Your entire post, which seems to be entirely about the hosts file, can be summarized by your summary:
P.S.=> Yes - Sure: Malware can use them to IT'S advantage, but then again, so can you!
All one needs to do is swap your statement and it should be obvious why malware scanners report these things; P.S.=> Yes - Sure: You can use them to YOUR advantage, but then again, so can malware!
Malware scanners are incapable of knowing whether it was you, or a disgruntled employee, or a piece of malware, or the alignment of the planets that adjusted the hosts file. All it can do is report that it was modified, and then let you decide what to do about it.
Now, I haven't run Microsoft's specific tool to see how it handles these things, but every scanner I've used lets you choose what to do, including the option to ignore the changes / whitelisting the file.
If you know that you made the modifications it's reporting about, then all you have to do is tell it so. On the other hand, if changes are made to it that you are not aware of, would you really want a malware scanner to just ignore it?
That's like a security researcher complaining that their anti-virus complains about the 1,287 infected files in their "%userdocs%\VirusResearch\Archives\" folder and suggesting that the virus scanner is crap because it can't tell that clearly the viruses are supposed to be there.
It complained that my custom hosts file was very suspicious.
And it is. I mean, don't you think that the line 65.55.175.254 www.google.com is suspicious?
It also didn't like the VNC client.
As well it shouldn't. Do you recall installing a VNC client? I don't recall you installing a VNC client. So why is there a VNC client on your system?
So this machine was infested with malware? I don't think so!
Yet another scareware scanner!
No, just a scanner that does what it's supposed to.. report irregularities.
Just because a lot of the virus/malware scanners in the world believe Unlocker is malware, or Snadboy's Revelation is a hacker's tool, or any compressed executable that it doesn't want to bother unpacking is by default suspicious, doesn't make these cases so; but it's still a Good Thing they're reported so that you know about them and you can decide what to do about it.
It would be a Bad Thing if it then subsequently decided to quarantine them automatically without notice for my own protection.
And if would be a Very Bad Thing if it were actually scareware of the type that marks all of your folders as Hidden, says there's a problem with the harddisk, and here's a company you can pay $50 to fix the harddisk (which won't remove all sorts of other crap that was running. As far as I can tell, the payload was delivered through a JAVA exploit. Lovely. I re-imaged their machine, at least this one kept proper backups! (see comment history for context)). That's a proper scareware product, along with the many online popups (should you see them) that appear to scan your system and find all sorts of viruses in files that don't even exist on your machine, including porn-suggesting filenames (so you're less likely to approach somebody about this), and you can pay them $50 to remove the viruses.
To equate this scanner - whatever your beef with it is - with actual scareware, is ludicrous.
Honestly? "as of 2007"? In computer terms, that's several lifetimes.
Not only that, but just because the news article linked to has 2007 at the top, doesn't mean the findings were from 2007. The news article in which the author "just read an incredible scary article" links to said incredible scary article - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/4423733.stm - from 2005. So not only was the news article writer 2 years behind the times, you're now suggesting that we should believe that you find it incredulous that things may have improved in 6 years' time?
In that time Windows 7 and Vista have been released - both with far better security models out of the box. Even Windows XP saw a reasonable update with SP3.
Then again, by April 2005, SP2 was also distributed and guess what it enabled by default? Windows Firewall. The worm in the original article, Sasser, would not have gotten very far.
Then again, Sasser would not even have been on the system if they bothered to install the update that fixed the hole that Sasser would eventually exploit.
It's just not a very convincing example to begin with, and certainly not one you should be citing 6 years later.
I can't help but think you're biased. You may have your reasons, but the arguments you put forth may stem from said bias and doesn't really address GP.
i.e.
1. No, GMOs do not create monocultures. Is it possible that a single genetically modified supercucumber sweeps the world because every farmer wants to grow it as it's cheap and resistant and whatnot? Yes, that's a possibility. On the other hand, there might be 20 new supercucumbers genetically engineered. Not all farmers might accept a singular supercucumber (for a variety of reasons). In the event that a singular supercucumber does sweep the world and some supercucumberfungus destroys the world's supply of cucumbers, we might have been sane enough to keep a few 'ordinary' cucumber strains left for just such a scenario. Regardless of the above scenarios, it's not GM in itself that produces them.
2. You've got me there. Patents on food (and medicine, imho.. probably software too, but I digress) are stupid. But who is to say that if you spent your life combining cucumbers until you get a supercucumber, you can't patent that? In fact - you can; http://www.freepatentsonline.com/PP20666.html . So this is not limited to GMO.
You make a second remark here that rather harks back to the first. Here you suggest that e.g. a cucumber that is a derivative of the supercucumber falls under their patents and so forth and so on. If derivatives are made, how does that gel with the whole monoculture argument? Doesn't a monoculture by definition require there to be only a single strain? Now, yes, I understand that the diversity in the strains is dependent on the number of generations and actual combinatorial and mutation rates and so forth and so on meaning that the second generation is just about as likely to succumb to the supercucumberfungus as as the first generation - but what about 10 generations down? If 'contamination' occurs naturally, then how is a monoculture ever to be established, globally?
3. If they're built to require -more- pesticide, then don't claim the GMO process in and of itself. Blame the engineer who decided that was a brilliant thing to do. Maybe they hold stock in pesticide producing companies or something; otherwise, producing a supercucumber that is not only resistant to regular cucumberfungus but also doesn't require quite so much pesticide as commoncucumber, sounds like a good idea and more likely to take off among farmers (pesticides and all the regulations that come with them aren't cheap).
And finally the bit where I suspect your bias... "tasteless product". I'm not sure if you meant 'morally offensive' when you said 'tasteless', or literally "not being very flavorful". If the former, carry on. If the latter.. well, tastes differ between crops, seasons, years, and persons of course.. but I wouldn't really try the whole "tasteless product" thing, given that - just for example - research has shown that you can genetically modify a tomato to taste better than the run-of-the-mill standard tomato, in part because said standard tomato has been bred to be bigger, have better shelf life, take less nutrition from the soil, etc. (not so successful in terms of 'taste', there). http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v25/n8/abs/nbt1312.html
Note that the researcher does point out that home-grown tomatoes, or those at the farmer's market, may also taste better. This says nothing of the mass-production tomato in your local grocer's/supermarket/thing, though... regardless of whether the label states GM or not, which was your argument.
I'm not too keen on eating GM stuff myself (mostly due to point 2), but then I do still eat beef and oh boy is that a rotten industry (cornfeed, antibiotics as per the article, etc.). I suppose I could switch to soy-based meat replacement products.. but then I'd just be supporting the deforestation of Brazil's rainforests. Time to grow my own food and stick to chikun?:)
I.e. the documentation is CC-BY-SA as a whole, however code examples fall under the GPLv3 license and that license applies to any use of them within actual software products. This still allows the documentation to be used verbatim, rewritten, reformatted, translated, etc. etc., including the code examples, under CC-BY-SA, while protecting the use of the code under GPLv3's terms.
