Where's the "talent?" The only thing he did was read someone's password to initially "hack" the system, and I'll bet $20 that the "remote access program" was something he downloaded from some site with a name like "Teh Supar-3v1L Bl4ck Haxx0rZ La1r!" Giving him a pass because it's a nonviolent crime makes as much sense as letting off anybody who tunnels into a bank because they were clever. He's not talented, he's a sociopath. He should be expelled from school and they should staple a copy of the police report to any transcript they send to a college. You seem to know an awful lot about this guy, have met him personally, and can pass judgement on his persona without blinking an eye. You have also never done something stupid while you were young, never knew anybody who did anything stupid while they were young and grew up to be upstanding citizens, and have always had a fully developed sense of right and wrong. It's almost as if I know you, right ?
If he had put that much effort into studying and learned what he was supposed to, maybe he wouldn't have had to alter any records to get A's? You are assuming an awful lot about that school's security.
I spent a year at a Texan High School once, as a junior. The computer and network security there was so bad, you would not believe it. Changing my grades (or even wreaking REAL mayhem) would have been rather trivial. Just some examples as to what you will find in the wild :
"Student" Network and "Administrative" Network, with different internet connections (T1 on the student network, dialup on the administrative network). Good idea. Implementation : they both run on the same wires, separated by RFC 1918 spaces (one was 10.x.x.x, one was 172.16.x.x). From a computer in the student computer lab, if you looked at wire traffic, you would see plenty of broadcast traffic of both networks.
"Internet Gateway" : 10.X.1.1 was the gateway for my school. telnet 10.X.1.1 gets you into the administrative interface thereof. No password, no IP checks. Trivial to shut it down, trivial to reroute packets. Oh, and 10.Y.1.1 would get me into the gateway of another school in the district. Same configuration. Naive as I was then, when I noticed this I notified my teacher, who encouraged me to call network support at the district; I got connected to an administrator there. The entire exchange was pretty much "Hi, I noticed that under 10.X.1.1 you could telnet into the administrative interface, and it was not password protected. You might want to fix that." "Ok. Please let me talk to your teacher." "Get that student away from the network, and revoke all his privileges." Luckily, my teacher was able to think for himself.
(This was fairly early in my first semester there. Before I left after my second, I checked whether any of this had changed -- the routers were still accessible that way, still unprotected).
Note that I did not even have to look for these things (nor did I, actually). I noticed the broadcast traffic when trying to troubleshoot the network connectivity of a freshly installed Linux box there, and the open router when accidentlly mistyping an IP (I meant to type 10.X.11.1 instead of 10.X.1.1, since 10.X.11.1 was another linux machine I wanted to telnet into; yeah, I know, telnet sucks:)
The grades for that entire school (as well as attendance records, personal information on all the students, etc.) was handled by a UNIX server; guidance councillors would have a telnet session to that server open and do their work through that. When in the councillor's office you could see the IP of that server, as well as that it was a telnet connection. Needless to say, if you had any social engineering skills at all, or were able to read as councillors input their passwords, you would have had full access to all of those records. I did not pursue this, as, quite frankly, I had no interest to do so without supervision and permission. However, that attack vector would have been somewhat trivial (lab machines were running Windows; you could get to the network settings quite easily. Just set up the right address and netmask, and telnet to that machine -- remember, the two networks are connected...)
Another interesting tidbit (and I did this supervised with nmap) : The machine was a HP-UX 9 server with more than a dozen open ports, some of which displaying nice version banners, at least two of which there were known security holes for. I did not mount an attack or exploit on the server, but, quite frankly, if anybody were determined to change their grades, they'd probably have an easy enough time doing so; same for wreaking havoc for the multiple-thousand student body.
Incidentally, the year after I left, they started offering Cisco Networking courses there. One of them dealt with security. I wonder when the first malicious student figured this stuff out; the skills required, however, are not so extensive as to require training equivalent to achieving an excellent academic record.
