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I don't like the argument that many are pirating software as some sort of protest against draconian measures. A few sure, but they are the exceptions.

I say this because even the Humble Indie Bundle sees piracy and that has no DRM.

Many pirates are doing it because they dislike the price/find it more convenient to pirate/want to share something cool with friends.

Maybe be aware of it so that they won't be taken by surprise when their own leaders attempt something similar, perhaps at the behest of the US State Department, which has a history of meddling in the laws of other nations regarding precisely this issue?

Huh? What judge? With SOPA & PIPA, there's no due process to follow or judge to convince; the bully companies get to play judge, jury and executioner themselves!

Umm, no.

SOPA requires a Court Order to do anything. Read the Bill.

And yes, you have to convince a Judge to get a Court Order.

Of course, that hasn't always been a very high bar to pass.

I wrote a story for Ars on this theme if anyone wants to check it out: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/protesting-sopa-what-you-can-do.ars Good luck! I also love the idea of an anti-SOPA Super PAC.

Looks like the Konfabulator weather widget. It's at least as derived from and different than that as the OS X widget is.

Leverage. You don't just say no to your biggest retailer. It also makes business sense because the labels get some of that iTunes Match money, all without any effort from their part. Just goes to show what we could have had by now if someone had stood up to these guys before Apple came along.

Or you could just do like they did - grab the code from the guys who wrote it, and install ANY linux distro on a linux-based TV.

Come on people - TVs running linux are not new. What *is* new is that Canonical, having failed to deliver on their promised android tablets more than 2 years after they were announced, and more than a year after they were supposed to ship, are now looking for something else "shiny" to make people forget abut all their previous failures to ship.

Besides, would you really want to buy a TV that's going to break something on every update?

If this law would only combat copyright infringement, I would be all for it. But it doesn't. This law is based on blocking from vague accusations just like the DMCA, and look how that law has been abused. Takedown requests generated by bots who select files which have the same words as the title of a movie/song or whatever. Takedown requests for things they don't even own. And of course, religious organizations abused the DMCA to silence critics.

Then there are the lawsuits. Suing Veoh which destroyed them, even though they won the lawsuit. Then there is Viacom v. YouTube where viacom sued YouTube, even though Viacom was uploading the videos for promotion. Then there is this video which I am not sure I agree with, but he has a point.

Then there is what happened in Denmark.

It all seems to me that the big media companies main goal is to turn the Internet into a one way TV medium which doesn't allow user content, not protect their copyrights.

Imagine what damage this will do to the industry. Everybody making their own things, nobody buying toys, nobody buying anything. Heavy copyright lawsuits must kick in to prevent this horrible scenario. Every model copyrighted, every 3D printer with online DRM.

It's already started happening. The DMCA has been used to take down 3D models.

As with music and movie industries, we're going to see this continue to 3D printing as well. It's only just started, since 3D printing is still a relative novelty for most people and everything's concentrated in just a few providers.

Pat Leahy is not corrupt.

He is - just that he's a bit more collegiate (a nice way of saying "sneaky") about it.

Ferdinand Marcos(Who's regime I did get to witness first hand from the safety of a USAF base), now there's a right bastard for you.

The base is formerly known as Clark AB, before Mt. Pinatubo turned it into a giant ashtray. I know of what you speak, but... the thing about Marcos (and his ilk) was that his greed was a lot more blatant, and that he was able to enforce his will in the open, and without opposition for a very long time. I'm very willing to wager that if you took half the congresscritters we have and put them into the same culture and situation, they'd behave in much the same way as Marcos did.

Have you called your congress critter?

I'm kind of lucky in a way - most of mine (Oregon) are actually decent people (except for Wu - who the frig knew he was a Furry?) As a matter of fact, one of the biggest opponents to SOPA happens to be Sen. Wyden (D - OR).

