I'm also a Century Link customer, in a small town in a rural area. My speed is 4 Mbps, although I'm paying for more, they have to cap me at 4 because my distance from their station won't work reliably at faster speeds. My ping times to 8.8.8.8 are running right at 50 ms:
Pinging 8.8.8.8 with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=54 Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=54 Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=48ms TTL=54 Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=49ms TTL=54
Tracert:
1 4 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.6.1
2 2 ms 2 ms 3 ms 192.168.2.1
3 32 ms 31 ms 31 ms va-71-51-24-1.dhcp.embarqhsd.net [71.51.24.1]
4 31 ms 32 ms 31 ms va-71-0-83-121.dyn.embarqhsd.net [71.0.83.121]
5 42 ms 44 ms 46 ms 208-110-248-237.centurylink.net [208.110.248.237]
6 58 ms 57 ms 55 ms 72.14.219.254
7 50 ms 50 ms 50 ms 209.85.252.46
8 42 ms 43 ms 44 ms 64.233.175.109
9 52 ms 56 ms 50 ms 72.14.232.25
10 50 ms 50 ms 50 ms google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]
Maybe that can be of some use to you in your complaining to Century Link and what is "possible" or "normal" for other customers.
So where is this music? Why hasn't it spread far and wide over the net? I suspect the hackers are holding onto it in an attempt to blackmail Sony for a big chunk of cash.
Viewtron was just another America Online, Prodigy, Compuserve, etc (but even worse, because it was also hardware based). A proprietary walled garden of content that nickel and dimed users to death, with very limited selection, slow performance, and expensive hardware. Take the banking for example. How many banks do you think were plugged into their service? I bet it was only one, and that was more for bragging rights and an advertising tic mark than anything else. 10 cents to send an email? Not exactly going to foster an explosive growth of online communication that way.
Here's why the Internet "won", and this service and the others I listed that were like it have gone the way of the dodo. The internet is open. It is open standards, on top of more open standards, on top of even more open standards. It wasn't built for consumers. It wasn't built for money grubbing corporations to rule over. First and foremost it was built to move data between any two computers on a network that could grow to fast proportions. THAT is why it is a success. I was fortunate to have been on the internet before the www, back when usenet, email, ftp, irc and gopher were king. Even before the glitz and glamor of HTML and the internet that the world knows now, the power of the internet was abundantly clear, even though the learning curve and interface weren't conducive to the average person (ahhh, the days of ftping pirated Amiga software from college servers).
Viewtron put the cart in front of the horse - it was meant to make money and grant control to a single corporate entity. It was not about open networking and raw connectivity between computing devices. That is "Why Didn't the Internet Take Off In 1983".
Orbiting isn't about elevation, it's about velocity. Even if a balloon made it to the altitude of the ISS, for example, it wouldn't be in orbit unless it was traveling at 17,000 MPH, which is the velocity required to orbit at that altitude and inclination.
That's all fine and well. However, I think that the foundation should have made an announcement about the change in distribution, the advantages of doing so, etc, first. Then a few days later actually announce the companies that would be selling and provide DIRECT urls to where the Pi could be purchased. The problem is that everyone, myself included, was expecting to buy direct from the raspberrypi.com (not.org) website. So it was the combination of a fundamental shift in distribution being announced at the same time as the devices going on sale (or preorder, or whatever it actually is). Not only was there a rush to buy, but to try and digest what the heck was going on and why it all changed and how to simply place an order.
The problems were further compounded by the "we'll be making an announcement at so-and-so time" which caused everything to be hammered at an exact, predetermined time. I think they should have just made an announcement and not have given prior notice. At least there would have been a slight ramp up in traffic over an hour or two, instead of a literal DDOS timed down to the minute.
This seems to have gotten lost in the commotion, but they also announced that the $25 Model A will be produced with the same amount of RAM as the $35 Model B (256 MB). Originally the Model A was only going to have 128 MB, so now the only difference is the Model B has an ethernet port. The Model A is going into production immediately.
I watched a good bit of TNG on Netflix recently (I skipped over the worst episodes, 20% or so). I did some research into the rather poor picture quality, and I'm kind of surprised to hear of this BR version. From what I read, the "problem" with TNG was that although everything was originally shot on 35mm film, all of the editing and some of the special effects were done on video tape. Editing on video tape saved a lot of money and time during the production process. Thus the quality of the finished version of the show was merely broadcast / VHS quality of the day, and nothing better. Now maybe people were just making stuff up and that information is incorrect, but I was under the impression the picture quality was fuzzy and poor because, well, that's how it was produced originally.
