Yeah - but at least I'd have my software check some checksums on the allegedly pirated files - then have a human go check them out BEFORE mailing out threatening letters.
This is probably more difficult than you think. If we asume that the checksum will be MD5's, you would need MD5's for every version of office in every language, compressed with every major compression utility. Right there you have a few thousand MD5 sums. On top of that, a one byte change will cause the MD5's to not "hit".
I do agree that more checks should be required before sending out emails such as this one (a human actually checking the files quickly would be nice), but the idea of spidering the web for illegal software is not a bad one in itself. I get atleast 5 search engine hits a day to my website, One hit extra a month (or however often it may be) will not make any difference in my cost for keeping the site up.
In the end, pirated software is illegal. Wether people like to use it or not because of the cost factor should be disregarded. Would the software industry be better off without the BSA? Probably not.
Having that said, I must add that I am no saint myself, and I don't really like the BSA. But after thinking about it for a while, I do understand what they are trying to accomplish, and why.
I found this article really interesting, mainly because it made me think about the American schoolsystem.
I grew up in Sweden, and I spent my first 11 schoolyears there. We had some popular kids, and we also had some kids that everyone disliked.
However, we only really had three groups. Popular, middle, hated. I would say that popular and hated might have accounted for 10% of the students, and the remaining 90% ended up in middle.
This article made me think that maybe the problem with this whole popularity thing is something that can be solved by the school / schoolsystem. In Sweden they constantly work on the wellbeeing of all students. It doesn't seem like they care about this at all in the US.
You will always have more and less popular kids, but it seems to me that the US schools are like India or something.
In India, the lower you are, the less rights you have. In US schools, it seems like the less popular you are, the less people you can associate with, and the less parties you can go to.
I have it for the Dreamcast.
I have about 500 NES and SNES roms with the emulator. Plays pretty ok. I love the Dreamcast because of all the emulators for it.
I don't think this encryption is unbreakable.
To me it sounds like they are relying on the massive keylength. Just because it has a large key, it is unbreakable.
Large random keys will make it more difficult to break the encryption, but unbreakable is just wrong. A one-time cipher is still more secure than this thing. They should take distributed computing into account as well. Just look at some of the encryptions that have been broken by Distributed.net, and how quickly they did it.
The only unbreakable encryption I believe is possible is the one described by Simon Singh in the book "The Code Book". The encryption described in this book relies on the vibration of photons. Due to the nature of photons, it is not possible to sniff for the key.
Of course, this encryption is only theoretical. By the time we can implement it, we may already be able to break it.
Bla bla bla bla... we are, again, going to attempt to sell music online that you can only play in our players for a limited amount of time or for as long as you keep paying us. You mp3 player will be useless, and don't even think about burning CD's
Sell non-encrypted mp3's online, or any other format I can convert to MP3. I want to play MY music in MY mp3 player and MY CD player!
I know the article didn't say what format they were going to use, but I am open for anyone that wants to bet against me when I say that the music will be encrypted in one way on another.
As was I, until the day the Diablo II xpack was released... While it was fun for a while, and really enhanced the gameplay, it also made the ladder system totally pointless. It was so easy to get experience that people could reach level 99 in a day. I liked the D2 xpack a lot, but it also ruined D2 for me...
I hated the xpack for Diablo II. I have yet to buy a Blizzard game after that horrible expension pack. I hated because it completly changed the characters. Having three characters I had worked on for a year become completly useless kinda sucked! The worst thing was that if you wanted to play on battle.net, you had to get parts of the xpack. This pissed me off more than anything else, as I think it should be a choice wether or not you want to apply an expansion (which is why it's differentiated from a patch). Basically, in my opinion, Blizzard forced you to by the xpack for D2 by forcing on the bad parts of it on you.
I just hope they don't pull something similar with W3.
After reading this post, I just couldn't help myself from answering.
Actually, swedes don't know much about Sauna.
