He's just blocking people on Twitter now (myself included.) I usually find 'you don't understand what's going on' with no attempt to educate to be an excuse used by the guilty party. The fact that he later said on said twitter feed that 'he owns the domain name' seems to solidly imply that he is guilty of this dick move, and he thought he's morally in the right to do what he did because of it.
Not really. You see, Tetris is a very simple game, there's no hidden levels of depth to it. It's blocks falling and you arrange them to make lines that disappear.
The fellows over at harddrop.com that prefer the licensed Tetris Grand Master series and the 'ripoff' Lockjaw game would like a word with you.
For many extremely detailed reasons that would make your head explode, these aforementioned games are far better for very advanced play, versus the rules currently mandated by Tetris Co. that basically castrate the game if you play Tetris seriously - such as infinite floor kicks (allowing you to stall indefinitely just by constantly rotating a piece even on the ground) and the fine details of how pieces rotate being a pain for 20G play (top-speed.)
I also strongly suspect that, magically, this ruling will do nothing to help those poor developers who have been utterly ripped off by Zynga, in several well-known cases like this one. Call me cynical, if you will.
Yes. They get too emotional about casualties in the name of freedom and opt to restrict what other people are able to do. They cannot handle even a single loss, and they don't even realize that their 'solutions' will often not even solve the problem.
This is why some people support the TSA and the Patriot Act. "We must restrict everyone's rights in exchange for a bit of safety." It's just that there are different things that they want to sacrifice freedom for. In some cases, it's terrorism (restricting people's rights to "stop the terrorists" doesn't seem popular here). In some cases, it's children (I've noticed this is more popular here, especially when it comes to issues like child porn).
Comparing the negative response to the idea of installing Twitter in a car to the hysterical comparison of such negative responses to the support of the TSA and the Patriot Act and strongly implying support of totalitarianism? Slashdot's all well and normal then, the cute little hippy libertarian tykes.
There's no chilling effect. If you don't want to license the MPEG LA pool you can always distribute uncompressed video and not pay anyone a cent. Or develop your own video encoding technology that isn't based on those ideas.
Good luck with both of those options, neither being based in any realistic world (good luck successfully dodging every software patent out there for video [The WebM probably didn't either] and you're just being sanctimonious with the comment about uncompressed video.)
It's easy to avoid notice if you act like you know what you're doing, where you're going and that you belong where you are. Never stand still or look around.
Bingo. Simple tactics and social engineering are usually all you need if you really want to get at something.
The weakest link in any security chain is always the people, and people are easy to deceive.
This guy has the right idea and this is what I meant.
I was once part of a particular arcade game emulation community (smaller than MAME) and the copy protections there ranged from non-existant, to the trivial, to the standard baked serial codes on the ROMs/hard drives and boards, to ones with security chips that performed very obnoxious operations in place for the main code itself, or outright served as an encryption device for the whole game data bank, decrypting on the fly for the CPU. The only way these particular ones were beaten were because the encryption method was simple and after patching out the security chip calls, the program could use the unencrypted data files natively. If you need an example of popular arcade games that took literally years to break because of aggressive copy protections of this sort, take a look at the CPS boards, made by Capcom. The early boards took a significant amount of time to emulate and make physical boards revivable - the CPS-3 board protection's death can be dated to approximately the year 2007. Not bad for hardware from 1996, I think. An intelligently designed system that used an encryption like AES would be an absolute nightmare to defeat, and would likely have to be defeated in similar, insane ways like burning off a chip's casing, then taking a photo of the physical layout of the chip in order to get at the data, as was the case for Mask ROMs. For a PC where you can take a dump from memory to snatch the key or the decrypted executable which you can then crack in standard ways, so this is less relevant, but it's still a higher entry bar - but most cracker groups voluntarily challenge themselves to defeat software packers and encrypters, so if your program is big enough to attract attention of one of those, it will be a matter of days rather than minutes. And then there are the folk that create home made replica server programs for MMOs so that they can hack the rules and drop rates, so there's always someone with the skill to write the assembly code to do what has to be done, even if they can't SEE what they're trying to copy.
