Wait, let me get this right. People are outraged that the RIAA used the local police department to seize unauthorized and unlicensed duplicates of their copyrighted works which were being sold for profit?
That's an actual felony in the United States, not the civil matter that small-scale P2P usage is.
Of course the police would be involved. I'm only surprised it was the local cops, not the U.S. Marshall's office or some similar Agency.
It took quite a long time for the high-revision ROM 102/193 cards to be compromised...and as it stands, the ROM 240 series cards as well as the SW02/SW04 cards aren't cracked at all.
There are, I'd wager, more secured cryptosystems for Dish Network in the wild than there are compromised ones. It just happens that the broken ones are still enabled on their system, due to the enormous number of subscribers using them, and that system is so broken that anyone who wants in via that door gets in.
Once the card swap comes around, which will be necessary when they go MPEG4 entirely, it won't be an issue anymore and they'll have regained control of their stream.
European satellite providers are significantly less broken, as far as I know; most IrdetoAccess cards, Viaaccess cards, and pretty much the entire current line of NDS VideoGuard products are secure or so difficult to exploit that they aren't used in an illegal fashion nearly as often. Some cable companies are still using ROM 10 Rev B0D which as it stands is one of the cards that's so difficult to compromise that it's really not done, anyway.
"I wonder if it's one of the ones that can be disabled by 31% of America's teenagers..."
This is, honestly, a pretty good endorsement. It means that a turnkey package of content filtering software will keep nearly 70% of all persons whose access is to be controlled, from going places they have been restricted from.
I imagine that proportion, 31%, represents the amount of teenagers with any significant computer skills, probably about 30% of that 30% are on Slashdot.
Teenagers don't need to know how to use a computer as anything other than a tool. Nor, for that matter, does anyone else unless they want to. It's the expert's job to ensure that people who use a computer like an appliance can do everything they need and be sure they don't get into trouble with it....
Of course this is Slashdot, so any endorsement of a censorware product is sure to burn some of my karma, but really people. None of us are better than anyone else, we just know different things...
I think technically, insurance companies want you to do whatever ends up making them more money at the end of the day. This doesn't necessarily mean paying higher insurance premiums on easy-to-steal vehicles, since they'd also be paying out for theft at a higher rate. They give you a break on your rates for various conditions and attributes because statistics say that if you have X, you're less likely to become a financial liability. Thus, they can charge less (loyalty increases) and still profit.
"(unless they're charging for received messages as well)."
The last time I was on a pay-per-use texting plan, I had to pay for receiving them as well as sending them at about 15c/per. Imagine that said individual is communicating with 2 or 3 other people, sending them each about 3 messages, and getting about the same in return. There's your quota right there.
Probably because chemical testing of soft drinks, while something that readily comes to mind, isn't actually likely to be done. The consumer product safety commission or whatever, relies on certified statements of contents and penalties if they are in fact incorrect. The public trusts the consumer watchdog.
Real chemists have better things to do with their time in most cases, and the general public doesn't have the skill...so really, the high school kids are perfectly primed to discover this sort of thing. They've got just enough skill to do the basic testing, and nothing better to do with their time -- and they need to use easily accessible materials. Bingo. Sodas and vitamins.
I'd be sold at nearly any price if they'd just include tablet functionality.
I'm not terribly fond of Windows (most of my apps would run under Wine or Parallels, the only Win-Only suite I really use is OneNote) but if there were a Mac replacement, I'd probably buy.
They're quick, pretty computers with easy software that doesn't get in the way.
An ultraportable tablet running an OS that stays out of my way is like a dream...its too bad that Apple is so shy of making a tablet.
Cable providers have sophisticated enough two-way networks that it shouldn't be that difficult to charge exactly how much people want, to the tune of $2/month per channel, if you don't want that many.
The channels I would watch on cable or satellite are ones that are only available on the higher tiers of programming. But, in order to get them, it means I'm saddled with a dozen "family" and "kids" channels, two dozen "news" channels, numerous channels akin to "lifetime" and mtv, mtv2, mtx, vh1 and its sisters, etc. As well as literally between 4-5 Spanish stations I am not interested in on cable, all the way up over a dozen on satellite. This means that in order to watch IFC and Fuse (i do occasionally watch Fox and USA also) I'm using about 1% of what I'd be receiving, and paying full price for it. Effectively, those channels are costing me $25/month each.