At risk of being modded down with a baseball bat, this sounds fair. On the face of it, if you buy all the premises, sure, why not. Think just a little more about it and no, it does not. Not at all.
Three warnings should be more than enough. If you are unaware of the infringing use when you get your first warning, you should try to find out who's doing it. If you don't bother, then well that's your own fault. Premises : You assume that all accusations are based in fact, that nobody can be framed easily, and that mistakes are impossible.
The RIAA sent DMCA notices to printers. It is trivial to make those unreviewed crappy opportunistic company-trash products that "track" piracy think that IP X has just downloaded Shrek 3 -- when IP X has done no such thing, ever. Do this 3 times and your neighbour is out his network access (serves him right, letting his tree grow over your yard !) -- or your son's teacher just lost his access since your son's classmate didn't like the grade he got... Or you lose your access because your son's classmate thought it would be a funny prank. This, all, of this, is not your own fault.
If you want to silence a blog you don't like ? Guess what, that just became a whole lot easier.
Review ? What review ? You got 3 warnings, obviously you must be a criminal.
As for mistakes : No judge ever reviews these, no court ever gets to see the accusation, and no ruling is ever dealt as to what constitutes fair use, citation, satire, or plain non-infringement (I can put a file online named Shrek 3.avi and it contains my review of that film in videoform. Want to bet that file won't get flagged, even if it's in a folder called "Reviews" and just 30 mbyte big ?)
It's a whole lot better then being sued for thousands of dollars, at least you get a chance to find out what's happening, or if you are the downloader, to stop with no consequences. Oh, you are assuming that the rights-holders give up their legal right of suing you... Naive. First you lose your internet access, then you get sued. If they feel like it. Furthermore, France does not recognize outlandish statutory damages as the US does ($750k a song ? Oh please.)
You can find out JUST as easily what is happening right now... You get a threatening letter from attorney. You do not get sued straight away (if ever, for rules of evidence REALLY do apply, and evidence gathered by, say, LogiStep in Switzerland is just shoddy and not worthy of that designation).
It's par du course in modern governments. It appeases the soccermoms and those scared-of-the-evil-internet folk. It won't be reversed since your political opponent can then run a smear campaign against you claiming you are protecting childfuckers. It's obscene, has been for a while, and will only get worse.
Also thoroughly ineffective. Check any game on D2D, then check for it on P2P. Notice how none of the ones on D2D are not also on P2P ? Protection failed, customer hampered.
The traditional notions of privacy are no longer sufficient. We need a legal affirmation of privacy as a right here in America. While that would be splendid, it would not curtail any actions taken by border agents -- seeing as how their subjects are not IN America, yet, and they have the power to deny entry.
Think about it: If the same data could travel freely from state to state over the wire, what kind of restriction should one apply at the border? It all has to appear secure so the fearful masses are appeased. There is no actualy security achieved by this, but at least Uncle Bob in TN believes that the evil terrorists with their childporn-computers cannot attack his hometown because the border control people really do their jobs. You can see it on TV !
No, there is no good reason for such a search, and it is only being allowed because our citizens have no right to privacy. If there were such a right, the need to respect it would greatly outweigh some bored TSA's curiosity. If only. As said, you are not inside the US while that search is taking place. You cannot cry foul.
computer data should not be searchable without a warrant or probable cause. And what jurisdiction would that warrant be signed off by ? Certainly not a US one, since the people being subjected to these searches are not inside the US yet. Probable cause ? Pfft. You don't even need probable cause to be searched thoroughly just to fly from one airport in the US to another.
(Note that does not mean you are bound to give them the decryption key) Right you are, chap. You are just bound, gagged, and shipped off to Gitmo.
(or if you are lucky you're just detained and harrassed until the border agents find a new game to play that day -- just don't expect your computer back, the captain's niece needed a new laptop, anyway).
