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mpaint

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Posts posted by mpaint

  1. Posted

    Thanks for that.

    (I've removed the steyr addon to fix missing weapons in the vanilla levels)

    But at a deeper level an addon that works in a old ARMA engine version won't work in a newer one?

    So the more addon's I get, the more time I going to have to spend tracking down their indivdual pages and d/ling?

    Anybody else feel that using a BIS FTP server for a one stop, mass GET of every current Addon (like windowsupdate.microsoft.com only cheaper) would probably pay off in terms of manhours down the route?

  2. Posted

    I can get the soldiers to work but not the rifles?

    Do I need to init the soldiers with a weapon add command?

    ---

    I import both NewZealandSAS.pbo and vil_aug.pbo into C:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA\AddOns

    I fire up ARMA, go into the Editor, Drop everyone into Ramadi, and no one has any Steyrs, they are running around with pistols or a GPMG

    MD5 hashes

    6362348b7ee342f29b0fc6b28564849d

    *New_Zealand_Troops_V1_1.zip

    895efa60973b4e2c2d15b7b71c7677ca

    *NewZealandSAS.pbo

    14b4d2625323e322446962a6e112c63d

    *vil_aug.pbo

  3. Posted

    You could replace your Securom version by a starforce version. But then you use one activation attempt per patch.

    Copy protection not tied to a HW key is always pain in the ass cause they have to cripple the main application

    Actually it's worse than that

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecuROM

    Quote[/b] ]

    Unlike SecuROM v4.6, which relied on illegal SubQ-Information, the new scheme utilises "data density measurement" (not to be confused with "data position measurement" as being used by other protections). While the data density on normal CD/DVD-ROMs constantly degrades from the most inner to the most outer sector, data density on SecuROM v4.7 (and up) protected CD/DVD-ROMs is diversified by a certain, vendor specific pattern. This pattern can be reconstructed by high-precision time measurement during software<->CD/DVD-drive interaction and reflects the vendor-key as mentioned above.

    To do so the protection defines a set of locations spread over the disc and issue two SCSI-read-commands per location to the drive. As the disc spins, the time it takes for the second command to return depends on the time it takes the disc to do a full round and thus depends on the data-density. To achieve the required timing-precision, the RDTSC command is used, which has a resolution of about 0.28 microseconds on x86-CPUs.

    The pattern is made up from 72 locations, each either with normal or higher than normal density and thus reflects a binary pattern which assembles to the vendor specific key mentioned above.

    From the looks of it

    If either your DVD disc becomes degraded and/or your mechanical DVD drive are slow to reply, then you may miss the valid response window

    The DVD drive ARMA's using is a IDE Dual layer, that I added  month or two ago when the other 1~2year old single layer started making coasters.

    So maybe it's not software?  Maybe the drives are a bit slow to find the track on the DVD, which is why it works some times and not others?  maybe the patch is just vanilla Securom with a longer timeout value?

    Which will make wear and tear on the DVD very interesting , in the future

    IT WOULD BE NICE IF THEY ACTUALLY ANSWERED THEIR EMAILS SO I COULD GLEAN A CLUE FROM THEM!

    (5 days and counting)

    And I forgot to reply to the, use an external drive to ensure data separation, suggestion above

    4 internal SATA drives mirrored into two volumes using the motherboard BIOS, require 4 cables to be [dis] connected correctly into their unique sockets

    RAID should be wired to scream for help when one just drive is at risk, so it can be replaced.  There will be noise involved when entire drives get unplugged.

    SMART hard drive monitoring (according to Google's published real world experience) has a 50/50 chance of actually gettting off an alert, before the drive fails, in a server enviroment.

    I run my drives at room temperature, randomly monitored and within a metre of a 65W bass speaker.  Just my "C:\Program Files\Valve\*" subdirectory has 20,000 files totalling 14.2Gig, which on capped broadband will take about 2months to recreate from scratch in the event of a crash.

    I like RAID1, it gives me fluffier feelings than my occasional backup to external hardrives do.

    As such the risk involved each time, especially if someone phones for something urgent and you need to swap back fast and under pressure. Makes fiddling with cables and risking dry jointing the mboard or rebuilding one split array twice over all four drives, or trying to ram a screwdriver through the sodding alarm, seem a less attractive proposition to leaving the case on.

    And I don't run an XP box on the internet without Antivirus.  NAT doesn't protect you against a webpage exploit doing "arbitary execution"

    http://www.frsirt.com/english/advisories/2007/0579

    Quote[/b] ]

    This issue is due to an integer overflow error in the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine (mpengine.dll) when processing a specially crafted PDF file, which could be exploited by attackers to execute arbitrary commands e.g. by sending an email containing a malicious file to a system being protected by a vulnerable application.