Yes, the studios and record labels are all greedy bastards, but they're the ones who do have an actual stake in IP rights. When you're making a living based on how well your art is received, then let's talk.

Bad assumption, in that they don't give a shit about how well it is received, as long as they are the ultimate arbiters of it, and can make money off of it to the exclusion of everyone else - legitimately or not.

The FAT patent has been worked around 2 years ago. there are no royalties to be paid for it today.

That was a poor attempt at a shakedown. Patents and any form of open source don't mix, and can't be reasonably enforced on it either.

It is not only LG but also HTC and Samsung. A few months ago I read in ars technica that Microsoft might be collecting royalties from around 50% of all android devices: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/10/microsoft-collects-license-fees-on-50-of-android-devices-tells-google-to-wake-up.ars

Meanwhile, the media effectively lionize groups like Anonymous by breathlessly reporting on their latest hacks,' writes Winkler.

Well you've got to admit the HBGary hack, as reported by arstechnica, was pretty damn cool.

Google has already testified on SOPA, but the bills backers are convinced that Google is an evil enemy of the Good Media Companies, out to leverage it's monopoly on search to make money off of "rampant piracy" (YouTube, Book Scanning, Google News, etc).

Putting him on the stand will do more damage than good. Bezos is a good option, as people view him more as enabling media sales. But in general concentrating on back-end folks will be much more effective.

Hello APK!

http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=453001

"I miss him, actually. I absolutely loved logging in every day during the whole sordid mess to see what inane crap he was posting. It had all the fascination of a car wreck in progress, and it lasted a lot longer as well.

Alec Starr Entertainment +++ "

Hi APK!

http://www.ntcompatible.com/postprint81050.html

http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=453001

[citation needed]

No really, I googled Windows Phone 7 Requires Carrier Updates and got a mess of results describing how the carriers are not compelled to release updates in a timely manner (or at all, really). Regardless of what MS said they were going to require, it would appear they've caved to pressure from the carriers and changed their official position on the matter.

Oh, lighting fast ad hominem from Anonymous Coward.. The fact is that Apple equips industrial spyware the CarrierIQ on iPhone 4, of course it is turned off by default.. or whatever they are saying on the matter now.

Taking kids back to the time of computing pioneers like John Von Neumann and the first machines â" the likes of the Z3, the Eniac and the Colossus â" would both inspire them and help get over the fundamentals about how computers work, argues silicon.com."

Using teaching gimmicks won't work. Locking down the computers won't work either for teaching, uhm, computer skills and programming skills. DOOH! (The BBC article makes vague references to "incidents of attempts to contact pupils inappropriately." and yet fails to mention any illegal behavior or arrests, any child rapes or murders, etc. Remember the FUD around the dangerous Internet, such as social networking sites like Slashdot. BTW, if there are any under-18 year old kids who want to meet up with me, just reply to this post with your email address).

Anyways, if you can find qualified computer programmers to teach computer programming (and actually give these teachers some educational theory as well) you should be good. And actually teach them something that is relevant (like Javascript they can actually use and experiment with in the real world). Filling them up with a bunch of theory will be useless to high-school level kids (although give them the option).

And don't patronize the little fuckers. Remember, eSafety is meant for parents, and not for children. Just like the TSA is useless security theater, so too is making children paranoid about imaginary enemies.

Teach them to be intelligent, and you won't need to protect them from the evil Wicca.

Take the locks off the computers and you will take the locks off the the minds of children. The only thing you are teaching them is how to circumvent these locks. I'm not meaning to hi-jack this topic, but when it comes to teaching you need to start off with the right premises and move forward from there. Remember that gimmicks and any type of theatre are just that.

Steve kicked the bucket, but the company has internalized his megalomaniacal desire for control.

Corporations are people, after all. Like the zombified shell of SCO, litigation might be their only consistent source of revenue in light of a lack of direction.

In a communist economy, the population are slaves. Literal whips are replaced by the Type 56 and threats to your family.

