Download AdAware and Spybot, hit it with a double whammy and it's amazing how much smoother older systems run.
You are not going to make your customers happy that way. Sooner or later you are going to come around to recomending dual boots or regular free software installs. Microsoft never was ready for the internet and they have let everyone down.
Yeah, they did the spybot thing where I worked too. It rarely worked. The exploits are not removed and the shit comes back doing further damage to an already hosed registry. Wipe and reload does a little better and may give the customer up to a year of running.
An M$ system that sees the internet will die, one that does not continues to work as well as it ever did. My 98 box is just fine, because it has no network drivers and I boot it to Debian for reasonable network services. Most customers won't go for that yet.
They will soon and that will be an even bigger money maker that will actually make the customer happy. Right now they think they would rather have the latest and greatest M$ crap. Sharper customers notice that the thing is loaded up with spyware right out of the box. All of them notice when the latest and greatest M$ junk gets just as beat up as the old stuff. All of them are away of free software but none of them has acutally used it. A little regular use is all it takes for the scales to fall of their eyes and they realize just how bad the Microsoft world was. They might want their safety blanket, but they won't go back.
Well, no matter, we wipe all the Dells we get in at my company (thank god for RIS).
Do you nuke windoze update? Media Player? Hit Box? These programs come with XP and they phone home with more info than you might expect or can even know. If you still run IE and Outlook, you will fight an intense and losing battle to keep garbage off your machines.
Given the nature of closed source, I don't recomend running spy removal software either. It never really works and it can't. Closed source simply sucks that way. If you hook it up to the internet, it's going to be broken soon.
What DO they recommend instead? Reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling to solve the spyware related problems?
If the spyware is on the computer when you buy it, the spyware is also on the "recovery" CD.
Dude, you're getting Debian, and you can try it out with Knoppix, is the only answer that won't cost you $150 and still come with spyware. That's right, XP home comes with spyware all on it's own. Tools such as spybot and addaware, as nice as they are, can't really solve the problem. Closed source sucks that way, and it's getting worse every year.
India offers a service of the same quality for a lower price... you must either lower your price or offer something better...
The people who hired Sapient were without a clue. Instead of consulting their own faculty or students, the idiots read a Gatner report and bought Microsoft snake oil. It was a typical big dog decision, breathtakingly ignorant and a hopless waste. The whole thing will have to be redone in two years when M$ decides to move the upgrade train along and another $2,000,000 will go to the big dogs while $10,000,000 is shoved into a company that will doll out a few hundred thousand bucks in India where slaves will bang out Microsoft shit. The platorm and contractor were chosen based on a single report that said this was the "easy" way to go. There was no real study, no real consideration of quality or cost.
Our unemployed friend and the people who made the $12,000,000 grant are right to expect more. The project is a great idea, it deserves to be implemented well.
I've become addicted to the amazing detail that is visible in large prints from these images!
....
Given that the resolving power of the human eye (under ideal conditions at the center of the retina) is about 1 arcminute (1/60th of one degree)... Assuming one pixel per arcminute, an image with dimensions of 3780 x 2485 would suffice to capture the amount of detail that the naked eye could resolve. This image has more than 100 times this detail. Looking at the full sized digital image, one is able to see things that might have been difficult or impossible to spot, even when using binoculars.
I know the feeling. I've rigged a 2.1 MPixel camera to both a 50 mm telescope, a few simple close up lenses and a microsoope. Some of the results are here. I know want that kind of vision enhancement everywhere.
Would you consider Linux insecure simply because I can get full read/write access with a boot floppy? If I have physical access to the box, it's owned.
Of course, and that's the point of a maintenance boot disk and the whole thread is a troll. A boot disk made so you can fix a system, regardless of the "permisions" on it. Having full read write access to NTFS makes that boot disk that much more useful because you can get at stupid XP boxes and write changes there. While this is usually futile, because of Microsoft's idiotic regisrty system, it's nice to have it. Implementing Microsoft's dumb permissions system would make repair impossible, because M$ forbids anyone but themselves from modifying and copying parts of their system.
