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Ars Technica reports that the site is now full of porn ads.

http://megaupload.com/.
See, proper journalism isn't that difficult.

??? How old ARE you? (OMG: I'm only 55 -- maybe I really am older and more paranoid than I thought.)

Let me get this straight: you gave away control of your unencrypted files to someone who wasn't a known personal friend and then am surprised that something happened to them??

I treat on-line services slightly differently: I keep local copies of EVERYTHING that goes out, and I'm surprised when it's still accessible online 5 minutes later, never mind 5 years later. And controlling exactly who has access to it? That's just a fantasy -- really. It's actually binary: either it's out there and they MIGHT have it, or it's not and they DON'T.

I do run Dropbox and use KeePass as a password manager. The credential store is encrypted, but even then the stored password there just isn't "quite right". Phone camera pics get uploaded to Dropbox. At times I'll AES encrypt and email or use Dropbox and expose. For stupid pics I'll just dump 'em out there straight. But I know what's exposed and encrypted-exposed. The latter die soon after they're used.

You store important and critical (tax receipts, lawyer-enforced) notices that might cause breach of contract? And you put control of that in someone else's hands, paid for or not? What kind of an IDIOT are you? Then again, you must not think much of the breaching penalties. That's great, I'm glad you're so confident at everyone always doing the right thing everywhere and nothing bad ever happening.

Me, if I'm going to have a some contract or data leakage it'll be because *I* did it myself and have no one else to blame. Then again, it's obvious digital computer files and paid services will stay around forever: Just ask MegaUpload, GeoCities, and LavaBit. Oh, and the data center located in the Twin Towers? Onsite backups sure came in handy there. Some got thru better than others: One, Two

Then again, there's this brand new data center that will hold all of your data for years -- all for free! I'm sure you can retrieve all of your data from that.

Really, I'm glad things are going so well for you, with the exception of a few bumps. And local storage doesn't solve everything either -- drives can be stolen, warrants can be served, computers can be hacked and data downloaded. But damn it, for 99.9% of my data, I'm 100% directly responsible for it. Offloading everything to the cloud is just offloading responsibility, never mind anything at all to do with the NSA.

Oh, one last thing. Even if all of the employees in the ISP, supporting companies, 3rd party vendors and everyone involved are all above reproach. are you sure? And even say all of the software is 100% vetted and accurate (ignoring accidental software bugs): oops.

Paranoid? Probably, but then again most things don't deserve multiple layers of defense. Only a few do, and of those only a select few get vetted, encrypted, backed up, and rotated offsite. But as for "What would you need if everything was suddenly gone (house fire) and you could only keep a couple of things?" Well there's your answer.

Good luck with it all; hope you produce a updated

What does this say to you about American freedom and the internet?

Oh yeah?

You think location matters if people with enough money on the line care enough? Please.

How about this one?
http://megaupload.com/

That one hosted it's servers IN THE UNITED STATES.

How about this one?
http://megaupload.com/

The only fair option is to sue Megaupload. But for their involvement in illegal activity, your legal data would be safe. Everybody who ever uploaded legal content has a good case to get back some of Megaupload's 100M USD, and their data too. Small claims or class action, I wonder...

IIRC, Megaupload's TOS (oops, the US Government doesn't want you to see that!) states that it is *not* responsible for your data and will not compensate you for *any* loss of data. Period. Assuming the click-through EULA is considered enforceable, end-users have no recourse. From anyone.

Wow, it seems that I'm infected: I get a weird page for http://megaupload.com/ !

Look at the red border around the note, it has the word "Seized" on it.

Government seizing assets - property. Is that the idea?

You are a short-sighted person.

It's fine if somebody gets 'bombed' and loses at business - it's a natural consequence of market doing its work, allocating resources in the most efficient manner.

Copyrights and patents ARE a subsidy, and if you don't understand that concept, I suggest you try and visit this site, and you will see a nice big government note there, subsidising a failing business model.