At a significant cost, you CAN briefly deter pirates, except for only the most dedicated. If your software is niche enough (you imply that it is, at this stage) then you can survive with moving functionality off onto the hardware dongle. There are PC games that save profile data directly onto a USB stick, and some of these have been niche enough to make this barrier to cracking too high to overcome for years.
Is your software small enough, is your need big enough to foot this cost and inconvenience to your users? Can't answer that one for you.
And if you use it, USE IT PROPERLY, bake in the encryption into your software so it becomes fiendishly difficult to crack (it will never be impossible.)
Guilt-ware doesn't work (WinZip, mIRC, anyone?) and I would ask a lawyer before attempting any kind of data collection.
What a myopic and short sighted view of the world. I use my iPad all day every day and for everything. The only thing I retain a Mac for is to serve as a central storage/syncing hub. Nothing else. Literally. And yes I do "real work" for a living.
Sheesh. Get past your own self absorbed view of the world and take a look around. You've already lost this argument. And when the iPad inexorably continues to evolve, along with iOS, and increasingly clever and capable apps, your argument will deflate like so much hot air.
This is pretty much exactly my point. Old tech undergoing a familiar modernisation path as with most technology, then some bright spark decides this is the most fitting use for it? What a terrible, disagreeable waste.
...directly in their field of expertise and strength.
If you willingly cut out the best (and sometimes only) advantage that an independant developer has, their freedom to be creative, then good luck with that one.
This wasn't a valid point even back when CRTs were the norm because it is far easier to run a CRT at a high refresh rate than an LCD, although flat-panels are now catching up (for 3D and such things.)
But it's a valid point you make - it does my head in when people worry about increasing FPS at that level on a cheap-ass 60hz monitor.
I don't disagree at all, I have major issues with how copyright is being extended to stupid levels and I especially dislike, when I was doing academic work, the way that you need to pay for a lot of scientific research - but I just don't agree that the method of fighting it is to deliberately break the law in this case. It is not a cause that deserves that kind of response, unlike more serious issues like corruption and the kinds of violent protests in the past used to help secure women's rights and such. If you don't agree with copyright, don't buy copyrighted material *and stick to free material.* I've said before in an older post, you have a right to live and to have liberty but you don't have a right to be entertained for free. Entertainment is so easy to make for oneself that it is ridiculous that anyone should feel the need to pirate to accomplish this.
I think your very true example of the science paywall is a hairier topic however. I'm not saying all science is good but for-pay journals shouldn't need to exist - they should be free for all. It's still tough to justify that deliberately breaking law is appropriate for the science realm considering the hit-and-miss nature of the field but at least there it has a non-trivial impact.
I agree with him and I do sysadmin and software & web development. Feel free to deprive me of all the royalties I receive from people using my products.
Really? You think that's an equal comparison? I have no words, other than you're being intellectually dishonest.
I'm not the original poster and i've never had issues with removable media that I couldn't find an application to blame for (some apps seem to keep files open even after the user has "closed" the visible representation of the file in the program). I'd bet very few users really know what is running in the background on their computer and what it is doing. Windows is worse because apps tend to be closed source and not filtered by a distro but even on linux do you really know the exact details of how every program you have installed behaves?
And afaict a file open for read is more than enough to prevent unmouning a partition on both windows and linux. It doesn't need to be writing it.
It is pretty interesting how Microsoft neglected to make it more intuitive since its introduction in XP (or was it 2000? I do not recall.) As another poster noted there's partly some of the functionality there in Linux but it's not hooked up to any current GUI properly. A real pity. And you are correct, just holding a file open for reading is a blocker in both cases, which is what actually catches most people out.
