Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Discipline, License, Name-calling
Every day, in every way, I am becoming a better and better Lt. Junior Grade. alanjstr writes "The Baltimore Sun reports 'The Naval Academy has disciplined 85 students who used a military Internet connection to illegally swap copyrighted music and movies, but it stopped short of carrying out its threat to impose the maximum penalties of expulsion or court-martial, an academy document shows.' It goes on to say that the raid was spurred less by the RIAA and more by the threat of losing the internet connection due to the enormous amount of bandwidth consumed. The academy had given students several warnings before raiding the dorm rooms. Some of the hard drives seized last November were found to contain one or two copyrighted files, while others ran into the hundreds or thousands."
I bet they could make a better agreement with Xiph.org Magnetic Confinement writes "In an effort to make life more difficult for civic-minded Mac users, NPR has decided to drop Quicktime from its available streams. Nothing specific on their webpage addresses it, just some suspicious vacancies remain. Their helpdesk response is officially:
'NPR.org had been offering some of its audio in the Apple QuickTime format under an arrangement with Apple QuickTime. We regret that we were unable to reach mutually acceptable terms for a new arrangement with Apple QuickTime. As a result, NPR is unable to continue offering its content in this format.You can also contact Apple QuickTime directly at: quicktime@apple.com
Weston
NPR Online'"
A note that got lost in the bin for too long ... JulesVD writes "Microsoft has agreed to tweak its Windows XP operating system in response to recent feedback from the Justice Department over its antitrust settlement with the federal government. (See news on Yahoo!) Microsoft will give more prominent display to a button in Windows that allows computer users to remove the company's Internet Explorer browser, company spokesman Jim Desler said. The Justice Department is overseeing Microsoft's compliance with the settlement. Placement of the button in a hard-to-reach spot in Windows was one of several complaints Microsoft's rivals made to the department last year."
Proportionality isn't just for the personals. You may still be boggling (I am) at the recently announced RIAA suits alleging that colleges and college students are liable for billions of dollars in damages to the music industry for facilitating online file trading. Reader Derek Lomas writes in with another editorial indicating "growing support at Yale for legal alternatives".
Even biggerness. The Gathering is billed by some as the the world's largest computer party. MC68040, though, writes "I'd like to remind everyone to have a look at dreamhack, that 'also' is the largest LAN in Sweden twice a year ... Which had over 5000 participants in 2001 and even more in 2002.. *arhem* Biggest you say?"
If you want to fight about "LAN party" vs. "Computer party," leave me out of it!
How about calling it "900t"? An anonymous reader writes "As previously reported, mozilla.org's Phoenix browser has been renamed to Firebird. This hasn't pleased supporters of the Firebird relational database project. In an Australian LinuxWorld article, one of their administrators calls the name change "one of the dirtiest deeds I've seen in open source so far." In a MozillaZine article, the same person accused mozilla.org of "theft" and "corporate bullying". They don't explain how it was different when they picked a name that was already used by a BBS, financial software manufacturer, Fenix IDE and games company. Meanwhile, IBPhoenix, an organisation that supports the development of the Firebird database, has put up a protest page, encouraging people to spam the MozillaZine forums (even though MozillaZine had nothing to do with the decision) and send masses of email to many Mozilla developers (most of whom were not involved in selecting the new name). I find it rather hypocritical that the Firebird database people are accusing Mozilla of "the filthiest of dirty tricks" while at the same time advocating the harassment of many Mozilla developers."
Point of clarification. batkid writes "In response to the article 'Microsoft pirating their own software,' Seems like MS is taking it pretty seriously. I got the following response from Microsoft (I am a faculty member, but the response should be the same to students).
April 9, 2003RE: Visual Studio .NET Professional Edition and Windows XP Professional software distributed during the Microsoft Faculty Seminars
Dear Faculty Member, Thank you for attending the recent Microsoft Faculty Seminar. The purpose of this letter is to clarify questions concerning the legal use of the Visual Studio .NET Professional and Windows XP Professional software distributed to faculty who attended the Seminar. The software received is governed by the electronic license embedded in the product set up that appears prior to installation and no additional documentation is required.
Notwithstanding language on the CD label for the copies of Visual Studio .NET Professional Edition and Windows XP Professional Edition that you received during your attendance at the Seminar, which appeared to indicate that a separate license document was required in order for you to legally use the software, this letter will confirm that use by you of the software received is governed by the electronic license embedded in the product setup that appears prior to installation.
You are required to agree to accept the terms and conditions of this license prior to proceeding with the products' installation. Acceptance by you of these "Click to Accept" licenses is the only license required for your use of the copies of Visual Studio.NET Professional Edition and Windows XP Professional Edition received. We recommend that you keep a copy of this letter in your personal files for future reference."
Thanks for passing that along.
What if Masterlock security was assured this way? Monday, you read that security researchers Billy Hoffman and Virgil Griffith (known as Vergil and Acidus) were were prevented from speaking at a security conference by means of a Cease and Desist order from Blackboard, Inc.. The two planned to talk about security flaws found in Blackboard's Transaction System.
In a mail posted at Declan McCullagh's Politech mailing list, David Yaskin of Blackboard responds to the criticism that the company's legal action has drawn. John R. Hall has posted a FAQ explaining some particulars of the Blackboard Transaction System which Virgil and Acidus aren't at liberty to discuss, as well as contradicting some claims that Yaskin makes in the posted email.
*highlights*
*Ctrl-C*
*Ctrl-V*
*Prints Letter*
*Launches Gnutella*
This space intentionally left blank.
In an effort to make life more difficult for civic-minded Mac users, NPR has decided to drop Quicktime from its available streams.
How do we know Apple wasn't being unreasonable in the terms they wanted?
BTW, those Phoenix database people sound really mature.
Don't worry. It opens in Open Office Impress just fine!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Remember that joke about the kid who prooves that he has no time to attend school, since he must spend x days sleeping and x days eating and x days are weekends.....
The kid in this joke arrives at the figure that he does because the way he does it counts a good portion of time twice. (IE: Sleep and weekends overlaps...)
The RIAA I think is counting things twice when it obtains these "Billion Dollar" figures. I think that it counts the number of P2P transactions and multiplies it by the cost of an album. This dispite people downloading songs that they would never buy. In fact, one could further inflate the figures by including incompleted transactions as a full one.
Billions of Dollars? Baloney.
Anyone know of a substitue for Blackboard? Open source or otherwise? I don't use it here at CSUN, but other Universities I deal with do use it. I was actually going to push it for the physics department here, but not now. Thanks.
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
The fact is that most students at Yale are very familiar with breaking copyright law, because they are not willing to give up learning about music just because they can't afford the $15 cost of each CD.
Does anyone else find that laughable?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
'NPR.org had been offering some of its audio in the Apple QuickTime format under an arrangement with Apple QuickTime. We regret that we were unable to reach mutually acceptable terms for a new arrangement with Apple QuickTime. As a result, NPR is unable to continue offering its content in this format.
That's strange, the quicktime streaming server is opensource and free. Were they using a proprietary, licensed format to deliver the audio? If so, why not just switch to low-bitrate MP3, which QTSS supports with no problem?
They should just rename it "TransAm", its the same thing anyways......
Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles
"Some kids were running miniature Napsters," said the academy official, referring to the now-defunct music-sharing site. "They had enormous drives - multigigabite drives - and they were on all the time. They became little Web sites."
Just goes to show how educated some naval personell are about computer technology. I mean MULTIgigabyte drives?!? Holy shit man, that's a lot of storage!!!
*note sarcasm above*
If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten. -George Carlin
Ok, I have commented on this before. I am still curious as to if the RIAA has it's way and wins this lawsuit, will it prove anything?
I mean, unless the student is very rich family, along the lines of Bill Gates rich, the RIAA would never see the money. And, on a appeal, the settlement would be thrown out on the fact that the amount, millions and millions of dollars is too much for anyone to pay.
I am still curious if the RIAA is just doing this for headlines, or to scare people from sharing music.
eh, this sucks, I am going back to bed....
We use the Blackboard transaction system here at LSU, and a lot of our food/drink machines with the system are usually offline... now, if you swipe your card in the machine while its offline, it'll display what's supposively stored on the card - your social security #.
Just something I thought was kind of interesting.
I don't believe that Microsoft intends to allow users to actually remove much software with any of these "new" features. Even if a user edits his/her sysoc.inf (you can find it in "%systemroot%\inf" if you so will) file and removes the word "hide" from applications which are not appearing under the "add/remove windows components" manager, most of the applications remain on the hard disk even after they are supposedly "uninstalled." I have found this to be true with Outlook Express and Media Player. Frankly who cares about Internet Explorer at this point. Most people I know use it on their windows machines anyway, regardless of how buggy and insecure it may. At this point, Microsoft being forced to alter XP so much that Internet Explorer is "uninstalled" is nothing more that a friendly pat on the ass compared to the original goals of the anti-trust case(s). The justice department should be absolutely ashamed.
Is it really that hard to pick an original name and then run a few searches to make sure there are no similar products with that name?
For example, why not pick something from another language that fits the product well? Something like 'gaiyuu' (Japanese: foreign travel) or 'michiyuki' (Japanese: going down the road)...
Seriously...it seems ridiculous the amount of trouble these people have coming up with original names...
IMHO.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
It say that the Navy found some hard drives with 100s and 1000s of copyrighted files on them. It never says if the students had a right to have those files... I have 1000s of "copyrighted" files on my hdd in the form of mp3s, which I obtained by buying the CDs and then ripping them...
It's about time. Making internet explorer easy to remove will definately eliminate the problem with Microsoft's monopoly. The only reason Linux hasn't been adopted as a major desktop competitor is that it was widely felt that the internet explorer icon needed to be removed from Windows before you could install Linux, and this should clear that up. The justice department deserves a big pat on the back for this. Way to go DOJ!
My Blog
I guess most people have come to expect this from slashdot, but it should be pointed out all the same. It's too bad everyone (me included) puts up with it.
From the slashdot writeup:
From the linked article (slightly summarised):
Listing the eight technical project leaders at the end might have been a tad excessive, but I'd hardly call that "encouraging people to spam the mozillazine forums" or harrassing mozilla developers in the way that slashdot makes out to be. It looks like an ordinary informational page to tell people how they can contact the people who are able to make a decision.
Actually, IIRC, Masterlock did threaten lawsuit over the dissemination of info that would allow someone to find out a combination to a MasterLock combo lock in a few easy steps.
This is not new.
Vidar
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
We all know that statistics can be manipulated to show anything one wants. Here's how to fix the problem: * Dismantle the RIAA and scatter the fragments to the four corners * Let Artists decide how to advertise and distribute their creations
Warning: Since Internet Explorer is part of the operating system, your operating system will no longer function after you click the button. Please forward all concerns to the US Department of Justice. Have a nice day.
Sigs are bad for your health.
I'm working on a project called sinapse that is a PHP/db portal for students. It's in use by Oklahoma University, Oklahoma State University, and I'm currently working on the Baylor University implementation. However, I've been writing a module for it specifically for teachers to be able to cover the same functions as Blackboard. Sinapse is the only education focused software for this usage AFAIK.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
Placement of the button in a hard-to-reach spot in Windows was one of several complaints Microsoft's rivals made to the department last year.
This sounds to me like an argument that might be made by people trying modchip X-Boxes - "It's too hard to circumvent Microsoft's way of doing things!"
Is it just me, or does legal wrangling over the placement of a button just seem kind of silly?
Mike Pettit, a spokesman for Procomp, an anti-Microsoft computer industry trade group, said the latest modification was minor. He called it "a complete waste of time and effort and has nothing to do with restoring competition."
Apparently not.
We carry BBC, Morning Edition, The Connection, Here & Now, Fresh Air, All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, On Point, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Car Talk, et al... :)
And we originate most of those.
-T
That is true, it uninstalls nothing, just makes in brain dead easy to reassociate html links to a different broswer.
Note that "IE" is a fairly small program, almost nothing more than a GUI wrapper around the MSHTML rendering engine that is used within Windows in several places as well as many third party apps and even an app that I've written myself.
You probably could remove iexplore.exe with no real harm to the rest of your windows use, but you would not beding yourself a favor by uninstalling the MSHTML com object(s) from your system.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Adware? I have Quicktime, and I don't remember getting any adware with it... but maybe I missed something. But yeah, an open source alternative would be really nice... go Theora! (I'm assuming that someone will work out a way to stream it after it comes out, the way Icecast does for Ogg.)
I produce electronic music and write little games. Have a look.
Well, you know there are 3 kinds of lies:
"Lies, damned lies, and statistics," Disraeli
SCO to Hell
Highlights...
Left mouse click...
Middle mouse click...
lpr...
Launches Gnutella...
What the %^&#, this requires WINDOWS?!
Launches Gnutella again...
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Maybe because Quicktime streaming server is freely downloadable.
Well, okay, you've got to have OS X Server to get that one, but if you don't want to even run OS X Server, guess what? Darwin streaming server is both open source and runs on Linux, Solaris, OS X(server or regular, 10.1.x or better), AND WINDOWS(both win2k and NT).
If -that- isn't good enough for you, there's no shortage of MP3 streaming servers. If THAT isn't good enough, there's ogg-vorbis.
Something smells, folks. MS -bought- their way into this one, probably via strong-arming or simply bribing with free hardware+licenses. By the way, PBS dropped Quicktime recently too.
Please help metamoderate.
this is so simple to fix...
current implementation:
reader to NP: this guy says he wants a coke
NP to reader: give him a coke
how it is hacked:
intercept the NP to reader command and resend "give him a coke" to the reader. free coke.
fixed implementation:
reader to NP: this guy says he wants a coke
NP to reader: give him a coke, lets call it UNIQUE_KEY
reader to NP: can i give this guy a coke and call it UNIQUE_KEY?
NP to reader: if this challenge already occured respond "no, you already did", otherwise, respond "yes, give him a coke" and log the UNIQUE_KEY
problem is the current hardware can not be upgraded to do handshaking or challenges like that. if you have programmed for paypal's IPN, it works as correctly described above and seems like the obvious solution... i can't figure out what these guys were thinking **for 19 years**!
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
If your smart enough to deal with not having I.E. then finding the button to remove it shouldn't be that hard. Imagine being on the phone doing tech support for some bozo who's deleted I.E. because Microsoft is Evil, and dealing with the complications thereof.
Oh, and is it just me, or is this pathetic? Microsoft used illegle tactics to destroy several companies, and dominated the industry with those tactics to the point where the only way an even potential competitor could make it was by circumventing the market entirely (Linux). And the most done to them is making them put a button to remove I.E. from the start menu?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Or, how about what the automotive world refers to the Firebird as(screaming/flaming chicken car), with a Mozilla twist?
I can see it now: "Screaming Dinosaur 7.0! Now featuring the Mullet theme, complete with AC/DC background music. Cinderblocks available as add-on module(please note, Cinderblock module disables browser completely, installs junk on your desktop)"
Please help metamoderate.
The RIAA is actually going about this in a winnable fashion and they don't even have to win to win. First they are taking on a person who does not have the deep pockets to defend himself against the 2,000Lb. gorilla that the RIAA is. If the student does not defend himself, the RIAA wins by default. The RIAA would then have a judgement placed against the student which would not be avoidable by bankruptcy and probably even have rights to his estate after his death. His credit is ruined and he would never have any hope of keeping any assets (cash or property), any earnings he is able to earn would probably be garinsheed also. The RIAA will also probably continue to keep the student in court until he dies of old age, demanding that he prove that he has no assets at each summons which would require several appearances. If the student fights the court case, the RIAA will keep him in court for years, one day at a time until he is broke and has to quit. At this point the RIAA wins be default again. This whole game is in the RIAA's favor since they have the bucks, resources, and the time (corporations can live a lot longer than people). Basically the poor guy's life is ruined unless some White Knight steps up and can give the RIAA a run for the money. In order to beat the RIAA at this game the student must somehow out spend the RIAA, tough to do. If the RIAA wins or settles out of court, they win. I f the student is able to win the case and the appeals that surely will follows, the RIAA has only lost one of an indefinite number of battles. Bottom line is this poor sucker is going to be made an example of to frighten the masses into submission. This war is a matter of life and death for the RIAA and they are going to pursue winning it as such.
That makes sense. But, you forgot that most judges in the united states are liberals and would never let a settlement of billions dollars on one person to stand. In the end, the judge and set a dollar amount for the settlement. If the student just admits his was in the wrong, then the judge will set a limit of more or less in the area of a couple thousand dollars.
But, I think we are also forgetting that the RIAA said a few years ago that they would not sue any person directly like this. But that is so typical of a business. Say one thing one day, and go against the next.
eh, this sucks, I am going back to bed....
Let's even carry it one step further: If clicking "I Agree" gives me a license to use the software, why wouldn't that apply to what would otherwise be illegal copies? It sounds pretty bizarre, but it also seems pretty consistent with what that letter said. And whatever happened to that whole "is it authentic" campaign?
They have many, many possible height levels. They are completely analog devices.
Analog devices have noise. Therefore, analog devices are built with tolerances, and on a given brand of lock, these tolerances may allow for only about ten distinct height levels per pin.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Even though Apple's site says QuickTime Streaming Server requires OS X Server, it really doesn't. You can install it on a regular OS X system.
Now, seriously, how many people have reverse engineered the installer _BEFORE_ actually installing and set it up so that it installs even if you say you Disagree?
If performed in the United States, such an act could possibly violate the DMCA. The installer may qualify as an "access control mechanism" under 17 USC 1201, and telling it to install even on Disagree may count as "circumventing" the license screen.
Nothing you see on Slashdot is legal advice. Even if a user is a lawyer, you're not his client.
Will I retire or break 10K?
http://www.blackboard.com/docs/Statement_on_System _Security.pdf
If they just want Acidus and Virgil nailed, they can let the two speak and then file criminal complaints. If the vulnerability is not a big deal, that is. Their system is shown to be robust, and they get their dose of spite by seeing Acidus &Co in cuffs. But if it is a big deal, then they have some explaining to do on why they didn't tell the colleges. Anyway, you're right that the devices are boxed in well, But it doesn't take much effort to trace the conduits and find a place top patch in.
How about calling it "900t"? An anonymous reader writes "As previously reported, mozilla.org's Phoenix browser has been renamed to Firebird. This hasn't pleased supporters of the Firebird relational database project. In an Australian LinuxWorld article, one of their administrators calls the name change "one of the dirtiest deeds I've seen in open source so far." In a MozillaZine article, the same person accused mozilla.org of "theft" and "corporate bullying". They don't explain how it was different when they picked a name that was already used by a BBS, financial software manufacturer, Fenix IDE and games company. Meanwhile, IBPhoenix, an organisation that supports the development of the Firebird
I'd like to suggest that all Open Source disputes over program names be settled through trial by combat in the old English tradition.
If this works, perhaps this method can be used to settle all trade name disputes.
Alternately, a version of this adapted to the programmer community can be tried.
Set up a server on a static IP. One side tries to keep it running, the other side tries to h4ck it down, who defends and who attacks settled by coin flip.
Tech Public Policy stuff
" In a MozillaZine article, the same person accused mozilla.org of "theft" and "corporate bullying". They don't explain how it was different when they picked a name that was already used by a BBS, financial software manufacturer, Fenix IDE and games company." Firebird....Firebird...somehow that name sounds familiar...scratching head........Am I nuts..or was there also a CAR named Firebird??? shameless trolling, but someone had to do it
Somebody ought to make an sql database called Mozilla. That will ignite the situation. Or better, the Firebird SQL Database project should rename to Mozilla. *sarcasm*
Meanwhile, rapists at the academy go completely unpunished (although the victims do if they speak out). The military is the coolest.
The middle mind speaks!
"How about calling it "900t"? [snip] In an Australian LinuxWorld article, one of their administrators calls the name change "one of the dirtiest deeds I've seen in open source so far." [that article quoted me, btw]
[snip]
"In a MozillaZine article, the same person accused mozilla.org of "theft" and "corporate bullying". They don't explain how it was different when they picked a name that was already used by a BBS, financial software manufacturer, Fenix IDE and games company."
I did post a comment about these other "Firebird" projects, which all except one are either more recent than ours, or are long defunct. The BBS project (a year older than our project) is a Chinese bulletin board, scarcely to be considered as being in the same space the way an open source browser and an open source database are...
"Meanwhile, IBPhoenix, an organisation that supports the development of the Firebird database, has put up a protest page, encouraging people to spam the MozillaZine forums"
This is a patent LIE - hence, no doubt, the poster's desire to stay anonymous. The readers were invited to write, not "encouraged to spam". As background to why the need to do so, our private emails to the Mozilla people at the start of all this have gone unanswered. What else could we do?
"(even though MozillaZine had nothing to do with the decision)"
Another misrepresentation. The announcement was made on the Mozillazine talkback forum and feedback was expressly invited.
" and send masses of email to many Mozilla developers"
Another outright lie. The suggestion was "You might like to write to..."
"(most of whom were not involved in selecting the new name)" The announcement said "we". Absent better information, how could anything be assumed except that the whole Mozilla team made the decision, since that was how it was announced.
"I find it rather hypocritical that the Firebird database people are accusing Mozilla of "the filthiest of dirty tricks" while at the same time advocating the harassment of many Mozilla developers."