One satellite subscription service (selling 4DTV subscriptions over C-Band) does offer al a carte programming but they have less than 100k subscribers nationwide and many of the networks aren't renewing contracts with them, because it isn't worth their time. They charge a very small fee monthly. But, you need a 10 foot dish...
I understand programming bundles exist to subsidize the foreign-language channels and special-interest channels that nobody would ever pay for in their own time, but that's why I'm not a subscriber. I get enough channels (even in HD) with a good rabbit-ears antenna and that's how it is going to stay.
The current iteration of technologies -- DVB-S -- is the standard MPEG2, Standard FEC, and has the optional crypto wrapper which is handled with PCMCIA CAMs and Cards.
DVB-S2, which is being implemented, is MPEG4, 8PSK/8VSB, Turbo FEC, and still has the optional crypto wrapper. I think DirecTV has, likely, already gone to this standard or some close cousin of it. Dish Network is in the process of moving to it and will likely be finished with this process, which involves a lengthy and expensive equipment swap, in a few years. Their new receivers -- the ViP series -- are already MPEG4 and likely fully DVB-S2 capable.
Many European set-top boxes are already MPEG4/DVB-S2 capable, the only thing stopping them from being used with U.S. Pay TV providers is, as noted, the fact that you need a CAM which it is likely that Dish Network or DirecTV will never make available in that manner. (Interestingly enough, however, both Kudleski Group/Nagrastar and NDS make CAMs for other providers which are more standardized.)
Active (Powered) RFID and a good antenna will net ranges much greater than 100 ft. You never hear about the Active sort terribly often, but it's out there, and is appropriate in a situation like this.
I'm a former tech addict and IT guy. Now I'm basically giving up tech entirely. I know Windows sucks, and I want to change to something else. I don't like the OSX interface, having used it extensively in labs -- it feels too childish.
I want to use Linux, I really do. I don't really do anything specific on Windows that I couldn't do on Linux or OSX...Web, e-mail, some simple apps, productivity. I have tried, on three separate occasions, to install various functional distributions of Linux on my machine. These three occasions total about 5-6 different distributions:
I tried Red Hat, then Mandrake in one attempt. Red Hat would crash out of the install. Mandrake would load but I never did get KDE to work correctly. I reformatted the partition and went back to Windows, at the time, 2000.
Attempt number 2 was taking a fairly functional Live-CD distro and using that for a while. I used the first version of Knoppix. Everything worked great on the CD, all my hardware was auto-detected, etc. I followed the instructions to install it on my hard drive -- knopper hdinstall or whatever the command was -- and upon reboot, after the automated process completed, nothing worked. My network interfaces wouldn't come up, the screen resolution was set wrong, etc. I was so frustrated by this one that I gave up on Knoppix, and installed a Debian package. It crashed out in the install, so I said screw it and went back to Windows, now XP.
Attempt number 3 was my most serious so far. I installed yet another, newer Debian. It sort-of worked. I was able to get my system up and running into KDE, I actually spent 5 hours figuring out how to make my wireless card (Proxim Orinoco, back before there was NDISwrapper or anything of the sort) work since for whatever reason, the built-in module wouldn't work. I figured out how to actually connect to a wireless network automatically, and managed to install Firefox...and that was where it ended. After installing the Java, the sytsem seemed to kernel-panic every time I opened a web browser. I probably did something wrong, but hey. I wiped the entire thing out again, and tried the current version of Fedora Core, FC2. I got the thing up and running but never was able to figure out how to change the default browser to Firefox, how to get Java to work in Firefox, how to get Flash to work in Firefox, etc etc etc. I asked for help in the #newbie IRC channel and got kicked by the op for asking stupid questions...and I reformatted and went back to Windows XP.