If the OS lets the user force unmount then at least the FS gets the opertunity to shut down cleanly even if the app doesn't. If the OS doesn't let the user force unmount and the user pulls the plug anyway then neither the FS or the app gets to shut down cleanly.
Though as you say linux isn't really much better No OS i'm aware of has proper handling for notifying users and their applications of WHY their unmounts are failing.
And I found out the hard way that lsof won't tell you if the kernel itself has the file open. I spent ages trying to figure out why I couldn't unmount a partition before finally realising it was because I had an iso image on the partition loopback mounted.
Didn't realise that about lsof, that's good to know.
Ah yes, oft to get the error message:
"Something is using the drive but I'm not going to tell you what and I am not going to even let you force the matter. You'll have to close all applications, then I may deign to let you have the device back. Maybe not. You'll have to reboot me, sucker. Bu-wa-ha-ha-ha-ha!"
Windows holding on to USB devices is a bloody PITA. Sure, I can find the lock after a bit of process inspection but I'd hardly call that intuitive.
If you don't know what your computer is doing and why it would be writing to a removable device then that's your own failing. Linux does that just the same too - ever seen 'Device or resource busy'? No help there. Allowing you to force unmount is not a safe thing to do for casual users - you need to know what you're doing and be prepared to accept the consequences of a mistake.
Windows is perfectly fine here if you use and maintain it correctly, and part of that is not installing random background running applications that keep hitting the filesystem and not leaving programs open with files on the device you're trying to eject(!) Explorer windows count as a program in this case. Thumbnail services etc.
If you still have a problem with it and your current solution is a more manual method, just go with something like Lockhunter. Works fine for this situation. Installing a separate utility for this task is another (valid) complaint entirely, in that Windows really never comes with an easy toolchain out of the box. Lockhunter just provides the same functionality as Linux's lsof, so it's worth having.
Not going to bother responding to the out-of-hand dismissal of my other points, it's clear you're not actually interested in a debate.
If someone says that a particular license is not suitable for them, why the pithy 'boo-hoo' response?
Because it's virtually always someone whining about the fact that someone made a choice they can't stand, and feel a need to gripe about it instead of accepting it and moving on. Also, because this is Slashdot.
A post by someone that states exactly why they don't use the GPL and why it doesn't work for them, on a discussion topic on how GPL use is declining, is 'griping' about it instead of accepting it and moving on? Seriously? The fact that our posts exist make this entire point completely hypocritical. Slashdot, indeed.
The problem with GPLv3 is that I can't use it in an application I develop unless I release any changes/mods I make to the source code.
That was true with the GPLv2 as well.
That's my secret sauce. If I'm a startup and trying to form a niche in an industry, why would I want to give my recipe away?
Boo hoo, so write it yourself. Why is it every complaint against the GPL seems to come from those who want to mooch and not contribute?
Why is it every shout of 'write it yourself' to people saying that the GPL viral source-release 'feature' has downsides, seem to come over the internet, presumably created with dozens of individual pieces of software they did not write, on hardware they did not manufacture, by people in houses they did not bit, fed by food they did not grow, in a society they did not create and perhaps, not even contributed to?
I'm using extremes to be a dick, but my point stands - there is a phrase 'standing on the shoulders of giants,' and yes, that applies to industry and producing a profit, using technologies and concepts that, surprise, may not have been invented by them, but merely refined and targeted.
If someone says that a particular license is not suitable for them, why the pithy 'boo-hoo' response? Pithy is indeed the word I have to use to describe much of the open-source movement.
However, supporting the record label by buying the discs will make it so much easier for the band to get the funding to go on tour. For the music genres filled with people with a genuine love for what they do and where performing to appreciative fans is the end game for getting into the business rather than money (most genres except the Pop Idol, celebrity obsessed half of the pop music section) this can be its own reward. You can also then further support them by going to see them live and possibly buying their band paraphernalia / crap. Not to mention that discs that sell well encourage the labels to give better contracts in the future.
