rec.autos.simulators

May the Force be with you...NOT

Dave Henri

May the Force be with you...NOT

by Dave Henri » Wed, 13 Oct 2004 14:40:42



    The Bullrun Tornado alley track was tested over and over by experienced
racers.  In less than 1 minute a bad racer...me...found a wall mismatch
that flung my car 30 feet backwards.  Just because 'testers' have not
reported any bad effects does not mean they don't exit.
    The SCC launcher was tested by everyone on the RSDG team, and it worked
perfectly.  Upon release, many users found that it had a fault which took 2
months to trace.  
     These are but two examples.  I'm sure those who are real beta testers
with past programs could relate many undisclosed problems that either
survived the beta process or came to light after shipping.
      I have no experience with SF copy protection...please don't call it
just 'drivers' but I imagine I will when GTR ships.   A shame really that
such draconian measures must be used.   I for one feel the user has every
right to know what is going on his system and should have every right to
remove unauthorized products.  Anyone who hides code on a user's hard drive
is no more lawful than a company like Bridgestone placing a GPS tracker
somewhere on everycar that buys their tires.
dave henrie

Mika Takal

May the Force be with you...NOT

by Mika Takal » Wed, 13 Oct 2004 16:56:04



They are old enough not to use Starforce3 but an older version.

Toca Race Driver 2 just got a nocd mini-image on sunday, it seems. How long
ago was it released anyway? :)

--
Mika Takala

Joachim Trens

May the Force be with you...NOT

by Joachim Trens » Wed, 13 Oct 2004 15:54:45

...

...

Especially the fact that it came with a demo (!) and didn't get
deinstalled when you deinstalled the demo it came with is annoying and
inacceptable.

--
Achim
http://users.skynet.be/AchimT

alex

May the Force be with you...NOT

by alex » Wed, 13 Oct 2004 22:19:02



As you've probably noticed, bug after bug is discovered in Microsoft's own
software. Why do you think MS certification of SF driver would guarantee
the absense of bugs there?

Alex.

Mitch_

May the Force be with you...NOT

by Mitch_ » Thu, 14 Oct 2004 04:58:12

Shhhh.  Dont tell Larry that Uwe :))

> Same here. I'd much prefer the "activation" scheme used by LFS over
> this thingy, because as we all know CD's *will* break eventually.

> Cheers,
> uwe

> --
> mail replies to Uwe at schuerkamp dot de ( yahoo address is spambox)
> Uwe Schuerkamp //////////////////////////// http://www.schuerkamp.de/
> Herford, Germany \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ (52.0N/8.5E)
> GPG Fingerprint:  2E 13 20 22 9A 3F 63 7F  67 6F E9 B1 A8 36 A4 61

Uwe Schürkam

May the Force be with you...NOT

by Uwe Schürkam » Thu, 14 Oct 2004 06:28:48


>> As you've probably noticed, bug after bug is discovered in Microsoft's own
>> software. Why do you think MS certification of SF driver would guarantee
>> the absense of bugs there?

> Yes, my last crash in Windows XP was only about 4 months ago and I only use
> it aout 10 hours per day.

Bugs don't necessarily lead to system crashes, but to remote exploits,
takeovers, stealing of private data, whatever.

Crashed windows machines ususally don't harm anyone (except the bloke
sitting in front of the tube ;-), while those taken over by remote
exploits can and will do harm by serving as spam relays, participating
in DDOS attacks and whatnot.

It's great to hear your XP hasn't crashed in a while, but OTOH XP's
security track record is right up there with win9x, IE  and the likes.

All the best,

uwe

--
mail replies to Uwe at schuerkamp dot de ( yahoo address is spambox)
Uwe Schuerkamp //////////////////////////// http://www.schuerkamp.de/
Herford, Germany \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ (52.0N/8.5E)
GPG Fingerprint:  2E 13 20 22 9A 3F 63 7F  67 6F E9 B1 A8 36 A4 61

Joachim Trens

May the Force be with you...NOT

by Joachim Trens » Thu, 14 Oct 2004 06:04:06


>>wonder whether when it gets installed into the system as a hidden device,
>>this is more a decision of the programmer of the installer (i.e. the
>>publisher of the game??) than of the SF programmers, and hence the one who
>>perhaps needed to be blamed is not SF, but those who create/publish the
>>game?

> That is completely a SF programmers software design decision. The driver is
> just designed that way and the publisher doesn't have any saying in how the
> driver installs after the protection is applied as the driver is 100%
> Starforce code. A publisher usually just cares that the protection actually
> works, in which SF3 is very good.