I am a technically literate person and I can make my Windows machine jump through any hoops I want it to. I was looking for something new and interesting to learn, but was discouraged at every turn from actually doing so. Documentation either assumed I knew stuff that I didn't (such as I would know how to manually change my shared libraries) or that there was no possible way to have the problems I was experiencing, and the people staffing the "newbie" channels were at best unhelpful and at worst, malicious when I was trying to learn the stuff.
I am going to be trying Linux Attempt #4 soon. I'm going to use Ubuntu. There's a nice walkthrough I read of what to edit where, what commands to type and what they mean, and how to basically make a functional system from the base package. We'll see how that goes.
Each of the four versions of Vista targets a different market -- business users, home users, "power users" or your tech jocks who want all of the above. I could see there being a need for two or three different "home" distributions of Linux...maybe different window manager choices, default filesystems, etc. tuned for media, development, whatever. And of course servers. The multitude of possibilities totally put me off and I don't want to learn how to recompile anything from source or write my own device drivers to use my computer...This is why I still use Windows.
I want out -- but Linux is not ready for me, since I don't want out THAT badly.
Their incoming mailserver reads your e-mail and gives you things to potentially see or do with it. It finds parcel tracking numbers, assuming they're correctly formatted, for USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL and maybe more, addresses to map -- and also links to products and services with keywords the same as phrases found in the e-mail you're reading.
There isn't anything wrong with this, either -- you're using their service, they're providing ads in a non-invasive manner to recoup some of the costs of their service being given away (or sold for dirt-cheap, as in a Hotmail Premium account.) If only all advertisers and "monitized web presences" would take a lesson from Google/MSN in their ad placement, I'd be a lot happier.
I'm running a P4-820, "600W" power supply, 4 HDDs, 3 LCD monitors, 5.1 speakers+subwoofer, cell phone charger, networking equipment, and my Slingbox right now.
I'm drawing 296W, according to an inline meter.
Just because your PC has a 450W power supply, it is by no means drawing 450W except maybe for the very first instant everything begins to spin. After that, it drops off a lot.
If I turn off the LCDs and speakers and let ACPI turn off the hard drives, I'm drawing 170W for networking, Slingbox, and fixed-action PC components. Not quite a Pentium 90, but it's hardly greedy with power at that amount.
As a technical service provider, I have to say I rather like WGA -- I work for a large corporation providing end-user support, and when anyone comes in saying "I did the updates on this machine I bought from the shop down the road..." and they have a WGA prompt, it means an easy sale of several hundred dollars to sell them a legit license, with a CoA and that will actually pass validation.
I also like it because it keeps people honest. Nobody has the right to pirate anything -- be it 14 year old kid who wipes XP Home off his computer to put XP Pro on there for no good reason except to say he did, or some real estate broker who did it basically for the same reason. Seeing how all off-the-shelf PCs from major dealers are licensed anyway, and OEM copies are a fraction of that of a retail one if you're a system builder, there is no excuse for people to be pirating Windows at all.
Windows Genuine Advantage and Windows Activation are an attempt to stop enterprise piracy and corrupt dealers from making a profit at Microsoft's expense, with neither remitting anything back to the source. They aren't perfect -- but then again, there isn't really any objective way to say "you got a new computer" versus "you had your motherboard replaced" and things like that are what causes the screwups.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait, let me get this right. People are outraged that the RIAA used the local police department to seize unauthorized and unlicensed duplicates of their copyrighted works which were being sold for profit?
That's an actual felony in the United States, not the civil matter that small-scale P2P usage is.
Of course the police would be involved. I'm only surprised it was the local cops, not the U.S. Marshall's office or some similar Agency.
To everyone who complains about the command being in the wrong syntax (C:/ehome/ versus C:\ehome\)
/windows/system32
Go to your command line. Start>Run>CMD
> cd \
> cd
See where you end up.
Now, try
> c:/windows/system32/dxdiag.exe
Windows CLI takes paths in both formats.
I don't know that I'd say that...
It took quite a long time for the high-revision ROM 102/193 cards to be compromised...and as it stands, the ROM 240 series cards as well as the SW02/SW04 cards aren't cracked at all.
