qlue's blog

This song has been my favourite since I was three! .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bKAPVpA46o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npxkXmoaD2o
*edit*
There's still a few clips available!

I bought two PC games yesterday! Skyrim and Dead Island. Skyrim installed and updated alright. I was a little annoyed that it had to 'update' which indicated that the game was actually released prematurely, but that's nothing compared with my experience with Dead Island! .

Dead Island doesn't install from the disk. Instead, it downloads completely from the Internet! .
At the time that I'm writing this, the download is about 60% complete and has already consumed 3GB of data. That's about R600+- where the game already cost R300+ to purchase in the first place! .
I will never buy another game bu Deep Silver again. In fact, since this appears to be the way games are going, I won't buy another game again! .

From now on, I'll stick with FOSS games!
At least with FOSS games;
1. I don't need to use Windows.
2. I don't need to pay twice for the same game!

A game that is sold on a disk, in a box, must be complete! Minor updates and a bugfix or two is acceptable since it is difficult to find every single bug prior to release! But that shouldn't need more than about 100MB of data! A non-working product is not fit for sale and having to download a game that you already have a disk for is totally ridiculous! :angry: .


*edit*

I made a complaint to Deep Silver's technical support team. Their response was to confirm that this is exactly how the game works! .
Here is the email they sent me!

thank you for your inquiry.

We are terribly sorry about the exorbitantly high Internet costs in your region, but that's just the way Steam games are designed. Technically it doesn't really matter if you purchase the disc version or the digital version directly from Steam.



Note: If you reply to this Email please do not edit the subject line. Thank you!

Best regards

Your Support Team

Deep Silver Inc.
Technical Support
900 Larkspur Landing Circle
Larkspur CA 94939 / USA

Technical support:
08:00 (8:00 am) Pacific Time to 17:00 Pacific Time (5:00 pm)
Phone: 1-888-883-1505
Email: techsupport@deepsilver.com
Webpage: http://www.deepsilver.com

01/26/2012 13:50 - qlue@myopera.com wrote:
email: qlue@myopera.com
realname: Aadil Shah
Secondname: Shah
Firstname: Aadil
Telephone:
Product: Dead Island (PC)
Issue: Disc defect
Question: The game does not install from the disk. Instead, it downloads from the
Internet! At this point, it's used over 3GB of data and only 60% downloaded! Thus,
I've spent R300 for the disk, R600+ for data and I still can't play the game! This
is un acceptable and I will blog about it!
submit: submit

I don't know if this is anywhere within your price range Tom. But I think it would be a nice to have for you anyway! .

I seem to do this every time. I've managed to Fubar the Windows 7 installation on my brand new laptop. . I haven't even booted into Windows once yet and it's already history! .
I guess Linux is my destiny. .

Either she forgot that it's Christmas or the arrow in her knee was troubling her! .

Read more...

Thanks to everyone that helped to clear up this misunderstanding! .
I still don't know exactly what happened or why but I'm glad it's fixed up! .

my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=1139042&t=1321552208&page=1#comment10811532
Vote for a return of our statistics pages. .
(or at least a suitable replacement. )

Today we remember!

Read more...

I've seen similar messages from google before, but never for so few words. . What did I do wrong? . Is it a glitch or deliberate censorship?

I have recently received this spam letter claiming to be from a Government Minister.
Since it is widely believed that all Government Ministers are inherently corrupt, some people might be tempted to believe that this is genuine! But would a Minister be stupid enough to distribute such incriminating evidence through such easily traced means as unencrypted email? Probably not. .

Read more...

Union Pay Malaysia Sdn Bhd
(address deleted)


Union Pay{ATM Compensation Payment Notification}


Attention Dear Beneficiary,


This is to inform you that the Malaysian Union Pay settlement Committee and the ATM International Inc. wishes to congratulate you on the successful emergence in our ongoing fund remittance promo of all ATM card users around the globe. This scheme was initiated by the MUP and the ATM Inc. to compensate ATM card users and also to help the world in the sustainable 2010 poverty alleviation scheme. In regards to this, we wish to inform you that your ATM compensation funds valued at (US$1.800.000.00) One million and eight hundred thousand United States dollars has been authorized to be released to you through our corresponding financial institution in Malaysia.