I'm just wondering why SF apparently does not get installed by some
software (X2 on my system) while with other software it does get
installed as hidden drivers?

--
Achim
http://users.skynet.be/AchimT

Uwe Schürkam

May the Force be with you...NOT

by Uwe Schürkam » Thu, 14 Oct 2004 06:29:27


> Shhhh.  Dont tell Larry that Uwe :))

What happened to Larry, the poor bloke? ;-)

cheers,

uwe

--
mail replies to Uwe at schuerkamp dot de ( yahoo address is spambox)
Uwe Schuerkamp //////////////////////////// http://www.schuerkamp.de/
Herford, Germany \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ (52.0N/8.5E)
GPG Fingerprint:  2E 13 20 22 9A 3F 63 7F  67 6F E9 B1 A8 36 A4 61

Steve Simpso

May the Force be with you...NOT

by Steve Simpso » Thu, 14 Oct 2004 11:33:32

My PC isn't immune and neither is anybody elses.  If some hacker wants to
take a crack a my PC then good luck to them.  They may actually force me to
spend 5 minutes restoring my ghost backup image...

Joachim Trens

May the Force be with you...NOT

by Joachim Trens » Thu, 14 Oct 2004 16:35:34

...
...
One thing I keep wondering about, with all this discussion about
security and the obvious shortcomings.

Everybody seems to agree that all of the widely used security measures,
be they updates from Microsoft or Firewalls, are fairly insufficient and
can and will be overcome fairly easily by some malevolent script kiddie
or ingenious hacker.

There's one fairly safe protection method though which very likely
cannot be overcome (and has never overcome by the exploits, worms and
virusses I've tested on it) and that's a Sandbox. But nobody seems to
use Sandboxes, although they work extremely well and are to my knowledge
the safest safeguard you can have on your computer.

Why does nobody used them (except me)?

--
Achim
http://users.skynet.be/AchimT

Mitch_

May the Force be with you...NOT

by Mitch_ » Fri, 15 Oct 2004 01:06:02

He had some issues with LFS and its registration.

> What happened to Larry, the poor bloke? ;-)

> cheers,

> uwe

> --
> mail replies to Uwe at schuerkamp dot de ( yahoo address is spambox)
> Uwe Schuerkamp //////////////////////////// http://www.schuerkamp.de/
> Herford, Germany \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ (52.0N/8.5E)
> GPG Fingerprint:  2E 13 20 22 9A 3F 63 7F  67 6F E9 B1 A8 36 A4 61

Mitch_

May the Force be with you...NOT

by Mitch_ » Fri, 15 Oct 2004 01:12:35

Im not saying XP is the Fort Knox of OS's but its a sight more secure than
W98 which had zero security.  One issue that has a direct relationship to
security is backwards compatibility.  Heck I just threw in a proggy called
3D Home Architect circa 1993 into my XP box the other day and viola, it
worked flawlessly, even printing.

Mitch

hear your XP hasn't crashed in a while, but OTOH XP's

Steve Simpso

May the Force be with you...NOT

by Steve Simpso » Thu, 14 Oct 2004 17:16:43

Like anyone would want my data.  There's nothing exciting on my PC...

Mitch_

May the Force be with you...NOT

by Mitch_ » Fri, 15 Oct 2004 01:14:01

Anyone that runs Java is technically in a "Sandbox".

Mitch


alex

May the Force be with you...NOT

by alex » Thu, 14 Oct 2004 11:12:57




>>> As you've probably noticed, bug after bug is discovered in
>>> Microsoft's own software. Why do you think MS certification of SF
>>> driver would guarantee the absense of bugs there?

>> Yes, my last crash in Windows XP was only about 4 months ago and I
>> only use it aout 10 hours per day.

> Bugs don't necessarily lead to system crashes, but to remote exploits,
> takeovers, stealing of private data, whatever.

Right, that's where is the most danger. Crashing is not that big deal. At
least it's much more preferrable than takeover.
Actually, it's much worse than Win9x. Win9x is pretty isolated and it also
tends to crash at the first signs of something going wrong ;)

Alex.


rec.autos.simulators is a usenet newsgroup formed in December, 1993. As this group was always unmoderated there may be some spam or off topic articles included. Some links do point back to racesimcentral.net as we could not validate the original address. Please report any pages that you believe warrant deletion from this archive (include the link in your email). RaceSimCentral.net is in no way responsible and does not endorse any of the content herein.