It's called FBI, federal courts, police, prisons and eventually military.

Either YOU are a liar or a very unintelligent person.

exactly like Hostel Part 3 that don't release until December 27th is already here: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=L7QM6ED3 you'd think people would learn from their mistakes.. oh well

If you're worried about Russian servers, and interested enough to read the emails, then here is the Zip file. On the other hand, they might not show the geography lecturers and assorted eco-loons in a good light, so maybe you'd be better not knowing.

Just copy to your phone and install the apk.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=RACH0473

Enjoy! This apk is ripped from my phone (as the Market let me install it).

it's easier to pirate and no worry of antip2p scraping the torrent for ip's

now it's like megaupload who is huge in the pirate business

for example

Icefilms moved over to an all megaupload solution http://www.icefilms.info/

Thor http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IUBDT2GZ

Pirates of the Caribbean 3 http://www.megaupload.com/?d=K3VZ3O80

Whistleblower http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JV45BJ01

Now using megaupload it's harder and no 3rd party antip2p scraper is going to get your ip address. Megaupload supposedly doesn't keep their logs of what ip downloads what. So if they get a dmca request, they remove the file. But there is a script called RapidLeech: http://www.rapidleech.com/

Rapidleech automatically puts the file back in place from remote sites as a link dies.

usually much handier for pirates since don't have to worry with peerblock, antip2p lists keeping updated and 3rd party antip2p companies sniffing ip's from torrent swarms.

So as they mention in the http://suprbay.org/ linked off piratebay's site. This way it's safer for the pirates, and since it's a direct download it will become a hell of a lot more safer. Since megaupload has been offering pirates the same thing for many years now. And rapidleech puts the files back as soon as they are removed.

Always check http://icefilms.info/ for link updates

it's easier to pirate and no worry of antip2p scraping the torrent for ip's

now it's like megaupload who is huge in the pirate business

for example

Icefilms moved over to an all megaupload solution http://www.icefilms.info/

Thor http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IUBDT2GZ

Pirates of the Caribbean 3 http://www.megaupload.com/?d=K3VZ3O80

Whistleblower http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JV45BJ01

Now using megaupload it's harder and no 3rd party antip2p scraper is going to get your ip address. Megaupload supposedly doesn't keep their logs of what ip downloads what. So if they get a dmca request, they remove the file. But there is a script called RapidLeech: http://www.rapidleech.com/

Rapidleech automatically puts the file back in place from remote sites as a link dies.

usually much handier for pirates since don't have to worry with peerblock, antip2p lists keeping updated and 3rd party antip2p companies sniffing ip's from torrent swarms.

So as they mention in the http://suprbay.org/ linked off piratebay's site. This way it's safer for the pirates, and since it's a direct download it will become a hell of a lot more safer. Since megaupload has been offering pirates the same thing for many years now. And rapidleech puts the files back as soon as they are removed.

Always check http://icefilms.info/ for link updates

it's easier to pirate and no worry of antip2p scraping the torrent for ip's

now it's like megaupload who is huge in the pirate business

for example

Icefilms moved over to an all megaupload solution http://www.icefilms.info/

Thor http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IUBDT2GZ

Pirates of the Caribbean 3 http://www.megaupload.com/?d=K3VZ3O80

Whistleblower http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JV45BJ01

Now using megaupload it's harder and no 3rd party antip2p scraper is going to get your ip address. Megaupload supposedly doesn't keep their logs of what ip downloads what. So if they get a dmca request, they remove the file. But there is a script called RapidLeech: http://www.rapidleech.com/

Rapidleech automatically puts the file back in place from remote sites as a link dies.

usually much handier for pirates since don't have to worry with peerblock, antip2p lists keeping updated and 3rd party antip2p companies sniffing ip's from torrent swarms.

So as they mention in the http://suprbay.org/ linked off piratebay's site. This way it's safer for the pirates, and since it's a direct download it will become a hell of a lot more safer. Since megaupload has been offering pirates the same thing for many years now. And rapidleech puts the files back as soon as they are removed.