    Or you gaming passwords nicked

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/10/wow_hijackings/

    Quote[/b] ]

    Subscribers playing World of Warcraft on Windows machines continue to find their accounts stolen more than eleven months after hackers first began targeting them using a Trojan attack, according to posts on the game's official website. The perpetrators are employing sophisticated techniques that involve hundreds of booby-trapped sites that in some cases use the ANI cursor vulnerability that Microsoft patched last week.

    ..

    The account hijackings are causing considerable consternation among WoW users. "I logged in to my account last Wednesday morning to a naked and penniless Grajtik and associated bank alts," a player who goes by that moniker wrote in an online forum. Many victims have learned of the hijackings only after finding that Blizzard, which publishes WoW, had canceled their accounts, presumably because the hackers have violated WoW rules.

    While some of the hijackings were carried by exploiting flaws ahead of an official patch, plenty of exploits have been carried out well after Microsoft issued updates, suggesting some players of WoW still haven't learned the most important and basic security measures.

    or your ISP bans you for being part of a botnet

    or your CMOS cleared

    http://searchg.symantec.com/search?q=clear+cmos+xp which screws up all installations equally.

    then you have to worry about it reaching across network shares (4PC lan), infecting USB drives or infecting your motherboard flashable mem

    And with just one strain of botnet infecting 1.5 million PC's,

    http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=172303265

    Quote[/b] ]

    . But Simon Hania, chief technology officer at XS4ALL, told the Associated Press that even though the botnet was enormous, it was just "a drop in the ocean."

    I would prefer that nobody recomends no/low end Antivirus protection, especially in the shabby web areas the free modders hang out in,   smile_o.gif

  5. Posted

    The customer name it was for, wasn't BIS, but Morphicon.

    http://www.morphicon.com/ "Peter Games", has a Arma icon??

    .

    mpaint your runnign alot fo software that 99% of PC owners don't.

    Your an elite users.

    I suspect you will have trouble with alot of games that use copy protection.

    a/Either have a completly seperate hard drive with an OS on using an extranl sata link,  and disconnect your PRO current drive when not needed.

    b/Put up with having to get patches from the copy protection company involved with the game.

    c/Buy a PS3 Xbox and play games on that ;}

    The issues you are having would effect about 1 in 5000 ARMA users.  And you have the technical skill to overcome them.  So is this a problem you treat this issue as highly negative as if BIH are at fault.

    Even with your multi level PC protection you can still play arma you just have to fiddle when they patch.  Should BIh protect there games or just leave them open so we have 1000 TK'ing pirate users on every public server?

    perhaps BIh should behave like EMi music remove all copy protection but make the legal users pay 100 pounds a game?

    For each each copy of ARMA sold BIh recieve a small amount,  the distributer recieve a small amount,  out of those amounts the cost of the DVD package and manual come and distribution of the product.  The retailer then takes a hefty fee and then you have the price.  BIH are not EA or DICE,  ARMA makes them a living but with current sales they are not all running round in ferrais just yet.

    ARMA has copy protection,  if you run complex tools you may have to work a bit.  But its the same for many games and BIh need to protect their investment.

    Games I've got loaded with CD/DVD based protection

    Company of Heroes

    GTA:SA

    Blitzkreig2

    IL2 (1, 2, 1946)

    Closecombat, 1,4, 5

    Online only

    Steam (Red Orchestra, DoD, HL2, CS:S and a bunch of demos and mods)

    America's Army =< 2006

    NO PROBLEMS until now

    I'm not saying drop your pant's and touch your toes in the TK showerblock.

    But they are releasing an online only version, which obviously can survive without DVD based protection. So I'm not having problems with a fundamental component here, but an optional extra.

    In fact it costs nothing to change a serial number, but if an online account like my Steam one gets klined then my reputation, friends list and earned freebies goes with it. So TK wise I don't buy that argument.

    I don't dispute their need to boobytrap their product, merely their competence with triggers. This is whats known as feedback, if I don't kick up a fuss, then I won't appear in their future budget estimates under "ongoing support costs"

    I will be screwed as opposed to merely "might be" screwed

  6. Posted

    Just as some background

    The URL was removed because "Securom provides this file for your purpose, and not for general use"

    I won't dispute that or repost the URL

    But it strengthens my case that I won't be mainstream user, looking forward to uninterupted ArmA. Instead a 2nd class citizen, stopped at a roadblocks everytime a new Bis patch comes out and resets the Arma.exe, until someone from securom lets me through.

