Well of course people buy pirated software. It is nearly impossible/never happens that MS will come to your door for buying a pirated copy of Windows XP (so long as the pirates were smart enough to disable WGA....) however, if I torrent XP there is a higher risk for MS to track my IP address and alert my ISP that I have been downloading files of questionable legality. Add that in with some people not knowing much about computers and seeing the stories about the *AA suing filesharers and they might think that everything they do is being watched carefully. Buying pirated things usually runs you at less of a risk then pirating them yourself, if all else fails, plead ignorance.
Oh yes, because making people pay $100 for an inferior operating system rather then just getting a free one (Linux/BSD/etc.) is really going to tighten up the monopoly they have! The only way MS can really compete with Linux in a free(ish) market is by lowing the price down to Linux's, free. Piracy is the only avenue that MS can hope to continue any dominance. I wouldn't call this in MS's best interest, being free (as in beer) is the only way they can compete, take that away and no more MS.
So are you the copyright police? Honestly if I am on tech support and I see someone's computer with P2P software and other Warez I'm not going to tell them "this is bad, morally wrong" or any of that type of crap. I would have just told them how to use a new computer. And honestly, I have never come across people with Windows that wasn't either OEM or bought. So, even though the elderly couple didn't know how to use Windows they somehow manage to download a Windows ISO and a cracked Office copy?!?! Those are some tech-savvy elders....
Ok, honestly, it is sorta hard to justify pirating a program and then selling it. Because unlike downloads for free (like as in the pirate bay) this form of copyright infringement is not a victimless crime as MS could have gotten money for it that the people were willing to pay the pirates. Now if this was an attack on home downloaders it would be wrong, but I see little reason to say what the pirates were doing was just.
Actually, with Windows there is no real reason to pirate. With a Mac there are tons of reasons. Number 1 you can install OS X on a lot of hackintoshes via patches (and you can even install OS X on an EEE PC!) Number 2 it gives you wider customization on a hackintosh and Number 3, you get it for free. For Windows only Number 3 applies, about the only other thing is you can remove WGA but other then getting a free OS there are no major reasons to pirate MS software, unlike OS X.
So after high prices, airlines dropping bankrupt, concerns about safety, and various maintenance problems, what we really need for aircraft is a way to make them A) more expensive B) more complex C) require more government restrictions and D) add a way that anyone can disable a plane. That is really going to help America! What I think is funny is how 1 terrorist attack used planes and that is all we are concerned about lately, even though we look to every country but America and see how the terrorists use other means of transportations (trains, buses, cars, etc.) to carry out terrorist activities but what we really need to do is stop any way for various American airlines to make a profit and that is what is really going to make us secure! Boy, I think that this is a great idea to make the US to be the most prosperous country in the world!
The CIA wants you to believe that wiki is safe and secure. Sure it is. The CIA does "wiki", so it must be secure. Other organizations -- FSB, PLA,
DGSE, Mossad, and the entire Fortune 500 -- should all adopt wikis. It'll be great. Everyone will be really productive and secure.
But what if wiki isn't secure? What if MediaWiki has security holes? What if wikis make it is easier to spy? What if the CIA wants a backdoor into FSB, PLA, DGSE, Mossad, and the entire Fortune 500? Then what? HUH?!
Chill. First off MediaWiki is open-source so if you are so paranoid just look up the source code. If we are on the topic of security whats to say that the CIA hasn't already broken many encryption schemes used today? It is a lot more probable that the CIA has busted encryption algorithms then it is that they are injecting backdoors to open-source projects.
And the same things have been said about unpatched Windows without an anti-virus. About how easy it is for spyware and keyloggers to help steal your identity, about how they will ruin your OS install, about how they contribute to spam, slow down your computer, etc. Still, I run into unpatched Windows installs with no anti-virus will probably hundreds of types of malware on the machine. These people probably see their machine as insignificant, and think that the laptop they have will never get a virus, will never get stolen, will never have a security breach ever in it's lifetime because they are the *insert high ranking official here* or think that because they don't go to *insert website here* or use *insert anti-virus here* or even have *insert names of tech-support people and sysadmins* working for me nothing can go bad! Basically, it is the "it won't happen to me" syndrome.
