genres, I have come across numerous online complaints about StarForce.It seems that the software does have issues. ANything which tries to hook into your system at a very deep level with a system driver, is going to cause some sort of problem. This is very comparable to what Spyware attempts to do. Once you start mucking about with the internals and system process calls of the Operating System, bad things are going to happen at some point in time. Do the StarForce people have an agreement with Microsoft to be informed of new security updates before hand? What if one of these updates affect the StarForce system driver and causes system instability,are people who purchased a game then supposed to go to the starforce website to download a 'patch' , not for the game, but for their system? That's a risk. And it is a risk that both StarForce and the Publisher needs to recognise. Will StarForce work in a year or two with LongHorn? ANd if not will that mean my game purchase now will only be valid for the next year or so? StarForce does not have the resources to test their software with a wide variety of system types and hardware combinations that is required to ensure that a system driver does not cause conflicts, crash to desktops, or otherwise interfere with normal system use. They may think it doesn't, but until they get a lot of complaints from customers they aren't going to know for sure. I am also wary of software that requires me to disable another legally purchased bit of software such as Clone CD or Alcohol etc. If I can just switch the emulation off to use the game, then fine. If I have to completely UNINSTALL the software to play the game, then that is *not* fine. The claim by StarForce that several of their games remain uncracked could be because afaik their protection scheme has not been used in any best selling titles for the PC. If it's so fantastic, why don't UBISOFT, Electronic Arts or Atari use this protection for their games? Why is it usually smaller developers for games with a lot less fanfare and publicity that use this protection? Silent Storm:niche game(and it was quickly cracked), Broken Sword 3: niche game, small market,TOCA Racing: another niche , low selling game. I would actually have preferred a protection scheme such as Steam, or GamesXtream for example that requires activation once,and then can be used normally, rather than a system level driver needing to be installed on my machine which isn't in any way widely validated. This is gaming software we are talking about, not business software that might be subject to more press and technical scrutiny. There just aren't as many safeguards for the consumer. Hopefully these questions and concerns will be answered.

This from Gamasutra.com http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=4986

:) I guess this is yet another reason why I don't particularly enjoy flying the SU25. It seems almost masochistic. 8) Fly by wire! Fly by wire! :D

Disabling Force feedback in producer.cfg solved the 'sticky' joystick command bug for me.

Correct, and the website doesn't go into detail on the mechanics of authorisation etc. But it just seemed like an ideal way to distribute a niche market game such as Lock On 1.1 No one said that users would need to be 'locked in' to anything. Perhaps there is a way once the entire game is downloaded that no further contact with the Server needs to be initiated except to get upgrades. I think it would be worth looking into at least :)

Oh heck yeah, forgot to mention that too. THe Ironhand tutorial was excellent. Of course, with the A10 when I was given command, I promptly lost the targets until I turned on Labels ^_^. Even after all the ," And notice the stream to the right of the road....the ocean on the west side..behind the town...and there's the convoy"...all the landmarks in the world and I still couldn't pick them out after I extend and then turn to target. :)

Mm.. I like the demo. But, even with the Advanced Flight Model, which allowed me to slide off the runway on the belly of the aircraft after damaging my landing gear, spewing debris in a chaotic trail behind me....I just can't say that I like the Su25. I never flew the plane very much at all in 1.02, and playing the demo made me remember why. :) I dunno..maybe I'm spoilt but the lack of the HUD cues I've grown accustomed to and it's reliance on all those analog gauges and instruments...but...I just don't like flying it! I much prefer the A10. From what I'm reading, the SU25T is the only deal for SEAD missions with high stand off capability that we have right now. So..anyone know when the full game is going to be released? :)

Why's the choice just the KA50? What about wanting another Add-On Aircraft...but not the KA 50? I'm actually leaning toward something multirole like the F18. A2G and A2A...plus carrier ops. Or maybe the Rafale...something russian but modern? :-) Or not caring for another aircraft if existing aircraft featured some sort of upgraded avionics or flight models etc. I think the questions were poorly phrased and won't really be representative of people's opinions as many of these posts show.

The list of countries for Registration does not include Trinidad and quite a few other countries. And...err...who said the Demo was available for download? Only the manual is?

NO!

They all got eaten by an Enormous Baloth!! http://www.wizards.com/global/images/magic/legions/enormous_baloth.jpg ... sorry..I've been playing too much MTG while I wait ^_^ Cheers!

uh huh. What are the downsides of steam that this program shares? Why is it a bad idea to use a secure delivery system to make the program available online? AFAIK it's going to be available online anyway.

There is a new 'Steam' like method for distributing games that is available for licensing. http://www.gamexstream.com/menus/prod2_game_xstream2.html I think it could be especially useful to the small developer or niche market developer who wants to rapidly bring their product to market and distribute online.It would also solve the problem of Piracy as well, since the contents are encrypted and tied to a particular machine. I think it's something worth looking into for ED and any other small developer out there. If someone knows of some good X-Plane forums then one could post this there as well. -Gel

Woot! I want to see these new avionics in the next update ! :) THis should put the plane head and shoulders above the SU25T... so,new A10 with new flight dynamics, two MFDs, and precision targeting pod thingy for Lock On 1.2? hmm? anyone? anyone? :)