Recent Comments:
SCEE President: 'You will probably see' GTAIV DLC for PS3 {Joystiq}
May 7th 2008 4:32PM "Download exclusive episodes on..." does not necessarily equal "Download episodes exclusively on...".
Just a thought...
Rocket-powered mechanical arm might boost prosthetic tech {Engadget}
Aug 21st 2007 8:20AM This thing would be awesomely cool as a steam-punk prosthetic if it was actually spewing hissing steam as you were using it. I hope they do as another prosthetics company I saw and offer multiple models. They had one where it was as human like as possible, and another one which was designed to look as robotic as possible, simply because different people felt more comfortable with the different models.
Drug kingpin IDed using advanced voice identification {Engadget}
Aug 13th 2007 9:41AM Protip: Voice identification does not equal the crap you use to go Star Trek on your computer like the biggest nerd out there. It's as similar as fingerprint identification is to clicking your mouse button. Which is not similar at all (in case you did not get that...).
Unreal Tournament 3 for PS3 to bring keyboard and mouse support {Engadget}
Aug 5th 2007 5:30AM You can already print pictures from the PS3 with a USB connected printer.
http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/settings/index_printersettings.html
Warhawk dated August 28th, digital and retail prices announced {Joystiq}
Aug 4th 2007 2:38AM This isn't exactly PacMan or the ninth iteration of "retro" MKII.
If you want digital delivery of big-budget games, accept then that they will cost on this level. They won't get cheaper.
I for one didn't let something like price hinder me when I "bought" HalfLife 2 over steam for an ungodly amount of money, I think, only $5 short of retail.
Nor did I care that "buying" Battlefield 2142 over EA Link would set me back just as much as buying it retail, or C&C3, and the list goes on.
For games which can actually be comfortably downloaded in an hour or preferably less over my 10mbps connection, I rather do them as digital downloads (unless the boxed version has some really nice pack-ins).
As for the "trade in question", I personally have accepted, from playing PC games my whole life, that when I "buy" an online-only game (or game with online components), I buy only a license to play online. Nothing more. And if I for some reason tire of this game, the license is nontransferable. I can accept that.
Of course I still won't buy a POS game (ShadowRun, I'm sorry, but the art direction in you is horrible and I can't stand it).
Joystiq interviews Unreal Tournament 3's Mark Rein {Joystiq}
Aug 3rd 2007 1:56PM The point of machine code is that it is the only form of "language" a CPU can understand. It is 100% binary, and is created now-a-days in a vast majority of cases with the help of our friendly "compilers". These "compilers", programs that take human readable text, "code", and "compiles" it into machine code, which can be loaded into RAM on the executing system.
Since a SCRIPT, is not machine code, nor is it compiled to machine code, it IS VERY LIMITED by what the SCRIPT ENGINE allows. It is not executed by the CPU in such, but by the SCRIPT ENGINE. (Which in turn executes on the CPU). This means that it can be secured from hostile attacks VERY easily. The engine is 100% in charge, if it doesn't like the way your script looks in any way... well, nothing's going to happen as it simply denies "execution" of it.
And regarding the HYPERVISOR, the main job of it is to make certain (amongst other things) that the code executing on the processor, never, EVER, touches the controlling code behind it, securing the core system from attacks. Ie. your MAGIC SHIELD or whatever it was. And since these games which execute on both the Xbox 360, and the PS3, HAVE to access (through the protection of the hypervisor) the core system, in order to work. It is VERY unlikely that you can bypass the restrictions it imposes on running code.
And as griffin also states, there are other counter-measures in place as well to protect the system from executing potentially harmfull or unsigned code.
The reason that the direct hack (by means of register overflow or whatever it was) was able to succeed on the Xbox 360 with old "firmware", was that a hole, on machine code level had been left open by mistake.
No such holes have been at least publicly disclosed in regards to the hypervisor running on the PS3. This does not exclude the possibility that there were such holes available in older firmwares, but that have been patched since.
It still does not mean that the SCRIPTS in UT3 are a viable attack vector in any way.