We have protections and guaranteed rights (not granted ones) because we are protecting people from the system's possible abuses. Nice theory.
The border agents have access to you while you are not in the country yet. They can trample on your rights all they want -- after all, it does not happen inside the US.
While I agree with the privacy infringements, You do ? Shame on you:P
I really wish it wasn't someone suspected on child porn complaining about it. It certainly won't garner much support from the general public, informed or not. That's generally the way to go if you want to get through some really restrictive legislation infringing on the public's rights -- parade some child porn asshole or child molester or child rapist or child abuser in front of the public, say that this new legislation will hurt that guy, and watch them all fall in line -- true or not, who would want to defend the rights of a CHILD molester, or even take the chance that he may be one.
In fact, I heard you were a child porn collector. Your opinion has no value, because you are clearly suspected of being a child porn collector. I just said it. Nobody is going to come to your rescue, since, quite possibly, you are the scum of the earth. Possibly. Let's not take any chances and shoot you on sight. You know. To be safe.
There's a reason why we have privacy laws. The border agents here have really overstepped their bounds. That's the beauty of it. They haven't, technically. You see, when you are in contact with them, you are not actually in the country yet. There aren't really any bounds to abide by. See Gitmo.
Well you could add your post. Seriously get over yourself and find something else to get upset about. So you are one of those people that needed those terms explained. Tell me, will you get the VA-Model of that series ?
The visuals of that video are interesting, the soundtrack is beyond condescending.
Here is a literal transcript.
"GINA is an acronym -- a set of letters -- that stand for geometry -- shapes -- and function -- how things work -- an N -- n is a way of saying 'an infinite number' -- of adaptations -- meaning, there is a lot of change possible."
Their target audience does not know that an acronym is a set of letters, that geometry deals with shapes, that function is related to how things work, that N is a variable, and that adaptating means changing.
He goes on to babble a whole lot of meaningless babbling. "Context over Dogma, that's it!" are the last words in that presentations. Seldomly have I heard a saying so devoid of meaning.
'"attempting to impeach a president because he got a BJ"'
'Correction. "Impeached a president because a lying about a BJ". Yes, Bill was impeached. Look it up.'
Correction. "Impeached a president because evading a question nobody had the right to ask, anyway". Yes, Bill was impeached. Because of a Blowjob, and nosy fucks having no decency.
"Tread lightly or be out of a job after your employment has ended, anyway", you mean. Impeachments take a while. Let's be really optimistic and give it 4 months. That would cut his job short by 3 months. Nice, free winter vacation !
If anything, it sends the signal "you have to fuck up at least this bad to get slap on the wrists".
I remember it differently. AT&T was the largest carrier available willing to cut Apple in on more of the profits. "let the pone be what Apple wanted it to be" -- this statement is quite correct, if you assume Apple wanted the phone to be a cash cow. The tech stuff is not that hard.
1) Cash is good, but unless you have the office, they aren't going to give you the cash. Unless of course you make promises to get money for your election campaign. The sad truth is that generally, the more money you throw at it (in terms of advertizing, PR firms, etc.), the better your chances are at office -- especially when we are not talking about the highest office in the land.
2) Transit providers have tons of customers, negative publicity regarding one customer who operates at best questionable services is generally not worth it. Not to mention the havoc it can cause for all those other paying customers while that one customer conducts their questionable activities. Transit providers have tons of customers, correct. Well, bundles of em -- generally not the same customers that get upset about attacks on P2P, but rather customers whose bill with them would be greatly reduced if P2P just didn't exist (short-sighted, but true).
What havoc does it cause them ? We are talking about transit providers here, i.e. the guys who are starting to count their bandwidth in terabit/s -- it takes a rather large bit of dDoS to adversely affect their entire networks -- and it's hardly just a single network they are connected to.
As an enduser, it's hard to vote with your dollars in this case; sure, you can shun Comcast. But do/you/ know which transit providers your ISP peers with, which it buys transit from, which it does business with ? Do you really care ? If you do, does a considerable amount of your peers ?
