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User: jrumney

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Comments · 6,163

  1. Re:someone explain something to me... on Small Webcasters Offered a Rate Break, Reject It · · Score: 2, Informative

    Perhaps even a simpler argument was if i were an artist and ran an internet radio station solely playing my own music, can SE force me to pay them royalties?

    Legally, they can't force you, but they will probably give it a good try. I'm sure their lawyers are busy coming up with wording for their letters that leaves the impression that you have no choice but to pay without actually stating that. Probably something along the lines of making threats that if you fail to pay this fee, you could be brought up on criminal copyright violations charge under the DCMA without stating that such charges can not be brought by SoundExchange themselves, only by the copyright holders, so if you have another deal with the copyright holder then there is no such risk.

  2. Re:Why is this a bad thing? Not a troll! on MS Wants To Identify All Web Surfers · · Score: 3, Insightful

    These people were in America with access to American news sources. Most of the control the Japanese military had over the general population's opinion of the war effort stemmed from their control of the media. Japanese Americans would have heard about the atrocities in Manchuria and the expansion by force of the Japanese empire throughout Asia. They may not have been in complete support of the American side of the war if they saw through the American propaganda and realised that they were getting very biased reports themselves, but they probably wouldn't have violently opposed it either.

  3. Too expensive on Municipal Wi-Fi Networks In Trouble · · Score: 1

    I live in London, where the City has recently acquired blanket coverage by one of the operators (actually The Cloud is more an association of WiFi operators with reasonable roaming agreements). My cellular provider is dropping its data rates next month, which will totally kill my use of "public" WiFi. Already it is a toss up - if I'm just checking email and looking at a few webpages, then the data based charging from my cellular provider is going to work out cheaper - even at the current outrageous rate. If I am going to download something more substantial, then the WiFi's time based charging is better, and I might notice the improvement in download speed over HSDPA in that case. The phone of course has the advantage of continuing to work after the train leaves the station, sitting on a train being the only time I ever use public internet anyway.

  4. Re:can internet radio play free music? on Small Webcasters Offered a Rate Break, Reject It · · Score: 1

    You can make deals independently with the rights holders of the music you're playing, what SoundExchange are offering is a blanket license so you don't have to. Making such deals with more than a small handful of labels or independent artists is going to be a lot of work though, and the big record companies are only going to be willing to talk to the big guys. Since SoundExchange's fees are extortionate, noone is going to want to pay them, so what we'll see is that the bigger web radio companies will do deals with the big record companies and avoid playing anything from smaller labels, leading to blander web radio from the big guys. Smaller webcasters will be confined to the fringes playing Creative Commons, out of copyright and music by artists who they have personally made deals with. Independent labels will be left in the gap in between and will probably have to do some creative licensing and heavy promotion to convince broadcasters that it is safe to play their music.

  5. Re:patents, usability on Update On Free Linux Driver Development · · Score: 1

    Why did you write a script to remove it? The print jobs will be queued until it is next available.

  6. Re:patents, usability on Update On Free Linux Driver Development · · Score: 1

    I only ever turn my printer on when I want to print. Never had a problem. Try manually loading the usb printer module (modprobe printer). If it works after that, investigate to see why it isn't being loaded automatically when your printer is plugged in or switched on. It certainly isn't CUPS that has a problem with printers coming and going.

  7. Re:The BBC should know better... on How Bad Can Wi-fi Be? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Frankly the BBC was irresponsible in showing this episode of Panorama. I'm against censorship, but informational programs produced by a tax-payer funded media outlet should not be spouting such paranoid, biased crap as Panorama did last night.

    What I find most disturbing, is that they are probably helping the Scientologists make their case against last week's Panorama by following it up with this tripe.

  8. Re:Diverse? on RIAA Seeks Royalties From Radio · · Score: 1

    Go listen to some Japanese music.

    More of the same and still more of the same. It might be a different same than you're used to, but once you've heard one JPop hit, you've heard them all.

  9. Re:Limited impact. on Unicode Encoding Flaw Widespread · · Score: 1

    What does "no privs" mean on Windows? Clearly IIS 6.0 does have privileges. It has opened port 80 for listening for example, and it can read files and run scripts. So it cannot really mean no priviliges.

  10. Re:Limited impact. on Unicode Encoding Flaw Widespread · · Score: 1

    There have been many vulnerabilities in the past that were based on encoding a URL in some broken (or even non-broken) way to get past the first level of URL checking to a lower level where directory traversal is possible. On Unix based servers, the risk of this is mitigated by running your webserver in a chroot jail. On IIS, you just have to hope that IIS 6.0 is actually fundamentally secure down to its lowest levels, not just an insecure product with a thin veneer of security layered over it like previous versions were.

  11. Re:witch hunts not helpful on MySpace Agrees to Share Sex Offender Data · · Score: 1

    We all remember the case of a female teacher having had consensual sex with a physically fully developed but legally under age boy.