BENEFICIARY SELECTION PROCESS
No tickets were sold out. Your email was one of the lucky emails/ATM Card users selected RANDOMLY via E-wheel Computer Ballot System drawn from over 200,000 companies and 300,000 individual email/ATM card users, from all over the world during the ATM Online EMAIL selection draw.
In the mean time we have been mandated to issue out this payment via our swift card payment centers, which is the latest technology powered by the MUP/ATM Inc.This World Union Pay card will be uploaded with your fund and couriered to your location via speed post and a tracking number issued to you to enable you track your parcel till it gets to its final destination. This card can be used in any ATM machine in any part of the world, so if you like to receive your fund in this way, please let us know by contacting our ATM Center Manager with the requested information as listed below to the follow office via email.


Union Pay Malaysia Sdn Bhd
(contact details deleted)
Contact Person: Mr.Alex Wung


Required information:
1. Full Name
2. Phone and Fax Number
3. Address Were You Want Us to Send the ATM Card
4. Your Age and Current Occupation
5. Country


Note that because of impostors, we hereby issued you our code of conduct, which is (ATM-3714) so you have to indicate this code when contacting the card center by using it as your subject. Now contact our ATM center Manager for more details.


We Wait For Your Expedite Response.


Yours in Service,
Mrs.Tracy Lou



.

Whenever you register an account anywhere on the Internet these days, you need to choose a password. But how do you know if your password is secure?

If we have a look at the password cracking techniques that are used, we can get a few good hints. The first thing to know is that personal information is freely available these days! Using names, dates of birth or other information that is directly associated with you is a bit like keeping the key to your front door on a keyring hanging outside that door!
Internet standards expert, CEO of web company iFusion Labs John Pozadzides wrote an article in 2007 wherein he gives a list the the 'top ten' bad choices for passwords! These are the passwords that are easy to guess and yet more common than you'd think! .
Here is that list!

1. Your partner, child, or pet’s name, possibly followed by a 0 or 1 (because they’re always making you use a number, aren’t they?)
2. The last 4 digits of your social security number.
3. 123 or 1234 or 123456.
4. “password”
5. Your city, or college, football team name.
6. Date of birth – yours, your partner’s or your child’s.
7. “god”
8. “letmein”
9. “money”
10. “love”

Now I know that no body reading this has used any of those as their password right? right? .

Now, if that list doesn't include your password, it doesn't mean that you're safe, yet! The most common method for hacking a password is the brute force attack. Some sites will block an account or temporarily limit access from an IP address that has entered a wrong password more than three times! But many sites will allow an unlimited number of re-tries! So the would be hackers is only limited by the time it would take to 'guess' the correct password.
A brute force attack uses an automated script to try thousands of potential passwords until the correct password is found! It uses a 'dictionary' file that is filled with virtually every 'password' that the hacker can think of and then some. (hackers have been known to use actual dictionaries to load these files)
Now, if you think that using 1337 speak helps, then think again! hackers will usually incude leet speak versions in their dictionaries for this very reason!

But what if the password is not a word at all? Well then, the next stage of the brute force attack is to try every combination of letter, number and special character that is allowed in sequence. Starting with the minimum number of characters allowed for the password! This is the original brute force attack and it's guaranteed to find your password,,, eventually! .
But how long will that take? well, the following graphic illustrates how long it could take, depending on how long the password is!


As you can see, the longer the password is the more time it takes. From this you can deduce that by using random mixed upper and lower case letters, Your password must still be at least eight characters long before it is 'safe'. but remember that this is calculated according to the power of a single computer in 2007 (when the original article was written)
Using modern equipment assembled into a ten node beowulf cluster, we can do that at least a thousand times faster! .

But the main point here is that longer is better! If the password is long enough, not even NASA or the CIA can crack it within one lifetime! . At least, not with a brute force attack that is! .

(the original article is linked below! However, be warned that a friend of mine received dire threats and warnings from his anti-virus at that site)
http://onemansblog.com/2007/03/26/how-id-hack-your-weak-passwords/