>Email and internet born exploits will continue to provide interested third parties any information placed on Microsoft run computers.
The tricky part is the usual M$ interoperability problem, Microsoft will break it. As soon as you figure out how to use it, M$ can pull a "system update" that changes everything right under you. They can even make it so that you harm your system or destroy information if you try to use it. They have done this for other sytems as far back as DRDOS. It would not be hard for them to put in a flag that they know about, but you don't. It's Microsoft, they suck, use it at your own risk.
Ownership, permissions, sharing, all that stuff Microsoft boasts to have much better than Linux (better gradation of permissions in operations)
Such boasts are obviously proved empty by full read write access from a boot disk. If you want to perpetuate Microsoft's insecure, performance lame and unportable database tables of files and users for permisions, you will have to buy into Microsoft's Next Generation rootkit, aka Longhorn, with a cripled bios motherboard and explosives on the hard disk. If you think this will provide anything but an inconvenience to the user and administrators, you have no memory of Microsoft's previous promisses of the same or are insane. Email and internet born exploits will continue to provide interested third parties any information placed on Microsoft run computers. Untill locked out by bios, Knoppix will continue to give unfettered access to Microsoft and other systems for reasonable repair and back up of completely unreasonable junk that's incapable of the same.
National governments will simply step in and legislate profitability - even if they have to outlaw the new technology.
They will pervert the new technology but it won't really work. We already have the "broadcast flag" and DVDs that disable remote control access durring commericals. It does not take much imagination to see what comes next, a "no modification" flag. This will be much nicer solution than "no recording" So, national governemts will legislate profitability, but it will only work short term. Unless governemts can outlaw all free networks, new media will arise to take the place of the advert poluted ones.
I already don't watch TV and have curtailed my movie watching because of the high advert content. Half an hour of adverts to watch a two hour move is an unacceptable waste of my time in a theater. I don't listen much to radio either. I'm just another one of those "unreachable" people that the advertisers fuss about.
News flash to you silly advertisers, YOU MADE ME! Thanks for being so abusive. Where ever I go, I'm against you. I vote against billboards, spam and other things. Because you have driven me off the corporate controled networks, I hardly care about the bullshit they push as news anymore, so being unmolested is job #1 for me. New self organizing pull media makes you obsolete anyway. Try as you might, the market for lemons is evaporating, so your budgets will go to zero. Bye Bye!
That's true and that's why I don't pay for it anymore. I'm not going to pay $50/month to get techtv, the learning channel and discovery and then suffer through thier adverts. Did I start watching broadcast garbage again? No, it's gotten even worse than it was 15 years ago when I first got cable and I've got better things to do. The 25 minutes of adverts movie theaters inflict has even cut back on the number of movies I will go see. TV is hardly watchable as is, I hope the advert morons don't try to put even more adds on. Chances are, they will try to put some kind of "modify" flag that will turn off your abilty to skip comercials. Let them, it will only screw them.
we might feel liberated to use Microsoft products? It's like looking out into the ocean, seeing a swarm of sharks feeding in the surf, and then choosing to paddle out to ride the waves. It's an adrenaline rush.
It's more like a blue screen of death after innumerable pop-up anoyances. Oh, the thrill of crap that does not work. Wooot. If that turns you on, you must be on Bill Gate's payroll. I prefer to get things done.
No one is forced to use IE with very few exceptions:
Not true, Microsoft makes it very difficult to use anything but Microsoft junk. The first level of anoyance is a barage of scary warning messages about "signed code". Then there are constant anoyance messages which require confirmation and include the option you don't want. In time, you will push the wrong button. Finally, Microsoft breaks other programs on their platform. My little brother uses XP and keeps it "up to date" by accepting whatever M$ pushes at him. It broke Mozilla. I consider that a force.