I'm sorry, but the only justification for pirating music is getting the material that is out of print and unobtainable. If you don't like supporting the record industry, don't give money to the bands that feel it's a worthwhile deal for them to use them to get their music heard and possibly go and play them live. There is in this day and age, after all, perfectly fine free music and it is totally possible to release music via the internet without the middle man. More power to them, but most of those bands aren't doing major tours - they probably don't want to do that, and that's just fine.
You could possibly make an argument for downloading older albums that aren't going to influence the band's current day chances, but even if you're not really doing the same harm as you would by downloading a brand new album, you're still taking away the artists (small) share, the employees of the record label that do grunt work, the owners of the labels (who own the business and have a legitimate right to earn money from their business) and also from the stores that are selling the discs. It's not really justifiable in any way to say copying is right. The internet is a disruptive technology causing us to rethink the value of data, but until that is done and codified into our laws and culture properly, you should respect copyright.
If you can't afford music, then you have other problems on your plate than feeling like you deserve to be entertained for free.
Did you read the rest of the quote? They explicitly state that the totals are unrealistic in 'normal' usage levels and just basically don't happen for most people. The purpose of such high levels of testing is purely experimental and to see if, at any level, THC could produce withdrawal effects. It can, but as they've discovered, the potheads were right - you could have to become a human smoke stack to achieve it, and lethal doses are impossible with this route. The lowest tested LD50 value for THC (according to Wikipedia, I'm not researching further as I'm just on lunch break) is 29mg/kg, intravenously. Nobody is shooting up THC, but assuming this was the LD50 for humans, you'd need 2.03 grams of pure THC if you were a 70kg female. At least 150 joints in one day, and that's not accounting for the fact that you might not be able to actually achieve that level in your bloodstream at any one time.
Not bloody likely.
Slashdot Mirror
He's just blocking people on Twitter now (myself included.) I usually find 'you don't understand what's going on' with no attempt to educate to be an excuse used by the guilty party. The fact that he later said on said twitter feed that 'he owns the domain name' seems to solidly imply that he is guilty of this dick move, and he thought he's morally in the right to do what he did because of it.
Not really. You see, Tetris is a very simple game, there's no hidden levels of depth to it. It's blocks falling and you arrange them to make lines that disappear.
The fellows over at harddrop.com that prefer the licensed Tetris Grand Master series and the 'ripoff' Lockjaw game would like a word with you.
For many extremely detailed reasons that would make your head explode, these aforementioned games are far better for very advanced play, versus the rules currently mandated by Tetris Co. that basically castrate the game if you play Tetris seriously - such as infinite floor kicks (allowing you to stall indefinitely just by constantly rotating a piece even on the ground) and the fine details of how pieces rotate being a pain for 20G play (top-speed.)
I really dislike that part of the ruling as well.
I also strongly suspect that, magically, this ruling will do nothing to help those poor developers who have been utterly ripped off by Zynga, in several well-known cases like this one. Call me cynical, if you will.
Have people really lost sight of liberty so much?
Yes. They get too emotional about casualties in the name of freedom and opt to restrict what other people are able to do. They cannot handle even a single loss, and they don't even realize that their 'solutions' will often not even solve the problem.
This is why some people support the TSA and the Patriot Act. "We must restrict everyone's rights in exchange for a bit of safety." It's just that there are different things that they want to sacrifice freedom for. In some cases, it's terrorism (restricting people's rights to "stop the terrorists" doesn't seem popular here). In some cases, it's children (I've noticed this is more popular here, especially when it comes to issues like child porn).
Comparing the negative response to the idea of installing Twitter in a car to the hysterical comparison of such negative responses to the support of the TSA and the Patriot Act and strongly implying support of totalitarianism? Slashdot's all well and normal then, the cute little hippy libertarian tykes.
Fucking ridiculous.