Mind you, I'm not sure how code examples in documentation could really fall under GPLv3. Say it's a printed work. I'm new to code completely and I read your code example "print 'hello world';". Now it's in my head and instead of jotting that down in my test program, I write "print 'hello gaia';". Oh dear, I just made a derivative work?
I guess once your 'code examples' become non-trivial, as you say, there's more of an argument to be made there. But once it's non-trivial, does it really serve as a 'code example', or just a wholesale publishing of the (GPLv3) code?
Free for developers looking to make closed derivative works. Not free for society, other developers, and certianly not users.
I've seen this argument before. It is true. Anybody, including a business, including Microsoft (oh noes!), can use your code 'as is', modify it, or incorporate it into their own code, and make the compiled results thereof available to anyone they see fit, without the requirement to also provide your source code when so requested, when you choose the BSD license.
But that means nothing for the source code that you still have and are distributing yourself. Somebody else can take that and distribute it 'as is', modified, or incorporated into their own code. They are free to do exactly that. Better yet - they are free to distribute it under a GPL license instead of the BSD license, as long as they still conform to the requirements of the BSD license (attribution, for example*).
If you want it to be "free," just go public domain it.
* public domain tends to completely mean "do with it what you wish" - this includes your renouncement of copyright claims or even attribution. So if you want it to be quotefreequote, use a BSD license. If you want it to be public domain, release it to the public domain.
GPL is about actually keeping software free, not providing a toolkit to proprietary developers.
GPL is about making derivative works just as free as the incorporated GPL component.
If your software is already free-as-in-BSD, it'll stay free-as-in-BSD even when a megacorp incorporates a copy of it into their multi-million dollar government software because your software and their software are two different things at that point.
Those looking for a middle road might ponder LGPL instead.
Or disgruntled people among the executive ranks of Skype knew that people would come up with conspiracy theories by playing such a hand and are now cackling as not only do they walk away with millions but get to see Microsoft painted as the bad guy yet again!
So, I saw this and went to Amazon, only to find out that the "today" mentioned in the summary/article was yesterday, May 23rd.
You think that's bad. An official sales representative for an electronics company mailed me to inform that part of my order will be available last May 25th (bit lost in translation. For the Dutch: "25 Mei jl.")
I don't know if I'm dealing with time-travelers or file a complaint that despite the item being available for a day shy of a year they haven't sent it to me yet.
Not to mention that a lot of people would still rate all other options negatively anyway, out of spite. Given the people in the story, I'd say they're very, very spiteful.
When's the last time you saw an e-bay review saying "Instead of office chair package contained bobcat. Would not buy again." (xkcd) and then proceed to give 5 stars for shipping?
As it is, the vast majority of reviews are either all 5 stars or all 1 star (or 0 stars, whatever the minimum is), instead of actual individual ratings.
I'm sorry but the glossy screen is actually easier to use in bright lighting conditions. The reason for this is pretty effen simple: The glare is constrained to a very limited area and does not wash out the entire screen as those so called Anti-Glare have happen.
This is contingent upon how bright the screen itself is.
You mention the reason that you prefer the highly specular screen screen over a less glossy one because whatever light source being reflect is limited to a 'small area'. However, within that small area is also effectively all of the the reflection's energy, easily stronger than the light coming from the laptop to the point of saturating your visual response.
On the other hand, a less glossy screen may have the reflection spread out over a larger area.. but so is its energy. If the less glossy screen 'blurs' the reflection by a factor 4, the energy per surface area within that reflection is decreased by a factor four as well. Depending on how bright the screen is, this usually means the reflection is weak enough that it combined with the image actually being displayed does not saturate your visual response.
Depends on the situation and screen brightness, essentially.
Personally, while a less glossy screen may not be so good for using with the sun right behind you, it's a lot better when dealing with reflections of windows, of pretty much any other object indoors.. like glassware, some random cupboard, etc. ( Which additionally, due to the mirror-like reflection, means you're more easily distracted by the reflection with your eyes attempting to focus on those, rather than the screen. )
Is Sony's network being used as the world's largest public penetration test?
No, every other scriptkiddie is just joining in on teh lulz of flogging the dead horse. "ZOMG I sql injectioned a SONY site! Yeah, it's got nothing to do with PS3 or PSN, and yeah it's some site in Greece, but lulz amirite!?"
It's even in the bloody article, isn't it?
As I mentioned in the Sophos Security Chet Chat 59 podcast at the beginning of the month, it is nearly impossible to run a totally secure web presence, especially when you are the size of Sony. As long as it is popular within the hacker community to expose Sony's flaws, we are likely to continue seeing successful attacks against them.
It appears someone used an automated SQL injection tool to find this flaw. It's not something that requires a particularly skillful attacker, but simply the diligence to comb through Sony website after website until a security flaw is found.
I mean.. honestly?
They could be running this against $random_site and try to hit the news with it, too.. but they wouldn't.. because nobody cares about a random hack at a random site right now.. but if it's got SONY attached to it.. well.. lulz rules the news.
None of which excuses the poor security.. but none of which excuses the submitter from his choice of words either.
They might catch a lot of flak from existing developers (the ones that weren't secretly let in on this change and thus already have their Apps for Mac ready to go on launch date) but those will readily adopt the Apps for Mac Store rather than see their software have zero market.
They have little to fear from the end-users, though: On iOS people are already defending Apple's subscription framework due to the convenience it offers them. Even users of Linux' most prominent distributions scold e.g. Windows installation of applications as being necessary to first hunt down the software you'd like, then find the download location, probably have to enter a bunch of details first, then download, then install - and they all use such complicated different installers! - make sure you disable all the toolbar and homepage junk, then find out where it actually installed itself to, etc. and hope it's not actually a piece of malware. It's so much easier to just use "sudo apt-get install thing" (or via a GUI) and it downloads and installs with the greatest of ease and the 'thing' is vetted for.
Nah.. if Apple wanted to make it so that only Apple-approved apps would be installed under some new version of their hardware/OS combination, they'd have very little trouble doing so in terms of public perception. In terms of technology.. that's what the whole Trusted Computing thing is for.
Wait.. did I miss it? Were the authors of Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning sued by LucasFilm / Paramount / any of the other companies involved with the Star * sci-fi series?
Because I"m pretty sure that downloading/uploading a copy of a movie doesn't fall under most interpretations of the 'fair use' doctine, whereas satire and parody (see story) do.
I would argue that Mr. Tyson is part of the 'work', and by modifying the work of art by putting it on the other guy's face for parody purposes, means the original artist can go bugger off.