In the Laogai they beat people if the production quotas are not met. Americans celebrate Christmas with Laogai made Christmas lights.

China is not communist. China is capitalist. Often the corporations and the government are controlled and influenced by each other, just like in the United States of America.

These two countries bad-mouth each other, and yet they have so much in common. Economically they are both in favour of exploiting an underclass to indulge the 1 percent of the population.

They also have censorship in China as well, like the censoring of "indecent" images and religious content.

Calling China "communist" gives the ignorant masses something to hate. It is a great diversion from the slavery of the American prison system and the War on Drugs.

This simple act underscored a problem possibly bigger than SOPA: the fact that as with far too many of our elected officials, technology legislation isn't even on his radar.

I don't think you understand SOPA. SOPA isn't a problem with Technology. It's not going to physically break the backbone routers we need for the internet. It's not going to present technological challenges. What it's going to do that is a problem is rape free speech, make user-generated content (like what I'm doing right now) nearly impossible and on par with China's arcane policies as well as a number of other things. It threatens uploading content, it threatens internal networks, it threatens open source software, it threatens DNS, DNSSEC and internet security. And the worst part is that it's going to be completely ineffective at what it aims to do!

You don't need to understand technology to read the pieces on how this is a direct assault on free speech. Screw their understanding of technology, frame this piece of shit legislation as a direct assault on basic civil liberties! Let them chisel into stone memos about their dry cleaning, who cares if they don't use e-mail. Just make sure they understand that this is first and foremost diametrically opposed to free speech when you simply consider the internet as a means of communication and expression!

The best we can do for the short term is to throw everything we can behind legislation to reinstate the OTA (Office of Technology Assessment). From 1974 through 1995, this small group with a tiny budget served as an impartial, nonpartisan advisory to the U.S. Congress on all matters technological.

Another government office or agency? Man, don't we have enough of that bullshit as it is? I think you're deflecting and focusing on something that will sidetrack us from getting this crap shut down. Call your representative and senators and tell them that you feel that your First Amendment Rights are being threatened by H.R. 3261 and forget trying to lecture them about how DNSSEC works.

You want to effectively stop this? Here's a commercial I'd like to see Google air on national TV:

*woman sits behind bars with a look of remorse on her face*
Woman: I uploaded a video less than half a minute long of my toddler dancing to music on Youtube.
*clip of cute toddler jamming out to some pop music plays*
Woman: The video went viral. Then I received a letter in the mail from lawyers saying I owed them the cost of that song for every view. Instead of just taking it down, I'm now in a criminal lawsuit facing bankruptcy and jail time. Please call your representative to stop SOPA and prevent this from happening to thousands of people.

Fight fire with fire, 15 second ad. Let's see it, Google.

Where is this list of blocked websites in the USA?

You have to wait for SOPA to pass first. In the meantime, there's always domain seizures.

Maybe these "schools" who offered "classes" in App Inventor should first have someone on hand who knows enough about computers to get the service up and running.

And maybe, just MAYBE they should have had that all set up already, considering they're (presumably) charging money for the class.

What's next classes on Minecraft? Oh wait...

Hello?

This is bullshit. It's PR.

Seed a bunch of stories about the crashing theater market, then fool Ebert into writing about it as though it were an actual fact on the ground, and then everybody assumes it's real.

It's not.

In fact, theater revenue from 2010 hit another record year, up from 2009, which was up from 2008.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/piracy-once-again-fails-to-get-in-way-of-record-box-office.ars

Why, oh why can't Slashdot readers stop being so easily duped?

If you were less stupid, we wouldn't have to live in the mess which is the world today.

Sigh.

Even the BSA backed off SOPA: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/even-the-business-software-alliance-now-backpedaling-on-sopa-support.ars

I've been puzzling over the corruption caused by business influence on government for awhile.

