Kilo does not mean 1024. Ever. If you say it does, you are wrong. Linux and OSx stopped the abuse long ago.it is time for windows to catch up.
Linux uses 2^10 when dealing with memory, and I'm pretty sure OSx also does.
That's the whole point...memory will always be sold/installed in powers of 2, and thus needs to be reported in powers of two. Disk space originally was sold in powers of 2, and it wasn't until disk manufacturers started fudging to make their disks look larger that it started being sold/advertised in powers of 10.
If you report the two differently, you end up with some issues, like why the "suspend" file for a machine with 4GB of RAM is 4.29GB on disk.
This is an article appropriate for The Today Show or something where you are informing the illiterate masses, not something worthy of posting on Slashdot.
The reason this is appropriate is that Microsoft Surface is being beaten up in reviews, and one reason is the difference between the 2^10 and 10^3.
No other tablet OS takes up so much space that the difference is significant, so a 32GB Android tablet that has 28GB free doesn't really shock people. It doesn't matter that Android doesn't take up "4GB", and that the difference in numbers is mostly because of the 2^10/10^3 difference. With Surface, though, the extra 7% lost due to marketing makes things even worse for MS.
Besides fellow geeks let us not forget this horseshit was started by marketing specifically the hard drive manufacturers during the race to 1GB. I remember before it became a "race" that it was listed in base 2 but once the HDD companies realized they could charge a premium if they got past certain metrics then anything they could do to make those metrics happen were just fine.
It actually started with floppy disks, as the 3-1/2" high-density "1.44MB" clearly shows.
These disks had 1,474,560 bytes (512 bytes per sector X 18 sectors per track X 80 tracks per side X 2 sides). Using the SI terms, these would be 1.47MB disks. Again, using SI terms, these would be 1.41MiB. So, how were they marketed as"1.44MB"...by being 1440 KiB.
Yes, that's right, the fudging started there, and it was caused by using a mix of 2^10 and 10^3 terms. Now we have pure 10^3 terms for hard drives, which inflate gigabytes by 7% and terabytes by 10%.
But you only make hundreds of millions if you get your home run to syndication - and for all the Alcatraz pop-ups, he keeps hitting a fair amount of Person of Interest home runs.
Person of Interest is not a J.J. Abrams product. Yes, he's "executive producer", but he has had no real creative input (writing or directing credits). Jonathan Nolan is the force behind PoI, and the actual show-runner.
Compare this to the things he has actual creative credit on, where there was obviously no thought as to where things were going (Fringe creator/writer/show-runner, Lost creator/writer/show-runner, Alias creator/show-runner) or that just generally suck (Armageddon writer, Gone Fishin' writer, Mission: Impossible III writer/director, Super 8 writer/director, Cloverfield producer).
Physical Media (Books, DVDs, CDs) account for slightly less then 1/3 of their sales. (31%)
That sounds about right, with books being the lowest dollar total by quite a bit. It's pretty easy to spend $100 on one DVD or CD "item" (box sets), but the books they sell the most of are basically all under $30.
Basically, if some other store (online or brick and mortar) came up with a way to take away all book sales from Amazon, it would hurt them, but they'd still survive quite nicely. Since that would never happen, even a huge resurgence by Barnes & Noble wouldn't be a blip on Amazon's radar.
If their prices were this low, nobody would complain, as that would be $50/1TB.
The problem is that the ISPs without caps look like their prices are that low because of the speeds they advertise, but then you rarely get the advertised speed 24/7. As for caps, $50/250GB isn't at all unusual on a wired ISP. That's $0.20/GB, way more than 20x the cost to the ISP.
Seriously other than B+N are there any "large" booksellers left?
Although I agree that Amazon isn't anywhere near a problem, I suspect that at this point, books are less than 10% of their sales (in terms of dollars).
I can drink a red bull, a monster, a coke, tea, or anything but coffee and easily take a long nap afterwards. Something about the caffeine I get through coffee is different.