Why do I get the feeling you are finnish?:)
If you haven't realized it yet, people from finland don't really like swedes, and the same goes the other way around.
I think this goes for a lot of neighbouring countries though. The US is the fifth canadian territory, right?:)
Anyways, the point is that saunas in Sweden are not bad. The bad examples you gave is something I have never come across, and I lived in Sweden for over 18 years. There is even a sauna in my dad's house back in Sweden, and we always heat it to about +80C.
Who can guess what the top query from canada is?
Jepp... you got it... "britney spears".
... and here I was wondering why they made canadiens look stupid in southpark.
There should be a section on zeitgeist called: Top site to cause a Denial-Of-Service on other sites... I'm sure/. would win:)
but they really should have done so when they designed Windows.
I think you have to remember that Microsoft used to put functionality before security. There is a tradeoff between functionality and security. For example, do you allow mailing functionality within the VBS language and the macro language?
There is a reason why there are over 20 worms that can spread using MSN messenger, and none that can spread using Yahoo messenger.
However, times change, and people change.
Now people put security before functionality. Microsoft is just going with the times...
Leaked must be the wrong word. This is a screener, and it started in cinemas last Thursday in the UK/Ireland.
I don't call this leaked. Instead, I would asume this to be completly normal. This what happens to all big movies.
First you get a screener, and then someone manages to produce a decent copy. Finally you get the DVDrip.
As far as I know, this is the normal thing for all movies...
Anyways, in regards to the movie, I must say that I liked it. I think it was better than the first one, as more things happened all the time. It is fairly long, roughly three hours, but definatly worth seeing. See it in the cinema, as watching the screener (in my opinion) completly destroys the experience. The sound is really good and really helps you get into the "Harry Potter atmosphere".
Not sure where you live, but if you are in western Europe, you can always sign up with the Open University.
I am getting a bachelors degree in computer and mathematical science myself right now, while working for a tech company as a software engineer. This is working out pretty well, although I am only studying half time.
I think it would have been very difficult for me to do it any other way. I mean, I don't think I could have handled full time uni and work at the same time. One of my co-workers tried to do it, and after 1,5 years he quit. Basically, he just couldn't keep it up and in the end he choose uni over work.
My advice to you, try to study on distance, and don't throw yourself at it too hard. I mean, start by studying half time. If it goes well, then try full time.
Good luck:)
Most shops in europe sell players regionfree, and most are also willing to chip them.
Over here, it is completly legal. Therefore, you should be able to find a LOT of brittish sites that do it. A search on google will give you hundreds of them...
I find the difference between Europe and the US a little amusing. Over here, I would say that atleast 60% of sold DVD-players are regionfree. It is completly legal, and most big chains sell all their players regionfree.
Even if you manage to pick up a player that is not, then making it region free is something most stores will do.
I'd say there's several major reasons to switch.. the fact that you can block pop up advertising is a major reason. The fact that is has far superior cookie and password management is a major reason. The fact that it has a better email and usenet client (than OE) is a major reason.
This may be major reasons for a/.'er, but I find it unlikely this is going to convice any "normal" user to switch from IE to Mozilla.
If Mozilla wants to gain market shares, they MUST make it look more like Windows. A fancy GUI is unfortunately the easiest way to get a "normal" user, not good security. Microsoft has proven that beyond any reasonable doubt.
Under DMCA (at least the way the writers of it have used it), anyone attempting to reverse engineer your virus (or whatever) and provide an
antigen, is liable to you and you can sue them.
I believe you are wrong. Working for an antivirus company, I am certain I remember a clause in the DMCA that says that malware is allowed to be reverse engineered.
If this was not the case, I would be breaking the DMCA on a daily basis.
I already saw a few posts saying things like: "it's useless, it easy to get around etc etc".
We all know you can get around this program. I didn't try installing it, but I'm sure it isn't even hard to prevent it from launching.