Well that's usually in their contract. Thankfully, not every photographer does this.. hit google to find out where you can find them and whether they're available for shoots.
The question then is whether or not Mr. Tyson signed a similar such contract OR whether the work could fall under the same laws that absurdly make taking photos of statues and other works of art ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Gate ) violations of copyright resting on them from their original artist - enforced only when commercially exploited, but still absurd.
But the twits who posted the tweets aren't the ones being sued.
As far as the twits go, there's basically a few groups.
There's the "lulz Streisand!" folk who don't fall under the jurisdiction of the court ordered silence. They've got little to fear.
There's the ones that do fall under its jurisdiction, but given that "lulz Streisand!" is in effect, I doubt some random chap from Liverpool has anything to fear either.
Then there's the ones that not only fall under its jurisdiction but are the source, being either directly ordered under the court ordered silence or having relations with one who is. Those may have something to fear.. but then again, they broke a court order. I'm pretty sure that's something that lands you in hot waters anywhere.
But you're right.. woe is the poor lad/lass who went against the court order in what he or she perceived to be unjust law and may have to defend his/her beliefs instead of being an anonymous vigilante:)
As much as I may disagree with the legal action on the part of this sportsguy (if it is an actual law, shouldn't the lawmakers by the way of the magistrate / DA / whatsit be chasing down whoever broke the court ordered silencing?)...
they're being bullied
I fail to see how it is bullying. It's a legal action. I'm presuming they asked nicely first and Twitter told them that they have no intent of releasing that information voluntarily and come back with a court order while snickering as they realize the many cross-jurisdictional issues at play not to mention Twitter's London office plans, etc. One step in obtaining a court order in what now appears to be a civil matter would be to file a legal claim and thus sue.
It's also hardly bullying in terms of some megacorp going against a poor widow whose only grandchild happened to download some MP3. This is a sportsguy, granted - one with 22 million quid or so, going against a company whose worth is, depending on the source you go with, anywhere between 11 and 13 BILLION dollars. How is that bullying? Unless the value of the pound vs the dollar skyrocketed at some point.. did the rapture hit the U.S. while skipping Europe somehow?
Simple. They have the money to buy politicians. We don't.
I disagree. I think 'we' do have the money.
For kicks, say there's 1,000,000 'downloaders' (term used within the context of copyright infringing downloading). That number is much higher, though it's probably also getting lower due to e.g. NetFlix - which has 23,000,000 subscribers (though this does include Canada). But I digress.
1,000,000 then. Let's say each one of them put forth $10 toward a fund each month. $10/month isn't much for unlimited music/movie downloads, I think?
Which politician can't 'we' buy for $120,000,000 per year, exactly? And keep in mind that this isn't just $120,000,000 at campaign time. This is $120,000,000 for each year they're in office. If they're in it for just 4 years, that's a sweet near-half-BILLION Dollars. Again, which politician can't 'we' buy with that?
The real problem is that 'we' are not that organized and 'we' don't actually want to spend the $10/month to pay off a politician to have things swung in favor of 'us'. Instead, 'we' pay $7.99/month for a limited, not-entirely-current, relatively low quality time-delayed, streaming service such as NetFlix, or 'we' just don't pay anybody anything and play the victim game, among many alternatives.
Should we get penalized for playing the game, as intended, and being good just because others are not as good and do not care to play against us?
Emphasis mine.
My gut reaction after reading your post is, of course, "hell no".
But let's read it a bit more carefully and put it into context with the "as intended" part of your question.
We are all above average. Get a couple of us together on a server, and we tend to slant things to the side we are on. This often leads to lots of people leaving on the other side.
Once you notice this to be the case - i.e. you're pretty much kicking everybody's ass on that server - shouldn't the "intended" thing be to go to a server with stronger players? ( Mind you, I have no idea how that works. Sounds like there's not a particularly strong matchmaking system at play there. )
Sometimes it leads to a server dying because people leave, the server switches people from our team, they don't wan to be on the other side so they leave and so on.
That can certainly not be "as intended". What, your teammates only want to play with eachother (probably because you're used to eachother's gameplay which is part of why you're doing so well as a team) and not against eachother, even though that might balance things out?
We'll turn the tide of the battle and start winning, and they'll all leave because they want to beat up on people.
As do some of your teammates (see above), but maybe they're not leaving so much because they want to beat up on people, but because they don't want to be beat up on? If you're winning pretty much every match to the point that the other team realizes you're just too good for them, maybe they decide to go to a weaker opponent? Not necessarily weaker than them - just weaker than you. ( I confess that's more wishful thinking than based on evidence, even if my evidence comes from a different game. )
So to get back to your question..
So should we get ranked down and charged more because we are good at the game?
Maybe. That depends on whether or not you're exploiting the fact that you're good at the game.
A lot of this hinges on whether or not there's a matchmaking system and how well that thing is performing. If you're winning most of the matches you play, then clearly you need to be served stronger opponents.
I admire your tenaciousness, but you really need to learn when to ask what the customer considers a good trade-off. My guess is that you're very far from that point already.
See other comment regarding this not being a customer:)
When a computer has "random" slow-downs, the hard disk is always a suspect. Check SMART data first.
Honestly.. random slow-downs are far more likely to be random crapware/malware X than a hardware failure, these days. The tiny little drives are so quiet that there's no distinct whrrrrrrrrrrrCLICK going on as it tries to re-read the location, or that would've given it away immediately.
As for the rest of your comment, I think you'll see that I did exactly that. Ask the user if they have backups (no), make a copy of the drive asap (I did prioritize, not really worth mentioning, goes without saying).
The update-marathon I could indeed have handled using any one of third party tools that combine them together - I mistakenly believed that the update rounds would immediately go SP2 + hotfixes after that, rather than fixes, fixes, fixes, oh and here's SP2, more fixes, more fixes. Silly me:)
As far as recovery of the files goes - I don't spend too much actual time on that; it's a Sunday, for one, albeit a rainy one. UC sits there doing its thing and I watch the MotoGP on BBC. They'll be around to pick the thing up tomorrow and it's no particular burden to me to try and recover as much as it will until they show up. Even if they're not vitally important files (the document was, and that was restored for the most part!), like holiday snapshots, it's still nice to have them saved.
Again, though, as per my post.. doing all of this makes no business sense whatsoever - which was my point with regard to 'repair services' usually just doing very basic checks, then re-imaging / dropping a pre-imaged new drive in there.
Finally... they computer actually has a backup product on it. Two even... Windows' own, and Acer's backup thing (which doesn't look particularly powerful, but should get the job done). Despite this, they used another solution for imaging (that ODIN thing), and didn't even bother to make a standard user files backup on a regular basis. I would like to think that after this, they'll have learned a lesson.. but from experience, I know that lesson is un-learned after just a few weeks.