There's no chilling effect. If you don't want to license the MPEG LA pool you can always distribute uncompressed video and not pay anyone a cent. Or develop your own video encoding technology that isn't based on those ideas.
Good luck with both of those options, neither being based in any realistic world (good luck successfully dodging every software patent out there for video [The WebM probably didn't either] and you're just being sanctimonious with the comment about uncompressed video.)
...so says the Anonymous Coward on Slashdot at 9.41am. Ran out of new rocket fuel candidates to study?
Death by lack of freedom?
Death by boredom?
Death from prolonged exposure to bad prison food?
It's easy to avoid notice if you act like you know what you're doing, where you're going and that you belong where you are. Never stand still or look around.
Bingo. Simple tactics and social engineering are usually all you need if you really want to get at something.
The weakest link in any security chain is always the people, and people are easy to deceive.
This guy has the right idea and this is what I meant.
I was once part of a particular arcade game emulation community (smaller than MAME) and the copy protections there ranged from non-existant, to the trivial, to the standard baked serial codes on the ROMs/hard drives and boards, to ones with security chips that performed very obnoxious operations in place for the main code itself, or outright served as an encryption device for the whole game data bank, decrypting on the fly for the CPU. The only way these particular ones were beaten were because the encryption method was simple and after patching out the security chip calls, the program could use the unencrypted data files natively. If you need an example of popular arcade games that took literally years to break because of aggressive copy protections of this sort, take a look at the CPS boards, made by Capcom. The early boards took a significant amount of time to emulate and make physical boards revivable - the CPS-3 board protection's death can be dated to approximately the year 2007. Not bad for hardware from 1996, I think. An intelligently designed system that used an encryption like AES would be an absolute nightmare to defeat, and would likely have to be defeated in similar, insane ways like burning off a chip's casing, then taking a photo of the physical layout of the chip in order to get at the data, as was the case for Mask ROMs. For a PC where you can take a dump from memory to snatch the key or the decrypted executable which you can then crack in standard ways, so this is less relevant, but it's still a higher entry bar - but most cracker groups voluntarily challenge themselves to defeat software packers and encrypters, so if your program is big enough to attract attention of one of those, it will be a matter of days rather than minutes. And then there are the folk that create home made replica server programs for MMOs so that they can hack the rules and drop rates, so there's always someone with the skill to write the assembly code to do what has to be done, even if they can't SEE what they're trying to copy.
At a significant cost, you CAN briefly deter pirates, except for only the most dedicated. If your software is niche enough (you imply that it is, at this stage) then you can survive with moving functionality off onto the hardware dongle. There are PC games that save profile data directly onto a USB stick, and some of these have been niche enough to make this barrier to cracking too high to overcome for years.
Is your software small enough, is your need big enough to foot this cost and inconvenience to your users? Can't answer that one for you.
And if you use it, USE IT PROPERLY, bake in the encryption into your software so it becomes fiendishly difficult to crack (it will never be impossible.)
Guilt-ware doesn't work (WinZip, mIRC, anyone?) and I would ask a lawyer before attempting any kind of data collection.
What a myopic and short sighted view of the world. I use my iPad all day every day and for everything. The only thing I retain a Mac for is to serve as a central storage/syncing hub. Nothing else. Literally. And yes I do "real work" for a living.
Sheesh. Get past your own self absorbed view of the world and take a look around. You've already lost this argument. And when the iPad inexorably continues to evolve, along with iOS, and increasingly clever and capable apps, your argument will deflate like so much hot air.
0/10
This is pretty much exactly my point. Old tech undergoing a familiar modernisation path as with most technology, then some bright spark decides this is the most fitting use for it? What a terrible, disagreeable waste.
I'm sure we can all get behind this fantastic use of technology that will further the demonisation of a plant.
...directly in their field of expertise and strength.
If you willingly cut out the best (and sometimes only) advantage that an independant developer has, their freedom to be creative, then good luck with that one.
