Not sure why the default response to "I don't give a shit about YouTube" is always to give me links to YouTube.
It's like saying I don't eat meat and you suggesting chicken.
You think I'm going to install Flash so I can find out the wonder of the two links you provided? Thanks, but no -- I genuinely don't care about internet videos, and I genuinely despise Flash.
Well, since the TOS for a site have been held as legally binding by courts, it's Microsoft.
If I'm legally bound by the TOS, surely Microsoft must be? They can't just decide they're going to be non-compliant because it's inconvenient.
Microsoft isn't championing for your rights, they're championing for their right to try to provide software which makes their platform more attractive, and they're doing it by violating the terms for YouTube. You know, to pad out their own bottom line and make sure people buy their phones.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that Google is moving away from their pledge of do no evil, but that doesn't make Microsoft the good guys here. It makes them leeching bastards who figure they're big enough to ignore the TOS for something.
I just ask that the law be consistently applied -- which means both Microsoft and your average Joe are bound by it unless Microsoft signs a deal with Google giving them better access.
Plugins are there for every browser and the worst offenders tend to be things like Flash which aren't always easily avoided
Except that Flash is easily avoided... if you don't want Flash, don't install it, and don't use sites which require it.
You might decide that there's stuff you can't live without, and I definitely agree that in company environments it can be damned near impossible as it seems there's usually one or two things you need which requires it.
But if you decide you don't want it and won't use it, it's actually not difficult at all to avoid. I've been doing it for over a decade, and it hasn't been on any of my own machines. My work machines, I've never been able to avoid having it, but only in IE which is the browser of last resort for those company things you have to visit a few times each year (like the ethics training courses we all know and love).
You just have to decide that not having it is worth more than the sites which need it, and there hasn't been a single site which made we think "OK, for this I'll install Flash".
In this case, I'm not sure how much a lawyer could help you. They have your IP, you can try arguing that IP != person, but you're pretty much caught red handed at this point making the settlement a lot more attractive.
If someone came to me with my IP address as a claim of proof I've downloaded a movie (which I've never done), I'd refer them to Arkell V Pressdam, because their proof would be utter crap.
An IP address isn't proof of anything, and it certainly isn't proof than any specific person did something.
And, let's face it, it's not like they have a great track record of getting the right information -- or, for that matter, that the people doing these suits fall into the category of ethical.
I can make up IP addresses and claim all sorts of things, but it sure as heck doesn't constitute proof of anything.
Given that our current understanding is that the universe has no end, is infinite, then the number of any type of planet you could imagine would be infinite.
I'm not sure it's understood to be truly 'infinite', but 'so damned big as to be infinite for purposes of discussion'.
And there was a time (not even all that long ago) when it was thought that planets around other stars would be very rare and uncommon.
In university I hung out with a bunch of astrophysicists, and the idea of finding exoplanets was still something we weren't sure of, and it was assumed there was a relatively small number of stars which would have planets.
It's only just over 20 years since we confirmed the first one, and in that time the rate at which we detect them keeps going up at a pretty staggering rate. To the point now that if you look at Drake's equation, it's hard not to conclude that, somewhere, some form of life has probably evolved elsewhere in the universe, and probably even intelligent life existed at some point.
Admittedly, the distances and time spans are so vast as to make it highly unlikely we'd ever find them. But, to me at least, it just seems so improbable that we're the only life to have evolved anywhere in the entire universe.
Oooh, encryption, encryption which they'll open up for governments to look at upon demand. I would feel absolutely confident in using encryption which can be bypassed like it wasn't there.
I mean, if it's encrypted it must be secure and good, right?
No, because since they can (and do) bypass it, their encryption is utterly useless. They've already demonstrated they can and will obviate your encryption.
So, I ask again, why is BBM so important? Because your argument for encryption is garbage when they can step around that.
It was inevitable, BBM was too important to fade away with the handset business
So, I'll admit my ignorance up front before I ask... why was it too important?
It's basically a proprietary version of SMS isn't it? And as I recall they've bent over for the Indian government and probably others to allow a MITM-type interception, and have probably done it for others now that they've set the precedent.
So, what benefit is there to me as someone with an Android phone to be able to use BBM? Does it actually get me something extra that I don't have now?
This seems more like a desperate attempt to make one of their few distinguishing features available to others, but I'm just not sure of what the benefit of that feature is for most people.
I wonder if this has any chance of actually saving Windows 8.