So the BR version must involve more than just digitizing the original film stock - they must have re-edited all the various camera shots together again, matching the original edits, because it never existed as a complete version in film in the first place.
Anyone else notice the similarity between "Çavdar" an "cadaver", in a story that already parallel's a certain work by Mary Shelley in a number of ways.
Morse code would not be optimal by a long shot, however it could be optimized for touch screen input by using 3 finger input. One finger would be dit, another dah, and the third indicates end of letter, so that no pausing is required. To calibrate and begin input, the user would place all 3 fingers on the screen at once so the software would know which area is which.
Some letters, like 'A' could be entered incredibly fast. Say your index finger is dit, middle finger is dah, and ring finger is end letter. You would roll your fingers "1-2-3" and A would be keyed. That particular letter could be entered nearly as fast as a single keypress. Letter H would be worst-case, as you would have to tab your index finger 4 times then your ring finger once. Continuous Dits or Dahs in a sequence would be the slowest method of input, and unfortunately S is three dits, so it would be somewhat slow and is a frequently used letter. Unfortunately Morse code was not optimized for paddle keyers originally, so we see repetition of dits or dahs for some frequently used letters.
Maybe I'm just becoming more and more cynical in my old age, but how in the world can online petitions be trusted? We can't even trust electronic voting machines, purpose built through and through to be infallible (I'm not saying they are, but that the were built under that premise from the ground up). Who would actually trust the results from one of these websites? Granted, I've never used one, but what are they doing? Requiring a valid credit card number to prevent multiple signatures? Is CAPTCHA so advanced now that we can rest assured that the majority of the "signatures" aren't fake?
The $50 roku does come with a remote control and free shipping which the $35 raspberry pi does not have.
And WiFi, which is a biggie. If they produce a Raspberry Pi with integrated WiFi at the pricepoint of the roku, well, roku should be very worried. Let's say a Raspberry Pi can be produced for $50 with Wifi instead of Ethernet. For under $5 more you could add an IR receiver, a dirt cheap infrared remote (heck, or just use your favorite remote from some other device), an enclosure and wall-wart USB power supply. Now imagine if some startup or hobbyist set all that up, worked out the kinks, and sold it as a complete package online for around $70. I think they could make some pretty decent money.
My hunch is that Raspberry Pi is going to be driving many commercial products of that sort - auto PCs, home alarm systems, you name it. I predict the day that you buy a certain consumer device from Walmart, and if you were to open up the enclosure, you'd see a Raspberry Pi running the show.
That is somewhat more than the naysayers claim (barely enough to run a watch, etc) but is not enough to be useful.
Sorry, but you're off by several orders of magnitude. A wrist watch consumes microwatts of power - around 1 micro watt (Slashdot seems to strip the micro symbol). Thus 40 watts is enough to power 4 million wristwatches.
Seiko makes a watch with an IC powered by only 25 nano watts of power!
Windows Phone 7 is C# only, which is why I don't support the platform with my games (99% of my C++ code is shared between the iOS and Android builds, which is how it should be). So if Windows 8 developers can "reuse — by far — most of their code" does that mean Windows 8 is C# only too, or that Windows Phone 8 will allow 3rd part apps to be written in C++?
IMO, if Windows Phone 8 doesn't support C++, it is dead in the water from the perspective of 3rd party apps. Only the really big players have the resources to completely rewrite their iOS or Android apps (mainly games, which usually aren't intimately tied to the native GUI) in C#. That is one of the reasons there aren't many apps for Windows Mobile 7, and certainly why there isn't as much commonality as you see between iOS and Android apps. If MS had half a brain they would allow development in C++, and include APIs like OpenGL ES which is supported by both Android and iOS, which will make it very easy for developers like me to release my games for Windows Mobile 8.
In what way is your tablet making wireless use of a monitor? Are you talking about a computer workstation, or just a standalone monitor?
I can't see ad-hoc networking being very useful for instrumentation. I would think you'd want sure fire, dedicated, reliable data capture and not random hodge-podge as far as that goes. For example, an instrument in the lab finds Tablet A and dumps its cached data to that tablet. The user of Tablet A promptly leaves the building and the data is now stuck on his device which is out of range. Worse, Tablet A is then dropped in a stream of molten lava in the field, and the data from that instrument is lost for good.