The government has more secure systems for people's laptops, like Bastile Linux, and should be using them instead of a consumer grade OS that was never intended to store anything more important than Solitair. When insecure systems are used to access secure systems, security falls to the level of the weak system.
But as we see in the business world, even though there are technologies that are 10000X superior to what you are currently using and may even cost less, those in upper management will complain that it isn't familiar and they might have to learn something new. I wouldn't see anything different in this case.
Having not read TFA but read the summary, it only says that they were working out of China. That could mean that any person in China with access to a computer and *possibly* access beyond the great firewall of China could have done it. The summary sounds like if a US hacker hacked the Chinese government it would have to be the US government and not some ordinary hacker.
Somehow I think that FFXIII will be PS3 only.... Then a FFXIII: Wii Edition will be released on the Wii, and lastly a FFXIII DX version will be released on the 360. Its only a matter of time, though I think a port to the Wii would be more likely then the 360 (with SE seeing FFCC:MLaaK a $15 downloadable game is selling extremely fast...)
Well, they can always plead that they didn't know that it was an RIAA song which would be really great for the rest of us because if the judge lets them it creates precedent that lets us use the same defense. If they share someone else's song... Most wouldn't care. Sure if they got caught they would sue them but really it is only the *AA that tries to keep a dictator-like hold on the songs they license.
Not really, the RIAA wants to set legal precedent, if they do set precedent in their favor then the "making available" theory will be accepted. If they lose enough cases on the "making available" theory then it will be thrown out by precedent.
But if MediaSentry is the RIAA or has been authorized wouldn't that make them have the rights to the copyrighted material? Its the same idea on how you can pay $.99 and get the rights to download a song off the web. If the RIAA says "you can download any RIAA song" then no, it wouldn't be a violation of copyright because they have a license given by the RIAA that lets them do that.
But you *need* IE for the attack to be successful, its as much if not more of a MS/IE problem then an Apple/Safari problem. Granted, Safari is needed for the attack, but it is IE that executes the attack much as if downloading something in Firefox and then having another program execute it, Firefox is needed but it isn't as much of Firefox's problem then the other software.
Although it is "stuff", I guess. Apple has ALWAYS been about the software - there has only been one point at which buying their hardware was advisable on any level, in the age of the G4. The PC quickly whipped their ass and the Mac became a PC (in the x86 sense.) Irony.
Actually, I don't think it has ever really been about the software. The powerPC architecture is/was more efficient then X86 so you didn't need CPUs in the 3 GHZ range. However when people saw an 800 MHZ CPU in a Mac and a 1.3 GHZ low-end Pentium 4, most people would buy the PC (when with a PC you can get the hardware for cheap compared to a Mac). When it became clear that OSX could be easily transitioned into the X86 architecture Apple did.
Apple has ALSO always tried to make you do things their way, and if you don't like it, you can fuck off. These days you can see that in the form of their latest bid to prevent people buying iPhones without a contract. You could also see it in the iPhone with the fact that originally there was to be NO user-developed software beyond webapps, and even today you have to run a special OS release that Apple can (and HAS) terminate at will, or accidentally.
Apple follows Steve, half the time he comes up with something great, the other half Apple is almost bankrupt by the time he comes up with another better idea. Just think the Apple ][ was great, the Apple III a disaster, the Lisa a commercial failure while the Mac was a best-seller.
AT&T pay Apple money to have the "must have phone". Apple gets the money and becomes richer. Apple uses that money to clean up more Open Source projects.
Strict gun-control, stupid "hate speech" laws, raiding an entire ISP to find TPB and shutting all of the sites down, and censorship just to name a few.