However, the idea isn't bad. I'm sure this program will get other people to write similar things, and maybe someone will create a program that is really hard to get around.
In any case, I think that if you really have data you want to protect, you should probably have a lot of protection. This one should only be one amongst many. If used like this, I think this program is great.
Hehe... maybe the underpant gnomes can help out with step 2:)
Interesting article, even though he's dead wrong on one point...
But I've pulled hard drives out of IBM computers and slammed them into Dell computers and, boom, the system comes up perfectly and runs as if it were still in the old computer.
Microsoft might be taking a small loss or just operating on a razor thin margin with the XBox but they're not losing hundreds of dollars per freaking console.
Ehh... you know that Microsoft lost $10 - $15 on each sold console when the first launced it (I am too lazy to find a link for you, but I'm sure a quick search on google will get you a few), they said it themselves.
Now, I may not be a great mathematician, but if you add $100 to $10, then you get a total of $115:)
So, this is probably what they are loosing for each sold console today. Alright... it's not several hundred, but it is over one hundred... which is way more than any other console.
Don't you think there's something wrong with the X-Box if Microsoft has to loose that much to get them sold??
I was looking around on the creative site, and I could only find a link to voip from the US site. Also, the call charges are all in dollars and only from calls originating from the US.
Can voip be bought and used in Europe? If not, can an american version be bought in the US and used in Europe?
To me, this sounds really good. It sounds way better that normal PC-PC calls, since you can make PC-Phone calls.
I'm just waiting for the day I can hook up a normal phone to my computer, pick it up and get a dialtone, and dial a normal number... that would be cool... wouldn't it?:)
Slashdot Mirror
...for the one click banner advert patent!
Yeah - but at least I'd have my software check some checksums on the allegedly pirated files - then have a human go check them out BEFORE mailing out threatening letters.
This is probably more difficult than you think. If we asume that the checksum will be MD5's, you would need MD5's for every version of office in every language, compressed with every major compression utility. Right there you have a few thousand MD5 sums. On top of that, a one byte change will cause the MD5's to not "hit".
I do agree that more checks should be required before sending out emails such as this one (a human actually checking the files quickly would be nice), but the idea of spidering the web for illegal software is not a bad one in itself. I get atleast 5 search engine hits a day to my website, One hit extra a month (or however often it may be) will not make any difference in my cost for keeping the site up.
In the end, pirated software is illegal. Wether people like to use it or not because of the cost factor should be disregarded. Would the software industry be better off without the BSA? Probably not.
Having that said, I must add that I am no saint myself, and I don't really like the BSA. But after thinking about it for a while, I do understand what they are trying to accomplish, and why.
I found this article really interesting, mainly because it made me think about the American schoolsystem.
I grew up in Sweden, and I spent my first 11 schoolyears there. We had some popular kids, and we also had some kids that everyone disliked. However, we only really had three groups. Popular, middle, hated. I would say that popular and hated might have accounted for 10% of the students, and the remaining 90% ended up in middle.
This article made me think that maybe the problem with this whole popularity thing is something that can be solved by the school / schoolsystem. In Sweden they constantly work on the wellbeeing of all students. It doesn't seem like they care about this at all in the US.
You will always have more and less popular kids, but it seems to me that the US schools are like India or something.
In India, the lower you are, the less rights you have. In US schools, it seems like the less popular you are, the less people you can associate with, and the less parties you can go to.
I have it for the Dreamcast. I have about 500 NES and SNES roms with the emulator. Plays pretty ok. I love the Dreamcast because of all the emulators for it.
I turned an almost useless Nintendo into one that worked perfectly in under an hour at no cost.
:)
Where did you get the free alcohol, cause I'd like some
Now you can make your 8Bit NES as reliable as your linux kernel.
:(
Guess I shouldn't try this then... just recompiled my kernel and now it won't boot
I don't think this encryption is unbreakable. To me it sounds like they are relying on the massive keylength. Just because it has a large key, it is unbreakable.