I think you need to better define exactly what you're even wanting proximity detection for in the first place - specifically, when two devices find one another, what is the point? Printers are one of the few things that makes some sense for proximity, but even in that case, how many printers are you talking about that it is too tedious to pick the desired printer from a list? What if you don't want to print to the closest printer, but the one nearest your office? Or the printer back at the office while you're out in the field? I would think printers in a lab would be part of the infrastructure, and not an ad-hoc wifi network. Further, you're usually better off with your tablet connecting to a WAP and accessing the LAN, instead of trying to wirelessly connect to individual devices like printers directly. In that case the whole concept of proximity is out the window unless your talking about PAN (bluetooth) type peripherals like keyboards and mice.
WAPs are usually strategically located for maximum wireless coverage, whereas things like printers and instruments are situated in entirely different locations where they are easy to reach (and thus suboptimal from a wireless perspective). Proximity could actually be a bad thing - it is really just a restriction. Wouldn't you want to be able to access a specific instrument whether or not you were in direct wireless range of that device?
Back in high school our band performed at EPCOT, and that night, to keep all the kids in their hotel rooms, the chaperones put tape on each door. If a student left their room, then the tape on the outside of the door would be broken loose and they would get in trouble. However there was a fatal flaw. Late that night when we were sneaking around the hotel, we simply removed the tape from a dozen other rooms.
The asteroid was discovered two days ago on the 25th, and its closest approach occurs today. Not much time there to get the shuttle back from the Smithsonian, haul it down to Florida, refit it with all the stuff they took out, and launch Bruce Willis to destroy the asteroid. Good thing it's not a larger asteroid on an actual collision course. (Yeah, I know, the shuttle isn't actually at the Smithsonian yet)
Yes, the headline is open to misinterpretation. The article is really about a new game called Australia, which will probably get an 18+ rating. Game must be pretty obscure, because I've never heard of it, so I'm not sure why it made the Slashdot headlines.
5 justices who think the expectation of privacy involved in one's movements should provide 4th amendment protection when long-term electronic tracking is used, regardless of whether trespass occurs, and at least 1 who thinks both apply.
So at least for some of the justices, the mere ability to track a person's every move (or simply that of their vehicle) raises serious privacy concerns? Well that would apply to having someone tail a suspect and keep an eye on their car, tracking a person via public security cameras, using a drone to hover above and track them where they go, etc. I'm glad that some of them aren't limiting the rights to the mere physical technicality of how it is applied, but I'm somewhat surprised they were willing to possibly reach so far with this ruling. There would be ramifications in a number of law enforcement areas, even with things as simple as following a suspect with an unmarked (or marked!) car.
The MegaUpload guys, through their actions, have been nailed fair and square. This is their choice. They took the lucrative, but risky, path, of actively courting piracy. Their business model is wholly different than that of DropBox.
What blows my mind is that this Kim Dotcom guy could be THAT greedy. Obviously he has some minimal amount of required intelligence to get the infrastructure and technology in place to operate at the massive scale that MU was at. However, it seems to me that anyone in their right mind would bail from something so risky after reaping a few tens of millions of dollars. He could have stopped a year or two ago, after putting away millions of dollars, and claimed that although he tried to run a legitimate, legal online business, too many people were taking advantage of his site in ways he didn't intend or condone, but it would require too many resources to try and police all the uploaded files. So his only recourse was to shut down the sites and close up shop. He'd have almost certainly escaped any legal problems once everything was shut down, and he could've just quietly taken his money and lived high off the hog for the rest of his life.
But no, this guy was greedy. REALLY greedy. $4.9 million in cars alone at his main residence. $24 million dollar estate. $12,000 PER DAY rent for their office headquarters in Hong Kong. Money was his downfall, that's for sure.
Mod parent up. My thoughts exactly. If they can already reach out and both prosecute and shut down sites located in other countries, then why do they need even more power? Less judicial oversight? More power and control to the "copyright holders"?
Slashdot Mirror
So what is apple calling it? There were rumors it would be called the iPad HD. So it is it iPad 3, iPad HD, iPad 4G, or just iPad (3rd gen)?