The only way to avoid all of that harassment and the insecurity that it creates is to leave M$ completely. If you still think it takes a lot of effort, you need to play with Knoppix. The only trouble you might have is with winmodems and other nastier hardware which does not work well under windblows either. It's easier for indiviuals to install and way easy for technicians. It's good for individual users and far superior for business.
There's probably someone near you who will do an install for less than the Windblows install going rate. Just google your town name with "free software", Linux and other likely terms. Hungry geeks, such as myself, will happily come to your house for $40 and set you up. Businesses will pay by the hour but save hundreds per machine and employee every year.
All the FBI would have to do is find out whats on the PC, and contact these companies for that software's unique IDs.
Ah, the many faces of Big Brother's love. It's so reasuring that so many non free software companies keep such close tabs. It would be beneath Big Brother's and your ISP's dignity to identify hardware, like XP does. God only knows that an OS call is too trivial for Big Brother especially when he has so much help. We might also be sure that our own masters who provide our daily bread have their own unique tracking software. Wells Fargo double plus good company, bellyfeel Ingsoc. We must support our troops in Eurasia. All else thoughtcrime. Kill Goldstien! Kill! Kill!
what about me? I pay for web hosting, and I provide services to my wife.... I allow her access to email hosted on that server.
Yep, you are providing a service and there's not much difference between what you do and what any "normal" ISP does. Everyone has help, no one writes all of their software themselves and everyone purchases or leases someone else's equipment somewhere, only the scale changes.
Don't listen to people who would infring on your rights by pidgon hole you into a "consumer" with a machine that is not alowed to do what it can on an internet that was not designed to have master and slave machines. What they are telling you is stupid and outrageous.
The way I read it, this would cover a home page as well, as it offers customers (family) access to information (your pictures of the kids, blogs, whatever). Does this make sense to anyone else?
You run a "server". It provides service through the internet. You are an internet service provider. What is the difference between your computer and any of the boxes at Google? None. You should expect and demand all the rights and privleges that your "ISP" expects and demands.
The problem is that your don't have those rights. My ISP explcilty prohibits "servers" of any sort and then blocks ports inbound and outbound to enforce the difference. It's an abuse of a public network, built with monopoly protection (cable), and an outrage.
How are "consumers" defined? Members of the general public who pay money to receive these services? If it's something like that, then those of us who run mail (etc.) services only to non-consumers shouldn't be affected. Right?
Right, so AOL, M$N and all can spam you to oblivion and you can't do anything about it. Don't even think of mailing your AOL using mom, though. If you get through their "spammer" blacklists, you will be fined. Expect the disparity between the computer you run and the one that M$-McDonald-Acme-Soft to grow larger as more dumb laws are crammed through clueless legislatures preocupied with bigger issues, like becoming an Empire.
But come on now guys, these quotes are the same type of crap pulled to get these laws in place 'for the children.'... What is worse, is that we are now throwing grandmother's in the picture.... lets keep the standards high, and use solid arguments in place of trying to sling mud at the RIAA.
Having a memory does not constitute mud-slinging. The RIAA is the organization that has brought 12 and 15 year old girls into the picture by shaking them down for thousands of dollars. You might also rember that this is not the first time the RIAA has threatened children. Back in the 80s they sued the Girl Scouts of America for singing "America the Beautiful" around the capfire. That's low standards and there's nothing wrong with remembering what kind of an organization we are talking about while their whores are busy asking for privelges.
No one deserves that kind of privelege, least of all an organization that's best known for extortion.
I'd really love not having to think about how the RIAA threatens shoolgirls, but no good would come of it. The RIAA has acted badly and deserves the bad reputation they have.
Psiren claims I hope that I can get one, just so I can wind the poor confused bastards up.
Oh that's good! Go and get yourself a transdermal concentration camp tatoo, just to upset 0.01% of the population. Here are some other nasty things you can do to yourself that will offend others:
Make your own pornagraphic passion plays. Thorns, flails, genitals, you get the picture.