There are, I'd wager, more secured cryptosystems for Dish Network in the wild than there are compromised ones. It just happens that the broken ones are still enabled on their system, due to the enormous number of subscribers using them, and that system is so broken that anyone who wants in via that door gets in.
Once the card swap comes around, which will be necessary when they go MPEG4 entirely, it won't be an issue anymore and they'll have regained control of their stream.
European satellite providers are significantly less broken, as far as I know; most IrdetoAccess cards, Viaaccess cards, and pretty much the entire current line of NDS VideoGuard products are secure or so difficult to exploit that they aren't used in an illegal fashion nearly as often. Some cable companies are still using ROM 10 Rev B0D which as it stands is one of the cards that's so difficult to compromise that it's really not done, anyway.
"I wonder if it's one of the ones that can be disabled by 31% of America's teenagers..."
This is, honestly, a pretty good endorsement. It means that a turnkey package of content filtering software will keep nearly 70% of all persons whose access is to be controlled, from going places they have been restricted from.
I imagine that proportion, 31%, represents the amount of teenagers with any significant computer skills, probably about 30% of that 30% are on Slashdot.
Teenagers don't need to know how to use a computer as anything other than a tool. Nor, for that matter, does anyone else unless they want to. It's the expert's job to ensure that people who use a computer like an appliance can do everything they need and be sure they don't get into trouble with it....
Of course this is Slashdot, so any endorsement of a censorware product is sure to burn some of my karma, but really people. None of us are better than anyone else, we just know different things...
I think technically, insurance companies want you to do whatever ends up making them more money at the end of the day. This doesn't necessarily mean paying higher insurance premiums on easy-to-steal vehicles, since they'd also be paying out for theft at a higher rate. They give you a break on your rates for various conditions and attributes because statistics say that if you have X, you're less likely to become a financial liability. Thus, they can charge less (loyalty increases) and still profit.
"(unless they're charging for received messages as well)."
The last time I was on a pay-per-use texting plan, I had to pay for receiving them as well as sending them at about 15c/per. Imagine that said individual is communicating with 2 or 3 other people, sending them each about 3 messages, and getting about the same in return. There's your quota right there.
Glancing at this chart http://www.averillpark.net/space/booster.html the SV is almost double the next-biggest current, historical or future launch platform.
How do we not have the expertise to build one? I can see not having a factory big enough, but engineers are smart, the plans already exist.
Probably because chemical testing of soft drinks, while something that readily comes to mind, isn't actually likely to be done. The consumer product safety commission or whatever, relies on certified statements of contents and penalties if they are in fact incorrect. The public trusts the consumer watchdog.
Real chemists have better things to do with their time in most cases, and the general public doesn't have the skill...so really, the high school kids are perfectly primed to discover this sort of thing. They've got just enough skill to do the basic testing, and nothing better to do with their time -- and they need to use easily accessible materials. Bingo. Sodas and vitamins.
I just tried to order a few of these.
It took 3 tries to make the quantity and price function correctly.
Then two more tries later, I had different people's names and addresses instead of my own.
Then, I finally got to PayPal with my information, did the PayPal bit successfully, and then it told me "access denied" on returning to the merchant.
*confused*
So if a fire starts, then it's like a balloon, and then something bad happens?
You're a credit to your religion, sir. It's a shame more people aren't as intelligent in their analysis of science and religion together as you are.
(It's also really only American Protestantism that even has a Science-vs-Religion debate in the first place, for what that's worth.)
I'd be sold at nearly any price if they'd just include tablet functionality.
I'm not terribly fond of Windows (most of my apps would run under Wine or Parallels, the only Win-Only suite I really use is OneNote) but if there were a Mac replacement, I'd probably buy.
They're quick, pretty computers with easy software that doesn't get in the way.
An ultraportable tablet running an OS that stays out of my way is like a dream...its too bad that Apple is so shy of making a tablet.
Cable providers have sophisticated enough two-way networks that it shouldn't be that difficult to charge exactly how much people want, to the tune of $2/month per channel, if you don't want that many.