Always check http://icefilms.info/ for link updates

Well let your old neighborhood PC repairman help ya out with that bud. Here ya go, a little gem called HD Tune which you can install (or put on a flash as a portable if you like) which will not only give you an error scanner but with also give you a full SMART report including ANY changes that have occurred. Quite useful for spotting those problems loooong before they become a problem.

if you'd like it along with many other useful tools you might want to try Kel's CPL Bonus Pack which gives you not only HD Tune but over a dozen great tools right in the Windows CPL, like the HP USB bootable format tool, CPU/GPU-Z, one click driver backup, just a ton of nice features. It works on everything from Win2K-Win 7 X64 BTW, it'll just put them under 32 bit control panel on the X64 OSes but otherwise work perfectly.

And finally if you have a 4Gb or greater flash lying around (and what geek doesn't?) then I'd suggest computer repair utility toolkit v2. Now it is about 2 years old since the FOSS guys had a shitfit and made them take it down, but since this is the net and nothing ever disappears here you go. Simply update the apps and voila! A full toolkit that does just about everything, hardware, software, malware, tweaks, you name it, all with a nice launcher (which is easy to add your own apps to) on a stick.

Anyway i've found with the right tools NO HDD failure should frankly be unexpected...well unless you drop it of course. Otherwise with the above you'll get a heads up weeks in advance which gives you plenty of time to hit Newegg and get a replacement. Enjoy!

Since we are going to watch this then make fun of it download your copy of The Hangover http://www.megaupload.com/?d=1HQJBA6A or http://www.icefilms.info/ip.php?v=34333& Since we are going to poke fun and parody it online, you can watch it free under fair use :)

You can download the book from any of these places (though I've only personally verified the first link):
http://www.ziddu.com/download/13005635/EssentialsforWebDesigners.rar.html
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=NQZDE0Z1
http://www.roosle.com/files/get/r8eAzfK67K/essentials-for-web-designers.rar

Remember, information wants to be free! Fight the power!

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=1agmxyr0
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=qdg2znud

I watched both episodes yesterday on my computer. First episode would've been better as a 15 minute vignette rather than a full 30 minute episode.
Basically Leela builds a Fry-bot after Fry dies. Leela ends up getting killed. The Fry-bot believes he's the real Fry and mourns Leela's demise by building a Leela-bot. Towards the end of the episode the real Fry and Leela come back, confusion reigns, there's a Terminator reference when they change their voices to thick Austrian accents after tearing off their pseudodermis and everyone lives happily ever after. Best part was Professor Farnsworth's Deep Thinking Chamber with the disco ball.

Episode two is a take on Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It travels through the universe censoring unseemly planets like Poopiter, Planet XXX and #%$/@!. Zapp and Leela fly out to blow it up Skywalker style, ship crash lands back on a deserted island which Zapp says is a distant alien world so he can get into Leela's pants. Fanservice ahoy. The Planet Express crew try to save the world by telling everyone to repent and not look at nudity and porn. They go to the last unspoiled place on Earth, find Zapp and Leela, the robot satellite shows up and tells Zapp and Leela to have sex to show their purity and she takes one for the team (off camera).

Thanks to my pirate buddies.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=1agmxyr0
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=qdg2znud

I watched both episodes yesterday on my computer. First episode would've been better as a 15 minute vignette rather than a full 30 minute episode.
Basically Leela builds a Fry-bot after Fry dies. Leela ends up getting killed. The Fry-bot believes he's the real Fry and mourns Leela's demise by building a Leela-bot. Towards the end of the episode the real Fry and Leela come back, confusion reigns, there's a Terminator reference when they change their voices to thick Austrian accents after tearing off their pseudodermis and everyone lives happily ever after. Best part was Professor Farnsworth's Deep Thinking Chamber with the disco ball.

