Dan Hulton's blog

Remember back when we installed Node.js on a Virtual Machine just to get it working on Windows 7? Well there’s a better way.

1) Install Cygwin

Grab Cygwin from here and install that puppy. Make sure you install the following modules:

• Devel -> gcc4-g++ [Builds v0.4.2 and earlier use gcc-g++]
• Devel -> git
• Devel -> make
• Devel -> openssl-devel
• Devel -> pkg-config
• Devel -> zlib-devel
• Editors -> nano
• Libs -> openssl-devel
• Python -> python

Ensure you allow Cygwin to install required packages as well, otherwise these things just won’t work.

2) Download and build Node.js

$ cd ~
$ git clone git://github.com/joyent/node.git
$ cd node
$ git fetch --all
# if the above fails complaining --all is not recognised, try: git fetch origin
$ git tag
$ git checkout [latest stable tag from previous command, e.g., v0.2.5]
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make install

If, during the “configure” step, you get the following error: “error: could not configure a cxx compiler!” Do the following:

1. Close your Cygwin terminal.
2. Start -> Run -> ash
3. /bin/rebaseall
4. Close ash, re-open your Cygwin shell, and try again.

3) Configure Node.js

Node.js tries to use /etc/resolv.conf for domain name resolution, all pretending like its on Linux. Simple enough to get around though, just “nano /etc/resolv.conf” to create it. Slap the following in there:

nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 8.8.4.4

Hit Ctrl-O to save. Now Node.js will route DNS requests through Google’s free DNS service.

4) Install NPM

This one’s easy. Run this:

curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh

5) Install CoffeeScript

This is easy because we installed npm:

npm install -g coffee-script

6) Configure your system’s PATH

Open up Control Panel and search for PATH. Click on “Edit the system environment variables”, then click the “Environment Variables” button. Scroll through the “System Variables” list until you find “Path”, then add this to the end:

c:\cygwin\usr\local\bin

If you installed Cygwin to a different spot, make that modification now.

Ta-daa!

Congratulations! Node.js and CoffeeScript are now installed in Cygwin under Windows 7. You can call node.js from a cmd.exe window now due to that PATH variable, and even calling CoffeeScript is super-easy:

node /usr/local/lib/node_modules/coffee-script/bin/coffee {arguments}

Thanks to the offical guide on how to install CoffeeScript on Windows, and to the authors and maintainers of Node.js and CoffeeScript as well.

It’s beginning to look like the PC version of Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition is going to be a worse investment than setting your wallet on fire.

The original SFIV was cancelled on PC due to piracy concerns. I don’t even understand that – isn’t the draw for this game fighting other people? Developers have come up with reliable ways to prevent pirated versions of games from going multiplayer for decades now. But Capcom, determined to apply a solution in face of a problem they don’t even really have, has basically guaranteed that pirating SFIV:AE will get you a better game than buying it.

First, make the assumption that if you’re pirating SFIV, you don’t care much about getting online, this being a fairly common restriction on pirated games. So if you pirate SFIV and you have an internet problem or Capcom’s servers go down, you get the following features that paying customers don’t:

• You can continue your game! Paying customers get kicked out without saving.
• Your challenge mode works like always! Paying customers lose the ability to save progress in challenge mode.
• You can change your settings! Paying customers can’t save their settings changes.
• You can play dress-up! Paying customers lose access to cosmetic DLC while offline.
• You can play with all 39 characters. Paying customers? Only fifteen.

That’s an impressively broken game. But here’s a good question. Why bother at all?