I find it amusing they were so out of touch with actual users they decided to go ahead with this in the first place.
I've never even seen Win 8, but I certainly have seen the stories and people saying how much they dislike it... not even sure if what they're restoring even puts a dent in the dislike for the product.
This is the kind of about-face which usually indicates the company made a stupid choice and are now trying desperately to pretend like it didn't happen.
I'm sure most of us have dealt with sales reps over the years, and seen all sorts of claims of bigger/better/faster/cheaper, but they're often unsubstantiated by anything.
We had a scenario with a vendor a while back where functionality we were relying on wasn't going to be in their next version until a year after it was too late for us. (Add on component we'd been using for years.)
So, we basically forced them into extending support since the only reason we couldn't upgrade was because of their inability to deliver functionality we already had.
Then they spent the next year constantly asking us when we would be upgrading, and conveniently trying to forget about the signed contract they'd given us to extend support and telling us we were about to become unsupported.
You need to work with your vendor, but you sure as hell don't need to take what they tell you at face value without something to support it.
At the end of the day, most of the salesmen (because that's what your rep is) are more worried about their commission check than anything else, and will certainly mislead your or pressure you to do something which doesn't really benefit you.
So, as I fully expected, this whole campaign about users being "Scroogled" that Microsoft has been involved in is misdirection, and they do the same thing.
Wanna bet they also scrape your hotmail and everything else in the same way they accuse Google of doing?
Do you consider the pope to be a religious fanatic?
Does the Pope advocate for the destruction of the evidence of other people's religion and history, or call for people's death?
The Pope is the head of a church, but I'm not certain any of the last few have done anything I'd think is reason to call 'religious fanatic'. The Westboro folks maybe.
The Taliban, who think everybody who doesn't agree with them deserves death, well, now those guys I'll call fanatics.
They didn't say they were going to give your name out.
They certainly implied it since they're saying they will contact your friends and family and neighbors to see if they have any knowledge of this "alleged activity" (which they don't actually state anything about what is alleged).
So the threat certainly reads to me like they're suggesting they might be naming you in the process of saying "hey, do you know anything about this porn this guy is alleged to have downloaded".
From what I can see of that letter, it's thinly veiled threats, an extortion attempt, and no details at all on what is alleged to have been downloaded. I don't see how this is anything other than the same old illegal tactics which got them into so much trouble in the first place.
Until PayPal is actually regulated like the bank it pretends not to be, I sure as hell wouldn't use them, and I sure as hell wouldn't set up my phone to use them.
The best way to create customers is to tell them that they are dirty, disgusting perverts and that if their family and friends knew what they where doing they'd be disowned.
They're not trying to create customers, they're trying to find people who are willing to cough up the extortion money instead of being named and shamed.
Do you think these guys have a product they're trying to sell? Their business model is shaking down people for settlement money.
These guys might find themselves getting some pretty major smackdown from a court beyond what has already happened.
This is straight up extortion, and at this rate, I wouldn't be surprised to see someone slap them with RICO charges or something.
They don't have any evidence which can stand up in court, so they're resorting to smearing you in front of your family on the assertion that you must have violated a copyright they don't own.
If ever lawyers needed some sanctions from the court, it's these guys. Epic douchebags.
You probably won't learn those spells until at least your 4th year at Hogwart's, and you might need to find some people who are pretty skilled at magic and mischief (and maybe even turning themselves into an animagus).;-)
Hindsight is 20/20. At the time, even respected financial types declared publicly there would be no end to the housing boom, and therefore you're a fool not to buy in.
What was really annoying, is you had people like Alan Greenspan acting like this was free money and people should get in on it.
When your policy makers buy into fantasy economics which people were saying were crap even before the melt down, how the hell can you expect good outcomes? Hell, it was in part the financial institutions telling the government what policy should be and giving them free reign to do what they wanted. Then they foisted their bad debts off on the rest of the world and packaged it like secured debt.
Unfortunately in most cases, economics is an ideology, not a objective set of facts -- people believe in a certain outcome as the obvious (and only) outcome because that's what they want to have happen. So people fervently believe absurd things, and then make decisions which affect everybody. Both the left and the right do this.
I'm often hard pressed to wonder how economics can call itself a science, it's mostly ideology with math and lots of assumptions behind it.
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Not sure why the default response to "I don't give a shit about YouTube" is always to give me links to YouTube.
It's like saying I don't eat meat and you suggesting chicken.