    You're not trying to say that there is nothing wrong with a teacher having sex with an underage student are you? Even if if there was no problem legally, she should at least lose her job for such an abuse of a position of trust.

  12. Re:Call me an idiot... on MySpace Agrees to Share Sex Offender Data · · Score: 1

    There was a recent story of a teenage boy who had sex with a teenage girl a year younger than him and became a "convicted sex offender". He'll be in such a registry and it gives me the creeps to think he's going to be watched the rest of his life. Let's face it, if at age 17 you weren't having sex with teenage girls, you wanted to (or if you're female, vice versa).

    If its the case I'm thinking about its worse than that. It wasn't that he had sex with her - the law already had an exception to deal with teenagers of similar age having sex with each other, it was that he had ORAL sex with her, which came under a different law with different ages of consent and no exception. The law was changed after his case exposed the flaw, but he is still in prison and the authorities that put him there refuse to overturn his conviction!

  13. Re:Send your claim in now on Unicode Encoding Flaw Widespread · · Score: 1

    It allows you to hide an exploit from first level scanners so it gets through to a deeper level.

  14. Re:errr.... on Google Wins Nude Thumbnail Legal Battle · · Score: 1

    I see my mistake now. I was reading at a level that filtered out the post in question, so I misinterpreted and thought you were talking about the parent, not GP.

  15. Re:First step towards National ID on Driver's License to be the Next Debit Card · · Score: 1

    In order to roll out a nation-wide license-as-debit card program, either states will have to standardize on specific extra features like a magentic strip and what information is stored there, or licensing will have to be handled by the federal government.

    The standard already exists, it just needs the other 40 or so states to adopt it.

  16. Re:errr.... on Google Wins Nude Thumbnail Legal Battle · · Score: 1

    It would be a spectacularly stupid move for Google to go after people using their logo to link to Google under the guise of trademark infringement. Think about it for a minute. How many trademarks do you think are indexed in Google images?

  17. Re:Yup! on Has Cosmology Been Solved? · · Score: 1

    While I can't dispute the specific Koran texts,

    I can.

    (Koran 18:29) Proclaim: "This is the truth from your Lord," then whoever wills let him believe, and whoever wills let him disbelieve. ...

    I realise I am being just as misleading as the GP here by selectively quoting the first half of the verse (the GP selectively quoted the second half). But with that context, you can clearly see that the Koran is not instructing believers to go out and put non-believers to death, rather it is saying to leave them alone - they will be punished in the afterlife. Many Christians believe in exactly the same fire and brimstone image of hell.

  18. Re:How does Forbes get away with it? on Why Web Pirates Can't Be Touched · · Score: 1

    They are just telling you about these drug dealers not giving you the drug. The websites just give the drugs out.

    Forbes gave you a list of places you can find dealers, and TPB gives you a lift right to the dealer's front door. Neither is giving the drugs out though.

  19. Re:Biased article, but what can you expect from Fo on Why Web Pirates Can't Be Touched · · Score: 1

    The Russian copyright whozits even tried to pass the money they'd collected on to the artists via the RIAA, but the RIAA refuses to deal with them. More examples of how the RIAA isn't there for the benefit of the artists it purports to represent.

    As for the GP paying by MasterCard - you obviously haven't tried to buy credit on allofmp3.com for a while. Last time I tried, they only accepted JCB.

  20. Re:Counterintuitive on Making Fingers Work With Touch Screens · · Score: 1

    If the touchscreen is not level with your eyeline, you will get an offset amount.

    I've noticed that with some ATMs that still use CRT displays and place the touchscreen on a glass/plastic pane some distance from the screen. But these are new ticket machines with LCD touchscreens, and very little parallax effect normally. The machine was out of order the following day, so I think the touchscreen had slipped down half an inch or so.

  21. Re:Counterintuitive on Making Fingers Work With Touch Screens · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Its how the ticket machines at my local train station were working the other day. I almost bought a First Class single instead of Standard return, luckily I noticed that the price was slightly out before I put my card in, then figured out that there was a vertical offset on the touchscreen. A cursor might have helped alert me earlier, but its still counter intuitive.

  22. Re:Sometimes,yes on How Far Should a Job Screening Go? · · Score: 1

    ... and yes, I have seen Office Space.

  23. Re:retraction... on How Far Should a Job Screening Go? · · Score: 1

    In the UK, you have to declare spent convictions on government security clearance forms, which most financial institutions will require for positions where the opportunity to commit serious fraud might arise.

  24. Re:Sometimes,yes on How Far Should a Job Screening Go? · · Score: 1

    ...and if they just went by name, they might hire the wrong Michael Bolton!

    Imagine trying to program with that guy singing bland pop songs in your ear all day!

  25. Re:Gee.. on Microsoft Says Your Phone is Your Next PC · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The impact of fingerprints on the screen is self limiting. Once you get to a certain point, your fingers rub off as much as they leave behind, and the whole screen becomes evenly coated in a film of finger grease, which is much less distracting than one or two isolated fingerprints.