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1) This: http://journalspace.com/this_is_the_way_the_world_ends/not_with_a_bang_but_a_whimper.html is amusing. "The guy who I fired for stealing and who told people how smart he was did not have backups. After he left, I should have checked on stuff." -- This is wrong. If you don't _know_ proper off-site backups exist at any time, you are making a huge mistake. Every single day. Your responsibility does not start when you fire some guy. And in a shop small enough that one guy can handle all IT, the boss of a blogging _website_ _must_ know that.

Not much he can do now and no use crying over spilt milk. But to imply that his (shared) responsibility is less than 100% is a joke.

2) To save affected bloggers the trouble of posting: http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s257/MyDoom111/btarded/outrage4yvdj3bf67oq.jpg ;)

Not even the Wayback Machine can save them...

"We're sorry, access to http://www.journalspace.com/ has been blocked by the site owner via robots.txt."

-- Dave

In today's world where primary storage and protection storage are well-defined, and where entire industry grew around it (examples: NetApp, Data Domain), one is hard-pressed to understand the reason for such a debacle. The reading of the note referred to in the article leads me to believe, unfortunately, that Journalspace's IT department did not understand the difference.

It is sometimes considered a bad form to say something bad about fellow techies. We prefer to look for 'outside' causes. Still, to learn and avoid the same problems in the future, one has to admit his mistakes first. This paragraph from the Journalspace's page:

The value of such a setup is that if one drive fails, the server keeps running, using the remaining drive. Since the remaining drive has a copy of the data on the other drive, the data is intact. The administrator simply replaces the drive that's gone bad, and the server is back to operating with two redundant drives.

makes me believe there is a denial going on.

"I don't really think so. Hosting and upkeep of their hardware may not be cheap, but if the $4m figure has any ties to reality, they're probably making an OK living off tpb."

I believe the original poster was being sarcastic, but your point stands.

It's hugely beneficial for the TPB operators paint a picture of break-even financials and motivation by an altruistic desire to stick it to the man. This helps them get sympathy when they get into legal scrapes like this; but more importantly, it helps with their efforts at collecting donations. Plenty of apologists will swear up and down that TPB doesn't make any money because somebody at TPB told them so, but the numbers regarding their bandwidth and ad views just don't add up.

So how much do they make? I read an article which put the wealth of one of the founders at $10MM, but I don't think it's nearly that much. Either way, between their daily revenue stream from ad impressions, the huge pile of cash they collected for their "let's buy an island" campaign, and the donations they've received since (many P2P fans use the donate 10% of the retail price of the media formula), they should have no trouble paying for their legal fees or fines.

For what it's worth, I have no trouble with TBP making a healthy profit. Neither should many P2P fans. After all, the record companies want you to pay for music, while TPB helps you get it for free, so perhaps they deserve compensation for providing this service. If I were a P2P fan I wouldn't have an issue with this, but nonetheless many people bristle at the notion of TBP actually having a profit motive, just like the vast majority of other enterprises.

I'd love to be proven wrong. I'd love TPB to organize as a non-profit (where their income and expenses, including compensation, would be public knowledge). If they really did support the artists, they could even announce that they were donating their excess operating income to the most-pirated artists on the site. That would truly show that they don't have a profit motive. But, I really don't think this will happen.

A friend recently posted the Sunday Creationist strip of Doonsbury in his blog. Very funny strip.

My thoughts too. There is a Linux BIOS project. Could something be written that makes EFI boot into a Linux BIOS which then allows Vista to be booted?

That would be the biggest boot salad ever seen!

I mean, Real ROM -> EFI -> rEFIt -> eLILO -> Linux BIOS -> Vista!!!

The journalspace fast media finder is yet another example. Start typing in the box, and watch what happens.

And has anyone tried sticking in a pre-release DVD of Windows Vista, holding down the D key, and seeing what happens?

I tried a few times to compose an answer to that question without being sarcastic, but I couldn't pull it off. In short, yea, pretty much everybody who has spent 2 seconds thinking about Windows on Mac has thought of this idea and/or tried it. I'll just point you to here, here, and here. I'm sorry to be pissy, but the forums where people are actually trying to work on this problem are so cluttered with this "novel" idea that it gets really annoying after a while.

So as not to be a complete rant, I'll explain why this doesn't currently work. The Mac uses the new UGA standard for video cards, and does not support VGA at all. Windows (even Vista) only supports VGA (or UGA with VGA fallback, which Mac doesn't have either). There are also drive partitioning issues, among other problems. Basically, any feature that Apple didn't need for booting MacOS was left out of the EFI, including BIOS-compatibility mode as you noted. No current PC hardware is so legacy-free. However, with a bit of massaging, the Vista install disc does boot, you just can't see anything on the screen. When Vista gets a real UGA driver, we should be able to make quite a bit more progress.

Please directly me to any place I've ever been against booting Windows. Second, I don't "host a site on how to do it". Nakfull Propaganda is not my blog. winxponmac.com is not my site. If you're referring to appleintelfaq.com, that is not a site about "how to run Windows on a Mac". It's a FAQ addressing the Apple/Intel transition. Once Windows is able to be installed directly on an Intel-based Mac, there definitely will be a FAQ entry about it, since that is indeed, well, a "Frequently Asked Question".