You think I'm going to install Flash so I can find out the wonder of the two links you provided? Thanks, but no -- I genuinely don't care about internet videos, and I genuinely despise Flash.
Well, since the TOS for a site have been held as legally binding by courts, it's Microsoft.
If I'm legally bound by the TOS, surely Microsoft must be? They can't just decide they're going to be non-compliant because it's inconvenient.
Microsoft isn't championing for your rights, they're championing for their right to try to provide software which makes their platform more attractive, and they're doing it by violating the terms for YouTube. You know, to pad out their own bottom line and make sure people buy their phones.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that Google is moving away from their pledge of do no evil, but that doesn't make Microsoft the good guys here. It makes them leeching bastards who figure they're big enough to ignore the TOS for something.
I just ask that the law be consistently applied -- which means both Microsoft and your average Joe are bound by it unless Microsoft signs a deal with Google giving them better access.
Who cares about random cat videos? I watch maybe 5 YouTube videos a year.
Now they'll decree the press are terrorists and say it's illegal to do this since it prevents 'awful' monitoring.
I think this whole snooping on the reporters thing has them deciding to fight back and send a big "F you".
Except that Flash is easily avoided ... if you don't want Flash, don't install it, and don't use sites which require it.
You might decide that there's stuff you can't live without, and I definitely agree that in company environments it can be damned near impossible as it seems there's usually one or two things you need which requires it.
But if you decide you don't want it and won't use it, it's actually not difficult at all to avoid. I've been doing it for over a decade, and it hasn't been on any of my own machines. My work machines, I've never been able to avoid having it, but only in IE which is the browser of last resort for those company things you have to visit a few times each year (like the ethics training courses we all know and love).
You just have to decide that not having it is worth more than the sites which need it, and there hasn't been a single site which made we think "OK, for this I'll install Flash".
If someone came to me with my IP address as a claim of proof I've downloaded a movie (which I've never done), I'd refer them to Arkell V Pressdam, because their proof would be utter crap.
An IP address isn't proof of anything, and it certainly isn't proof than any specific person did something.
And, let's face it, it's not like they have a great track record of getting the right information -- or, for that matter, that the people doing these suits fall into the category of ethical.
I can make up IP addresses and claim all sorts of things, but it sure as heck doesn't constitute proof of anything.
Private donations? The idea of drones doing constant overwatch isn't going to make many people happy.
Because, of course, sooner or later this gets used for speeding tickets and all of the inevitable mission creep something like this will undergo.
I'm not sure it's understood to be truly 'infinite', but 'so damned big as to be infinite for purposes of discussion'.
And there was a time (not even all that long ago) when it was thought that planets around other stars would be very rare and uncommon.
In university I hung out with a bunch of astrophysicists, and the idea of finding exoplanets was still something we weren't sure of, and it was assumed there was a relatively small number of stars which would have planets.
It's only just over 20 years since we confirmed the first one, and in that time the rate at which we detect them keeps going up at a pretty staggering rate. To the point now that if you look at Drake's equation, it's hard not to conclude that, somewhere, some form of life has probably evolved elsewhere in the universe, and probably even intelligent life existed at some point.
Admittedly, the distances and time spans are so vast as to make it highly unlikely we'd ever find them. But, to me at least, it just seems so improbable that we're the only life to have evolved anywhere in the entire universe.
Oooh, encryption, encryption which they'll open up for governments to look at upon demand. I would feel absolutely confident in using encryption which can be bypassed like it wasn't there.
I mean, if it's encrypted it must be secure and good, right?
No, because since they can (and do) bypass it, their encryption is utterly useless. They've already demonstrated they can and will obviate your encryption.
So, I ask again, why is BBM so important? Because your argument for encryption is garbage when they can step around that.
And by free, you mean "with huge privacy implications", right?
So, I'll admit my ignorance up front before I ask ... why was it too important?
It's basically a proprietary version of SMS isn't it? And as I recall they've bent over for the Indian government and probably others to allow a MITM-type interception, and have probably done it for others now that they've set the precedent.
So, what benefit is there to me as someone with an Android phone to be able to use BBM? Does it actually get me something extra that I don't have now?
This seems more like a desperate attempt to make one of their few distinguishing features available to others, but I'm just not sure of what the benefit of that feature is for most people.
I wonder if this has any chance of actually saving Windows 8.
I find it amusing they were so out of touch with actual users they decided to go ahead with this in the first place.