3) A couple of Slashdotters not purchasing their products you're right won't make a dent directly. A couple of Slashdotters not purchasing their products and telling others not to purchase their products - that might make a dent. Even if it is 1% to use your number, depending on the "media" we are talking about, could be significant numbers. Never underestimate the power of word of mouth - they don't. They can write it off as losses due to piracy -- and they likely will. Helps get tougher laws passed.
Word of mouth is a powerful tool, to be sure, but so are broad ad barrages on MTV. Have you ever considered what kind of person buys CD-singles ?
As long as you have a negative attitude you will most likely get negative results. The opposite, unfortunately, is not true.
As long as you have a realistic attitude you will most likely not be disappointed.
Remember, you are the consumer, it's your money they're after, Fat chance in hell they'll get/my/ money.
hence you have the ability to shape the industry. This argument is oft-repeated, but rarely backed up. Sure, the masses have the ability to shape the industry -- I alone have no such ability.
If they do stupid things that you don't like and you still give them your money, you have no one else to blame but yourself. Quite true. Now if I don't give them my money, can I start blaming the masses that do ?
1) Be nice and professional, but write your congressmen, senators and governors and tell them how you feel about the issue. Unless you attach a wad of cash, the other side has the better arguments (read : more cash). The RIAA has deep pockets, and they spend this money wisely in the political arena. If you think your senator will ever actually read your well-argued letter, I have a bridge to sell you.
2) Write the transit providers that provide peering agreements with MediaDefenders service provider. Their service provider and the transit providers that peer with their service provider are supporting their actions indirectly. If their service provider refuses to continue service with Media Defender then they will be forced to move. If other transit providers refuse to peer with their / or a service provider that supports their actions, their service provider will be forced to change their business position or go out of business. And the transit provider, who is getting paid hand over fist for their multi-gbps lines, should care why, exactly ? Are you offering to buy their bandwidth for more than they are paying ? What do "neutral" providers care what traffic their legitimately incorporated, paying customers are carrying ?
3) MediaDefender is primarily funded by copyright holders, the irony being that the copyrighted works have absolutely no value if there is no demand. If XYZ studio, producer or artist employs the services of MediaDefender, do not purchase their products. Simple. Yes, I'm sure they'll feel the sting of a couple of geeks not buying the new Britney Spears album. You know, the one they aggressively market to kids on MTV all day. They can just attribute the 1% loss in sales to piracy and be done with it. Why would they assume MediaDefender is to blame ?
GP said: "there ought to be a law". I said: "there already is, dumbo". Your argument misses the point. From your argument it read as if you were holding up the "we all sign it, so we could never do such a thing !"-card as well, though. Sure, there is a law -- in some industries, the law gets broken without missing a beat, as a matter of course -- and it is never prosecuted. Take, for instance, again the Deutsche Telekom AG. They, as a matter of course, have breached existing law for years by saving call data at variance with the BDSG and TMG -- of course now they are required to do so by law (even though that law is being examined by the Bundesverfassungsgericht), but for the years before they were obligated not to do such a thing. No, they did not care -- and in the one lawsuit they lost in, the only outcome was that for that single customer, they would purge the records immediately -- all other customers' call data would be collected and saved as before.
So sure, it may be against the law, some people and managers may have signed a worthless piece of paper saying they would not break the law -- but if management is the party commanding subordinates to break that law (or simply not doing anything about such breaches even though they know they occur), that signature is truly worthless. Well, maybe not, in a scandal like this the head of the tech that did the surveillance will roll. Managers will just insulate themselves by pointing to that piece of paper.
Source: I work at a german telecommunications company (not T-Com). Due to my position I had to sign extensive paperwork about all the laws I have to know and follow when I started working there. And never in a million years would anybody who ever signed any papers that are required to be signed to start work breach that agreement when ordered to do so by a superior (or when assuming that you'll never get caught). He signed a paper, for chrissakes ! It cannot be !
