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from the move-along-nothing-to-see-here dept.
Lagg writes:
"We're in a climate where it's easy to accuse a company of spying on you by various means with a distinct possibility that you could be right, but sometimes a reality check is needed. A Reddit user recently posted a thread accusing Valve of writing code for VAC that iterates your DNS cache and sends the hashed entries to their server. The proof provided of this was a prettied disassembly (that was not easily reproducible due to how VAC loads symbols) that showed only that VAC was indeed iterating the DNS cache, which any knowledgeable programmer understands is not exactly an uncommon thing to do, as no socket code was to be seen. Today, Gabe Newell responded to these allegations by confirming that no they do not in fact snoop your cache entries.
There are probably a few things to learn from this, including not trusting a screenshot of code that looks complex without actually understanding what it's doing. A lack of any level-headed investigation is a bad idea and it's important to handle these situations before they snowball into a mob (as Redditors are bound to do)."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mrbluze on Tuesday February 18 2014, @05:19AM
It also shows how easy it is to smear an individual or company with no evidence. Doesn't matter if it's complete garbage, some of the stuff will stick anyway.
Do it yourself, 'cause no one else will do it yourself.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by dry on Tuesday February 18 2014, @05:44AM
This is also partially what has broken democracy. Politicians repeat lies about each other until they're believed.
(Score: 1) by ableal on Tuesday February 18 2014, @09:16AM
> Doesn't matter if it's complete garbage, some of the stuff will stick
Reminded me of the French "Calomniez, calomniez, il en restera toujours quelque chose", which seems to go back to a medieval Latin saying noted by Francis Bacon: Audaciter calomniare semper aliquid haeret
To be fair, this instance seems more a case of "a scalded cat fears cold water" ;-)
(Score: 2, Informative) by Sir Garlon on Tuesday February 18 2014, @01:27PM
That's called confirmation bias. You see it all over the place in comments here: "the government is evil." "Corporations are evil." If that's what you're predisposed to believe, that's what you want to hear.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 5, Informative) by GeminiDomino on Tuesday February 18 2014, @01:36PM
It also shows how easy it is to smear an individual or company with no evidence
Or how easy it is to absolve them even if they don't deserve it. Breaking with tradition, I actually read his response, and of course, TFS is full of crap. What Newell confirmed was that VAC does check your cache entries, if a suspected cheat is found, to identify "cheat DRM servers."
VAC checked for the presence of these cheats. If they were detected VAC then checked to see which cheat DRM server was being contacted. This second check was done by looking for a partial match to those (non-web) cheat DRM servers in the DNS cache.
So the code does what it was said to do, which is hardly "no evidence." Sadly, it looks like the almost Apple-like fervor people have for a scummy DRM system isn't one of the relics we'll be leaving behind for Dice to deal with.
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 1) by GeminiDomino on Tuesday February 18 2014, @01:43PM
Aaand, quote tags don't work.
NB, for anyone not reading in threaded mode: The first line of my previous post was quoted (or supposed to be) from the post it was responding to. The rest is me.
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 2, Informative) by GeminiDomino on Tuesday February 18 2014, @01:50PM
Correction: Paragraphs 2 and 4 are me, 1 is the post I was replying to, and 3 was a quote from Newell's response.
I'm done posting until I get some magic brain juice in me.
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 1) by Lagg on Tuesday February 18 2014, @02:50PM
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 1) by GeminiDomino on Tuesday February 18 2014, @03:12PM
Whether or not quibbling over definitions of "snooping" qualifies as "objective" is low priority right now.
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2014, @10:04PM
The summary is actually accurate. The poster used a double negative.