Setting it up as a problem in game theory, the tenet "candidate who spends the most money wins the election" makes the outcome a foregone conclusion: elected government officials will be in the pocket of corporations, in all cases.

This may be a way out.

We've bemoaned our inability to influence the political system, but here we see a striking example of the population rising up and affecting specific government actions.

Public outcry stopped the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, or at least it helped. Similarly, public outcry attempted to hurt Bank of America and GoDaddy over their political beliefs.

If we can make this work it will give us the fine control over government that we have been missing. We've been able to affect small companies - HBGary, Stratfor, Ocean Marketing, Sony. (OK, Sony isn't that small, but it was a slice of Sony much smaller than BOA.)

Future companies may need to think twice before supporting oppressive or corrupt legislation - if only because of the chance that the people will rise up and hurt their bottom line.

We haven't had an effect on the really big companies yet (BOA), but I'm hoping that this grows to be a worldwide trend. We need to install a healthy dose of respect for public opinion. To put it succinctly, the companies have to fear the possibility of public retribution, both legal and extra-legal.

This will give us the power to affect legislation, to control the corruption. This will put government back in the hands of the people.

If we can make this work...

I've been puzzling over the corruption caused by business influence on government for awhile.

Setting it up as a problem in game theory, the tenet "candidate who spends the most money wins the election" makes the outcome a foregone conclusion: elected government officials will be in the pocket of corporations, in all cases.

This may be a way out.

We've bemoaned our inability to influence the political system, but here we see a striking example of the population rising up and affecting specific government actions.

Public outcry stopped the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, or at least it helped. Similarly, public outcry attempted to hurt Bank of America and GoDaddy over their political beliefs.

If we can make this work it will give us the fine control over government that we have been missing. We've been able to affect small companies - HBGary, Stratfor, Ocean Marketing, Sony. (OK, Sony isn't that small, but it was a slice of Sony much smaller than BOA.)

Future companies may need to think twice before supporting oppressive or corrupt legislation - if only because of the chance that the people will rise up and hurt their bottom line.

We haven't had an effect on the really big companies yet (BOA), but I'm hoping that this grows to be a worldwide trend. We need to install a healthy dose of respect for public opinion. To put it succinctly, the companies have to fear the possibility of public retribution, both legal and extra-legal.

This will give us the power to affect legislation, to control the corruption. This will put government back in the hands of the people.

If we can make this work...

Here is a better writeup from Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/12/huge-portions-of-web-vulnerable-to-hashing-denial-of-service-attack.ars

From that page:

the flaw affects a long list of technologies, including PHP, ASP.NET, Java, Python, Ruby, Apache Tomcat, Apache Geronimo, Jetty, and Glassfish, as well as Google's open source JavaScript engine V8

the theory behind such attacks has been known since at least 2003

Klink and WÃlde showed that "PHP 5, Java, ASP.NET as well as V8 are fully vulnerable to this issue and PHP 4, Python and Ruby are partially vulnerable, depending on version or whether the server running the code is a 32-bit or 64-bit machine

The actual vulnerability seems to be that many web applications (or application servers or libraries or what have you) parse form data from HTTP POST requests into hash tables, using known hashing algorithms. If an attacker sends a POST request using specifically crafted parameter names that all hash to the same value, inserting these into the hash table will take O(n^2) time, which opens up affected software to a denial of service attack.

http://anonymiss-express.blogspot.com/2011/12/notes-for-diy-mesh-networks.html

http://shareable.net/blog/how-to-set-up-a-open-mesh-network-in-your-neighborhood

http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2006/08/7427.ars

http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php/DIY_Mesh_Guide

http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php/DIY_Mesh_Guide_Software_and_Resources

No kidding, and there's a lot more shit coming from arse these days too.

If we're throwing around knock-off accusations, Android used to look like this until the iPhone came out, and then Android suddenly started looking and behaving a lot more like iOS, right down to the pinch-zoom gestures that originated with the iPhone.