I'm also a Century Link customer, in a small town in a rural area. My speed is 4 Mbps, although I'm paying for more, they have to cap me at 4 because my distance from their station won't work reliably at faster speeds. My ping times to 8.8.8.8 are running right at 50 ms:
Pinging 8.8.8.8 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=54
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=54
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=48ms TTL=54
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=49ms TTL=54
Tracert:
1 4 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.6.1
2 2 ms 2 ms 3 ms 192.168.2.1
3 32 ms 31 ms 31 ms va-71-51-24-1.dhcp.embarqhsd.net [71.51.24.1]
4 31 ms 32 ms 31 ms va-71-0-83-121.dyn.embarqhsd.net [71.0.83.121]
5 42 ms 44 ms 46 ms 208-110-248-237.centurylink.net [208.110.248.237]
6 58 ms 57 ms 55 ms 72.14.219.254
7 50 ms 50 ms 50 ms 209.85.252.46
8 42 ms 43 ms 44 ms 64.233.175.109
9 52 ms 56 ms 50 ms 72.14.232.25
10 50 ms 50 ms 50 ms google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]
Maybe that can be of some use to you in your complaining to Century Link and what is "possible" or "normal" for other customers.
So where is this music? Why hasn't it spread far and wide over the net? I suspect the hackers are holding onto it in an attempt to blackmail Sony for a big chunk of cash.
Why Didn't the Internet Take Off In 1983?
Viewtron was just another America Online, Prodigy, Compuserve, etc (but even worse, because it was also hardware based). A proprietary walled garden of content that nickel and dimed users to death, with very limited selection, slow performance, and expensive hardware. Take the banking for example. How many banks do you think were plugged into their service? I bet it was only one, and that was more for bragging rights and an advertising tic mark than anything else. 10 cents to send an email? Not exactly going to foster an explosive growth of online communication that way.
Here's why the Internet "won", and this service and the others I listed that were like it have gone the way of the dodo. The internet is open. It is open standards, on top of more open standards, on top of even more open standards. It wasn't built for consumers. It wasn't built for money grubbing corporations to rule over. First and foremost it was built to move data between any two computers on a network that could grow to fast proportions. THAT is why it is a success. I was fortunate to have been on the internet before the www, back when usenet, email, ftp, irc and gopher were king. Even before the glitz and glamor of HTML and the internet that the world knows now, the power of the internet was abundantly clear, even though the learning curve and interface weren't conducive to the average person (ahhh, the days of ftping pirated Amiga software from college servers).
Viewtron put the cart in front of the horse - it was meant to make money and grant control to a single corporate entity. It was not about open networking and raw connectivity between computing devices. That is "Why Didn't the Internet Take Off In 1983".
DING DING DING!!! We have a WINNER!
http://it.slashdot.org/story/12/03/01/1452225/azure-failure-was-a-leap-year-glitch
Orbiting isn't about elevation, it's about velocity. Even if a balloon made it to the altitude of the ISS, for example, it wouldn't be in orbit unless it was traveling at 17,000 MPH, which is the velocity required to orbit at that altitude and inclination.
That's all fine and well. However, I think that the foundation should have made an announcement about the change in distribution, the advantages of doing so, etc, first. Then a few days later actually announce the companies that would be selling and provide DIRECT urls to where the Pi could be purchased. The problem is that everyone, myself included, was expecting to buy direct from the raspberrypi.com (not .org) website. So it was the combination of a fundamental shift in distribution being announced at the same time as the devices going on sale (or preorder, or whatever it actually is). Not only was there a rush to buy, but to try and digest what the heck was going on and why it all changed and how to simply place an order.
The problems were further compounded by the "we'll be making an announcement at so-and-so time" which caused everything to be hammered at an exact, predetermined time. I think they should have just made an announcement and not have given prior notice. At least there would have been a slight ramp up in traffic over an hour or two, instead of a literal DDOS timed down to the minute.
This seems to have gotten lost in the commotion, but they also announced that the $25 Model A will be produced with the same amount of RAM as the $35 Model B (256 MB). Originally the Model A was only going to have 128 MB, so now the only difference is the Model B has an ethernet port. The Model A is going into production immediately.
I watched a good bit of TNG on Netflix recently (I skipped over the worst episodes, 20% or so). I did some research into the rather poor picture quality, and I'm kind of surprised to hear of this BR version. From what I read, the "problem" with TNG was that although everything was originally shot on 35mm film, all of the editing and some of the special effects were done on video tape. Editing on video tape saved a lot of money and time during the production process. Thus the quality of the finished version of the show was merely broadcast / VHS quality of the day, and nothing better. Now maybe people were just making stuff up and that information is incorrect, but I was under the impression the picture quality was fuzzy and poor because, well, that's how it was produced originally.