Depending on how it is prepared, coffee can have more caffeine than Red Bull, and definitely has more than Coca-Cola and the vast majority of teas. See this table for details.
You can also do some searching and see that the "caffeine" in various substances isn't always the real thing, but instead is closely related compounds.
when people dodge that debate by claiming that those differences simply don't exist and that the gun just looks different.
The looks difference argument plays in when the gun grabbers are arguing we should ban cosmetic features like barrel shrouds (which is really just a cosmetically different fore-end or pistol grips. or Flash suppressors or Bayonet lugs.
This is one of the many reasons why I found the "assault weapons" ban ludicrous.
I think we can safely say that the number of non-wartime incidents where people were killed who would otherwise be alive today if the rifle did not have a bayonet attached is less than a dozen in the history of the US, and the number killed by the bayonet lugs themselves is zero.
If you engage someone out in the open, in movement, at about 100 feet range, the guy with the AR-15 is going to own your ass, unless you get the kill with the first shot. Which is hard, very hard. So advantage AR-15.
If we assume both shooters are moderately trained, it's pretty much even when shooting against unarmed civilians, which is the whole point of this debate.
Same thing for pump-action shotgun. Unless you engage the enemy at close range and out in the open, the AR-15 guy is going to own you.
Again, we are talking about shooting unarmed people, so both again equally lethal, with the shotgun more so are real-world ranges of less than 15 yards, as you don't need much accuracy at all.
Also, you seem to have watched far too many movies, as the average person won't hit anything from 100 feet with any hand-carried gun while they and the target are on the move.
I wonder about hybrids? Ballistic high arc, then go guided (for any definition of guided)?
This is pretty much the definition of most missiles that aren't "cruise" missiles. A cruise missile hopes to hide beneath radar detection altitude, while a ballistic missile either hopes to overwhelm with speed, or has a desired range that requires using gravity and less air resistance at higher altitudes to extend the range because not enough fuel can be carried economically.
For example, the Phoenix air-to-air missile heads pretty much straight up until its fuel is expended, then dives on the target. Again, this is the mode of operation for most missles, as almost all have used up all their fuel by the time they strike their target. Cruise missiles are biggest class of exception, as they often have remaining fuel at impact.
Compared to the overall cost of the missile, it's trivial to add some terminal guidance system to allow a missile that has expended its fuel to be able to make small corrections for far greater accuracy, even if they would not otherwise be required. In general, though, without terminal guidance, you end up the like the Scuds that basically had only a small chance of hitting the correct city.
Last I checked, the president's armed guards (or Rosie O'Donnell's, or anyone else for that matter) aren't carrying military style assault rifles or hand guns with extended clips.
Since "extended clip" was "more than 10 round" in the previous "assualt weapons" ban law, and some legislators are consdering 7 rounds as the limit, I can guarantee you that most bodyguards are carrying weapons with "extended clips" by those defintions.
Secondly, "military style assault rifles" are not a problem, as those are fully automatic, and are highly regulated. If you believe that the semi-automatic rifles that look "dangerous" and which were banned for sale by the "assualt weapons" ban can give someone an advantage over a person who is carrying a not-as-dangerous-looking hunting rifle (for long range) or a pump-action shotgun (for close range), then take your own advice and "stop spouting off about things you don't know enough about".
There is some question as to whether the girl (I know, RTFA is a crime on/.) is guilty of any infringement. She admitted to downloading one song, and that song was listed twice in the lawsuit for some reason. She says she never downloaded the other song. There was no indication that any uploading took place, but the RIANZ never had to even try to prove it, as it was assumed she had uploaded because she had been sent a notice.
and the fine is not excessive,
More than 150x actual damages (since she only downloaded two songs, not three) isn't excessive?
why is it immediately necessary to attack the copyright group?
Maybe because they are stupid for spending $250K to recover $600?
Is there anything in this article that indicates a wrong was done to the "convicted file-sharer"?