Episode two is a take on Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It travels through the universe censoring unseemly planets like Poopiter, Planet XXX and #%$/@!. Zapp and Leela fly out to blow it up Skywalker style, ship crash lands back on a deserted island which Zapp says is a distant alien world so he can get into Leela's pants. Fanservice ahoy. The Planet Express crew try to save the world by telling everyone to repent and not look at nudity and porn. They go to the last unspoiled place on Earth, find Zapp and Leela, the robot satellite shows up and tells Zapp and Leela to have sex to show their purity and she takes one for the team (off camera).

Thanks to my pirate buddies.

Ever heard of Youtube?

For starters

Ever RTFA?

4. Infringing webpage(s):

http://hotfile.com/
http://usershare.net/
http://2shared.com/
http://4shared.com/
http://mediafire.com/
http://megaupload.com/
http://sendspace.com/
http://teradepot.com/
http://zippyshare.com/

None of these are Google-owned sites. Doesn't hurt to try throwing the DMCA at Google though.

*cough*

Oh believe me pal, I can share some Worst Buy horror stories. The last shop I worked for (Now I do mostly SOHO and SMBs and the only home users are brought to me by word of mouth) was the "go to" place for those poor souls that went to Worst Buy.

Here are just a few that I can remember off the top of my head: One guy went in with a nearly $500 graphics card, came out with a $50 one, which of course when I told him and he went screaming to Worst Buy said "You can't prove you had a decent card in there". Folks opening their "new" PC and finding other folks stuff (and often porn) in it (that one happened A LOT). Folks going in with X amount of RAM and coming back with Y (also popular, some even had the RAM ripped out breaking the retention clips right off the mobo), that one BTW also happened to my current GF when she took her PC to rent a ripoff before she met me, so apparently that is a common FU. Parts put in upside down or even backwards (one had the floppy drive installed vis hammer) hell I could go on all damned day.

As for a good AV/firewall combo, may I recommend Comodo Internet Security? It is feature rich, without the user having to know squat, low resource, doesn't slow the machine to a crawl, and so far I haven't had a single malware infection come across my desk from a box loaded with Comodo, which considering some of the business owners I deal with is saying a lot. Pretty much your users will have to ignore every warning and continue installing to get a bug around Comodo, and of course in that case there is really nothing that will stop an ID10T error.

And for computer problems I would suggest downloading a copy of this, the Computer-Repair-Utility-Kit-V2. It has more than 50 tools that fix the most common problems (great for field work), it is butt simple to add your own tools like Malwarebytes Antimal to it (which I also use), fits just fine on a cheapo 1Gb flash stick, and has just about everything you'd need to find and fix common problems. The ClamAV it comes with is out of date of course, but that is easy to fix. Slap it on a thumbstick, update it once a week, and you are good to go.

But I have to agree, you can only do so much before the problems become PEBKAC. But I have found like you that a few sane policies (FF over IE, autoupdates on, fully patched Windows, decent AV/firewall) goes a LONG way to cutting down rates of infection. I have customer's PCs that have been running for years without a single bug thanks to a little sane policy setting on my part.

No problem with the tools, Oh and hey I found a link for the repair utility toolkit for you. It is less than 100Mb and has over 50 tools for things like networking, recovery, virus removal, etc and it is butt simple to add your own. I added Malwarebytes Antimalware, along with a few tools from the portable freeware collection and all is golden. If you have to deal with any XP boxes I would suggest autopatcher which lets you have all the patches for Win2K-Vista offline, along with common add-ons like Java and .NET. They are gonna add Windows 7 support soon but the new autopatcher isn't out yet.

And while I thank you for the suggestion, if I end up with a machine that is that borked I use a WinPE LiveCD with built in support for resetting keys, running malware scans, launching system restore, and about a dozen apps, all from the GUI. It works just like a Linux LiveCD only I can use Windows apps natively. It is pretty nice and since I use online virus scans like Trend Micro Housecall I don't have to constantly be updating it.