Find a partner to make and abort babies until you are sterile.
Practice odanistic mutilation in public until you are sterile.
Your ultimate statement could be mutilating yourself and a partner in the street to remove and mix your genitals in a vesel that you will then set on fire.
Whatever you do, keep doing it until you are sterile. Have a nice day.
IANAL, but it's my understanding that the Communications and Privacy acts make it illegal for telco's and ISP's to snoop on customer activity (wiretapping). As such, they are not responsible for what their users do. They are also not entitled to reveal the details of users who are up to illegal activity unless compelled to by a court or the police.
Frivolous lawsuits and inflamatory statements are just one way to manipulate public opinion. The paper does not care one way or another, so long as it does not step on their right to print inflamatory material. The RIs of the world know it and use this as one more means of spreading their extortionate message, "Someone needs to pay." When they have changed public opinion just enough, they can change the laws to their advantage. Once they have changed the laws, the government itself becomes their mouthpiece and they can concentrate on the next outrage.
The goal is Universal Censorship and control of electronic publishing. The powers that are have already made it difficult to run a website or any other "server" out of your house, now they are trying to remove the programs that have sprung up to replace normal information sharing. Free software is also target. Governments, old media press, traditional telco and many other intersts coincide with the recording industry's and they are winning on the owned wires.
A new class action suit has been filed against makers of computer printers for aiding and abetting frivolous lawsuits. Lexmark, HP, and others have been named along with several large paper mills.
"These bastards know that up to 20% of their proffits come from frivolous lawsuits, but they do nothing about it," said Brad Boiles who leads the team. "Printer makers must know that the discovery process, which is the most expensive part of judicial extortion, is their bread and butter. They are pirates by association with the likes of us, but only we should profit from this kind of thing."
Printer makers objected. "That's inflamatory, we've been working on DRM for years but have yet to perfect Universal Censorship Chips which can be used to prevent such harmful activity," said the chairman of the newly formed United Printing Ass. "We are worried that there is no technical solution and that a person will always be responsible for what they do with their printers."
Lumberjacks in Canada and the Southeastern United States were overjoyed. "Judicail extortion over judicial extortion? The mill's are going to be working overtime to keep up with this one. Add that to Christmas demands and we are looking at one great end of the year and a very happy 2004."
Well, actually, you can have the music on up to three computers and you can stream it to an unlimited number of computers on the same subnet. You can also put the music on an unlimited number of iPods.
That all sounds very reasonable, but what happens when the "master" computer dies? What do you do with music you purchase from other services? Will Sony's brand of DRM work with the Apple Software, even when it's the same song? Worse yet, what can you do if the music publisher decides to pull a MicroSoft/RIAA move and change formats to force you to purchase all your music again? The layers of complication and risk that DRM adds are going to hold digital music back while people will seek the path of least resistance.
I'm happy with my simple ogg files, all obtained legally, and I resent being treated like a criminal. The iPod is a beautiful device, but I will make do with the less expensive and free software solution of Open Zaurus and Vorbis Tools. That "I agree" button is really repulsive after a few years of using free software, so repulsive that things that come with it I throw away. Music companies that make it difficult or impossible for me to get their music into that form just won't get my business.
OK, let's say Itunes is the best DRM crippled format there is. Can it do what normal recorded music can? The objections raised in the article strike at real problems facing any DRM that make the whole concept look like a looser. The inability of more than one person to share music collections in more than one place at a time blows it for most people. Answer these questions about Apple's nice DRM that are typical family issues:
Can I have my music collection on more than one computer at a time?
Can I have my music collection on more than one ipod at a time?