I've never even seen Win 8, but I certainly have seen the stories and people saying how much they dislike it ... not even sure if what they're restoring even puts a dent in the dislike for the product.
This is the kind of about-face which usually indicates the company made a stupid choice and are now trying desperately to pretend like it didn't happen.
You know, they might have renamed it, but as far as I know all of those @hotmail.com addresses are still valid and in use.
A marketing re-brand is just that, the service in question is still there.
I'm sure most of us have dealt with sales reps over the years, and seen all sorts of claims of bigger/better/faster/cheaper, but they're often unsubstantiated by anything.
We had a scenario with a vendor a while back where functionality we were relying on wasn't going to be in their next version until a year after it was too late for us. (Add on component we'd been using for years.)
So, we basically forced them into extending support since the only reason we couldn't upgrade was because of their inability to deliver functionality we already had.
Then they spent the next year constantly asking us when we would be upgrading, and conveniently trying to forget about the signed contract they'd given us to extend support and telling us we were about to become unsupported.
You need to work with your vendor, but you sure as hell don't need to take what they tell you at face value without something to support it.
At the end of the day, most of the salesmen (because that's what your rep is) are more worried about their commission check than anything else, and will certainly mislead your or pressure you to do something which doesn't really benefit you.
So, as I fully expected, this whole campaign about users being "Scroogled" that Microsoft has been involved in is misdirection, and they do the same thing.
Wanna bet they also scrape your hotmail and everything else in the same way they accuse Google of doing?
LOL, WTF?
Does the Pope advocate for the destruction of the evidence of other people's religion and history, or call for people's death?
The Pope is the head of a church, but I'm not certain any of the last few have done anything I'd think is reason to call 'religious fanatic'. The Westboro folks maybe.
The Taliban, who think everybody who doesn't agree with them deserves death, well, now those guys I'll call fanatics.
They certainly implied it since they're saying they will contact your friends and family and neighbors to see if they have any knowledge of this "alleged activity" (which they don't actually state anything about what is alleged).
So the threat certainly reads to me like they're suggesting they might be naming you in the process of saying "hey, do you know anything about this porn this guy is alleged to have downloaded".
From what I can see of that letter, it's thinly veiled threats, an extortion attempt, and no details at all on what is alleged to have been downloaded. I don't see how this is anything other than the same old illegal tactics which got them into so much trouble in the first place.
No shit.
Until PayPal is actually regulated like the bank it pretends not to be, I sure as hell wouldn't use them, and I sure as hell wouldn't set up my phone to use them.
They're not a company I have any trust in.
They're not trying to create customers, they're trying to find people who are willing to cough up the extortion money instead of being named and shamed.
Do you think these guys have a product they're trying to sell? Their business model is shaking down people for settlement money.
These guys might find themselves getting some pretty major smackdown from a court beyond what has already happened.
This is straight up extortion, and at this rate, I wouldn't be surprised to see someone slap them with RICO charges or something.
They don't have any evidence which can stand up in court, so they're resorting to smearing you in front of your family on the assertion that you must have violated a copyright they don't own.
If ever lawyers needed some sanctions from the court, it's these guys. Epic douchebags.
You probably won't learn those spells until at least your 4th year at Hogwart's, and you might need to find some people who are pretty skilled at magic and mischief (and maybe even turning themselves into an animagus). ;-)
Well, it's invisible to that spectrum. And if you're invisible to radar, it is a limited form of 'invisible'.
Besides, inradarible sounds stupid. :-P
Why? Planes are designed to be landed. The space shuttle is designed to be landed.
The ISS, not so much.
So any talk about 'de-orbiting' it in any sense which isn't a fiery splash into the ocean is pretty much a joke.
I'm sure it would have been possible to design the space station such that you could do a re-entry. But they didn't.
What was really annoying, is you had people like Alan Greenspan acting like this was free money and people should get in on it.
When your policy makers buy into fantasy economics which people were saying were crap even before the melt down, how the hell can you expect good outcomes? Hell, it was in part the financial institutions telling the government what policy should be and giving them free reign to do what they wanted. Then they foisted their bad debts off on the rest of the world and packaged it like secured debt.
Unfortunately in most cases, economics is an ideology, not a objective set of facts -- people believe in a certain outcome as the obvious (and only) outcome because that's what they want to have happen. So people fervently believe absurd things, and then make decisions which affect everybody. Both the left and the right do this.
I'm often hard pressed to wonder how economics can call itself a science, it's mostly ideology with math and lots of assumptions behind it.