Because there was no "conviction". There was merely an accusation, which under the "three strikes" law is a presumption of guilt. If other laws worked that way, all I'd have to do to put you in jail for life is to say you murdered some person, without even having to prove the person was dead (or even existed in the first place). Don't like that analogy because it's criminal? OK, then you have infringed on my patent, please pay me $600, because I say so, and my accusation is proof enough that you are guilty.
Unlike Joel Spolsky, though, Patrick McKenzie doesn't actually try to point folks in any direction to the truth. What is the robust way to handle names? that simultaneously not in violation of all those misconceptions?
Most of those misconceptions don't matter, though.
Somewhere, you have a legal identifier (on a passport, driver's license, etc.) that can be called your "name". That identifier can be input with a single Unicode text box that has a reasonably insane length limit (say 512 characters). Even if someone has a name that won't fit in 512 characters, it's highly unlikely that you will have a collision because of truncation. Even if you do, it doesn't matter, because you shouldn't use the name as a unique record identifier. Even the "source" systems (like Social Security, DMV, etc.) don't use the name as the unique identifier, so your website shouldn't, either. E-mail addresses make a much better unique identifier for online systems, which is why TFQ is being asked.
Don't look for "invalid" names. Don't try to separate a name into first/given, last/surname, titles, honorifics, etc.
Do that, and you will be fine with names, as any "name" that doesn't work with these constraints isn't really a legal name anyway.
As long as it's read only access, I don't really see a problem. Maybe it has to be read/write?
It depends on the use case.
For me, I don't save TV that I have recorded (or sometimes downloaded, if my recording screwed up) after it has been watched. I'd like to be able to delete the file from the UI of my media player after watching. Many people save everything pretty much forever, so they don't really care about being able to write to the share from their "consumption" devices. Even so, I still have the shares as read only for the user that I have configured for the media player.
I guess I'm just not familiar with those products...
The "media player" seems to be beginning to be replaced by the "media streamer", which are not as easy to configure to consume non-"official" sources (Netflix, Hulu, etc.), and sometimes don't even support viewing Windows shares directly. But, they are still out there, usually in the form of a networked DVD or Blu-Ray player, and quite popular.
This is a nice idea, but there is a lot of hardware/software that just can't be solidly secured. Most of it falls into the "consumer electronics" category.
For example, there are a lot of media players/TVs/etc. that cannot use the most secure form of Windows file sharing, so you need to enable older NTLM on machines that share that kind of data. The shares still need username/password to access, but it can be cracked fairly easily.
Actually Windows 8 is an improvement from Windows 7. Apparently printer drivers take up a rather large chunk of space, and in Windows 8 they reworked the way printing works a bit and were able to get away with a lot less space used by drivers.
And yet both are far worse than XP. On my XP machine the printer drivers I need take up 51MB. No other printer drivers are on the disk.
On Windows 7 and 8, every printer driver shipped with the OS is on the disk already, just in case you might need it (just like every other feature of the OS). For years, Microsoft has had a mechanism for automatically downloading and installing printer drivers when you connect to the print share, and all printers ship with driver disks (even if they are supported by built-in MS drivers), so there is never a need to store printer drivers on the disk "just in case".
I'm on a Samsung Galaxy S III now - rooted it right away and uninstalled (after backing up) any crappy bloatware I didn't want.
How much storage did you get back? I looked into doing this for my Verizon HTC Thunderbolt, but the savings in space was only about 300MB on the internal drive. Since it has 1.8GB free right now, and came with 32GB micro-SD, storage space isn't really a problem.
As for stopping all the bloatware from running and slowing down the phone, that's a different story. My wife's Droid (also Verizon) allows you to disable the built-in apps so they never run. Her phone also has plenty of free space (nearly 8GB on the internal, with a 16GB micro-SD from the factory), so disabling really does all that we need. If I could do that on my phone, I wouldn't consider rooting.
Considering that it ships with very little, application-wise, I really don't know WTF they're doing with ~15-20x more space than WinXP. Even with needing to have both 32 and 64 bit libs I don't get how that much bloat between Vista and XP is justified. What does it all do?