What good is any music that I can't share with other members of my own family? If my wife can't listen to my music in her car, while I listen to our music at home or on my bike, the DRM sytem simply sucks. Sure, I can work around it with tapes and other stuff that will rocket me back to the 1980s. What good is that? I'm happier with my simple oggfiles that I can serve out as I please and put on as many computers as I want. When I bought the music, I had every intention of everyone in my house being able to enjoy it. Anything more complicated than that is simply not going to catch on.
You wish this good fortune on people right before Thanksgiving:
Hopefully those responsible have been sacked, and the new security llamas won't make the same mistakes.
The responsible party will not be fired, the poor dude who actually implemented the dumb decision will be. Chances are the person who implemented these new Windoze machines also complained that they would not be secure. "It was your job to tell me so!" they will tell the poor devil and that will be that. The dumb ass who decided to "standardize" his platform on M$ will continue to make bad decisions that drive the company into the ground. As soon as "something serious" is noticed, those parties responsible might have to answer. It must suck to work for a company dumb enough to trust money to the world's least secure OS.
The difference? Your place is built before a great depression, the Johnso wax building is built at the end of one. David Byrne says, "Watch me work. Ah, work, work." Now get back to it, slave. That or revolt to take your life back. Home is a place you take care of and take comfort from your spouce and children, not simply sleep and change clothes. Then as now, the non freeness of forgeiners leads to our own. Fight for your life and that of others.
Wouldn't a leak of Windows source be a great excuse for MS to sue everyone who codes, ala SCO?
The misserable failure of SCO will deter them from using this flimsy and stupid idea. It's already backfired in their face so bad that they might get some jail time out of it.
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You are not going to make your customers happy that way. Sooner or later you are going to come around to recomending dual boots or regular free software installs. Microsoft never was ready for the internet and they have let everyone down.
Yeah, they did the spybot thing where I worked too. It rarely worked. The exploits are not removed and the shit comes back doing further damage to an already hosed registry. Wipe and reload does a little better and may give the customer up to a year of running.
An M$ system that sees the internet will die, one that does not continues to work as well as it ever did. My 98 box is just fine, because it has no network drivers and I boot it to Debian for reasonable network services. Most customers won't go for that yet.
They will soon and that will be an even bigger money maker that will actually make the customer happy. Right now they think they would rather have the latest and greatest M$ crap. Sharper customers notice that the thing is loaded up with spyware right out of the box. All of them notice when the latest and greatest M$ junk gets just as beat up as the old stuff. All of them are away of free software but none of them has acutally used it. A little regular use is all it takes for the scales to fall of their eyes and they realize just how bad the Microsoft world was. They might want their safety blanket, but they won't go back.
Do you nuke windoze update? Media Player? Hit Box? These programs come with XP and they phone home with more info than you might expect or can even know. If you still run IE and Outlook, you will fight an intense and losing battle to keep garbage off your machines.
Given the nature of closed source, I don't recomend running spy removal software either. It never really works and it can't. Closed source simply sucks that way. If you hook it up to the internet, it's going to be broken soon.
If the spyware is on the computer when you buy it, the spyware is also on the "recovery" CD.
Dude, you're getting Debian, and you can try it out with Knoppix, is the only answer that won't cost you $150 and still come with spyware. That's right, XP home comes with spyware all on it's own. Tools such as spybot and addaware, as nice as they are, can't really solve the problem. Closed source sucks that way, and it's getting worse every year.
The people who hired Sapient were without a clue. Instead of consulting their own faculty or students, the idiots read a Gatner report and bought Microsoft snake oil. It was a typical big dog decision, breathtakingly ignorant and a hopless waste. The whole thing will have to be redone in two years when M$ decides to move the upgrade train along and another $2,000,000 will go to the big dogs while $10,000,000 is shoved into a company that will doll out a few hundred thousand bucks in India where slaves will bang out Microsoft shit. The platorm and contractor were chosen based on a single report that said this was the "easy" way to go. There was no real study, no real consideration of quality or cost.
Our unemployed friend and the people who made the $12,000,000 grant are right to expect more. The project is a great idea, it deserves to be implemented well.