Hmmm... Lets see.... If you were an A) Amiga person B) BeOS person or any other type of OS that wasn't MS, Apple or UNIX, your years of training suddenly were worthless. Now, you could probably still find employment but all of the training you got became worthless due to MS's monopoly, not because the software was bad but because of a monopoly.
Hmmmm? But from what I hear from various forums that are European based, there are Wii consoles to be found in Europe. In the USA other then the Wii I bought in January of last year, I have only seen one other store have a new Wii in it. And this is ever since the console launched.
Eh, well I haven't ever opened up a Word document in notepad but I remember reading some PC repair thing and it said to open up corrupted documents in a text editor to salvage content. And yes opening them up in OOo would be good, but my point was using a 100% proprietary way you couldn't have your documents and as we all know OOo is free and open source.
With free software though, I can almost always manage to download an older version of the program to open it 100% legally, or if for some reason the site is down/dead I can get a copy from many other sites again, 100% legally. If I want to open a document created in Office '97 and for some reason MS doesn't let you open Office '97 documents in Office 2010, the only way to legally get it is by buying a (presumably) used copy off of E-Bay of Word 2007. And if optical media degrades to unreadable in say 20 years, by 2030 you won't be able to access your documents legally. Ever (now granted Office '97 documents are openable in a text editor to salvage at least some of the info...)
But who even looks at the title bars anymore.... I can install Firefox on someone's computer, import all the IE settings, add an IE theme, delete all IE links, and replace the Firefox logo with a blue E and they don't notice the difference. Well sometimes they wonder why they don't have the toolbars of spyware and adware (But I really DO want to Tazer the gnome!!!!).
And it isn't? Granted some of the features aren't there but if I remember correctly an old Mac could start up in ~30 seconds on an 8 MHZ CPU and 1 MB of RAM, while even my Linux distro takes about a minute on my low-end computer from 2002 with 512 MB of RAM, a 1.8 GHZ Celeron and loading the OS from a hard drive. Most '80s software was limited yes, but has better quality code and could run faster then modern programs because you couldn't say that in a year there will be a CPU to run it fast enough and that RAM is becoming cheaper. You only need to look at Vista compared to the old Macs to see how bloated todays programs are (and if you want to compare things feature-wise just compare a Ubuntu 8.04 disc to Vista SP1 or XP SP 3 and see that even that with more 3-D effects runs faster on older hardware).
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Well of course people buy pirated software. It is nearly impossible/never happens that MS will come to your door for buying a pirated copy of Windows XP (so long as the pirates were smart enough to disable WGA....) however, if I torrent XP there is a higher risk for MS to track my IP address and alert my ISP that I have been downloading files of questionable legality. Add that in with some people not knowing much about computers and seeing the stories about the *AA suing filesharers and they might think that everything they do is being watched carefully. Buying pirated things usually runs you at less of a risk then pirating them yourself, if all else fails, plead ignorance.
Oh yes, because making people pay $100 for an inferior operating system rather then just getting a free one (Linux/BSD/etc.) is really going to tighten up the monopoly they have! The only way MS can really compete with Linux in a free(ish) market is by lowing the price down to Linux's, free. Piracy is the only avenue that MS can hope to continue any dominance. I wouldn't call this in MS's best interest, being free (as in beer) is the only way they can compete, take that away and no more MS.
So are you the copyright police? Honestly if I am on tech support and I see someone's computer with P2P software and other Warez I'm not going to tell them "this is bad, morally wrong" or any of that type of crap. I would have just told them how to use a new computer. And honestly, I have never come across people with Windows that wasn't either OEM or bought. So, even though the elderly couple didn't know how to use Windows they somehow manage to download a Windows ISO and a cracked Office copy?!?! Those are some tech-savvy elders....