Unlike XP, Vista and beyond install every feature of the OS onto your hard drive, so even if you don't use it, it's there.
When you use "Add/Remove programs" in XP to change OS features, some are on the hard drive and just need to be configured, but others require you to insert the install disk to load the feature. On Vista and beyond, you never have to insert the original install disk, as it's already there on the drive.
In addition, if I were a movie studio and a connection were proxied through a user's machine in the manner that he appears to be advocating rather than directly to a consuming user I'd still sue the proxy. My argument would be that the proxy did indeed download the content - and I'd be right. Never mind that the data was "just" passed along,
That "never mind" doesn't apply, as copyright law says that if you are just a transit, you aren't infringing. Otherwise, the MPAA could just sue everyone who has any sort of router, switch, firewall, or other network equipment. There is nothing special about being an "ISP" that prevents them from being sued for this...it's the fact that the transient nature of the data (even if temporarily cached) makes it by definition not infringing.
And, if this scheme was applied, you would see programs that do the proxy part without being a true torrent client, and they would be installed on virtual private servers all over the world. The only difference between this and a "real" proxy is that the exact proxy IP address isn't determined until you run the software and it queries the distributed database of available proxies.
The Pirate Bay website is an index. They also run trackers.
The Pirate Bay hasn't run a tracker in over a year (maybe longer).
At this point, TPB is nothing more than a very specialized version of Slashdot, where instead of getting submissions that contain links to other websites, the user submissions are links to interesting files that aren't hosted via HTTP.
First let me say that I legitimately use Bit torrent and similar programs to download (and reshare) perfectly legal things like Knoppix and other open sores software.
Slashdot Mirror
Kilo does not mean 1024. Ever. If you say it does, you are wrong. Linux and OSx stopped the abuse long ago.it is time for windows to catch up.
Linux uses 2^10 when dealing with memory, and I'm pretty sure OSx also does.
That's the whole point...memory will always be sold/installed in powers of 2, and thus needs to be reported in powers of two. Disk space originally was sold in powers of 2, and it wasn't until disk manufacturers started fudging to make their disks look larger that it started being sold/advertised in powers of 10.
If you report the two differently, you end up with some issues, like why the "suspend" file for a machine with 4GB of RAM is 4.29GB on disk.
This is an article appropriate for The Today Show or something where you are informing the illiterate masses, not something worthy of posting on Slashdot.
The reason this is appropriate is that Microsoft Surface is being beaten up in reviews, and one reason is the difference between the 2^10 and 10^3.
No other tablet OS takes up so much space that the difference is significant, so a 32GB Android tablet that has 28GB free doesn't really shock people. It doesn't matter that Android doesn't take up "4GB", and that the difference in numbers is mostly because of the 2^10/10^3 difference. With Surface, though, the extra 7% lost due to marketing makes things even worse for MS.
Besides fellow geeks let us not forget this horseshit was started by marketing specifically the hard drive manufacturers during the race to 1GB. I remember before it became a "race" that it was listed in base 2 but once the HDD companies realized they could charge a premium if they got past certain metrics then anything they could do to make those metrics happen were just fine.
It actually started with floppy disks, as the 3-1/2" high-density "1.44MB" clearly shows.
These disks had 1,474,560 bytes (512 bytes per sector X 18 sectors per track X 80 tracks per side X 2 sides). Using the SI terms, these would be 1.47MB disks. Again, using SI terms, these would be 1.41MiB. So, how were they marketed as"1.44MB"...by being 1440 KiB.
Yes, that's right, the fudging started there, and it was caused by using a mix of 2^10 and 10^3 terms. Now we have pure 10^3 terms for hard drives, which inflate gigabytes by 7% and terabytes by 10%.
I've never had a problem updating BIOS on any of the half a dozen LSI controllers I have at home, and sometimes have jumped many revisions.
As you say, using the latest tools is definitely important.