I've become addicted to the amazing detail that is visible in large prints from these images!
....
Given that the resolving power of the human eye (under ideal conditions at the center of the retina) is about 1 arcminute (1/60th of one degree) ... Assuming one pixel per arcminute, an image with dimensions of 3780 x 2485 would suffice to capture the amount of detail that the naked eye could resolve. This image has more than 100 times this detail. Looking at the full sized digital image, one is able to see things that might have been difficult or impossible to spot, even when using binoculars.
I know the feeling. I've rigged a 2.1 MPixel camera to both a 50 mm telescope, a few simple close up lenses and a microsoope. Some of the results are here. I know want that kind of vision enhancement everywhere.
Of course, and that's the point of a maintenance boot disk and the whole thread is a troll. A boot disk made so you can fix a system, regardless of the "permisions" on it. Having full read write access to NTFS makes that boot disk that much more useful because you can get at stupid XP boxes and write changes there. While this is usually futile, because of Microsoft's idiotic regisrty system, it's nice to have it. Implementing Microsoft's dumb permissions system would make repair impossible, because M$ forbids anyone but themselves from modifying and copying parts of their system.
>Email and internet born exploits will continue to provide interested third parties any information placed on Microsoft run computers.
Yeah, those run by clueless idiots.
Like the people who make Windows?. It's crap, Jon.
Such boasts are obviously proved empty by full read write access from a boot disk. If you want to perpetuate Microsoft's insecure, performance lame and unportable database tables of files and users for permisions, you will have to buy into Microsoft's Next Generation rootkit, aka Longhorn, with a cripled bios motherboard and explosives on the hard disk. If you think this will provide anything but an inconvenience to the user and administrators, you have no memory of Microsoft's previous promisses of the same or are insane. Email and internet born exploits will continue to provide interested third parties any information placed on Microsoft run computers. Untill locked out by bios, Knoppix will continue to give unfettered access to Microsoft and other systems for reasonable repair and back up of completely unreasonable junk that's incapable of the same.
They will pervert the new technology but it won't really work. We already have the "broadcast flag" and DVDs that disable remote control access durring commericals. It does not take much imagination to see what comes next, a "no modification" flag. This will be much nicer solution than "no recording" So, national governemts will legislate profitability, but it will only work short term. Unless governemts can outlaw all free networks, new media will arise to take the place of the advert poluted ones.
I already don't watch TV and have curtailed my movie watching because of the high advert content. Half an hour of adverts to watch a two hour move is an unacceptable waste of my time in a theater. I don't listen much to radio either. I'm just another one of those "unreachable" people that the advertisers fuss about.
News flash to you silly advertisers, YOU MADE ME! Thanks for being so abusive. Where ever I go, I'm against you. I vote against billboards, spam and other things. Because you have driven me off the corporate controled networks, I hardly care about the bullshit they push as news anymore, so being unmolested is job #1 for me. New self organizing pull media makes you obsolete anyway. Try as you might, the market for lemons is evaporating, so your budgets will go to zero. Bye Bye!
That's true and that's why I don't pay for it anymore. I'm not going to pay $50/month to get techtv, the learning channel and discovery and then suffer through thier adverts. Did I start watching broadcast garbage again? No, it's gotten even worse than it was 15 years ago when I first got cable and I've got better things to do. The 25 minutes of adverts movie theaters inflict has even cut back on the number of movies I will go see. TV is hardly watchable as is, I hope the advert morons don't try to put even more adds on. Chances are, they will try to put some kind of "modify" flag that will turn off your abilty to skip comercials. Let them, it will only screw them.
It's more like a blue screen of death after innumerable pop-up anoyances. Oh, the thrill of crap that does not work. Wooot. If that turns you on, you must be on Bill Gate's payroll. I prefer to get things done.