Recently, Lionhead has come out and said that second-hand game sales cost them more than piracy. I’ve long suspected this to be the case for a while, but it’s interesting to see a publisher come out and say it. Given this, wouldn’t it make more sense for Capcom to try to make money from second-hand sales instead of battling uphill against pirates? And come on, Street Fighter is the perfect game for this. Check it:

You buy SFIV:AE for $10. That’s right. Ten dollars. Cheap, simple, easy. (Knock on: So cheap that it may tempt some pirates to buy it.) However, this is only the single-player version of the game. Most people are buying this game for the multiplayer anyway, which you sell a key for direct from your website for $30. The benefits are enormous:

• From customers who would have paid you anyway, you make the same $40 you would have charged at retail.
• From pirates who only want to play single player, you make the same $0. But you can’t stop that anyway.
• From pirates who want to play multiplayer, you make $30 instead of $0!
• From second-hand buyers who want to play multiplayer, you make another $30 instead of $0!

You’ve now converted some pirates to paying customers, and recovered most of the money you lose on second-hand sales. What do you think Capcom?

Capcom?

Wait, what are you doing? Why are you selling the retail version for less than the digital version?

Didn’t you listen to a thing I just said?

Time Vortex Malfunction.

YES.

So there’s been some hullaballoo recently about how Anonymous might turn out to actually be responsible for the PSN hack, but I think that honestly goes to show how poorly understood Anonymous actually is. Let’s break it down.

History

So there’s this website, eBaum’s World, where members can – and usually do – post anonymously. When you don’t provide a handle to go with your posting over there, you show up as “Anonymous”. On any other website, when someone would provide an answer to a question you posed, you’d say something like “Thanks, JimmyJim255!”. On eBaum’s World, you’d instead say “Thanks, Anon!” And so it grew to be A Thing.

It was funny, to pretend that Anonymous wasn’t some anonymous person, but a giant Hive-Mind of people. You send a question out, and it gets Answered. You request the source for a particular image, and it is provided to you not by a single person, but by the Great Anonymous Itself. The Hive-Mind has spoken.

What Anonymous Isn’t

Anonymous isn’t a tightly-controlled net of hackers. There’s no “Boss Anon”. No “Anon Bin Laden”. There’s no single member of Anonymous that you can arrest that will cause a “crippling blow” to “the network”. Because let’s be honest here, “the network” is generally a bunch of bored dudes, killing some time by browsing eBaum’s World and taking part in whatever looks fun.

Sure, some members are incredibly more talented in the whole Black Hat stuff. Sure, some are better at persuading the herd, through use of clever rhetoric, reverse psychology, and hilarious memes. But they don’t make up the bulk of Anonymous, and if they left and never returned, it would remain the same.

What Anonymous Is

Anonymous remains the same even through the loss of its members, largely because Anonymous is ever-changing. From one moment to the next, the “member list” is different. Some bored college student in California hits up a well-crafted webpage to join in on a DDOS attack on Friday night, and leaves on Saturday morning, bored. A talented hacker joins in the fight against Scientology because she has a friend she lost to the group, but leaves when they start attacking Sony, because she’s a hyuuuuge fan. Any “leaders” are at best temporary and individually-motivated. Participants are even more amorphous and random. Pinning down “Anonymous” is pretty much impossible.

It’s made even worse by statements from “inside” the group as well. From the linked article, a “veteren member of Anonymous” says:

“If you say you are Anonymous, and do something as Anonymous, then Anonymous did it,” said Kayla. “Just because the rest of Anonymous might not agree with it, doesn’t mean Anonymous didn’t do it.”

While technically correct, going back to the old-school definition of Anonymous as the Hive-Mind, it doesn’t help clear things up to the media. This point of view correctly places Kayla as a veteran member of Anonymous, at least, given the fact that she still thinks of Anonymous as the Hive-Mind across the internet, where thanking or blaming one member thanks or blames the Hive-Mind. But as far as news organizations are concerned, it really muddies the waters.

Kayla is not confirming that there is a well-controlled and organized cyberterrorist group called Anonymous. She’s not confirming that Anonymous is behind the PSN network attacks. There’s no confusion inside the Anonymous community about this.

She’s just saying, with the same playful, let’s pretend attitude as members of Anonymous have always regarded themselves, that if you thank Anonymous for giving you sauce, then you can curse Anonymous for taking down PSN.

Welcome to the Hive-Mind.