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Yatta

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Now don't give me that crap "this topic doesn't belong in this forum" because people rarely visit the Steam forum section and I doubt many people would get a chance to read this.

It appears that Valve has been working closely with RIAA. RIAA is the Recording Inudustry Association of America, which tries to protect copyrighted music from getting download via P2P Applications such as KaZaA. Apparently, Steam scans your hard drive for MP3 files and tries to see if you have anything illegal installed. I'm not sure that this is true, but you should really read this:

http://www.*****************/modules/news/article.php?storyid=56

Someone who has a hex editor should do what that article says, and confirm with us. Thank you.

Edit: The stars in the URL should be replaced by [Nothing. Tthe site has a filter on it for a reason.]
 
This has already been coverd. On a FAT32 system the area that the cache is allocated isnt blanked until used. The random stuff on that section of the harddrive still appears there so people have made theories about "spyware" and other stuff. It is not to be believed.
 
HAH, that article is old, second, it's fake also,
Dihard kindly forwarded an email conversation that he had with Gabe Newell. Dihard’s concern involved reports (where the Steam cache contained miscellaneous info) of Steam collecting personal information. Here’s what Gabe said:
We were a bit perplexed when these reports first surfaced until we found out that people with NTFS didn't see the problem and people with FAT-32 did. In Windows, if you use NTFS for your file system, it zeros out the sectors before allocating them to a new file. So if you have something, like a Steam cache file, where a lot of space gets allocated but not used, and you look at it, then you'll see a bunch of zeros. The FAT-32 file system doesn't do that. If you allocate a large amount of space, don't fill it up, and then use a binary editor to look at the file, you'll see whatever was in those sectors before they were allocated to the new file (at least until they get written over). Whether the files are zero'd or not doesn't affect applications because you always assume there's junk there until you write over it.
So this behavior isn't a function of Steam cache files, it's a function of the FAT-32 file system. Other applications that allocate large files and not fill them immediately will see the same behavior. It doesn't mean the application cares about the data, it just means it was something already on your hard drive. Just last night I noticed that Bram, the guy who created bittorrent for UNIX, had had the same issue raised on the UNIX file system (which makes sense).
Click to expand...

that's from PHL
 
It's not, my god, where have you people been? WTF? Seriously, before you post such things, educate yourself on your computer system. :)
 
Originally posted by FoB_Ed
HAH, that article is old, second, it's fake also,

that's from PHL
Click to expand...
Hey, thanks for the headsup. Phew..!
 
In NTFS when you delete something it is actually removed from the hard drive along with the information about the file stored in the Master File Table.

In FAT32 when you "delete" something the only thing that happens is that the information about the file that is stored in the File Allocation Table is removed but the file itself is not removed from the hard drive. Windows then treats the data on the hard drive like it is empty space... it just ignores it.
Then along comes Steam. Steam creates a big "empty" 350MB file (in the case of Counter-Strike) in "empty" space of the hard drive.
If you then open the "empty" cache file in a hex editor you can see data that you "deleted" a long time ago...

That is one reason I moved over to NTFS.
Other reasons include:

It supports much larger hard drives.
It has faster recovery from crashes
It allows you to define permissions for every user on each
individual file/folder.
It offers transparent, automatic encryption.
It offers support for file compression, which allows more space for storage.
It also performs sector sparing to remap data to good clusters and mark bad clusters as unusable.
 
god if it isnt a delay thread its a whacko alien from pluto stole my underpants story!
 
Originally posted by Direwolf
This has already been coverd. On a FAT32 system the area that the cache is allocated isnt blanked until used. The random stuff on that section of the harddrive still appears there so people have made theories about "spyware" and other stuff. It is not to be believed.
Click to expand...

Thanks ,thats what I was going to post.
 
Lol, the OGC'ers probably started that stop steam petition too, anything to keep getting cheats out those ****ers, KILL THEM ALL!
 
heh, Valve would never implement something like that and release Steam to the public... never... they would be nuked sooo fast if it happened
 
OGC are just screwing around, since they know that steam will mark the end of cheats...






LOOOOL :D
 
yea all the ogc users are pissed cuase steam won't allow them to cheat, so they are trying all this crap to make steam look bad and for others not to use it, why do you think these pentions are popping up all over, its all the cheats upset that their unskilled arses will get handed to them in cs or whatever when they can't use ogc.
 
This is OLD.

And has been proven WRONG.

And the RIAA stuff was just completely made up.. lmao.. bunch of retards I swear.
 
Guys, OGC cannot be trusted. They are the source of 50% or more hacks available in the Half-Life community. It is them that cause us so much trouble, and they do not deserve an ounce of respect.
 
Not only was it cheaters who hate steam that started this, but almost certainly they found what they did because they were trying to find a way to hack steam so they could cheat some more.
 
god bless newbs, i need a good chuckle every now and again :)

They are spying on us! :p hehehehe good one.
 
Originally posted by OCybrManO
In NTFS when you delete something it is actually removed from the hard drive along with the information about the file stored in the Master File Table.

...
Click to expand...

No, NTFS flags files for deletion, but these only get processed either when it runs out of empty space for other files or the MFT is about to be saturated. The files don't get zeroed when the flagged entries get purged, the zeroing doesn't happen either how Newell said it. When you create a huge uninitialized file on NTFS, it exists only virtually. That's called sparse files. Once you start writing to it, it maps only the used clusters, all other clusters that haven't been written to, still exist only virtually, thus appear zeroed. Disk editor applications will still find the data after a file on NTFS has been deleted. If you killed a 20gig disk, then create a 20gig file on it without initializing it, the whole file appears nulled, but all previous data is still there since the file doesn't exist, only virtually in the MFT. Same with a 1gig file, dont init it completely and only fill 500megs of it, the remaining 500megs aren't mapped physically. NTFS is a bit complexer than that.
 
There's always "OMG SPYWARE" reactions to internet related software. Steam is obviously no exception :)

Hmm, why is it assumed that if you have mp3s on your harddrive, they're illegally downloaded, anyway? I have a massive mp3 collection, all ripped from CDs I own, or made from music I've created. The suggestion that any program would scan for illegal mp3s is a rediculous one, since there's no way to tell if you own the original CD or not, and therefore nothing anyone can do, even if they do somehow detect your several gig of mp3s.
 
I've an easy solution: Sandboxing applications I dont trust. I make a seperate user account for applications, and deny any access outside their installation folder and My Documents, and only grant readonly to \windows\system32. Application restricted, spyware my ass, case closed.
 
Conspiracy theories...

What make you think you're important ?
 
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