Not true, Microsoft makes it very difficult to use anything but Microsoft junk. The first level of anoyance is a barage of scary warning messages about "signed code". Then there are constant anoyance messages which require confirmation and include the option you don't want. In time, you will push the wrong button. Finally, Microsoft breaks other programs on their platform. My little brother uses XP and keeps it "up to date" by accepting whatever M$ pushes at him. It broke Mozilla. I consider that a force.
The only way to avoid all of that harassment and the insecurity that it creates is to leave M$ completely. If you still think it takes a lot of effort, you need to play with Knoppix. The only trouble you might have is with winmodems and other nastier hardware which does not work well under windblows either. It's easier for indiviuals to install and way easy for technicians. It's good for individual users and far superior for business.
There's probably someone near you who will do an install for less than the Windblows install going rate. Just google your town name with "free software", Linux and other likely terms. Hungry geeks, such as myself, will happily come to your house for $40 and set you up. Businesses will pay by the hour but save hundreds per machine and employee every year.
Ah, the many faces of Big Brother's love. It's so reasuring that so many non free software companies keep such close tabs. It would be beneath Big Brother's and your ISP's dignity to identify hardware, like XP does. God only knows that an OS call is too trivial for Big Brother especially when he has so much help. We might also be sure that our own masters who provide our daily bread have their own unique tracking software. Wells Fargo double plus good company, bellyfeel Ingsoc. We must support our troops in Eurasia. All else thoughtcrime. Kill Goldstien! Kill! Kill!
Yep, you are providing a service and there's not much difference between what you do and what any "normal" ISP does. Everyone has help, no one writes all of their software themselves and everyone purchases or leases someone else's equipment somewhere, only the scale changes.
Don't listen to people who would infring on your rights by pidgon hole you into a "consumer" with a machine that is not alowed to do what it can on an internet that was not designed to have master and slave machines. What they are telling you is stupid and outrageous.
You run a "server". It provides service through the internet. You are an internet service provider. What is the difference between your computer and any of the boxes at Google? None. You should expect and demand all the rights and privleges that your "ISP" expects and demands.
The problem is that your don't have those rights. My ISP explcilty prohibits "servers" of any sort and then blocks ports inbound and outbound to enforce the difference. It's an abuse of a public network, built with monopoly protection (cable), and an outrage.
Right, so AOL, M$N and all can spam you to oblivion and you can't do anything about it. Don't even think of mailing your AOL using mom, though. If you get through their "spammer" blacklists, you will be fined. Expect the disparity between the computer you run and the one that M$-McDonald-Acme-Soft to grow larger as more dumb laws are crammed through clueless legislatures preocupied with bigger issues, like becoming an Empire.
Having a memory does not constitute mud-slinging. The RIAA is the organization that has brought 12 and 15 year old girls into the picture by shaking them down for thousands of dollars. You might also rember that this is not the first time the RIAA has threatened children. Back in the 80s they sued the Girl Scouts of America for singing "America the Beautiful" around the capfire. That's low standards and there's nothing wrong with remembering what kind of an organization we are talking about while their whores are busy asking for privelges.
No one deserves that kind of privelege, least of all an organization that's best known for extortion.
I'd really love not having to think about how the RIAA threatens shoolgirls, but no good would come of it. The RIAA has acted badly and deserves the bad reputation they have.
Oh that's good! Go and get yourself a transdermal concentration camp tatoo, just to upset 0.01% of the population. Here are some other nasty things you can do to yourself that will offend others:
Whatever you do, keep doing it until you are sterile. Have a nice day.
Frivolous lawsuits and inflamatory statements are just one way to manipulate public opinion. The paper does not care one way or another, so long as it does not step on their right to print inflamatory material. The RIs of the world know it and use this as one more means of spreading their extortionate message, "Someone needs to pay." When they have changed public opinion just enough, they can change the laws to their advantage. Once they have changed the laws, the government itself becomes their mouthpiece and they can concentrate on the next outrage.