Honestly, that's your own fault for trying to save a bad drive image. ANY bad sectors on a drive instantly gets a "NO" with using Vista to using any kind of drive imager from me.
Just to address this point.
The image was made right after installation. Although it is possible that the drive was FUBAR at that time already, that image was made a very long time ago. Problems only started to appear on the day the machine was brought in - so I'm inclined to believe the drive was just fine before then, and certainly at the time of imaging.
That image was saved to a different drive - not to the drive that ultimately failed. The faulty drive essentially only saw three parts of the process: 1. Verification of problem. 2. Quick-copy of files. 3. Slow-copy/recovery of files that went on today. The document was mostly saved (Word document, two photos in it that are corrupt near their bottom, not disastrous), and some photos were also saved. The others are too garbled to be of any use, imho, but that's for the user to decide.
So most of your argument really doesn't apply:)
Not sure what you're referring to with regard to Vista repair. I've got a Vista Repair disc - but it only deals with boot-time issues, not with anything that comes at/after the point of user login. It doesn't include a full copy of Vista for an OS restore, though. Maybe the XP and Win7 ones do.
Oh, and the user isn't a customer - there's a bit of money in it, but mostly there's some useful favors I can pull after this, which is why I'm bothering with it at all.
So no, even if the tech is competent, they don't want you spending a whole lot of time actually SOLVING the problem. They want you to spend maybe 10 minutes at most of actual touch time on a computer
Well can you blame them? From a business perspective, that is.
I've been 'repairing' somebody's computer the past few days. Yes, days. Admittedly I also have another job, but it allowed me to walk over to that debacle and press buttons and such once in a while, so it wouldn't be sitting idly very long.
Their Vista machine was slow, wouldn't properly run things anymore, not even log in (light blue screen), responded to ctrl+alt+del only sporadically, etc.
So.. they brought it in.
Step 1: Boot, make sure you can reproduce the problem. Yup, reproduced. Step 2: Try a different user (Guest account, say). Same problem. Step 3: See if, within the reproduced problem, you can still access diagnostic tools. Nope. Step 4: Try a different user. Step 5: Try safe mode. Same problem. Shit.
Step 6: Open laptop, remove drive, put into dock, mount to a different machine (make sure autorun is off!), check disk for viruses malware. Some stuff found, but in AVG's quarantaine. But that scan sure took bloody forever. Step 7: Check the disk. Oh dear - read errors in various places. Step 8: Ask if person made backups recently. Nope. Shit.
Step 9: Download Unstoppable Copier (UC) and set it to work in its fastest mode (skip everything that so much as introduces a pause in the copy process - this is faster than Windows copying files itself). This still takes a good bit of forever.
Step 10: Hear that a drive image was made of this machine right after installation of user programs, customization, etc. Using ODIN. Regret their choice later; for now, believe you can restore the image, at least it'll be back to their personalized settings/etc. at the time of imaging.
Step 11: Check drive size. Custom label, says it's 250GB. Get new 250GB drive. Mount.
Step 12: Run ODIN. Restore Drive. ODIN crashes. Why? Dunno. Step 13: Fine. Restore partition instead. ODIN restores partition. Use MbrFix to reset the MBR using ODIN's copy. Step 14: Mount newly restored drive in machine. Boot. Boot fails - blank screen with blinking cursor. Shit.
Step 15: Go back to ODIN. Figure out what's going wrong. Wait. Why is it saying the selected partition is only 7GB? There's 70GB of image files data in that directory. Realize there's three partitions under different series. Step 16: Select second partition. See size as 250GB. Add 250GB + 7GB. Realize the original drive is not the custom label's claimed 250GB (to match with apparent available size in Windows, presumably). There's another 7GB in a restore partition (let's get back to this later), and some more GB in a hidden Acer 'D2D' partition. Realize also that maybe that's why ODIN is crashing - it needs equal or greater drive size. Shit.
Step 17: Return 250GB drive, get a 320GB model instead. Thank store for their courtesy in taking back the drive at no charge, given that they now have to sell it as 'slightly used'.
Step 18. Re-run ODIN to restore the entire disk. ODIN restores entire disk. Hooray? This takes a good while.
Step 19: Mount drive in laptop, boot up in Safe Mode.
Step 20: Do a victory dance as Vista boots up in Safe Mode.
Step 21: Try to log in. Oops. User gets black screen with mouse cursor. Ctrl+alt+del responds just fine, but starting e.g. Task Manager does absolutely nothing. Shit.
Step 22: Try Guest account. It logs out immediately. Double-shit.
End of Day 1.
Step 23: Hit the internet. Find potential causes for problems under 21 and 22. Graphics drivers? Not authenticated Windows? UserInit for either issue? Try them all - to no avail. Triple-shit.
Step 24: Try a few more things, and ultimately give up, as none of the suggestions or original ideas work. Cu
1. Wikipedia 2. Sorta. More like not wanting to be a total dick. The opposite - selectively accepting visas - is already in place. If you're rich, a great sportsman/woman, a world-class academic, etc. you can pretty much get in anyway. The flipside of that would be to turn everybody else away. Although that sounds rather appealing to some, most people understand the unfairness of such a system. Hence a lottery (or other solutions), which is reasonably fair. 3. they're not - that's usually scam companies trying to make it look like their services will make it more likely for you to BE A WINNER!!!!. There are legit green card lottery companies that make sure you've got all the forms filled out right and such, for a fee, but those tend not to spam. 4. See 3. 5. Not sure what you're questioning there... I guess the answer is "See 1-4"?
I, for one, don't mind your shameless plug as it is at least somewhat informative.
I'm curious, however, as to one of your arguments:
The consumer is the one pressing play. Therefore, the one âoeperformingâ the work is the end user, and not Zediva (in the Redd Horne case, the store clerks were pushing play). In Zedivaâ(TM)s case, the consumer is the one playing a movie that they have rented, on a player that they have rented, to a display in their own homes.
If Zediva is renting out both the DVD and the player somehow - then how does that DVD get out of the DVD box and into the DVD player? Are they auto-loaded? If so - who stocks the auto-loader?
This is aside from technical questions relating to whether they really are just renting out the DVD (given that they effectively transcode its content for viewing, and then stream it to the user.. no matter how much they like to avoid the legal definition of streaming, somehow), and whether or not they really have a whole server farm of actual DVD players playing back actual DVDs (i.e. one DVD + player per viewer of that DVD, and not just a single disc image on HDD/in RAM that gets played back with a user limit so as to be able to claim limited DVD playback), given that you can't access - for example - special features (as per their own FAQ).. which should be entirely possible if this were really just a DVD player being controlled remotely somehow.