In fact, all of my posts here (and on the blog) on the topic are specifically FOR booting Windows on Intel-based Apple hardware, or using Windows in a virtual machine:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=173774&cid=144 55455
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=174115&cid=144 83527
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=174203&cid=144 91243

At the end of this post, I even enumerate the reasons why people might want to run Windows directly, as opposed to in a VM:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=174845&cid=145 43786

I've also been trying to install Windows directly on Intel-based Macs since the first day we were able to begin testing. Anyone can see the log of the various tries here:

http://nak.journalspace.com/?cmd=displaycomments&d cid=407&entryid=407 (Note: that is NOT my blog)

And finally, even though some of the EFI testing rendered the iMac unbootable (after someone else already had the same issue), I then posted my steps for recovering both in the story here and in the above blog entry's comments.

Nice try, though!

From Dave Schroeder, posted to http://nak.journalspace.com/?cmd=displaycomments&d cid=407&entryid=407

By following these steps, the iMacs that had difficulty with certain EFI modules appear to have been restored to a functioning state:

1. Disconnect the internal hard disk
2. Disconnect the iMac from AC power
3. Plug in AC while holding the power button
4. Power up the iMac and zap NVRAM (cmd-opt-P-R)
The hard disk can be reformatted and the operating system restored.

By following these steps, the iMacs that had difficulty with certain EFI modules appear to have been restored to a functioning state:

1. Disconnect the internal hard disk

2. Disconnect the iMac from AC power

3. Plug in AC while holding the power button

4. Power up the iMac and zap NVRAM (cmd-opt-P-R)

The hard disk can be reformatted and the operating system restored.

somewhere in this thread are various instructions on how to fix it.

I should note that a colleague is also tracking these issues on his site, the same one noted in the submission. Sooner or later, and with a bounty now offered for anyone who gets Windows XP booting on a Mac, I've no doubt something interesting will be accomplished.

I wonder how Wiley will mock them this time? He sure didn't seem to think much of Scott Kurtz when he offered his strips to newspapers for free.

I know that SMU said she was let go for reasons not related to her blog, but that seems fishy.

It reminds my of the flight attendant who lost her job for her blog. http://queenofsky.journalspace.com/

Okay, some people would argue that blogs are such a blot on the web as to warrant this action. Point is, um, let's see, Delta should have been able to do due diligence on the core software of new acquisitions. Shouldn't they?

http://queenofsky.journalspace.com/?cmd=displaycom ments&dcid=393&entryid=393

these are hardly explicit photo's, yes she looks great in them.
but they are hardly pornographic, sure she looks sexy in uniform isn't this why the uniform was designed this way so old guys in first class get to be attended to by pretty women sexily attired.

perhaps it was more that you could get to see for free which so annoyed delta.
combined with america's moral indignation, should she have been fired when its part of marketings unofficial agenda fly with us we have hot babes to look after you.

for the rest of us if you want to blog with freedom then do it annonymously
my last blog entry was a silent scream of rage hurt and anger, no need for me to direct that at anyone, just having a bad day thats all.
better out then in, well i felt better afterwards.

This is the link to the pics that got the flight attendant fired.

I don't think Ellen's pics are compromising and it is not obvious that it is Delta airlines that she works for.

Here's the link: http://queenofsky.journalspace.com/?cmd=displaycom ments&dcid=393&entryid=393

Ellen Simonetti's blog, mentioned in the CNN article as having "suggestive photographs of [her] in uniform," dies a slow horrible death...

The folks at Delta fired their flight attendant after she placed a picture of herself in uniform on her blog...

(drool? hehe)

"The record companies have a monopoly."

The record industry may be many things, but it's not a monopoly.

"They make it almost impossible for an artist to audit independently how many records they've sold, but inevitably when artists do audit (usually in a very limited area), they discover they are being paid even less than the lousy terms in their contracts."

Inevetably? You mean this happens in 100% of the cases? Can you give some examples?

By the way, there are independent auditing sources freely available, like NPD MusicWatch and Nielsen Soundscan.

"So stop calling it stealing or copyright infringement."

They're just words. If you're going to infringe somebody's copyright, why not be honest with yourself and let the Jolly Roger fly freely? If you're convinced that you're doing the right thing by infringing somebody's copyright, then the words can't hurt you. It's not like somebody's taking money out of your pocket. At the end of the day, the worst thing is that you'll be called a name, but you'll have the last laugh because you've saved the $14.

"So don't give me a sob story about the artists."

How about applying the Golden Rule in this case? As I'm sure that none of us would want somebody using our copyrighted material in an unauthorized manner (such as violating the GPL), why not extend that same courtesy to artists? Right or wrong, if they let you copy their work, then by all means do it. But if they would prefer that you purchase it, why not respect their decision rather than deciding that you know what's best for them? We don't need free music, but artists do need to pay the rent.

I wrote this back when this first broke in November. This whole thing feels to me like a shakedown on the EU's part. Granted M$ has done plenty wrong, but this is far from the earth-shattering event it's been made out to be.

I don't think I've seen it mentioned that the recent launch of AOL Journals significantly changed the blogging competitive landscape. This news surely affected Pyra's forecast for the paid version of Blogger.

Either way, I prefer journalspace. They use the 'try before you buy' model, have more features than Blogger, and the content has an average intelligence level that's roughly three metric notches above LiveJournal.