Please stop perpetuating this myth. There was no mad rush to change Android after the iPhone was announced. Feel free to look up Dianne Hackborn yourself; her word should carry a lot more weight than a picture carefully crafted by some Apple apologist.

It's no surprise at all that Apple is going to try to hinder competitors' efforts to ride the coattails of its design work.

Oh God, please stop repeating Jobs tiring drivel. It serves no purpose, and only make you look like a tool. Let Apple do their own dirty marketing. Apple has no noble agenda, they're fighting increasingly dirty to protect their bottom-line, abusing the patent system to hinder competition, attempting to subvert the work of W3C threatening the very openness of the web.

Their actions are hurting the industry. Yet, you can still find people on a technical forum like this feeling the need to support their actions, modded +5 Insightful no less. I'm appalled.

If we're throwing around knock-off accusations, Android used to look like this until the iPhone came out, and then Android suddenly started looking and behaving a lot more like iOS, right down to the pinch-zoom gestures that originated with the iPhone.

Please stop perpetuating this myth. There was no mad rush to change Android after the iPhone was announced. Feel free to look up Dianne Hackborn yourself; her word should carry a lot more weight than a picture carefully crafted by some Apple apologist.

It's no surprise at all that Apple is going to try to hinder competitors' efforts to ride the coattails of its design work.

Oh God, please stop repeating Jobs tiring drivel. It serves no purpose, and only make you look like a tool. Let Apple do their own dirty marketing. Apple has no noble agenda, they're fighting increasingly dirty to protect their bottom-line, abusing the patent system to hinder competition, attempting to subvert the work of W3C threatening the very openness of the web.

Their actions are hurting the industry. Yet, you can still find people on a technical forum like this feeling the need to support their actions, modded +5 Insightful no less. I'm appalled.

Pushing of proprietary standards

Hilarious. You are aware of the fact that they favored pushing HTML5 instead of the proprietary stuff like Flash.

No, Apple is pushing its own version of HTML5 and, as a matter of fact, Apple is using patents to undermine the development of Web standards and block their finalization.

RT.

Okay, I'll admit that the article is very high in troll content but, as someone who has spent plenty of money on Apple products over the last 6 years, let me add that I'm getting more and more disgusted with their behaviour and I won't buy anything else from them for the foreseeable future.

That said, let me add more reasons to strongly dislike (if not boycott, let alone hate) Apple :

All apps on the Mac App Store will be required to run in the so-called App Sandbox

Apple sues but loses design lawsuit against Spanish tablet maker (producing a tablet nothing like the iPad)

Apple is using patents to undermine the development of Web standards and block their finalization

Apple has given valuable patents to a patent troll (which is using them to sue top technology companies)

And, last but not least, I don't know whether to laugh or cringe about this one:

Apple threatens 20-seat restaurant that sells only drinks, sandwiches and desserts because it's called AppleADay

RT.

So, what's your point? As of Dec. 2009 Windows had a 92% share versus Mac OS with 5.11% Now with Mac OS all the machines were Apple products (or ~ 99% anyway) and Ms Win7 was being run on about a gazillion different companies products. Using your analogy, that demeans Windows. Somehow, I don't think so.

Will Microsoft try to extort Dell and Baido like they have with so many Android vendors? Oh how they'd love to collect license fees from a few hundred million Chinese smart phone customers...

So support builds for Bitcoin as an alternate way to transfer value.

> Remember that time in the '90s when a Taiwanese RAM
> factory caught fire, and it turned out to be a big chunk of
> world RAM output? Sent prices spiking for a while.

IIRC, that was more or less a cover for price fixing.

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/05/04/22/1850250/ram-manufacturers-fined-for-price-fixing

http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2005/10/5429.ars

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

Many more links available if you search for 'ram price fixing'

(Hint, it is not Chrome, Chrome gets people out of Firefox mainly.)