I'm guessing that's why they're partnering with WENN and limiting things to celebrity pictures, at least at this point in time as far as the public eye goes.
WENN have the infrastucture and know-how to handle image origins; at least when it comes to (potentially) notable (to some) subjects. Especially in the case of celebrities' pictures (pictures that celebrities upload, in case that was ambiguous), the celebrity in question - or their agent - can be contacted to verify the picture's origin.
I'm pretty sure I'm saying it tends not to work for either big company or Joe Schmoe at large.
People will download movies, complaints / lawsuits or not.
Companies will use user content, complaints / lawsuits or not.
Of course big companies do have an advantage over an individual Joe Schmoe. A legal team, or even legal representatives through organizations such as the MPAA, versus an individual is not very balanced when compared to an individual versus a media outlet which also has a legal team / legal representatives.
It is doable as an individual to exercise your rights, but it's often just not worth it.
In case that the artist decides to pursue the matter further, it's on him to go to America and confront them with the local use of law. It will require a considerable amount of faith and, of course, money.
Slashdot Mirror
Your entire post, which seems to be entirely about the hosts file, can be summarized by your summary:
All one needs to do is swap your statement and it should be obvious why malware scanners report these things;
P.S.=> Yes - Sure: You can use them to YOUR advantage, but then again, so can malware!
Malware scanners are incapable of knowing whether it was you, or a disgruntled employee, or a piece of malware, or the alignment of the planets that adjusted the hosts file.
All it can do is report that it was modified, and then let you decide what to do about it.
Now, I haven't run Microsoft's specific tool to see how it handles these things, but every scanner I've used lets you choose what to do, including the option to ignore the changes / whitelisting the file.
If you know that you made the modifications it's reporting about, then all you have to do is tell it so. On the other hand, if changes are made to it that you are not aware of, would you really want a malware scanner to just ignore it?
That's like a security researcher complaining that their anti-virus complains about the 1,287 infected files in their "%userdocs%\VirusResearch\Archives\" folder and suggesting that the virus scanner is crap because it can't tell that clearly the viruses are supposed to be there.
And it is. I mean, don't you think that the line
65.55.175.254 www.google.com
is suspicious?
As well it shouldn't. Do you recall installing a VNC client? I don't recall you installing a VNC client. So why is there a VNC client on your system?
No, just a scanner that does what it's supposed to.. report irregularities.
Just because a lot of the virus/malware scanners in the world believe Unlocker is malware, or Snadboy's Revelation is a hacker's tool, or any compressed executable that it doesn't want to bother unpacking is by default suspicious, doesn't make these cases so; but it's still a Good Thing they're reported so that you know about them and you can decide what to do about it.
It would be a Bad Thing if it then subsequently decided to quarantine them automatically without notice for my own protection.
And if would be a Very Bad Thing if it were actually scareware of the type that marks all of your folders as Hidden, says there's a problem with the harddisk, and here's a company you can pay $50 to fix the harddisk (which won't remove all sorts of other crap that was running. As far as I can tell, the payload was delivered through a JAVA exploit. Lovely. I re-imaged their machine, at least this one kept proper backups! (see comment history for context)). That's a proper scareware product, along with the many online popups (should you see them) that appear to scan your system and find all sorts of viruses in files that don't even exist on your machine, including porn-suggesting filenames (so you're less likely to approach somebody about this), and you can pay them $50 to remove the viruses.
To equate this scanner - whatever your beef with it is - with actual scareware, is ludicrous.
Honestly? "as of 2007"? In computer terms, that's several lifetimes.
Not only that, but just because the news article linked to has 2007 at the top, doesn't mean the findings were from 2007. The news article in which the author "just read an incredible scary article" links to said incredible scary article - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/4423733.stm - from 2005. So not only was the news article writer 2 years behind the times, you're now suggesting that we should believe that you find it incredulous that things may have improved in 6 years' time?
In that time Windows 7 and Vista have been released - both with far better security models out of the box. Even Windows XP saw a reasonable update with SP3.
Then again, by April 2005, SP2 was also distributed and guess what it enabled by default? Windows Firewall. The worm in the original article, Sasser, would not have gotten very far.
Then again, Sasser would not even have been on the system if they bothered to install the update that fixed the hole that Sasser would eventually exploit.
It's just not a very convincing example to begin with, and certainly not one you should be citing 6 years later.
I can't help but think you're biased. You may have your reasons, but the arguments you put forth may stem from said bias and doesn't really address GP.
i.e.
1. No, GMOs do not create monocultures. Is it possible that a single genetically modified supercucumber sweeps the world because every farmer wants to grow it as it's cheap and resistant and whatnot? Yes, that's a possibility. On the other hand, there might be 20 new supercucumbers genetically engineered. Not all farmers might accept a singular supercucumber (for a variety of reasons). In the event that a singular supercucumber does sweep the world and some supercucumberfungus destroys the world's supply of cucumbers, we might have been sane enough to keep a few 'ordinary' cucumber strains left for just such a scenario.
Regardless of the above scenarios, it's not GM in itself that produces them.
2. You've got me there. Patents on food (and medicine, imho.. probably software too, but I digress) are stupid. But who is to say that if you spent your life combining cucumbers until you get a supercucumber, you can't patent that? In fact - you can; http://www.freepatentsonline.com/PP20666.html . So this is not limited to GMO.
You make a second remark here that rather harks back to the first. Here you suggest that e.g. a cucumber that is a derivative of the supercucumber falls under their patents and so forth and so on. If derivatives are made, how does that gel with the whole monoculture argument? Doesn't a monoculture by definition require there to be only a single strain?
Now, yes, I understand that the diversity in the strains is dependent on the number of generations and actual combinatorial and mutation rates and so forth and so on meaning that the second generation is just about as likely to succumb to the supercucumberfungus as as the first generation - but what about 10 generations down? If 'contamination' occurs naturally, then how is a monoculture ever to be established, globally?
3. If they're built to require -more- pesticide, then don't claim the GMO process in and of itself. Blame the engineer who decided that was a brilliant thing to do. Maybe they hold stock in pesticide producing companies or something; otherwise, producing a supercucumber that is not only resistant to regular cucumberfungus but also doesn't require quite so much pesticide as commoncucumber, sounds like a good idea and more likely to take off among farmers (pesticides and all the regulations that come with them aren't cheap).
And finally the bit where I suspect your bias... "tasteless product". I'm not sure if you meant 'morally offensive' when you said 'tasteless', or literally "not being very flavorful". If the former, carry on. If the latter.. well, tastes differ between crops, seasons, years, and persons of course.. but I wouldn't really try the whole "tasteless product" thing, given that - just for example - research has shown that you can genetically modify a tomato to taste better than the run-of-the-mill standard tomato, in part because said standard tomato has been bred to be bigger, have better shelf life, take less nutrition from the soil, etc. (not so successful in terms of 'taste', there).