But you should definitely download the repair toolkit and give it a spin. The AV will of course be out of date but that is easy enough to fix, and it has great tools like DriveImage, CCleaner, tools for finding out product and wireless keys, TweakUI, a ton of really great tools all set up in an easy to use and easy to add to package. Even if you only have to work on a PC once in a while it is a good tool to have in your toolbox and with flash sticks being so cheap it is an easy way to have powerful tools in your pocket. I added a bunch of programs like FixWin and Ultimate Windows Tweaker and it still only takes up 268Mb of a cheapo 512Mb drive I had laying around. Nothing to install, just unzip and use. Try it, I'll bet you like it.

source: Neuro's demo Masagin (apologies, it's not my best encode, but i had to work and wanted to get all the samples up ASAP)
(for more wheezy computers)
halfres 720p30: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZZT4OGLD
halfres 720p60: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WHWJIXHZ
(for manly computers that eat HD for breakfast (or just a $30 radeon 3000+ or geforce 8000+ and mpc hc))
720p30: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LSM31W74
720p60: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9XC9NN7A

parts that especially leap out at me as being noticeable (altho 90% is noticeably not 60fps smooth to me)
0:28-0:59
1:26-1:29
1:58-2:28

source: Neuro's demo Masagin (apologies, it's not my best encode, but i had to work and wanted to get all the samples up ASAP)
(for more wheezy computers)
halfres 720p30: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZZT4OGLD
halfres 720p60: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WHWJIXHZ
(for manly computers that eat HD for breakfast (or just a $30 radeon 3000+ or geforce 8000+ and mpc hc))
720p30: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LSM31W74
720p60: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9XC9NN7A

parts that especially leap out at me as being noticeable (altho 90% is noticeably not 60fps smooth to me)
0:28-0:59
1:26-1:29
1:58-2:28

source: Neuro's demo Masagin (apologies, it's not my best encode, but i had to work and wanted to get all the samples up ASAP)
(for more wheezy computers)
halfres 720p30: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZZT4OGLD
halfres 720p60: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WHWJIXHZ
(for manly computers that eat HD for breakfast (or just a $30 radeon 3000+ or geforce 8000+ and mpc hc))
720p30: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LSM31W74
720p60: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9XC9NN7A

parts that especially leap out at me as being noticeable (altho 90% is noticeably not 60fps smooth to me)
0:28-0:59
1:26-1:29
1:58-2:28

source: Neuro's demo Masagin (apologies, it's not my best encode, but i had to work and wanted to get all the samples up ASAP)
(for more wheezy computers)
halfres 720p30: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZZT4OGLD
halfres 720p60: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WHWJIXHZ
(for manly computers that eat HD for breakfast (or just a $30 radeon 3000+ or geforce 8000+ and mpc hc))
720p30: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LSM31W74
720p60: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9XC9NN7A

parts that especially leap out at me as being noticeable (altho 90% is noticeably not 60fps smooth to me)
0:28-0:59
1:26-1:29
1:58-2:28

Listen: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00mcwv5/More_or_Less_04_09_2009/
Archive: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=5PPRZ6Y0

Oops

Not to mention as a PC repairman it has really helped me move folks away from the ubercrap that is IE. I would get a call to go out and fix a home user/SOHO/small business and I always carry my flash with me loaded with computer repair utility toolkit and portable Firefox with Adblock Plus installed. It never seems to fail that I have this conversation:

"Hey, how come I don't see that stupid 'hit the clown and win an iPod ad'?" that is because with Firefox 3 and Adblock Plus I don't have to look at stupid ads anymore. Makes my day nicer and my browser load quicker to boot. "I bet that is expensive and really hard to set up,huh?" Nope, it is absolutely free, no adware or spyware either, and with Adblock Plus I answer a single question and I'm done. It even updates itself so as new ads or Internet bugs come along I don't have to worry. "Uuuhh, since you are here anyway, do you think you could install that to MY machine?"