So the BR version must involve more than just digitizing the original film stock - they must have re-edited all the various camera shots together again, matching the original edits, because it never existed as a complete version in film in the first place.
Here's a source for that info, although this is not where I had heard of the video editing before:
http://geekchocolate.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=174:star-trek-the-next-generation-the-next-level-
It's good to see that CBS put the time and money into doing this properly.
I find it disturbing that my tapeworms will outlive me.
Anyone else notice the similarity between "Çavdar" an "cadaver", in a story that already parallel's a certain work by Mary Shelley in a number of ways.
Forget the radiation and heat. The trauma from the g-forces of that flight and landing would have killed anyone easily.
Morse code would not be optimal by a long shot, however it could be optimized for touch screen input by using 3 finger input. One finger would be dit, another dah, and the third indicates end of letter, so that no pausing is required. To calibrate and begin input, the user would place all 3 fingers on the screen at once so the software would know which area is which.
Some letters, like 'A' could be entered incredibly fast. Say your index finger is dit, middle finger is dah, and ring finger is end letter. You would roll your fingers "1-2-3" and A would be keyed. That particular letter could be entered nearly as fast as a single keypress. Letter H would be worst-case, as you would have to tab your index finger 4 times then your ring finger once. Continuous Dits or Dahs in a sequence would be the slowest method of input, and unfortunately S is three dits, so it would be somewhat slow and is a frequently used letter.
Unfortunately Morse code was not optimized for paddle keyers originally, so we see repetition of dits or dahs for some frequently used letters.
Maybe I'm just becoming more and more cynical in my old age, but how in the world can online petitions be trusted? We can't even trust electronic voting machines, purpose built through and through to be infallible (I'm not saying they are, but that the were built under that premise from the ground up). Who would actually trust the results from one of these websites? Granted, I've never used one, but what are they doing? Requiring a valid credit card number to prevent multiple signatures? Is CAPTCHA so advanced now that we can rest assured that the majority of the "signatures" aren't fake?
The $50 roku does come with a remote control and free shipping which the $35 raspberry pi does not have.
And WiFi, which is a biggie. If they produce a Raspberry Pi with integrated WiFi at the pricepoint of the roku, well, roku should be very worried. Let's say a Raspberry Pi can be produced for $50 with Wifi instead of Ethernet. For under $5 more you could add an IR receiver, a dirt cheap infrared remote (heck, or just use your favorite remote from some other device), an enclosure and wall-wart USB power supply. Now imagine if some startup or hobbyist set all that up, worked out the kinks, and sold it as a complete package online for around $70. I think they could make some pretty decent money.
My hunch is that Raspberry Pi is going to be driving many commercial products of that sort - auto PCs, home alarm systems, you name it. I predict the day that you buy a certain consumer device from Walmart, and if you were to open up the enclosure, you'd see a Raspberry Pi running the show.
That is somewhat more than the naysayers claim (barely enough to run a watch, etc) but is not enough to be useful.
Sorry, but you're off by several orders of magnitude. A wrist watch consumes microwatts of power - around 1 micro watt (Slashdot seems to strip the micro symbol). Thus 40 watts is enough to power 4 million wristwatches.
Seiko makes a watch with an IC powered by only 25 nano watts of power!
Windows Phone 7 is C# only, which is why I don't support the platform with my games (99% of my C++ code is shared between the iOS and Android builds, which is how it should be). So if Windows 8 developers can "reuse — by far — most of their code" does that mean Windows 8 is C# only too, or that Windows Phone 8 will allow 3rd part apps to be written in C++?
IMO, if Windows Phone 8 doesn't support C++, it is dead in the water from the perspective of 3rd party apps. Only the really big players have the resources to completely rewrite their iOS or Android apps (mainly games, which usually aren't intimately tied to the native GUI) in C#. That is one of the reasons there aren't many apps for Windows Mobile 7, and certainly why there isn't as much commonality as you see between iOS and Android apps. If MS had half a brain they would allow development in C++, and include APIs like OpenGL ES which is supported by both Android and iOS, which will make it very easy for developers like me to release my games for Windows Mobile 8.
Merging science bodies. Sounds kinky.
In what way is your tablet making wireless use of a monitor? Are you talking about a computer workstation, or just a standalone monitor?