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v25/n8/abs/nbt1312.html
Note that the researcher does point out that home-grown tomatoes, or those at the farmer's market, may also taste better. This says nothing of the mass-production tomato in your local grocer's/supermarket/thing, though... regardless of whether the label states GM or not, which was your argument.
I'm not too keen on eating GM stuff myself (mostly due to point 2), but then I do still eat beef and oh boy is that a rotten industry (cornfeed, antibiotics as per the article, etc.). I suppose I could switch to soy-based meat replacement products.. but then I'd just be supporting the deforestation of Brazil's rainforests. Time to grow my own food and stick to chikun? :)
Why don't you simply use both licenses?
I.e. the documentation is CC-BY-SA as a whole, however code examples fall under the GPLv3 license and that license applies to any use of them within actual software products.
This still allows the documentation to be used verbatim, rewritten, reformatted, translated, etc. etc., including the code examples, under CC-BY-SA, while protecting the use of the code under GPLv3's terms.
Mind you, I'm not sure how code examples in documentation could really fall under GPLv3. Say it's a printed work. I'm new to code completely and I read your code example "print 'hello world';". Now it's in my head and instead of jotting that down in my test program, I write "print 'hello gaia';". Oh dear, I just made a derivative work?
I guess once your 'code examples' become non-trivial, as you say, there's more of an argument to be made there. But once it's non-trivial, does it really serve as a 'code example', or just a wholesale publishing of the (GPLv3) code?
I've seen this argument before. It is true. Anybody, including a business, including Microsoft (oh noes!), can use your code 'as is', modify it, or incorporate it into their own code, and make the compiled results thereof available to anyone they see fit, without the requirement to also provide your source code when so requested, when you choose the BSD license.
But that means nothing for the source code that you still have and are distributing yourself. Somebody else can take that and distribute it 'as is', modified, or incorporated into their own code. They are free to do exactly that. Better yet - they are free to distribute it under a GPL license instead of the BSD license, as long as they still conform to the requirements of the BSD license (attribution, for example*).
* public domain tends to completely mean "do with it what you wish" - this includes your renouncement of copyright claims or even attribution. So if you want it to be quotefreequote, use a BSD license. If you want it to be public domain, release it to the public domain.
GPL is about making derivative works just as free as the incorporated GPL component.
If your software is already free-as-in-BSD, it'll stay free-as-in-BSD even when a megacorp incorporates a copy of it into their multi-million dollar government software because your software and their software are two different things at that point.
Those looking for a middle road might ponder LGPL instead.
Or disgruntled people among the executive ranks of Skype knew that people would come up with conspiracy theories by playing such a hand and are now cackling as not only do they walk away with millions but get to see Microsoft painted as the bad guy yet again!
You think that's bad. An official sales representative for an electronics company mailed me to inform that part of my order will be available last May 25th (bit lost in translation. For the Dutch: "25 Mei jl.")
I don't know if I'm dealing with time-travelers or file a complaint that despite the item being available for a day shy of a year they haven't sent it to me yet.
Not to mention that a lot of people would still rate all other options negatively anyway, out of spite. Given the people in the story, I'd say they're very, very spiteful.
When's the last time you saw an e-bay review saying "Instead of office chair package contained bobcat. Would not buy again." (xkcd) and then proceed to give 5 stars for shipping?
As it is, the vast majority of reviews are either all 5 stars or all 1 star (or 0 stars, whatever the minimum is), instead of actual individual ratings.
This is contingent upon how bright the screen itself is.
You mention the reason that you prefer the highly specular screen screen over a less glossy one because whatever light source being reflect is limited to a 'small area'. However, within that small area is also effectively all of the the reflection's energy, easily stronger than the light coming from the laptop to the point of saturating your visual response.
On the other hand, a less glossy screen may have the reflection spread out over a larger area.. but so is its energy. If the less glossy screen 'blurs' the reflection by a factor 4, the energy per surface area within that reflection is decreased by a factor four as well. Depending on how bright the screen is, this usually means the reflection is weak enough that it combined with the image actually being displayed does not saturate your visual response.
Depends on the situation and screen brightness, essentially.
Personally, while a less glossy screen may not be so good for using with the sun right behind you, it's a lot better when dealing with reflections of windows, of pretty much any other object indoors.. like glassware, some random cupboard, etc.
( Which additionally, due to the mirror-like reflection, means you're more easily distracted by the reflection with your eyes attempting to focus on those, rather than the screen. )
No, every other scriptkiddie is just joining in on teh lulz of flogging the dead horse. "ZOMG I sql injectioned a SONY site! Yeah, it's got nothing to do with PS3 or PSN, and yeah it's some site in Greece, but lulz amirite!?"
It's even in the bloody article, isn't it?
I mean.. honestly?
They could be running this against $random_site and try to hit the news with it, too.. but they wouldn't.. because nobody cares about a random hack at a random site right now.. but if it's got SONY attached to it.. well.. lulz rules the news.
None of which excuses the poor security.. but none of which excuses the submitter from his choice of words either.
I don't know why it would
given that all they have to do is make it so.
They might catch a lot of flak from existing developers (the ones that weren't secretly let in on this change and thus already have their Apps for Mac ready to go on launch date) but those will readily adopt the Apps for Mac Store rather than see their software have zero market.
They have little to fear from the end-users, though:
On iOS people are already defending Apple's subscription framework due to the convenience it offers them.
Even users of Linux' most prominent distributions scold e.g. Windows installation of applications as being necessary to first hunt down the software you'd like, then find the download location, probably have to enter a bunch of details first, then download, then install - and they all use such complicated different installers! - make sure you disable all the toolbar and homepage junk, then find out where it actually installed itself to, etc. and hope it's not actually a piece of malware. It's so much easier to just use "sudo apt-get install thing" (or via a GUI) and it downloads and installs with the greatest of ease and the 'thing' is vetted for.
Nah.. if Apple wanted to make it so that only Apple-approved apps would be installed under some new version of their hardware/OS combination, they'd have very little trouble doing so in terms of public perception.
In terms of technology.. that's what the whole Trusted Computing thing is for.
Wait.. did I miss it? Were the authors of Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning sued by LucasFilm / Paramount / any of the other companies involved with the Star * sci-fi series?
Because I"m pretty sure that downloading/uploading a copy of a movie doesn't fall under most interpretations of the 'fair use' doctine, whereas satire and parody (see story) do.
I would argue that Mr. Tyson is part of the 'work', and by modifying the work of art by putting it on the other guy's face for parody purposes, means the original artist can go bugger off.