The channels I would watch on cable or satellite are ones that are only available on the higher tiers of programming. But, in order to get them, it means I'm saddled with a dozen "family" and "kids" channels, two dozen "news" channels, numerous channels akin to "lifetime" and mtv, mtv2, mtx, vh1 and its sisters, etc. As well as literally between 4-5 Spanish stations I am not interested in on cable, all the way up over a dozen on satellite. This means that in order to watch IFC and Fuse (i do occasionally watch Fox and USA also) I'm using about 1% of what I'd be receiving, and paying full price for it. Effectively, those channels are costing me $25/month each.
One satellite subscription service (selling 4DTV subscriptions over C-Band) does offer al a carte programming but they have less than 100k subscribers nationwide and many of the networks aren't renewing contracts with them, because it isn't worth their time. They charge a very small fee monthly. But, you need a 10 foot dish...
I understand programming bundles exist to subsidize the foreign-language channels and special-interest channels that nobody would ever pay for in their own time, but that's why I'm not a subscriber. I get enough channels (even in HD) with a good rabbit-ears antenna and that's how it is going to stay.
The current iteration of technologies -- DVB-S -- is the standard MPEG2, Standard FEC, and has the optional crypto wrapper which is handled with PCMCIA CAMs and Cards.
DVB-S2, which is being implemented, is MPEG4, 8PSK/8VSB, Turbo FEC, and still has the optional crypto wrapper. I think DirecTV has, likely, already gone to this standard or some close cousin of it. Dish Network is in the process of moving to it and will likely be finished with this process, which involves a lengthy and expensive equipment swap, in a few years. Their new receivers -- the ViP series -- are already MPEG4 and likely fully DVB-S2 capable.
Many European set-top boxes are already MPEG4/DVB-S2 capable, the only thing stopping them from being used with U.S. Pay TV providers is, as noted, the fact that you need a CAM which it is likely that Dish Network or DirecTV will never make available in that manner. (Interestingly enough, however, both Kudleski Group/Nagrastar and NDS make CAMs for other providers which are more standardized.)
Active (Powered) RFID and a good antenna will net ranges much greater than 100 ft. You never hear about the Active sort terribly often, but it's out there, and is appropriate in a situation like this.
Or, you could use Run() to generate the script for the FTP client in place on the target's hard drive.
Run(drive,path,"type \"FTP COMMAND LIST HERE\" > script.txt");
or any other method of entering arbitrary command-line data into a file.
Then, run as normal.
I'm a former tech addict and IT guy. Now I'm basically giving up tech entirely. I know Windows sucks, and I want to change to something else. I don't like the OSX interface, having used it extensively in labs -- it feels too childish.
I want to use Linux, I really do. I don't really do anything specific on Windows that I couldn't do on Linux or OSX...Web, e-mail, some simple apps, productivity. I have tried, on three separate occasions, to install various functional distributions of Linux on my machine. These three occasions total about 5-6 different distributions:
I tried Red Hat, then Mandrake in one attempt. Red Hat would crash out of the install. Mandrake would load but I never did get KDE to work correctly. I reformatted the partition and went back to Windows, at the time, 2000.
Attempt number 2 was taking a fairly functional Live-CD distro and using that for a while. I used the first version of Knoppix. Everything worked great on the CD, all my hardware was auto-detected, etc. I followed the instructions to install it on my hard drive -- knopper hdinstall or whatever the command was -- and upon reboot, after the automated process completed, nothing worked. My network interfaces wouldn't come up, the screen resolution was set wrong, etc. I was so frustrated by this one that I gave up on Knoppix, and installed a Debian package. It crashed out in the install, so I said screw it and went back to Windows, now XP.
Attempt number 3 was my most serious so far. I installed yet another, newer Debian. It sort-of worked. I was able to get my system up and running into KDE, I actually spent 5 hours figuring out how to make my wireless card (Proxim Orinoco, back before there was NDISwrapper or anything of the sort) work since for whatever reason, the built-in module wouldn't work. I figured out how to actually connect to a wireless network automatically, and managed to install Firefox...and that was where it ended. After installing the Java, the sytsem seemed to kernel-panic every time I opened a web browser. I probably did something wrong, but hey. I wiped the entire thing out again, and tried the current version of Fedora Core, FC2. I got the thing up and running but never was able to figure out how to change the default browser to Firefox, how to get Java to work in Firefox, how to get Flash to work in Firefox, etc etc etc. I asked for help in the #newbie IRC channel and got kicked by the op for asking stupid questions...and I reformatted and went back to Windows XP.