The Xbox 360 and PS3 are miles, if not farther away from "crude" technology such as the Xbox 1, PSP, and PS/PS2 when it comes to protecting the system. It does not make them unbreakable, but they will sure as hell put up a fight for years to come.
Joystiq interviews Unreal Tournament 3's Mark Rein {Joystiq}
Aug 3rd 2007 1:28PM Actually, as a side note, just because you branched off your code at say 1.2.0.0, it does not mean that you cannot port fixes, and optimizations from 1.2.1.0, or even 1.3.0.0, or even more still 2.0.0.0. It just means that i's going to be a thorough hassle.
I know, as I spent most of my time before my all to short vacation which is soon over, doing just that.
But yes, it would seem that something is not too stable in the UT3 development. Exactly what "content" if I remember the quote correctly, refers to, I can only speculate in, to me it seems to have more to do with model-file-formats etc, than actual code API. But that does not make it much better, possibly it's an even worse situation depending on the tools provided and existing.
Joystiq interviews Unreal Tournament 3's Mark Rein {Joystiq}
Aug 3rd 2007 1:13PM Ben... my god.
If you think a computer executes ANYTHING else but machine code, then I'm not even going to be able to convince you on this matter, no matter how hard I try.
Joystiq interviews Unreal Tournament 3's Mark Rein {Joystiq}
Aug 3rd 2007 1:08PM Ben. Go read the technical documents on CELL BE if you want to find out how hypervisors and such technologies work. Please.
I do not think I said it is 100% impossible to create an opportunity for a hack, this has been proven when a hacker team managed to have into the Xbox 360 "core". This was of course made impossible when the next patch was released to their OS.
But I am suggesting that the SCRIPT support (and ONLY script support) in UT3 is NOT a likely attack vector.
The Xbox 360 hack was done through as I remember a register overflow. Performing such an attack from the SCRIPT ENGINE is not especially viable whatsoever as compared to creating a malicious save-game-file or other binary data that has to be processed by virtually insecure functions.
So, until hyper visors are in full use on the PC market too, please read up on what they and other such technologies accomplish.
It's not for no reason that there STILL haven't been any news of hacking the GameOS from PS3 Linux, where you at least, actually can have access to compile, AND RUN actual machine code (again, under the protection of the Hypervisor)
And as a FYI, the "hack" that allows running of pirated games on Xbox 360 takes advantage of the fact that the DVD-Reader in the Xbox 360 tells the console whether or not the disc it is reading is a legit disc or not. To circumvent this, you can flash the control circuitry on the reader as it was not then, and as far as I know, not now either, checked for legitimacy. The contents on the priated disc it reads must still be SIGNED and NON-MODIFIED.
If you feel that it is easier to call all of this MAGIC, and not science, then go ahead.
Joystiq interviews Unreal Tournament 3's Mark Rein {Joystiq}
Aug 3rd 2007 12:33PM Ben, I can clearly tell from your apparent lack of knowledge about the CELL BE that you will never even come close to comprehend that it is vastly more secure than anything you put in a PC.
The same can be said about the processors used in the Xbox360, as they too use a similar hardware protection scheme against malicious attacks.
"But anything you can put in there, which includes maps, models, Unreal Kismet scripts, Unreal Script, textures, shaders, matinee instructions."
And that you cannot understand even what a script is, is laughable.
You NEVER get to even touch machine-code with UT3. NEVER. (unless you paid in the millions of dollars for the full source code and were a trusted developer by Epic). The script environment is a SECURE environment. Just because you "download unverified content" does not mean that you can create hostile machine code as NO SUCH OPTION IS AVAILABLE.
There is no MAGIC involved, only technology, which seems to be far more advanced than your understanding of such allows.
If only you had taken my suggestion and read the about 500 page tech document detailing the inner workings of the CELL BE as I suggested, we might have avoided this. (And if you had understood the difference between script and machine code).
Ben, please, until you actually understand what you are talking about, just shut up. Please. This is just a friendly suggestion I'm making so you have the option of looking like less of an a**hole than you already do.