Ok, honestly, it is sorta hard to justify pirating a program and then selling it. Because unlike downloads for free (like as in the pirate bay) this form of copyright infringement is not a victimless crime as MS could have gotten money for it that the people were willing to pay the pirates. Now if this was an attack on home downloaders it would be wrong, but I see little reason to say what the pirates were doing was just.
Actually, with Windows there is no real reason to pirate. With a Mac there are tons of reasons. Number 1 you can install OS X on a lot of hackintoshes via patches (and you can even install OS X on an EEE PC!) Number 2 it gives you wider customization on a hackintosh and Number 3, you get it for free. For Windows only Number 3 applies, about the only other thing is you can remove WGA but other then getting a free OS there are no major reasons to pirate MS software, unlike OS X.
So after high prices, airlines dropping bankrupt, concerns about safety, and various maintenance problems, what we really need for aircraft is a way to make them A) more expensive B) more complex C) require more government restrictions and D) add a way that anyone can disable a plane. That is really going to help America! What I think is funny is how 1 terrorist attack used planes and that is all we are concerned about lately, even though we look to every country but America and see how the terrorists use other means of transportations (trains, buses, cars, etc.) to carry out terrorist activities but what we really need to do is stop any way for various American airlines to make a profit and that is what is really going to make us secure! Boy, I think that this is a great idea to make the US to be the most prosperous country in the world!
Chill. First off MediaWiki is open-source so if you are so paranoid just look up the source code. If we are on the topic of security whats to say that the CIA hasn't already broken many encryption schemes used today? It is a lot more probable that the CIA has busted encryption algorithms then it is that they are injecting backdoors to open-source projects.
And the same things have been said about unpatched Windows without an anti-virus. About how easy it is for spyware and keyloggers to help steal your identity, about how they will ruin your OS install, about how they contribute to spam, slow down your computer, etc. Still, I run into unpatched Windows installs with no anti-virus will probably hundreds of types of malware on the machine. These people probably see their machine as insignificant, and think that the laptop they have will never get a virus, will never get stolen, will never have a security breach ever in it's lifetime because they are the *insert high ranking official here* or think that because they don't go to *insert website here* or use *insert anti-virus here* or even have *insert names of tech-support people and sysadmins* working for me nothing can go bad! Basically, it is the "it won't happen to me" syndrome.
But as we see in the business world, even though there are technologies that are 10000X superior to what you are currently using and may even cost less, those in upper management will complain that it isn't familiar and they might have to learn something new. I wouldn't see anything different in this case.
Having not read TFA but read the summary, it only says that they were working out of China. That could mean that any person in China with access to a computer and *possibly* access beyond the great firewall of China could have done it. The summary sounds like if a US hacker hacked the Chinese government it would have to be the US government and not some ordinary hacker.
Somehow I think that FFXIII will be PS3 only.... Then a FFXIII: Wii Edition will be released on the Wii, and lastly a FFXIII DX version will be released on the 360. Its only a matter of time, though I think a port to the Wii would be more likely then the 360 (with SE seeing FFCC:MLaaK a $15 downloadable game is selling extremely fast...)
Well, they can always plead that they didn't know that it was an RIAA song which would be really great for the rest of us because if the judge lets them it creates precedent that lets us use the same defense. If they share someone else's song... Most wouldn't care. Sure if they got caught they would sue them but really it is only the *AA that tries to keep a dictator-like hold on the songs they license.
Not really, the RIAA wants to set legal precedent, if they do set precedent in their favor then the "making available" theory will be accepted. If they lose enough cases on the "making available" theory then it will be thrown out by precedent.
But if MediaSentry is the RIAA or has been authorized wouldn't that make them have the rights to the copyrighted material? Its the same idea on how you can pay $.99 and get the rights to download a song off the web. If the RIAA says "you can download any RIAA song" then no, it wouldn't be a violation of copyright because they have a license given by the RIAA that lets them do that.