But you only make hundreds of millions if you get your home run to syndication - and for all the Alcatraz pop-ups, he keeps hitting a fair amount of Person of Interest home runs.
Person of Interest is not a J.J. Abrams product. Yes, he's "executive producer", but he has had no real creative input (writing or directing credits). Jonathan Nolan is the force behind PoI, and the actual show-runner.
Compare this to the things he has actual creative credit on, where there was obviously no thought as to where things were going (Fringe creator/writer/show-runner, Lost creator/writer/show-runner, Alias creator/show-runner) or that just generally suck (Armageddon writer, Gone Fishin' writer, Mission: Impossible III writer/director, Super 8 writer/director, Cloverfield producer).
Physical Media (Books, DVDs, CDs) account for slightly less then 1/3 of their sales. (31%)
That sounds about right, with books being the lowest dollar total by quite a bit. It's pretty easy to spend $100 on one DVD or CD "item" (box sets), but the books they sell the most of are basically all under $30.
Basically, if some other store (online or brick and mortar) came up with a way to take away all book sales from Amazon, it would hurt them, but they'd still survive quite nicely. Since that would never happen, even a huge resurgence by Barnes & Noble wouldn't be a blip on Amazon's radar.
Maybe charge 5 cents per gigabyte
If their prices were this low, nobody would complain, as that would be $50/1TB.
The problem is that the ISPs without caps look like their prices are that low because of the speeds they advertise, but then you rarely get the advertised speed 24/7. As for caps, $50/250GB isn't at all unusual on a wired ISP. That's $0.20/GB, way more than 20x the cost to the ISP.
amazon is in bubble territory
Seriously other than B+N are there any "large" booksellers left?
Although I agree that Amazon isn't anywhere near a problem, I suspect that at this point, books are less than 10% of their sales (in terms of dollars).
I can drink a red bull, a monster, a coke, tea, or anything but coffee and easily take a long nap afterwards. Something about the caffeine I get through coffee is different.
Depending on how it is prepared, coffee can have more caffeine than Red Bull, and definitely has more than Coca-Cola and the vast majority of teas. See this table for details.
You can also do some searching and see that the "caffeine" in various substances isn't always the real thing, but instead is closely related compounds.
when people dodge that debate by claiming that those differences simply don't exist and that the gun just looks different.
The looks difference argument plays in when the gun grabbers are arguing we should ban cosmetic features like barrel shrouds (which is really just a cosmetically different fore-end or pistol grips. or Flash suppressors or Bayonet lugs.
This is one of the many reasons why I found the "assault weapons" ban ludicrous.
I think we can safely say that the number of non-wartime incidents where people were killed who would otherwise be alive today if the rifle did not have a bayonet attached is less than a dozen in the history of the US, and the number killed by the bayonet lugs themselves is zero.
If you engage someone out in the open, in movement, at about 100 feet range, the guy with the AR-15 is going to own your ass, unless you get the kill with the first shot. Which is hard, very hard. So advantage AR-15.
If we assume both shooters are moderately trained, it's pretty much even when shooting against unarmed civilians, which is the whole point of this debate.
Same thing for pump-action shotgun. Unless you engage the enemy at close range and out in the open, the AR-15 guy is going to own you.
Again, we are talking about shooting unarmed people, so both again equally lethal, with the shotgun more so are real-world ranges of less than 15 yards, as you don't need much accuracy at all.
Also, you seem to have watched far too many movies, as the average person won't hit anything from 100 feet with any hand-carried gun while they and the target are on the move.
I wonder about hybrids? Ballistic high arc, then go guided (for any definition of guided)?
This is pretty much the definition of most missiles that aren't "cruise" missiles. A cruise missile hopes to hide beneath radar detection altitude, while a ballistic missile either hopes to overwhelm with speed, or has a desired range that requires using gravity and less air resistance at higher altitudes to extend the range because not enough fuel can be carried economically.
For example, the Phoenix air-to-air missile heads pretty much straight up until its fuel is expended, then dives on the target. Again, this is the mode of operation for most missles, as almost all have used up all their fuel by the time they strike their target. Cruise missiles are biggest class of exception, as they often have remaining fuel at impact.