This wasn't a valid point even back when CRTs were the norm because it is far easier to run a CRT at a high refresh rate than an LCD, although flat-panels are now catching up (for 3D and such things.) But it's a valid point you make - it does my head in when people worry about increasing FPS at that level on a cheap-ass 60hz monitor.
I don't disagree at all, I have major issues with how copyright is being extended to stupid levels and I especially dislike, when I was doing academic work, the way that you need to pay for a lot of scientific research - but I just don't agree that the method of fighting it is to deliberately break the law in this case. It is not a cause that deserves that kind of response, unlike more serious issues like corruption and the kinds of violent protests in the past used to help secure women's rights and such. If you don't agree with copyright, don't buy copyrighted material *and stick to free material.* I've said before in an older post, you have a right to live and to have liberty but you don't have a right to be entertained for free. Entertainment is so easy to make for oneself that it is ridiculous that anyone should feel the need to pirate to accomplish this.
I think your very true example of the science paywall is a hairier topic however. I'm not saying all science is good but for-pay journals shouldn't need to exist - they should be free for all. It's still tough to justify that deliberately breaking law is appropriate for the science realm considering the hit-and-miss nature of the field but at least there it has a non-trivial impact.
I agree with him and I do sysadmin and software & web development. Feel free to deprive me of all the royalties I receive from people using my products.
Really? You think that's an equal comparison? I have no words, other than you're being intellectually dishonest.
This is an acceptable price.
By whose divine measure? Yours?
Pray tell, what is your occupation, so that others may deem your livelihood a waste of time as well?
I'm not the original poster and i've never had issues with removable media that I couldn't find an application to blame for (some apps seem to keep files open even after the user has "closed" the visible representation of the file in the program). I'd bet very few users really know what is running in the background on their computer and what it is doing. Windows is worse because apps tend to be closed source and not filtered by a distro but even on linux do you really know the exact details of how every program you have installed behaves?
And afaict a file open for read is more than enough to prevent unmouning a partition on both windows and linux. It doesn't need to be writing it.
It is pretty interesting how Microsoft neglected to make it more intuitive since its introduction in XP (or was it 2000? I do not recall.) As another poster noted there's partly some of the functionality there in Linux but it's not hooked up to any current GUI properly. A real pity. And you are correct, just holding a file open for reading is a blocker in both cases, which is what actually catches most people out.
If the OS lets the user force unmount then at least the FS gets the opertunity to shut down cleanly even if the app doesn't. If the OS doesn't let the user force unmount and the user pulls the plug anyway then neither the FS or the app gets to shut down cleanly.
Though as you say linux isn't really much better No OS i'm aware of has proper handling for notifying users and their applications of WHY their unmounts are failing.
And I found out the hard way that lsof won't tell you if the kernel itself has the file open. I spent ages trying to figure out why I couldn't unmount a partition before finally realising it was because I had an iso image on the partition loopback mounted.
Didn't realise that about lsof, that's good to know.
Ah yes, oft to get the error message: "Something is using the drive but I'm not going to tell you what and I am not going to even let you force the matter. You'll have to close all applications, then I may deign to let you have the device back. Maybe not. You'll have to reboot me, sucker. Bu-wa-ha-ha-ha-ha!"
Windows holding on to USB devices is a bloody PITA. Sure, I can find the lock after a bit of process inspection but I'd hardly call that intuitive.
If you don't know what your computer is doing and why it would be writing to a removable device then that's your own failing. Linux does that just the same too - ever seen 'Device or resource busy'? No help there. Allowing you to force unmount is not a safe thing to do for casual users - you need to know what you're doing and be prepared to accept the consequences of a mistake.
Windows is perfectly fine here if you use and maintain it correctly, and part of that is not installing random background running applications that keep hitting the filesystem and not leaving programs open with files on the device you're trying to eject(!) Explorer windows count as a program in this case. Thumbnail services etc.