I can't count how many times I have had that conversation. I even managed to get my Luddite 67 year old dad to get off IE. Trying to sell folks security is like trying to sell them air. They know they need it but actually getting them to grasp it is NOT easy. Thanks to Adblock Plus getting them switched to a more secure browser is simple as 1-2-3. 1-Let them see me using FF3 with Adblock Plus. 2-Tell them it is free and easy when asked 3-Install FF3 and Adblock Plus when requested by the user(which they always do). So my heart goes out to their family. Guys like Rick have done more to spread FOSS than any bullet pointed list about security ever could. Thanks to Adblock Plus the web is what I WANT it to be, not what some damned irritating advertiser makes it into. He really was one of the unsung heroes of FOSS because by maintaining the Adblock Plus list he made FF3 an easy sell to every IE user I've come in contact with.

And for those that suggested a HOSTS file, aka the Cheap Opera hack? That is NOT easy, in fact for the average home user maintaining a HOSTS file is strange and difficult. With FF3 and Adblock Plus they don't have to do ANYTHING, as the software does it all for them. Can't get much simpler than that.

Did you try booting into a Linux Live CD to delete the folders? Every time I have run into the "undeletable file/folder" issue and couldn't get around it through CMD I was able to destroy them with a Live CD. While it would depend on your RAID and how well it is supported, I always look at format/reinstall as a last resort. I have had some customers do some seriously stupid things, like game during a thunderstorm and get half the box fried, but so far a little time and the right tools ( I have found a Live Cd on USB and Computer Repair Utility Toolkit V2) will fix pretty much anything.

Oh and sorry about having to use Megaupload, but the makers of Computer Repair Utility toolkit got told they weren't allowed to make the toolkit anymore or host the files. But as we all know once something is out in the wild it is out there for good. Yay Internet! You would think someone would be happy to have their programs advertised especially since the toolkits includes easy to use links to all the home pages and all the tools were freeware. I guess it shows even geeks can be as stupid as PHBs.

As promised:

Command & Conquer: Red Alert linux installer

Cheers, XnPlater

Complete audio of the conference
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7SSH9YJD

Moon Cricket call
http://www.speedyshare.com/269485286.html

Vagina/China call
http://www.speedyshare.com/306644284.html

In that case you'll want pictures of Evelyn Lory instead of this...

WARNING: SOURCE CODE DOES NOT CONTAIN EVELYN LORY.

Don't worry,the hairyfeet has got you covered-Audigy and X-Fi.Don't you just love the power of the Internet? I don't even have those cards(currently running a Live! I got give to me when I built a gamer a new rig)but I snatched the drivers in case I happen to get one give to me,or I get one cheap when Creative buys the farm.I used to ALWAYS have a creative card,but their asshatery got so bad I just couldn't bare to support them with my $$$.Really stupid move,Creative.Geeks are the ones buying your cards and then you piss them off with this IP crap.Just dumb.

Don't worry,the hairyfeet has got you covered-Audigy and X-Fi.Don't you just love the power of the Internet? I don't even have those cards(currently running a Live! I got give to me when I built a gamer a new rig)but I snatched the drivers in case I happen to get one give to me,or I get one cheap when Creative buys the farm.I used to ALWAYS have a creative card,but their asshatery got so bad I just couldn't bare to support them with my $$$.Really stupid move,Creative.Geeks are the ones buying your cards and then you piss them off with this IP crap.Just dumb.

No one but Jimmy Page was playing guitar like that in 1969.

No one but Jimmy Page was playing guitar like that in 1969.

No one but Jimmy Page was playing guitar like that in 1969.

Let's knock out the obvious ones first, shall we ?

http://www.megaupload.com/ has one offering, 250gbyte. Prepaid for one year it's 50 Euros (or whatever their site says for the US locale). That's 70 bucks. You /can/ use this as a storage-only service, but of course you can also use it for distribution and such -- no transfer limits. Rapidshare.com has similar offerings (with "unlimited" storage but a 5gbyte/day cap) at similar prices. Both of these rely heavily on customers infringing copyrights, so it's anyone's guess how long they'll stay around. Both also use somewhat nonstandard file deposit and file delivery methods. There are countless others in that market (oxedion, mediafire, upfile, rs.de, filefront, etc., all with varying foci).