If he really wants to try to lay claim somewhere, he should go after the tattoo artists that tatoo'd Mike Tyson + tattoo on somebody else's body:
http://isportacus.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/mike-tyson-tattoo1.jpg
But I guess there's less money in that.
Well that's usually in their contract. Thankfully, not every photographer does this.. hit google to find out where you can find them and whether they're available for shoots.
The question then is whether or not Mr. Tyson signed a similar such contract OR whether the work could fall under the same laws that absurdly make taking photos of statues and other works of art ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Gate ) violations of copyright resting on them from their original artist - enforced only when commercially exploited, but still absurd.
But the twits who posted the tweets aren't the ones being sued.
As far as the twits go, there's basically a few groups.
There's the "lulz Streisand!" folk who don't fall under the jurisdiction of the court ordered silence. They've got little to fear.
There's the ones that do fall under its jurisdiction, but given that "lulz Streisand!" is in effect, I doubt some random chap from Liverpool has anything to fear either.
Then there's the ones that not only fall under its jurisdiction but are the source, being either directly ordered under the court ordered silence or having relations with one who is. Those may have something to fear.. but then again, they broke a court order. I'm pretty sure that's something that lands you in hot waters anywhere.
But you're right.. woe is the poor lad/lass who went against the court order in what he or she perceived to be unjust law and may have to defend his/her beliefs instead of being an anonymous vigilante :)
As much as I may disagree with the legal action on the part of this sportsguy (if it is an actual law, shouldn't the lawmakers by the way of the magistrate / DA / whatsit be chasing down whoever broke the court ordered silencing?)...
I fail to see how it is bullying. It's a legal action. I'm presuming they asked nicely first and Twitter told them that they have no intent of releasing that information voluntarily and come back with a court order while snickering as they realize the many cross-jurisdictional issues at play not to mention Twitter's London office plans, etc. One step in obtaining a court order in what now appears to be a civil matter would be to file a legal claim and thus sue.
It's also hardly bullying in terms of some megacorp going against a poor widow whose only grandchild happened to download some MP3. This is a sportsguy, granted - one with 22 million quid or so, going against a company whose worth is, depending on the source you go with, anywhere between 11 and 13 BILLION dollars.
How is that bullying? Unless the value of the pound vs the dollar skyrocketed at some point.. did the rapture hit the U.S. while skipping Europe somehow?
I disagree. I think 'we' do have the money.
For kicks, say there's 1,000,000 'downloaders' (term used within the context of copyright infringing downloading). That number is much higher, though it's probably also getting lower due to e.g. NetFlix - which has 23,000,000 subscribers (though this does include Canada). But I digress.
1,000,000 then. Let's say each one of them put forth $10 toward a fund each month. $10/month isn't much for unlimited music/movie downloads, I think?
1,000,000 * $10/month = $10,000,000/month.
$10,000,000/month * 12 months/year = $120,000,000/year.
Which politician can't 'we' buy for $120,000,000 per year, exactly?
And keep in mind that this isn't just $120,000,000 at campaign time. This is $120,000,000 for each year they're in office. If they're in it for just 4 years, that's a sweet near-half-BILLION Dollars.
Again, which politician can't 'we' buy with that?
The real problem is that 'we' are not that organized and 'we' don't actually want to spend the $10/month to pay off a politician to have things swung in favor of 'us'. Instead, 'we' pay $7.99/month for a limited, not-entirely-current, relatively low quality time-delayed, streaming service such as NetFlix, or 'we' just don't pay anybody anything and play the victim game, among many alternatives.
Emphasis mine.
My gut reaction after reading your post is, of course, "hell no".
But let's read it a bit more carefully and put it into context with the "as intended" part of your question.
Once you notice this to be the case - i.e. you're pretty much kicking everybody's ass on that server - shouldn't the "intended" thing be to go to a server with stronger players?
( Mind you, I have no idea how that works. Sounds like there's not a particularly strong matchmaking system at play there. )
That can certainly not be "as intended". What, your teammates only want to play with eachother (probably because you're used to eachother's gameplay which is part of why you're doing so well as a team) and not against eachother, even though that might balance things out?
As do some of your teammates (see above), but maybe they're not leaving so much because they want to beat up on people, but because they don't want to be beat up on? If you're winning pretty much every match to the point that the other team realizes you're just too good for them, maybe they decide to go to a weaker opponent? Not necessarily weaker than them - just weaker than you.
( I confess that's more wishful thinking than based on evidence, even if my evidence comes from a different game. )
So to get back to your question..
Maybe. That depends on whether or not you're exploiting the fact that you're good at the game.
A lot of this hinges on whether or not there's a matchmaking system and how well that thing is performing. If you're winning most of the matches you play, then clearly you need to be served stronger opponents.
See other comment regarding this not being a customer :)
Honestly.. random slow-downs are far more likely to be random crapware/malware X than a hardware failure, these days. The tiny little drives are so quiet that there's no distinct whrrrrrrrrrrrCLICK going on as it tries to re-read the location, or that would've given it away immediately.
As for the rest of your comment, I think you'll see that I did exactly that. Ask the user if they have backups (no), make a copy of the drive asap (I did prioritize, not really worth mentioning, goes without saying).
The update-marathon I could indeed have handled using any one of third party tools that combine them together - I mistakenly believed that the update rounds would immediately go SP2 + hotfixes after that, rather than fixes, fixes, fixes, oh and here's SP2, more fixes, more fixes. Silly me :)
As far as recovery of the files goes - I don't spend too much actual time on that; it's a Sunday, for one, albeit a rainy one. UC sits there doing its thing and I watch the MotoGP on BBC. They'll be around to pick the thing up tomorrow and it's no particular burden to me to try and recover as much as it will until they show up. Even if they're not vitally important files (the document was, and that was restored for the most part!), like holiday snapshots, it's still nice to have them saved.
Again, though, as per my post.. doing all of this makes no business sense whatsoever - which was my point with regard to 'repair services' usually just doing very basic checks, then re-imaging / dropping a pre-imaged new drive in there.
Finally... they computer actually has a backup product on it. Two even... Windows' own, and Acer's backup thing (which doesn't look particularly powerful, but should get the job done). Despite this, they used another solution for imaging (that ODIN thing), and didn't even bother to make a standard user files backup on a regular basis. I would like to think that after this, they'll have learned a lesson.. but from experience, I know that lesson is un-learned after just a few weeks.
Just to address this point.
The image was made right after installation. Although it is possible that the drive was FUBAR at that time already, that image was made a very long time ago. Problems only started to appear on the day the machine was brought in - so I'm inclined to believe the drive was just fine before then, and certainly at the time of imaging.