Large random keys will make it more difficult to break the encryption, but unbreakable is just wrong. A one-time cipher is still more secure than this thing. They should take distributed computing into account as well. Just look at some of the encryptions that have been broken by Distributed.net, and how quickly they did it.
The only unbreakable encryption I believe is possible is the one described by Simon Singh in the book "The Code Book". The encryption described in this book relies on the vibration of photons. Due to the nature of photons, it is not possible to sniff for the key.
Of course, this encryption is only theoretical. By the time we can implement it, we may already be able to break it.
Interesting article.
:-/
This is what I read:
Bla bla bla bla... we are, again, going to attempt to sell music online that you can only play in our players for a limited amount of time or for as long as you keep paying us. You mp3 player will be useless, and don't even think about burning CD's
Sell non-encrypted mp3's online, or any other format I can convert to MP3. I want to play MY music in MY mp3 player and MY CD player!
I know the article didn't say what format they were going to use, but I am open for anyone that wants to bet against me when I say that the music will be encrypted in one way on another.
I wonder if they will ever understand...
As was I, until the day the Diablo II xpack was released... While it was fun for a while, and really enhanced the gameplay, it also made the ladder system totally pointless. It was so easy to get experience that people could reach level 99 in a day. I liked the D2 xpack a lot, but it also ruined D2 for me...
I hated the xpack for Diablo II. I have yet to buy a Blizzard game after that horrible expension pack. I hated because it completly changed the characters. Having three characters I had worked on for a year become completly useless kinda sucked! The worst thing was that if you wanted to play on battle.net, you had to get parts of the xpack. This pissed me off more than anything else, as I think it should be a choice wether or not you want to apply an expansion (which is why it's differentiated from a patch). Basically, in my opinion, Blizzard forced you to by the xpack for D2 by forcing on the bad parts of it on you.
I just hope they don't pull something similar with W3.
After reading this post, I just couldn't help myself from answering.
:)
:)
Actually, swedes don't know much about Sauna.
Why do I get the feeling you are finnish?
If you haven't realized it yet, people from finland don't really like swedes, and the same goes the other way around.
I think this goes for a lot of neighbouring countries though. The US is the fifth canadian territory, right?
Anyways, the point is that saunas in Sweden are not bad. The bad examples you gave is something I have never come across, and I lived in Sweden for over 18 years. There is even a sauna in my dad's house back in Sweden, and we always heat it to about +80C.
It's kinda funny to look at the zeitgeist page.
... and here I was wondering why they made canadiens look stupid in southpark.
/. would win :)
Who can guess what the top query from canada is?
Jepp... you got it... "britney spears".
There should be a section on zeitgeist called: Top site to cause a Denial-Of-Service on other sites... I'm sure
but they really should have done so when they designed Windows.
I think you have to remember that Microsoft used to put functionality before security. There is a tradeoff between functionality and security. For example, do you allow mailing functionality within the VBS language and the macro language? There is a reason why there are over 20 worms that can spread using MSN messenger, and none that can spread using Yahoo messenger.
However, times change, and people change. Now people put security before functionality. Microsoft is just going with the times...
Leaked must be the wrong word. This is a screener, and it started in cinemas last Thursday in the UK/Ireland.
I don't call this leaked. Instead, I would asume this to be completly normal. This what happens to all big movies. First you get a screener, and then someone manages to produce a decent copy. Finally you get the DVDrip. As far as I know, this is the normal thing for all movies...
Anyways, in regards to the movie, I must say that I liked it. I think it was better than the first one, as more things happened all the time. It is fairly long, roughly three hours, but definatly worth seeing. See it in the cinema, as watching the screener (in my opinion) completly destroys the experience. The sound is really good and really helps you get into the "Harry Potter atmosphere".
She's not fictonal. She does exist. If she'd kept her MAC, I'd shag her :)
Not sure where you live, but if you are in western Europe, you can always sign up with the Open University.