The regular webhosting market has things like this to offer as well. http://www.dreamhost.com/ : The cheapest plan, at one year prepayment, would be around 120 bucks and offer 145gb of space. I say would since you can use their promo codes (check the forums) to almost triple the space or drop the price to a lot less. So that's 400 gb of storage, a couple terabytes of transfer a month, and some processing power to boot (WebDAV/FTP/SFTP/SCP/rsync/etc. are all possible). I imagine competitors to DH will have similar offerings space-wise. We're looking at around a fourth the price for almost double the storage space. Don't you dare yell "overselling" -- Google does, too.

If you can be bothered with some cumbersome setup (to laypeople, anyway), Amazon S3 will get you storage space for $0.15/gb/month, plus traffic ($0.18/gb). If you actually use 250gb, the price will be comparable to Google for storage alone (i.e. no transfers other than the initial incoming transfer); the difference is that you get charged by the byte, not in large pre-paid packages. If you use 1gb and transfer it twice, you pay $0.51 that month. Also consider that if you use less than the 250gb Google offering, you're probably get away cheaper (since the smaller Google plans are comparatively more expensive while Amazon's offering exhibits a linear price curve over the amount of storage used).

The value Google's space has is probably the integration with its applications -- Picasa, for instance, lacks decent online functionality using standard protocols -- and Google will probably deliver GREAT online functionality with their own service.

If all you really need is a foolproof backup, open up an FTP and let the world mirror it. I wonder who would do such a thing ...

Have a look at megaupload.com. I had never heard of it, but it is on place 14 of the Alexa top sites, before Ebay and blogger.com.

The trick: The Megaupload toolbar integrates the Alexa toolbar, which is the source of the traffic data used for the Alexa rankings.

The openness of the hardware platform is essential to a vibrant PC ecosystem. In the current world, however, the industry is also working to prevent hackers from using that openness to pirate copyrighted content. The goal is to make the Windows-based PC a safer place for premium content, so that content providers will be happy to allow Windows-based PCs to play their content.

The term "premium content" is used in this paper to refer to valuable content that needs to be protected from stealing. Each content type has its own particular policy that defines what the user can and cannot do with it. The term "high-level premium content" is used to refer to the most valuable content types, such as High Definition (HD) DVD and Blu-Ray DVD.

The content industry may introduce robustness rules and testing that would effectively lock out PCs from premium content, by not allowing PCs a license key for the encryption used by conditional-access systems or HD-DVD and Blu-Ray DVD. These protection schemes will be very strong in the future, based on Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA), and so on. Under these future rules, a PC would only be granted a licensed to play the content if it is at least as secure as a CE appliance.

To make the PC safer for premium content, Microsoft has been working with members of the PC industry to solve the technical issues in hardware and software. Our key partners in this work have been Intel, ATI, NVidia, S3, and Matrox.

So essentially, they need to do something about the trustability of the PC from the point of view of the content providers, otherwise they won't get the keys they need to decrypt. It's worth pointing out that with DVD, the DVD Alliance (representing the studios, RIAA etc) didn't want to allow any software players at all. Eventually they relented and allowed it, and it was the Xing software player which leaked the keys originally. So it's not too surprising that the studios want more trustability in the successor formats.

The alternative is to leave Windows the way it is, and not support HD-DVD and BlueRay. This is drastic, since third parties would not be able to write players either, if the OS and hardware are untrusted. It would be the end of the Media Centre editions of Windows for example. Strangely enough, Apple would benefit from this. Since the software and hardware in Macs are much less open, they could probably convince the Content Industry to allow software players much more easily.