But you *need* IE for the attack to be successful, its as much if not more of a MS/IE problem then an Apple/Safari problem. Granted, Safari is needed for the attack, but it is IE that executes the attack much as if downloading something in Firefox and then having another program execute it, Firefox is needed but it isn't as much of Firefox's problem then the other software.
Actually, I don't think it has ever really been about the software. The powerPC architecture is/was more efficient then X86 so you didn't need CPUs in the 3 GHZ range. However when people saw an 800 MHZ CPU in a Mac and a 1.3 GHZ low-end Pentium 4, most people would buy the PC (when with a PC you can get the hardware for cheap compared to a Mac). When it became clear that OSX could be easily transitioned into the X86 architecture Apple did.
Apple has ALSO always tried to make you do things their way, and if you don't like it, you can fuck off. These days you can see that in the form of their latest bid to prevent people buying iPhones without a contract. You could also see it in the iPhone with the fact that originally there was to be NO user-developed software beyond webapps, and even today you have to run a special OS release that Apple can (and HAS) terminate at will, or accidentally.
Apple follows Steve, half the time he comes up with something great, the other half Apple is almost bankrupt by the time he comes up with another better idea. Just think the Apple ][ was great, the Apple III a disaster, the Lisa a commercial failure while the Mac was a best-seller.
AT&T pay Apple money to have the "must have phone". Apple gets the money and becomes richer. Apple uses that money to clean up more Open Source projects.
Strict gun-control, stupid "hate speech" laws, raiding an entire ISP to find TPB and shutting all of the sites down, and censorship just to name a few.
Hmmm... Lets see.... If you were an A) Amiga person B) BeOS person or any other type of OS that wasn't MS, Apple or UNIX, your years of training suddenly were worthless. Now, you could probably still find employment but all of the training you got became worthless due to MS's monopoly, not because the software was bad but because of a monopoly.
Hmmmm? But from what I hear from various forums that are European based, there are Wii consoles to be found in Europe. In the USA other then the Wii I bought in January of last year, I have only seen one other store have a new Wii in it. And this is ever since the console launched.
Eh, well I haven't ever opened up a Word document in notepad but I remember reading some PC repair thing and it said to open up corrupted documents in a text editor to salvage content. And yes opening them up in OOo would be good, but my point was using a 100% proprietary way you couldn't have your documents and as we all know OOo is free and open source.
You can probably get a USB floppy drive that can read all the floppies...
With free software though, I can almost always manage to download an older version of the program to open it 100% legally, or if for some reason the site is down/dead I can get a copy from many other sites again, 100% legally. If I want to open a document created in Office '97 and for some reason MS doesn't let you open Office '97 documents in Office 2010, the only way to legally get it is by buying a (presumably) used copy off of E-Bay of Word 2007. And if optical media degrades to unreadable in say 20 years, by 2030 you won't be able to access your documents legally. Ever (now granted Office '97 documents are openable in a text editor to salvage at least some of the info...)
But who even looks at the title bars anymore.... I can install Firefox on someone's computer, import all the IE settings, add an IE theme, delete all IE links, and replace the Firefox logo with a blue E and they don't notice the difference. Well sometimes they wonder why they don't have the toolbars of spyware and adware (But I really DO want to Tazer the gnome!!!!).
And it isn't? Granted some of the features aren't there but if I remember correctly an old Mac could start up in ~30 seconds on an 8 MHZ CPU and 1 MB of RAM, while even my Linux distro takes about a minute on my low-end computer from 2002 with 512 MB of RAM, a 1.8 GHZ Celeron and loading the OS from a hard drive. Most '80s software was limited yes, but has better quality code and could run faster then modern programs because you couldn't say that in a year there will be a CPU to run it fast enough and that RAM is becoming cheaper. You only need to look at Vista compared to the old Macs to see how bloated todays programs are (and if you want to compare things feature-wise just compare a Ubuntu 8.04 disc to Vista SP1 or XP SP 3 and see that even that with more 3-D effects runs faster on older hardware).