I would disagree with that statement. While Firefox has lost a bit of market share to Chrome, most of Chrome's gains have come at the expense of IE. Look at the trends.
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/12/internet-explorer-stops-its-slide-as-chrome-nears-firefox.ars

I'd love to fly an RC plane around a local park with my kids and then offload the video

Here's an extreme version:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/12/how-a-rc-airplane-buzzed-the-statue-of-liberty-with-no-arrests.ars

The story just rehashes the press release by AT&T.

And by the time the story got to Slashdot, others have already written decent stories about it - those would have made much better links.

The business perspective .

The regular news

And the tech perspective

Chrome of course auto-updates, so it's easy for one version to rise to the top. However, we'll see IE take the lead back when they implement auto-updating (Not that I'm an IE fan, but I agree that stats like this are FUD-ish)

But doesn't Sprint have a reputation for handing data over to the cops without a warrant? http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2009/12/sprint-fed-customer-gps-data-to-leos-over-8-million-times.ars

Won't somebody please think of the Shareholders!?

Isn't it more like: Won't somebody please think of the CEO's!

Hollywood was actually set up to get away from the east coast and Edison's patents.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/thomas-edisons-plot-to-destroy-the-movies.ars

Funny, I remember this around the time,

Gene's son was doing some comic, and ripped images that were almost identical to Bleach and a few other manga's ( http://www.cnngo.com/tokyo/none/manga-gene-simmons-son-accused-bleach-plagiarism-750585 and http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-02-25/nick-simmons-incarnate-halted-over-alleged-bleach-plagiarism ) . Then his dad comes out that all these kids that steal should be sued, face prision, hang on I think there was an quote saying he hoped they get @ss rapped in prison: yep found it http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/gene_simmons_fires_back_at_hackers.html and another http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/10/gene-simmons-vs-anonymous-whos-the-bigger-asshole.ars . By his own mouth, his son should be in prison being @ss raped.

Personally it is the double standards everyone has that annoys me

Bit like all the hacking stuff lately, Companies are allowed to sell programs to hijack Itunes, install keyloggers, do what they like and sell it to governments, but the day a normal person does it, 10 years in prison. Hacking a website is like tagging someones building/home, if it is that much of a problem get better protection. 10 years for defacing a website? You can kill someone for less time. You think if you killed gene that the charge of website defacing would still be present? might be a nice option out that has only good points

Bored now, MERRY XMAS ALL

It's interesting that the rational behavior is to expect people to act irrationally, or at least compromising some rationality for morals/ethics.

If you look at the numbers, the cost obtaining in a not so legitimate way is (time to find it)*(value of time) + (chance of being caught)*(penalty). Let's suppose someone believes their time to be worth $25/hr, the chance of getting caught is 0.0001 (if the RIAA has sued 18,000 people, I'm assuming in total about 30,000 have been sued for file-sharing, and the population of the US is over 300M), and the penalty is $10,000, that becomes:

(time to find)*(25/hr)+(0.0001)*(10,000)

As long as it takes less than 10 minutes longer to find the video by illegitimate means than from his website, the rational choice is to find it illegitimately. What's interesting is that the expected value of being caught is about $1, meaning it probably is rationally best to download music legally, but not for many movies, ebooks, etc.

Read the recently released EPA report, or at least reporting on it. Wells which had been pure for years have suddenly had massive influxes of hydrocarbons which cannot be explained by bacteria means. Chemicals used in fracking are also showing up in these drinking wells in significant quantities, with no other plausible source. Fracking is polluting our water table and should be stopped immediately.

Feel free to post the instructions for Windows for someone to follow;

There's a zillion guides out there on making a bootable USB key (preferable) or DVD to install Windows from. It's about 5 steps. Here is one example. After that's done, you just copy whatever custom software you want onto the USB key and you've achieved the same result as that link you gave.

including rights required and hardware compatibility issues.

Now you're moving the goalposts.