Which makes Intel's courting of them seem much smarter actually - they're a way to use Intel chips essentially in closed Multimedia appliances, rather than Open Architecture PCs.

and from (page 41)

The PCIe bus may be defined in some Content Industry Agreements as a user-accessible bus. It is further defined in some Content Industry Agreements that premium audio is not allowed to pass over a user-accessible bus in unprotected form. In spite of PC industry push-back on this requirement, it is not certain which way the decision will fall. Realistically, any concession in this area would only be valid for a small number of years, so the PC industry needs to address this issue in the not-too-distant future. Microsoft plans to address this as part of the PAP project that will be a number of years after the initial release of Windows Vista.

When the PC industry does PAP, there will be a way of encrypting audio over the PCIe bus. For discrete graphics manufacturers, the easiest mechanism to use would be PVP, because their graphics chip hardware will already be able to decrypt this. The encryption would be don

if this is the right report (i have no idea what to look for inside of it), here we go with a 4chan rapidsharing flood

http://depositfiles.com/files/259792/missing_local ism_report.pdf.html

http://up.spbland.ru/files/0609167/

http://www.filefactory.com/file/305b6c/

http://www.f-forge.com?d=USezyG458nCRrPwZuboE

http://www.hemenpaylas.com/download/1575825/missin g_localism_report.pdf.html

http://ushare.in/d29507371b3da0bc4ed48b7a3b834917

http://rapidshare.de/files/33271523/missing_locali sm_report.pdf.html

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=KEL9IGOX

Apple's customers are like no others--a rich blend of the most sociologically elite [atspace.com] with those seeking elegant [atspace.com], simple computing... Unlike users of Intel/Windows computers, a significant portion of Apple's users are active [atspace.com], exploratory [atspace.com], avant-garde [atspace.com] and early adopters [atspace.com]. The activities they enjoy are unique in the way that they more often incorporate rich media such as video [atspace.com] and music [atspace.com] as well as more active prosumer behavior than many more passive Windows [atspace.com] [and Linux [atspace.com]] users.
                                                                                    â" MetaFacts, Inc. [metafacts.com]

With above-average household income and education levels, the Mac population [atspace.com] [is] very attractive [ intellectually [atspace.com] as well as physically [atspace.com].]
                                                                                    â" Nielsen/NetRatings (as quoted by C|NET [com.com])

Google Cache is great for the forum thread.


Torrent

Other Mirrors Listed (from the forrum) Below.
https://uploads.sgul.ac.uk/uploads/5499300/FairUse 4WM.zip
http://ranobe.com/up/src/up132003.zip
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Othe r-VIDEO-Tools/FairUse4WM.shtml
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/FairUse4WM/11 56529648/1
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6BZYVF56
http://www.filefactory.com/file/f75e74/
http://www.badongo.com/file/1270460
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=B5M9PXUM

Google Cache is great for the forum thread.


Torrent

Other Mirrors Listed (from the forrum) Below.
https://uploads.sgul.ac.uk/uploads/5499300/FairUse 4WM.zip
http://ranobe.com/up/src/up132003.zip
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Othe r-VIDEO-Tools/FairUse4WM.shtml
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/FairUse4WM/11 56529648/1
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6BZYVF56
http://www.filefactory.com/file/f75e74/
http://www.badongo.com/file/1270460
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=B5M9PXUM

Uploaded to megaupload. Sorry for the annoying ads that come with it. It's the fastest site to upload to I could find http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9M999M8L There may be a few repeats in there. I didn't check.

http://www.rapidshare.de/ --> 100mb max size, limited downloads/hour, but it might work if you rar the distro.
http://www.megaupload.com/ --> real slow, 250mb max size
http://www.filefront.com/ --> not sure if they allow non-game related stuff, send 'em an email. Their speeds are slow but not bad (80-100k), and they would let you host the distro in one chunk, rather than needing rar files.

Couple more I haven't tried:
http://www.uploadport.com/ --> Heard it had mixed speeds, and limits files to 100mb
http://www.megashares.com/ --> Have heard good things about it. Pretty fast, and will allow 1.5 gig files.