Compared to the overall cost of the missile, it's trivial to add some terminal guidance system to allow a missile that has expended its fuel to be able to make small corrections for far greater accuracy, even if they would not otherwise be required. In general, though, without terminal guidance, you end up the like the Scuds that basically had only a small chance of hitting the correct city.
Last I checked, the president's armed guards (or Rosie O'Donnell's, or anyone else for that matter) aren't carrying military style assault rifles or hand guns with extended clips.
Since "extended clip" was "more than 10 round" in the previous "assualt weapons" ban law, and some legislators are consdering 7 rounds as the limit, I can guarantee you that most bodyguards are carrying weapons with "extended clips" by those defintions.
Secondly, "military style assault rifles" are not a problem, as those are fully automatic, and are highly regulated. If you believe that the semi-automatic rifles that look "dangerous" and which were banned for sale by the "assualt weapons" ban can give someone an advantage over a person who is carrying a not-as-dangerous-looking hunting rifle (for long range) or a pump-action shotgun (for close range), then take your own advice and "stop spouting off about things you don't know enough about".
If the guy is actually guilty,
There is some question as to whether the girl (I know, RTFA is a crime on /.) is guilty of any infringement. She admitted to downloading one song, and that song was listed twice in the lawsuit for some reason. She says she never downloaded the other song. There was no indication that any uploading took place, but the RIANZ never had to even try to prove it, as it was assumed she had uploaded because she had been sent a notice.
and the fine is not excessive,
More than 150x actual damages (since she only downloaded two songs, not three) isn't excessive?
why is it immediately necessary to attack the copyright group?
Maybe because they are stupid for spending $250K to recover $600?
Is there anything in this article that indicates a wrong was done to the "convicted file-sharer"?
Because there was no "conviction". There was merely an accusation, which under the "three strikes" law is a presumption of guilt. If other laws worked that way, all I'd have to do to put you in jail for life is to say you murdered some person, without even having to prove the person was dead (or even existed in the first place). Don't like that analogy because it's criminal? OK, then you have infringed on my patent, please pay me $600, because I say so, and my accusation is proof enough that you are guilty.
Unlike Joel Spolsky, though, Patrick McKenzie doesn't actually try to point folks in any direction to the truth. What is the robust way to handle names? that simultaneously not in violation of all those misconceptions?
Most of those misconceptions don't matter, though.
Somewhere, you have a legal identifier (on a passport, driver's license, etc.) that can be called your "name". That identifier can be input with a single Unicode text box that has a reasonably insane length limit (say 512 characters). Even if someone has a name that won't fit in 512 characters, it's highly unlikely that you will have a collision because of truncation. Even if you do, it doesn't matter, because you shouldn't use the name as a unique record identifier. Even the "source" systems (like Social Security, DMV, etc.) don't use the name as the unique identifier, so your website shouldn't, either. E-mail addresses make a much better unique identifier for online systems, which is why TFQ is being asked.
Don't look for "invalid" names. Don't try to separate a name into first/given, last/surname, titles, honorifics, etc.
Do that, and you will be fine with names, as any "name" that doesn't work with these constraints isn't really a legal name anyway.
As long as it's read only access, I don't really see a problem. Maybe it has to be read/write?
It depends on the use case.
For me, I don't save TV that I have recorded (or sometimes downloaded, if my recording screwed up) after it has been watched. I'd like to be able to delete the file from the UI of my media player after watching. Many people save everything pretty much forever, so they don't really care about being able to write to the share from their "consumption" devices. Even so, I still have the shares as read only for the user that I have configured for the media player.
I guess I'm just not familiar with those products...
The "media player" seems to be beginning to be replaced by the "media streamer", which are not as easy to configure to consume non-"official" sources (Netflix, Hulu, etc.), and sometimes don't even support viewing Windows shares directly. But, they are still out there, usually in the form of a networked DVD or Blu-Ray player, and quite popular.