If you still have a problem with it and your current solution is a more manual method, just go with something like Lockhunter. Works fine for this situation. Installing a separate utility for this task is another (valid) complaint entirely, in that Windows really never comes with an easy toolchain out of the box. Lockhunter just provides the same functionality as Linux's lsof, so it's worth having.
...and no proper OS (Windows ...
Did you just claim an OS that can't even eject a USB drive, a proper OS??? Bahahaha!
...sure Windows can. It's called 'Safely Remove Hardware'.
Not going to bother responding to the out-of-hand dismissal of my other points, it's clear you're not actually interested in a debate.
A post by someone that states exactly why they don't use the GPL and why it doesn't work for them, on a discussion topic on how GPL use is declining, is 'griping' about it instead of accepting it and moving on? Seriously? The fact that our posts exist make this entire point completely hypocritical. Slashdot, indeed.
That was true with the GPLv2 as well.
Boo hoo, so write it yourself. Why is it every complaint against the GPL seems to come from those who want to mooch and not contribute?
Why is it every shout of 'write it yourself' to people saying that the GPL viral source-release 'feature' has downsides, seem to come over the internet, presumably created with dozens of individual pieces of software they did not write, on hardware they did not manufacture, by people in houses they did not bit, fed by food they did not grow, in a society they did not create and perhaps, not even contributed to? I'm using extremes to be a dick, but my point stands - there is a phrase 'standing on the shoulders of giants,' and yes, that applies to industry and producing a profit, using technologies and concepts that, surprise, may not have been invented by them, but merely refined and targeted. If someone says that a particular license is not suitable for them, why the pithy 'boo-hoo' response? Pithy is indeed the word I have to use to describe much of the open-source movement.
However, supporting the record label by buying the discs will make it so much easier for the band to get the funding to go on tour. For the music genres filled with people with a genuine love for what they do and where performing to appreciative fans is the end game for getting into the business rather than money (most genres except the Pop Idol, celebrity obsessed half of the pop music section) this can be its own reward. You can also then further support them by going to see them live and possibly buying their band paraphernalia / crap. Not to mention that discs that sell well encourage the labels to give better contracts in the future. I'm sorry, but the only justification for pirating music is getting the material that is out of print and unobtainable. If you don't like supporting the record industry, don't give money to the bands that feel it's a worthwhile deal for them to use them to get their music heard and possibly go and play them live. There is in this day and age, after all, perfectly fine free music and it is totally possible to release music via the internet without the middle man. More power to them, but most of those bands aren't doing major tours - they probably don't want to do that, and that's just fine. You could possibly make an argument for downloading older albums that aren't going to influence the band's current day chances, but even if you're not really doing the same harm as you would by downloading a brand new album, you're still taking away the artists (small) share, the employees of the record label that do grunt work, the owners of the labels (who own the business and have a legitimate right to earn money from their business) and also from the stores that are selling the discs. It's not really justifiable in any way to say copying is right. The internet is a disruptive technology causing us to rethink the value of data, but until that is done and codified into our laws and culture properly, you should respect copyright. If you can't afford music, then you have other problems on your plate than feeling like you deserve to be entertained for free.
Did you read the rest of the quote? They explicitly state that the totals are unrealistic in 'normal' usage levels and just basically don't happen for most people. The purpose of such high levels of testing is purely experimental and to see if, at any level, THC could produce withdrawal effects. It can, but as they've discovered, the potheads were right - you could have to become a human smoke stack to achieve it, and lethal doses are impossible with this route. The lowest tested LD50 value for THC (according to Wikipedia, I'm not researching further as I'm just on lunch break) is 29mg/kg, intravenously. Nobody is shooting up THC, but assuming this was the LD50 for humans, you'd need 2.03 grams of pure THC if you were a 70kg female. At least 150 joints in one day, and that's not accounting for the fact that you might not be able to actually achieve that level in your bloodstream at any one time. Not bloody likely.