That image was saved to a different drive - not to the drive that ultimately failed. The faulty drive essentially only saw three parts of the process:
1. Verification of problem.
2. Quick-copy of files.
3. Slow-copy/recovery of files that went on today. The document was mostly saved (Word document, two photos in it that are corrupt near their bottom, not disastrous), and some photos were also saved. The others are too garbled to be of any use, imho, but that's for the user to decide.
So most of your argument really doesn't apply :)
Not sure what you're referring to with regard to Vista repair. I've got a Vista Repair disc - but it only deals with boot-time issues, not with anything that comes at/after the point of user login. It doesn't include a full copy of Vista for an OS restore, though. Maybe the XP and Win7 ones do.
Oh, and the user isn't a customer - there's a bit of money in it, but mostly there's some useful favors I can pull after this, which is why I'm bothering with it at all.
Well can you blame them? From a business perspective, that is.
I've been 'repairing' somebody's computer the past few days. Yes, days. Admittedly I also have another job, but it allowed me to walk over to that debacle and press buttons and such once in a while, so it wouldn't be sitting idly very long.
Their Vista machine was slow, wouldn't properly run things anymore, not even log in (light blue screen), responded to ctrl+alt+del only sporadically, etc.
So.. they brought it in.
Step 1: Boot, make sure you can reproduce the problem. Yup, reproduced.
Step 2: Try a different user (Guest account, say). Same problem.
Step 3: See if, within the reproduced problem, you can still access diagnostic tools. Nope.
Step 4: Try a different user.
Step 5: Try safe mode. Same problem.
Shit.
Step 6: Open laptop, remove drive, put into dock, mount to a different machine (make sure autorun is off!), check disk for viruses malware. Some stuff found, but in AVG's quarantaine. But that scan sure took bloody forever.
Step 7: Check the disk. Oh dear - read errors in various places.
Step 8: Ask if person made backups recently. Nope.
Shit.
Step 9: Download Unstoppable Copier (UC) and set it to work in its fastest mode (skip everything that so much as introduces a pause in the copy process - this is faster than Windows copying files itself). This still takes a good bit of forever.
Step 10: Hear that a drive image was made of this machine right after installation of user programs, customization, etc. Using ODIN. Regret their choice later; for now, believe you can restore the image, at least it'll be back to their personalized settings/etc. at the time of imaging.
Step 11: Check drive size. Custom label, says it's 250GB. Get new 250GB drive. Mount.
Step 12: Run ODIN. Restore Drive. ODIN crashes. Why? Dunno.
Step 13: Fine. Restore partition instead. ODIN restores partition. Use MbrFix to reset the MBR using ODIN's copy.
Step 14: Mount newly restored drive in machine. Boot. Boot fails - blank screen with blinking cursor.
Shit.
Step 15: Go back to ODIN. Figure out what's going wrong. Wait. Why is it saying the selected partition is only 7GB? There's 70GB of image files data in that directory. Realize there's three partitions under different series.
Step 16: Select second partition. See size as 250GB. Add 250GB + 7GB. Realize the original drive is not the custom label's claimed 250GB (to match with apparent available size in Windows, presumably). There's another 7GB in a restore partition (let's get back to this later), and some more GB in a hidden Acer 'D2D' partition. Realize also that maybe that's why ODIN is crashing - it needs equal or greater drive size.
Shit.
Step 17: Return 250GB drive, get a 320GB model instead. Thank store for their courtesy in taking back the drive at no charge, given that they now have to sell it as 'slightly used'.
Step 18. Re-run ODIN to restore the entire disk. ODIN restores entire disk. Hooray? This takes a good while.
Step 19: Mount drive in laptop, boot up in Safe Mode.
Step 20: Do a victory dance as Vista boots up in Safe Mode.
Step 21: Try to log in. Oops. User gets black screen with mouse cursor. Ctrl+alt+del responds just fine, but starting e.g. Task Manager does absolutely nothing.
Shit.
Step 22: Try Guest account. It logs out immediately.
Double-shit.
End of Day 1.
Step 23: Hit the internet. Find potential causes for problems under 21 and 22. Graphics drivers? Not authenticated Windows? UserInit for either issue? Try them all - to no avail.
Triple-shit.
Step 24: Try a few more things, and ultimately give up, as none of the suggestions or original ideas work. Cu
Is this where we point you to wikipedia?
1. Wikipedia
2. Sorta. More like not wanting to be a total dick. The opposite - selectively accepting visas - is already in place. If you're rich, a great sportsman/woman, a world-class academic, etc. you can pretty much get in anyway. The flipside of that would be to turn everybody else away. Although that sounds rather appealing to some, most people understand the unfairness of such a system. Hence a lottery (or other solutions), which is reasonably fair.
3. they're not - that's usually scam companies trying to make it look like their services will make it more likely for you to BE A WINNER!!!!. There are legit green card lottery companies that make sure you've got all the forms filled out right and such, for a fee, but those tend not to spam.
4. See 3.
5. Not sure what you're questioning there... I guess the answer is "See 1-4"?
I, for one, don't mind your shameless plug as it is at least somewhat informative.
I'm curious, however, as to one of your arguments:
If Zediva is renting out both the DVD and the player somehow - then how does that DVD get out of the DVD box and into the DVD player? Are they auto-loaded? If so - who stocks the auto-loader?
This is aside from technical questions relating to whether they really are just renting out the DVD (given that they effectively transcode its content for viewing, and then stream it to the user.. no matter how much they like to avoid the legal definition of streaming, somehow), and whether or not they really have a whole server farm of actual DVD players playing back actual DVDs (i.e. one DVD + player per viewer of that DVD, and not just a single disc image on HDD/in RAM that gets played back with a user limit so as to be able to claim limited DVD playback), given that you can't access - for example - special features (as per their own FAQ).. which should be entirely possible if this were really just a DVD player being controlled remotely somehow.
I'm guessing that's why they're partnering with WENN and limiting things to celebrity pictures, at least at this point in time as far as the public eye goes.
WENN have the infrastucture and know-how to handle image origins; at least when it comes to (potentially) notable (to some) subjects. Especially in the case of celebrities' pictures (pictures that celebrities upload, in case that was ambiguous), the celebrity in question - or their agent - can be contacted to verify the picture's origin.
I'm pretty sure I'm saying it tends not to work for either big company or Joe Schmoe at large.
People will download movies, complaints / lawsuits or not.
Companies will use user content, complaints / lawsuits or not.
Of course big companies do have an advantage over an individual Joe Schmoe. A legal team, or even legal representatives through organizations such as the MPAA, versus an individual is not very balanced when compared to an individual versus a media outlet which also has a legal team / legal representatives.
It is doable as an individual to exercise your rights, but it's often just not worth it.
Here's a good example of the arrogance you can be met with:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbaland_plagiarism_controversy#Court_proceedings
Choice quote: