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Slashback: DRM, MPAA, ADSL
It's not evil, but just in case... gmr2048 writes "Sony seems to have heard the commotion. They have offered a "Service Pack" to uninstall the DRM Rootkit. From the announcement: 'This Service Pack removes the cloaking technology component that has been recently discussed in a number of articles published regarding the XCP Technology used on SONY BMG content protected CDs. This component is not malicious and does not compromise security. However to alleviate any concerns that users may have about the program posing potential security vulnerabilities, this update has been released to enable users to remove this component from their computers.'"
Obviously they have never heard the adage about deep pockets. Dieppe writes "The MPAA is at it again. This time they're suing a grandfather who didn't cave into the $4,000 blackmail offer for movie downloads his grandson downloaded from iMesh. Four movies in total, and they already owned 3 out of 4 with the grandson deleting them soon after download. This time the MPAA wants "as much as $600,000" in damages. The article also claims that "illegal downloading" costs the industry $5.4 billion per year. Not sure where the MPAA comes up with these figures."
Longer life and no charge time. It doesn't come easy writes "A press release from A123Systems announces another new lithium-ion battery technology that promises to deliver unprecedented performance (according to them). The technology is suppose to deliver 10 times the cycle life and 5 times the power over conventional lithium technology, and only require 5 minutes to recharge to 90% capacity. This is certainly not the first breakthrough for lithium based batteries that has been promised. I wonder if there is a patent lawsuit in the making?"
Fast net connection, but only if you live nearby. conJunk writes "The BBC is running an article about the ADSL2+ that touted a 24MB/s net connection. It seems that this number in fact only holds up if you live across the street from the service provider."
Always read the fine print. JeremyWall writes "The recent Netflix class action settlement has a catch. While it is nice that the average subscriber will be upgraded for one month for free, if you read the fine print in section 4.2 of the long form [PDF Warning] of the settlement you find that you will be automatically charged for the higher subscription going forward. If you don't opt back out when you get their email, you are gonna get charged from then on. If you opt in for the settlement - check your email box regularly!"
Know when to hold and know when to fold. psykocrime writes "According to a recent press release SGI stock has been delisted by the New York Stock Exchange, as a result of falling below the NYSE's minimum share price." SGI, the former darling of the high-tech world, has been in trouble for a while, perhaps this is really the end.
From their ass! They pulled it right out.
Leave it up to the MPAA to go after a grandfather. Where is the accountability for this group? Who do we direct our hatred at?
Let's give the fuckers a name, and a face. No more of this MPAA, let people know who is behind it, which artists are in cahoots with this. Then we'll see how much we can really cost the industry.
The real question about the Sony "service pack" is whether it removes the entire software program, leaves anything behind, or simply replaces the old rootkit with one that's harder to detect and remove.
So to uninstall this mess, they want me to go to a web site, hosted by the company who wrote the spyware/rootkit, and run an activeX control. Hahahahaha.
This is exactly the sort of thing that makes me channel Nancy Regan, and "Just Say NO!".
Only works in IE.
How about a full exchange of that CD for a new one without the DRM and the rootkit?
I hope someone sues them just to get such an exchange program going.
Say WHAT? ... I ... This.... WOW.
I cannot belive that they can say this. They released a rootkit, bloody damn general purpose rootkit, and it doesn't comprimise security? IT HIDES AN ENTIRE SUBSET OF FILE NAMES! With this rootkit installed, ANY file or folder starting with $sys$ is immmedately hidden from the Windows API. People are already using it to hide hacks for WoW. What happens if someone distributes a trojan, tells them to run Sony's rootkit to make sure they don't get caught by Warden, and the thing disappears and the user never knows the better.
Sony screwed up beyond reproach with this, and that comment just makes me scream.
Ohmigod, a grandfather? How dare they? Grandfathers should obviously be immune to all lawsuits. Grandfathers are always nice, and we all know that nobody should be able to sue nice people. I say Grandfathers should be allowed to download all the movies, music, and porn they can get their liver-spotted hands on.
Find free books.
The article gives a name. Ms. Kori Bernards, vice president of corporate communications for MPAA.
Let's take a time out for a brief lesson on how the world works. People have some money. People give a little of this money to lawyers. Lawyers give some of the money that they get to politicians. Politicians pass laws requiring you to give more of your money to the people who gave a little of their money to the lawyers. A positive feedback loop. It continues to grow until (1) people kill the politicians, or (2) people kill the lawyers. This is how the world works.
The MPAA (or any group with money to pay for politicians) will continue to extort your money from you until you either (1) kill the lawyers yourself, or (2) pay someone to do it for you.
When the entertainment lawyers collectively realize that they personally will suffer as a direct result of their applying their professional expertise to the topic of randomly selecting someone who watches a movie or listens to a music recording and demanding thousands of dollars, then this shit will stop. Until then, it will continue.
Be real, this is America in the 21st century. The corporations own the three branches of government, the military, the media, the police, and damn near everything else. NONE of these avenues is open any more for a systematic redress of grievances.
What else is left?
I can not and will not in good faith condone murder in either a public or private forum. What I can say is that, from a historical perspective, violence is the fastest, cheapest, and most effective way to either institute social change ( for better or worse ) or to seek redress from injustice.
There are alternatives to violence. Reread the works of Dr. Martin Luther King or Gandhi for powerful accounts of effective alternatives. Nonviolent tactics did work against far more dangerous and evil enemies than the entertainment industry. Perhaps the newer communications tools such as the web can be used to organize effective boycotts and other tools of social change.
Nevertheless, you asked for a name and you now have it.
I have a bunch of SGI machines that I use where I work:
2x 8 processor Onyx2s
1x 8 processor Origin 300
1x 8 processor Origin 2200
1x 32 processor Origin 350
1x 4 processor Prism
3x 1 processor Octane2s
and I hate them all with a passion. I've been fighting with software installation on the older Origin 2200 (8 400MHz processors, 6GB of RAM). SGI's crap compiler can't bootstrap gcc 4.0.2, their versions of common Unix tools like grep, etc., suck (forcing you to upgrade to the GNU versions, if their stupid compiler can build them), and IRIX has been at release 6.5 since 1998 or something. Sure, they want you to move to their new Linux-based Prism machines, and I've got one of those, too. Yippee, Itanics! What a super swell processor! I have an 8 processor Origin 300 where the total power consumption of all 8 processors is less than the consumption of 1 of the Itanics! See also, the poor code produced by gcc for this processor.
So, anyway. Upgrading SGIs sucks, their hardware is immensely fragile, its very persnickety about its environment (god forbid the temperature in the room not be in the 60s), licensing all their tools is hellish, their debugger is ancient and decrepit, my tech is a retard who tried to cable together the Origin 300 incorrectly and I had to fix it for him, and get this -- 8GB of RAM for an Origin 300 cost $25,000. That's right: $25k. You know what it is: it's PC3200 with some goddamn proprietary bullshit thrown in so you have to order your parts from SGI.
I'm glad you're dying. You've made every misstep possible: lets sell Windows NT machines! You sell Fuels in regular ATX cases with rockin' 800MHz processors that start at something like $10k. Your video offerings, once your strong suit, suck -- all you offer is older ATI cards in crap configurations -- $40k for two cards since I needed a new node (didn't buy it, duh).
The only reason to buy an SGI in the last five years or so is because of the good realtime performance of IRIX: I can sustain 16us interrupt times pretty much forever. But that's it. I'm not paying $130k for another slow-ass computer without even a damn video card for a console. And I don't need to: Ingo Molnar's realtime patches are coming along, and my quad Opteron box wipes the floor with the Origin and cost, oh yeah: $19,992 including shipping, and $7k of that is pimpin' SCSI disks.
Yay for your death! Ding dong, bitches.
I sure hope it is
Send Sony some feedback about their DRM software: http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/english/form11.html I sure did.
That's bull. You might be paid to represent a client, but its not like they're putting a gun to your head and forcing you to work for them. If lawyers are sick of the stupid lawsuits and laws that keep people down, then why do they keep working for these organizations?
You have other choices. You can quit. You can find a new firm to work for. You can start your own firm.
My Sysadmin Blog
" its not like they're putting a gun to your head and forcing you to work for them." Thank you! I can understand there are some cases where someone *has* to represent an individual (criminal cases, simple disputes, etc). But c'mon, if someome tells you they want to hire you for X/hr to utterly devastate someone and take all their savings, kids college funds, their house, etc, for as stupid of a reason as this, would the GP *have* to take the job? I'm sure as hell wouldn't. I think this is silly that folks dont' think that they should be held accountable for their employers/clients actions.
If you do it, regardless of wether you get paid or not to do it you are morally responsible. And I personally have quit jobs (twice) because I found my employer actions/buisness objectionable and or morally aprehensible. In both cases I ended up with a job that was lower paying but in the end more satisfying. I didn't have to go home knowing that I spent the whole day working for someone who lives to take complete advantage of their customers.
I think the best argument I've heard for employee accountability has to be from Clerks:
DANTE: My friend is trying to convince me that any contractors working on the uncompleted Death Star were innocent victims when the space station was destroyed by the rebels.
WORKER: Well, I'm a contractor myself. I'm a roofer... Dunn and Reddy Home Improvements. And speaking as a roofer, I can say that a roofer's personal politics come heavily into play when choosing jobs.
RANDAL: Like when?
WORKER: Three months ago I was offered a job up in the hills. A beautiful house with tons of property. It was a simple reshingling job, but I was told that if it was finished within a day, my price would be doubled. Then I realized whose house it was.
DANTE: Whose house was it?
WORKER: Dominick Bambino's.
RANDAL: "Babyface" Bambino? The gangster?
WORKER: The same. The money was right, but the risk was too big. I knew who he was, and based on that, I passed the job on to a friend of mine.
DANTE: Based on personal politics.
WORKER: Right. And that week, the Foresci family put a hit on Babyface's house. My friend was shot and killed. He wasn't even finished shingling.
RANDAL: No way!
WORKER: I'm alive because I knew there were risks involved taking on that particular client. My friend wasn't so lucky... You know, any contractor willing to work on that Death Star knew the risks. If they were killed, it was their own fault. A roofer listens to this...[taps his heart] not his wallet.
Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
I disagree that it would be unethical to refuse a case from the MPAA. We're not talking about defending a person accused of a gruesome murder who is most likely bound for death row. If lawyers refused a case like that, I could understand someone saying they are unethical.
/ bagaric_full.jsp/
But the cab rank rule doesn't apply in the United States.
In the United States and elsewhere, the general rule is that there is no duty for lawyers to accept work, except where the professional association or a court assigns them to the client. According to the International Code of Ethics of the International Bar Association, 'Lawyers shall at any time be free to refuse to handle a case, unless it is assigned by a competent body'.[62] While the cab rank rule does not apply in the United States, it has a strong foundation so far as barristers are concerned in England[63] and Australia.
http://www.law.qut.edu.au/about/ljj/editions/v3n2
We're talking about an organization made up of one of the richest industries in America suing its own customers for even more money. While I don't agree with the concept of people downloading full movies, you have to wonder if the lawyers who take these cases are thinking with wallets when their firm gets the call from the **AA.
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