2) Don't have open (insecure) systems. Ever.
This is a nice idea, but there is a lot of hardware/software that just can't be solidly secured. Most of it falls into the "consumer electronics" category.
For example, there are a lot of media players/TVs/etc. that cannot use the most secure form of Windows file sharing, so you need to enable older NTLM on machines that share that kind of data. The shares still need username/password to access, but it can be cracked fairly easily.
Actually Windows 8 is an improvement from Windows 7. Apparently printer drivers take up a rather large chunk of space, and in Windows 8 they reworked the way printing works a bit and were able to get away with a lot less space used by drivers.
And yet both are far worse than XP. On my XP machine the printer drivers I need take up 51MB. No other printer drivers are on the disk.
On Windows 7 and 8, every printer driver shipped with the OS is on the disk already, just in case you might need it (just like every other feature of the OS). For years, Microsoft has had a mechanism for automatically downloading and installing printer drivers when you connect to the print share, and all printers ship with driver disks (even if they are supported by built-in MS drivers), so there is never a need to store printer drivers on the disk "just in case".
I'm on a Samsung Galaxy S III now - rooted it right away and uninstalled (after backing up) any crappy bloatware I didn't want.
How much storage did you get back? I looked into doing this for my Verizon HTC Thunderbolt, but the savings in space was only about 300MB on the internal drive. Since it has 1.8GB free right now, and came with 32GB micro-SD, storage space isn't really a problem.
As for stopping all the bloatware from running and slowing down the phone, that's a different story. My wife's Droid (also Verizon) allows you to disable the built-in apps so they never run. Her phone also has plenty of free space (nearly 8GB on the internal, with a 16GB micro-SD from the factory), so disabling really does all that we need. If I could do that on my phone, I wouldn't consider rooting.
Considering that it ships with very little, application-wise, I really don't know WTF they're doing with ~15-20x more space than WinXP. Even with needing to have both 32 and 64 bit libs I don't get how that much bloat between Vista and XP is justified. What does it all do?
Unlike XP, Vista and beyond install every feature of the OS onto your hard drive, so even if you don't use it, it's there.
When you use "Add/Remove programs" in XP to change OS features, some are on the hard drive and just need to be configured, but others require you to insert the install disk to load the feature. On Vista and beyond, you never have to insert the original install disk, as it's already there on the drive.
Can you install your own OS on your DVD player?
Maybe, since my DVD player runs Linux, and the source code is available.
Here's a review which shows the output from "top" running on the DVD player.
I assumed it was an auto-correct gone wrong. It's not the funniest ever, but it was worth a chuckle.
In addition, if I were a movie studio and a connection were proxied through a user's machine in the manner that he appears to be advocating rather than directly to a consuming user I'd still sue the proxy. My argument would be that the proxy did indeed download the content - and I'd be right. Never mind that the data was "just" passed along,
That "never mind" doesn't apply, as copyright law says that if you are just a transit, you aren't infringing. Otherwise, the MPAA could just sue everyone who has any sort of router, switch, firewall, or other network equipment. There is nothing special about being an "ISP" that prevents them from being sued for this...it's the fact that the transient nature of the data (even if temporarily cached) makes it by definition not infringing.
And, if this scheme was applied, you would see programs that do the proxy part without being a true torrent client, and they would be installed on virtual private servers all over the world. The only difference between this and a "real" proxy is that the exact proxy IP address isn't determined until you run the software and it queries the distributed database of available proxies.
.
The Pirate Bay website is an index. They also run trackers.
The Pirate Bay hasn't run a tracker in over a year (maybe longer).
At this point, TPB is nothing more than a very specialized version of Slashdot, where instead of getting submissions that contain links to other websites, the user submissions are links to interesting files that aren't hosted via HTTP.
First let me say that I legitimately use Bit torrent and similar programs to download (and reshare) perfectly legal things like Knoppix and other open sores software.
You should really see a doctor about that.