The goal is Universal Censorship and control of electronic publishing. The powers that are have already made it difficult to run a website or any other "server" out of your house, now they are trying to remove the programs that have sprung up to replace normal information sharing. Free software is also target. Governments, old media press, traditional telco and many other intersts coincide with the recording industry's and they are winning on the owned wires.
"These bastards know that up to 20% of their proffits come from frivolous lawsuits, but they do nothing about it," said Brad Boiles who leads the team. "Printer makers must know that the discovery process, which is the most expensive part of judicial extortion, is their bread and butter. They are pirates by association with the likes of us, but only we should profit from this kind of thing."
Printer makers objected. "That's inflamatory, we've been working on DRM for years but have yet to perfect Universal Censorship Chips which can be used to prevent such harmful activity," said the chairman of the newly formed United Printing Ass. "We are worried that there is no technical solution and that a person will always be responsible for what they do with their printers."
Lumberjacks in Canada and the Southeastern United States were overjoyed. "Judicail extortion over judicial extortion? The mill's are going to be working overtime to keep up with this one. Add that to Christmas demands and we are looking at one great end of the year and a very happy 2004."
Well, actually, you can have the music on up to three computers and you can stream it to an unlimited number of computers on the same subnet. You can also put the music on an unlimited number of iPods.
That all sounds very reasonable, but what happens when the "master" computer dies? What do you do with music you purchase from other services? Will Sony's brand of DRM work with the Apple Software, even when it's the same song? Worse yet, what can you do if the music publisher decides to pull a MicroSoft/RIAA move and change formats to force you to purchase all your music again? The layers of complication and risk that DRM adds are going to hold digital music back while people will seek the path of least resistance.
I'm happy with my simple ogg files, all obtained legally, and I resent being treated like a criminal. The iPod is a beautiful device, but I will make do with the less expensive and free software solution of Open Zaurus and Vorbis Tools. That "I agree" button is really repulsive after a few years of using free software, so repulsive that things that come with it I throw away. Music companies that make it difficult or impossible for me to get their music into that form just won't get my business.
OK, let's say Itunes is the best DRM crippled format there is. Can it do what normal recorded music can? The objections raised in the article strike at real problems facing any DRM that make the whole concept look like a looser. The inability of more than one person to share music collections in more than one place at a time blows it for most people. Answer these questions about Apple's nice DRM that are typical family issues:
What good is any music that I can't share with other members of my own family? If my wife can't listen to my music in her car, while I listen to our music at home or on my bike, the DRM sytem simply sucks. Sure, I can work around it with tapes and other stuff that will rocket me back to the 1980s. What good is that? I'm happier with my simple oggfiles that I can serve out as I please and put on as many computers as I want. When I bought the music, I had every intention of everyone in my house being able to enjoy it. Anything more complicated than that is simply not going to catch on.
Hopefully those responsible have been sacked, and the new security llamas won't make the same mistakes.
The responsible party will not be fired, the poor dude who actually implemented the dumb decision will be. Chances are the person who implemented these new Windoze machines also complained that they would not be secure. "It was your job to tell me so!" they will tell the poor devil and that will be that. The dumb ass who decided to "standardize" his platform on M$ will continue to make bad decisions that drive the company into the ground. As soon as "something serious" is noticed, those parties responsible might have to answer. It must suck to work for a company dumb enough to trust money to the world's least secure OS.
Johnson Wax, 1936
The difference? Your place is built before a great depression, the Johnso wax building is built at the end of one. David Byrne says, "Watch me work. Ah, work, work." Now get back to it, slave. That or revolt to take your life back. Home is a place you take care of and take comfort from your spouce and children, not simply sleep and change clothes. Then as now, the non freeness of forgeiners leads to our own. Fight for your life and that of others.
The misserable failure of SCO will deter them from using this flimsy and stupid idea. It's already backfired in their face so bad that they might get some jail time out of it.