    My first two emails had 16 hour delays in repsonses, the third and final one went out friday lunchtime (NZ time) and hasn't been replied too yet (monday evening)

    It wasn't a critical question which I have to be gratefull for. but it imply that if Arma doesn't start, I'm FUBAR'd for half a week and counting

    And this is the early customer focussed 1.05 days. Once the focus shift off Arma, I expect things to get even slower.

    The file was hosted on the Securom site so it is Securom santioned.

    The customer name it was for, wasn't BIS, but Morphicon.

    http://www.morphicon.com/ "Peter Games", has a Arma icon??

    The number on it was three digits, so either they are not doing one per user, or the number of people they doing this for is relatively small.

  7. Posted

    Dual booting has a 2 minute (may vary) turnaround to (save your work, shutdown, restart, logon, update) swap between two different windows desktops on the Same harddrive

    If one becomes infected, they both become infected.

    And if you load a third one, like Linux or Vista, then there's a risk,conflicting bootloaders will need to be fixed before you can choose an OS.

    Free MS VPC lets you run multiple OSes (XP32, Vista RC2, Ubuntu Edgy) simultanously on their own virtual harddrives. If one gets compromised then the others survive. You can "Pause" VPC's instantly, jump into a game on the host, jump out and "Resume" the VPC's and be right in the middle of what you were doing

    So VPC's cost 2 seconds to toggle between 3 or 4 OS's to Games and back and doesn't make you lose your state of mind (opened windows, command prompts or files)

    Dualbooting costs 4minutes to switch to games and back between two windows desktops, and you have to start from scratch each time

    If that makes you impatient then you get sloppy and start migrating work from your clean desktop to the unprotected, unencrypted, games desktop which gets regular self extracting exe's of mod's from people with Verbs for names.

    And if each makers copy protection fights with it's rivals, either you have a boot OS for each brand of games, and patch them and purchase activated AV protection for each one, as the weakess one will infect the others.

    Or you wave the "Sale of Goods Act" at the retailers, and toss the opened box back at them for a full refund, as it's not "fit for purpose"

    And with the risk of undetectable once installed rootkits arriving through holes in IE, Flash, Firefox, Email, and Antivirus programs that don't offer 0day protection. The Free Microsoft-Sysinternal tools are one of MS's officially recommended tools to troubleshoot windows issues.

    Kaspersky has the highest detection rate for day old viruses, and updates every 2hours. Symantec in comparision has a 60% failure rate and updates weekly

    MS VPC acts as condom. Dualbooting is closer to double peneration, with twice the risk of having getting the boot code infected.

    Wireshark acts a doubleblind, since AV on a Rooted OSD can't detect the rootkit. but the packets on the wire are unprotected. So if the CAT5 is full of spam, DDOS'ness or Tor, hey that's a clue!

    But this all irrelevant.

    My PC is shaped to fit me, to fit my workflow, to have the tools I need. It comes up to my high standards of malware paranoia, why should it be made vunerable to match a games developers company managed workstation?

  8. Posted

    I buy ArmA English boxed retail on DVD from a Mall chain, install it on the host OS and patch it to 1.05

    And it starts sometimes, not others claiming the DVD is a copy. It isn't!!

    It doesn't alternate success/failure. It may fail 3 tries, then starts on the 4th, 5th, 6th attempts.

    There's no common factor, I can have MS VPC, Truecrypt running, stopped, not started. System rebooted. The systernals suite sits unstarted on my harddrive

    If I run LaunchAnalysis, it'll start the next time, but LaunchAnalysis isn't always on the right click menu

    OK it's SecuRom, lets email them the Analysis file and see what they come back with

    They recommend replacing the 1.05 arma.exe with their websites <span style='color:red'>link removed by moderator</span> version

    That fixes the problem

    Hooray yay.gif

    I then enquire if this fix is being incorporated into the next BIS version?

    "Thank you for your email. Unfortunately, every time you download a new software update from the publisher you will need a new game EXE from us as well.

    Best regards, SecuROM Support Team"

    Soooo everytime BIS do an update, and I'm assuming ArmA's a work in progress, I have to hope SecuRom the company, will spend the time to make their own patch, promptly, for just me? in effect forking the BIS code each time.

    Is this sanctioned by BIS?

    Who is Morphicon?

    OpFlash is still going 7(?) years later. Will it be economic for SecuRom/BIS to provide ArmA patches for 7years?

    Am i better off returning ArmA now, than getting hooked before being locked out years down the track?

    Why isn't a one stop shop approach adapted for patch management?

    Hardware spec

    AMD 3500x2, 3Gig Ram, dual NVIDIA Raid1 volumes (4 SATA drives) , 2 IDE DVDR drives, USB external Drives, USB thumb drives, Nvidia6600GT dualheaded.

    Software

    XpSp2 , Virtual PC2007, True Crypt, Sysinternals, Wireshark, Kaspersky

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