I find it highly hypocritical that an anonymous poster would construct a spin like this -- and rather depressing that Craig Ringer and others are buying the spin.
Helen Borrie
Firebird Project Admin
If I join one of those clubs, I could get the quantity of the discs you say, but they don't carry the bands I like, nor do they carry cd's that are by bands no longer around, and never made a big hit. This is something that everyone on both sides of this copyright shit need to realize. Especially the RIAA and other corporate entities. I don't want Brittney Spears, or Metallica , or whatever bullshit is lining the shelves of Walmart. If they really want to stop piracy, then I should be able to walk into anyplace that sells cds, and pick up a copy of Haunted Garage, or LawnmowerDeath, or anything else I decide. No, special orders do not cut it. The biggest music store here never even heard of these bands, and they don't find them on their little order sheets, so I must search all over to find my kind of music. Gee, the internet has sure made it easy to find my music. I buy from band pages when I find bands worth buying from, but when the band is dead and gone, and the RIAA decides to discontinue the cds, well, what then? P2P fills this bill. If they would think ahead just a bit, they could setup the motherlode of all napsters, and charge a reasonable fee for access, and then they would, at the very least, quadruple their income and reduce costs. This will never happen though, because Corporate thinking corrupts all that it touches, and the RIAA is certainly corrupt. But hey, what do I know? I work for a living.
For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
Do you use QuickTime...are you giving $$ to PBS?
/audio, in favor of an apparent Microsoft-only solution.
<BR>
<BR>
This email is to discuss a recent decision by NPR, which I note on it's website says "In partnership with PBS".
NPR.org has announced* it will stop using QuickTime for online
As a past supporter to PBS in my hometown, Sacramento, I find it less than 'public' for an otherwise public resource such as NPR to adopt what I feel is a restrictive posture towards their online community.
I also notice that the PBS website still supports QuickTime as a available format for viewing video online. I would like to believe that if PBS can continue to support more than one choice of online video, NPR would be able to follow suit.
If PBS/NPR is going to request financial support from the community at large, it should perhaps consider those funds come from people with various choices that not only apply to politics, etc, but to information access methods as well. If I felt that PBS/NPR was only going to support a Microsoft environment in the future, I would be less apt to provide financial support....and I'm sure others will be thinking along similar lines.
Regards,
.....
You can download audio of many articles directly from the site. Unfortunately, Apple's web browser of choice (Safari) thinks that the audio links are served up as *.smi files--perhaps "self mounting image files".
Safari will, instead of opening these files with RealPlayer, Quicktime or downloading them to a desiganted directory, will open them up directly with Disk Copy-- an operation that wil surely fail.
And because NPR uses javascript to decide what kind of stream to serve up, it's rather difficult to cut and paste a link directly into one of the audio streaming clients. I suppose you could uncheck the "open safe files automatically,", and control click the downloaded file, select "Open With RealOne Player" and enjoy the results, but that solution is rather complicated.
NPR blames Apple for this. I'm sure that in the confusion, angry Safari users have jammed already strained technical support queues. So NPR does the only sensible thing-- it seeks petty revenge by dropping Quicktime.
1. Enroll as student at university hosting next MS-sponsored event and grab a CD.
2. Ignore sticker that says separate license required, as MS says to.
3. Wait for cat to walk on keyboard during installation and agree to on-screen license agreement.
4. ???
5. Profit!
Open date and time and set the year to something like 2024. Then save this time. Launch Quicktime and click on later to register sometime in the future.
Now reset the year.
Re-launch quicktime...no nag to upgrade to Quicktime Pro.
This has worked for years, and is pretty widely known...I saw it on a Mac forum and have forgotten who the poster was so I cannot give credit to the original poster.
(c) why firebird - what's so special about the name?
The logo.
If you look its clearly a phoenix, a firebird is basicly just another way of calling it. It essentially means that they can keep the "same" name even if they've had to change the title for legal reasons.
IMO the Firebird DB project needs to stop being a bunch of whining asses. So its got the same name... Does the DB have the name registered as a trademark? Do you really think that people will get confused and download a browser if they're clearly looking for a DB? Do you really think that people will think "shit! the DB has the same name as a browser, thus it must be crap!". I don't...
Actually I'd say that they have reason to be happy - think of the thousands of slashdoters who have now heard of your Firebird...