I am a technically literate person and I can make my Windows machine jump through any hoops I want it to. I was looking for something new and interesting to learn, but was discouraged at every turn from actually doing so. Documentation either assumed I knew stuff that I didn't (such as I would know how to manually change my shared libraries) or that there was no possible way to have the problems I was experiencing, and the people staffing the "newbie" channels were at best unhelpful and at worst, malicious when I was trying to learn the stuff.
I am going to be trying Linux Attempt #4 soon. I'm going to use Ubuntu. There's a nice walkthrough I read of what to edit where, what commands to type and what they mean, and how to basically make a functional system from the base package. We'll see how that goes.
Each of the four versions of Vista targets a different market -- business users, home users, "power users" or your tech jocks who want all of the above. I could see there being a need for two or three different "home" distributions of Linux...maybe different window manager choices, default filesystems, etc. tuned for media, development, whatever. And of course servers. The multitude of possibilities totally put me off and I don't want to learn how to recompile anything from source or write my own device drivers to use my computer...This is why I still use Windows.
I want out -- but Linux is not ready for me, since I don't want out THAT badly.
GOOGLE DOES THE EXACT SAME THING!
Their incoming mailserver reads your e-mail and gives you things to potentially see or do with it. It finds parcel tracking numbers, assuming they're correctly formatted, for USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL and maybe more, addresses to map -- and also links to products and services with keywords the same as phrases found in the e-mail you're reading.
There isn't anything wrong with this, either -- you're using their service, they're providing ads in a non-invasive manner to recoup some of the costs of their service being given away (or sold for dirt-cheap, as in a Hotmail Premium account.) If only all advertisers and "monitized web presences" would take a lesson from Google/MSN in their ad placement, I'd be a lot happier.
I've used PayPal Virtual Debit Card numbers since like 2002, it's been an option for YEARS.
My credit card company, Citibank, also offers the same thing.
How is this new? Or interesting?
If you exclude yourself from the Class in writing, yes, you are. Otherwise, no, you are not.
That doesn't count. The representation of Mozart contained on that CD has a unique, modern copyright.
I'm running a P4-820, "600W" power supply, 4 HDDs, 3 LCD monitors, 5.1 speakers+subwoofer, cell phone charger, networking equipment, and my Slingbox right now.
I'm drawing 296W, according to an inline meter.
Just because your PC has a 450W power supply, it is by no means drawing 450W except maybe for the very first instant everything begins to spin. After that, it drops off a lot.
If I turn off the LCDs and speakers and let ACPI turn off the hard drives, I'm drawing 170W for networking, Slingbox, and fixed-action PC components. Not quite a Pentium 90, but it's hardly greedy with power at that amount.
As a technical service provider, I have to say I rather like WGA -- I work for a large corporation providing end-user support, and when anyone comes in saying "I did the updates on this machine I bought from the shop down the road..." and they have a WGA prompt, it means an easy sale of several hundred dollars to sell them a legit license, with a CoA and that will actually pass validation.
I also like it because it keeps people honest. Nobody has the right to pirate anything -- be it 14 year old kid who wipes XP Home off his computer to put XP Pro on there for no good reason except to say he did, or some real estate broker who did it basically for the same reason. Seeing how all off-the-shelf PCs from major dealers are licensed anyway, and OEM copies are a fraction of that of a retail one if you're a system builder, there is no excuse for people to be pirating Windows at all.
Windows Genuine Advantage and Windows Activation are an attempt to stop enterprise piracy and corrupt dealers from making a profit at Microsoft's expense, with neither remitting anything back to the source. They aren't perfect -- but then again, there isn't really any objective way to say "you got a new computer" versus "you had your motherboard replaced" and things like that are what causes the screwups.
I think you, sir, have misunderstood the fact that his post was indeed humorous and not serious.
SysInternals makes a program called tcpviewer that does exactly what you want.