:)
I am getting a bachelors degree in computer and mathematical science myself right now, while working for a tech company as a software engineer. This is working out pretty well, although I am only studying half time.
I think it would have been very difficult for me to do it any other way. I mean, I don't think I could have handled full time uni and work at the same time. One of my co-workers tried to do it, and after 1,5 years he quit. Basically, he just couldn't keep it up and in the end he choose uni over work.
My advice to you, try to study on distance, and don't throw yourself at it too hard. I mean, start by studying half time. If it goes well, then try full time. Good luck
Most shops in europe sell players regionfree, and most are also willing to chip them.
Over here, it is completly legal. Therefore, you should be able to find a LOT of brittish sites that do it. A search on google will give you hundreds of them...
I find the difference between Europe and the US a little amusing. Over here, I would say that atleast 60% of sold DVD-players are regionfree. It is completly legal, and most big chains sell all their players regionfree.
Even if you manage to pick up a player that is not, then making it region free is something most stores will do.
I'd say there's several major reasons to switch.. the fact that you can block pop up advertising is a major reason. The fact that is has far superior cookie and password management is a major reason. The fact that it has a better email and usenet client (than OE) is a major reason.
/.'er, but I find it unlikely this is going to convice any "normal" user to switch from IE to Mozilla.
This may be major reasons for a
If Mozilla wants to gain market shares, they MUST make it look more like Windows. A fancy GUI is unfortunately the easiest way to get a "normal" user, not good security.
Microsoft has proven that beyond any reasonable doubt.
Under DMCA (at least the way the writers of it have used it), anyone attempting to reverse engineer your virus (or whatever) and provide an antigen, is liable to you and you can sue them.
I believe you are wrong. Working for an antivirus company, I am certain I remember a clause in the DMCA that says that malware is allowed to be reverse engineered. If this was not the case, I would be breaking the DMCA on a daily basis.
I already saw a few posts saying things like: "it's useless, it easy to get around etc etc".
We all know you can get around this program. I didn't try installing it, but I'm sure it isn't even hard to prevent it from launching.
However, the idea isn't bad. I'm sure this program will get other people to write similar things, and maybe someone will create a program that is really hard to get around.
In any case, I think that if you really have data you want to protect, you should probably have a lot of protection. This one should only be one amongst many. If used like this, I think this program is great.
Hehe... maybe the underpant gnomes can help out with step 2 :)
Interesting article, even though he's dead wrong on one point...
But I've pulled hard drives out of IBM computers and slammed them into Dell computers and, boom, the system comes up perfectly and runs as if it were still in the old computer.
IBM Hardrives don't work in *ANY* computer...
Microsoft might be taking a small loss or just operating on a razor thin margin with the XBox but they're not losing hundreds of dollars per freaking console.
:)
Ehh... you know that Microsoft lost $10 - $15 on each sold console when the first launced it (I am too lazy to find a link for you, but I'm sure a quick search on google will get you a few), they said it themselves.
Now, I may not be a great mathematician, but if you add $100 to $10, then you get a total of $115
So, this is probably what they are loosing for each sold console today. Alright... it's not several hundred, but it is over one hundred... which is way more than any other console.
Don't you think there's something wrong with the X-Box if Microsoft has to loose that much to get them sold??
To save people from having to do the awful copy/paste job, here it is as a proper link :)
I was looking around on the creative site, and I could only find a link to voip from the US site. Also, the call charges are all in dollars and only from calls originating from the US.
:)
Can voip be bought and used in Europe? If not, can an american version be bought in the US and used in Europe?
To me, this sounds really good. It sounds way better that normal PC-PC calls, since you can make PC-Phone calls.
I'm just waiting for the day I can hook up a normal phone to my computer, pick it up and get a dialtone, and dial a normal number... that would be cool... wouldn't it?
...they probably moved all the adverts from kazaa to popup windows on their webpage :)