I can't see ad-hoc networking being very useful for instrumentation. I would think you'd want sure fire, dedicated, reliable data capture and not random hodge-podge as far as that goes. For example, an instrument in the lab finds Tablet A and dumps its cached data to that tablet. The user of Tablet A promptly leaves the building and the data is now stuck on his device which is out of range. Worse, Tablet A is then dropped in a stream of molten lava in the field, and the data from that instrument is lost for good.
I think you need to better define exactly what you're even wanting proximity detection for in the first place - specifically, when two devices find one another, what is the point? Printers are one of the few things that makes some sense for proximity, but even in that case, how many printers are you talking about that it is too tedious to pick the desired printer from a list? What if you don't want to print to the closest printer, but the one nearest your office? Or the printer back at the office while you're out in the field? I would think printers in a lab would be part of the infrastructure, and not an ad-hoc wifi network. Further, you're usually better off with your tablet connecting to a WAP and accessing the LAN, instead of trying to wirelessly connect to individual devices like printers directly. In that case the whole concept of proximity is out the window unless your talking about PAN (bluetooth) type peripherals like keyboards and mice.
WAPs are usually strategically located for maximum wireless coverage, whereas things like printers and instruments are situated in entirely different locations where they are easy to reach (and thus suboptimal from a wireless perspective). Proximity could actually be a bad thing - it is really just a restriction. Wouldn't you want to be able to access a specific instrument whether or not you were in direct wireless range of that device?
Back in high school our band performed at EPCOT, and that night, to keep all the kids in their hotel rooms, the chaperones put tape on each door. If a student left their room, then the tape on the outside of the door would be broken loose and they would get in trouble. However there was a fatal flaw. Late that night when we were sneaking around the hotel, we simply removed the tape from a dozen other rooms.
The asteroid was discovered two days ago on the 25th, and its closest approach occurs today. Not much time there to get the shuttle back from the Smithsonian, haul it down to Florida, refit it with all the stuff they took out, and launch Bruce Willis to destroy the asteroid. Good thing it's not a larger asteroid on an actual collision course. (Yeah, I know, the shuttle isn't actually at the Smithsonian yet)
Yes, the headline is open to misinterpretation. The article is really about a new game called Australia, which will probably get an 18+ rating. Game must be pretty obscure, because I've never heard of it, so I'm not sure why it made the Slashdot headlines.
5 justices who think the expectation of privacy involved in one's movements should provide 4th amendment protection when long-term electronic tracking is used, regardless of whether trespass occurs, and at least 1 who thinks both apply.
So at least for some of the justices, the mere ability to track a person's every move (or simply that of their vehicle) raises serious privacy concerns? Well that would apply to having someone tail a suspect and keep an eye on their car, tracking a person via public security cameras, using a drone to hover above and track them where they go, etc. I'm glad that some of them aren't limiting the rights to the mere physical technicality of how it is applied, but I'm somewhat surprised they were willing to possibly reach so far with this ruling. There would be ramifications in a number of law enforcement areas, even with things as simple as following a suspect with an unmarked (or marked!) car.
The MegaUpload guys, through their actions, have been nailed fair and square. This is their choice. They took the lucrative, but risky, path, of actively courting piracy. Their business model is wholly different than that of DropBox.
What blows my mind is that this Kim Dotcom guy could be THAT greedy. Obviously he has some minimal amount of required intelligence to get the infrastructure and technology in place to operate at the massive scale that MU was at. However, it seems to me that anyone in their right mind would bail from something so risky after reaping a few tens of millions of dollars. He could have stopped a year or two ago, after putting away millions of dollars, and claimed that although he tried to run a legitimate, legal online business, too many people were taking advantage of his site in ways he didn't intend or condone, but it would require too many resources to try and police all the uploaded files. So his only recourse was to shut down the sites and close up shop. He'd have almost certainly escaped any legal problems once everything was shut down, and he could've just quietly taken his money and lived high off the hog for the rest of his life.
But no, this guy was greedy. REALLY greedy. $4.9 million in cars alone at his main residence. $24 million dollar estate. $12,000 PER DAY rent for their office headquarters in Hong Kong. Money was his downfall, that's for sure.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/01/21/megaupload-founder-kim-dotcom-by-the-numbers/?iid=biz-main-mostpop2
Mod parent up. My thoughts exactly. If they can already reach out and both prosecute and shut down sites located in other countries, then why do they need even more power? Less judicial oversight? More power and control to the "copyright holders"?