There are plenty of honorable people in the business, but there are also plenty of opportunistic bastards who will sign these things and never give them a second thought.
Yesterday, the Open Source community took an emotional hit I didn't. Why should "the Open Source community" care ? Why should it take an emotional hit ?
when veteran Linux programmer Hans Reiser was convicted of first degree murder in the suspicious disappearing of his wife, Nina. While I won't go into the details of the case, Good !
I would like to talk a little bit about how this verdict will impact the technology in play for file system dominance in our favorite Open Source operating system, Linux. Riiight. You mean apart from what already happened (Namesys is no more), this ruling will have any further impact ? Why should it ? Has the quality of the code in reiserfs somehow changed now, without a single line of code changing ?
Why is Linux "our" favourite operating system ? How does a programmer allegedly, or convictedly murdering his wife impact it, at all ? He's one of many, and probably not the first Linux coder to commit a criminal offense.
There is no fair use about this. Says you and EMI.
EMI is saying when you upload a file to an on-line site you are lossing posestion of the file and it is entering the possestion of the site you uploaded the file too. Riiight. Therefore, if I upload a file to my webhost, they become the owners of that file ? Come on, this is not rocket science. I don't lose possession of a file if I store it at a remote location. I could, for instance, scp some Madonna tune to my user account in university and still be in control of said file and the associated storage. I'd do that to listen to my legally purchased music at university, of course, which is arguably fair use.
It the uploader is still claiming rights to the file then a copy was made. You assume that the uploader transferred any kind of right to the file to the backup service. You also assume that any kind of copy is not legal, which, under fair use, is plainly not the case.
Making an additional copy of the music is a right that only EMI can give. Bullshit. Making an additional copy of the music is a right the customer has under fair use, and EMI has to accept it. It is when said user engages in unlawful sharing of said copy, or commercial piracy or something of that ilk that EMIs rights are being infringed. In this case, however, that is simply not the case.
mp3tunes case was that they were not sharing the files, only available to the uploader, and they did nothing with the files except provide backup protection and allow the uploader purchaser access to them. In other words, they provided storage space as a service. Much like many-a-backup-service, online drives,.Mac webdrives, etc.; Storing files on there does not automatically transfer any kind of rights on their usage to the service, unless the service contract specifies otherwise -- and I would assume mp3tunes doesn't have such provisions (which would make the service stand on shaky legal ground).
Then as you say this will boil down to laws not keeping up with the way technology is going. Chances are in most states in the US and most other countries EMI is probably right in the law. Chances are EMI is blowing hot air into the wind, and have the money to keep paying their lawyers to do so.
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I spent a year at a Texan High School once, as a junior. The computer and network security there was so bad, you would not believe it. Changing my grades (or even wreaking REAL mayhem) would have been rather trivial. Just some examples as to what you will find in the wild :
"Student" Network and "Administrative" Network, with different internet connections (T1 on the student network, dialup on the administrative network). Good idea. Implementation : they both run on the same wires, separated by RFC 1918 spaces (one was 10.x.x.x, one was 172.16.x.x). From a computer in the student computer lab, if you looked at wire traffic, you would see plenty of broadcast traffic of both networks.
"Internet Gateway" : 10.X.1.1 was the gateway for my school. telnet 10.X.1.1 gets you into the administrative interface thereof. No password, no IP checks. Trivial to shut it down, trivial to reroute packets. Oh, and 10.Y.1.1 would get me into the gateway of another school in the district. Same configuration. Naive as I was then, when I noticed this I notified my teacher, who encouraged me to call network support at the district; I got connected to an administrator there. The entire exchange was pretty much "Hi, I noticed that under 10.X.1.1 you could telnet into the administrative interface, and it was not password protected. You might want to fix that." "Ok. Please let me talk to your teacher." "Get that student away from the network, and revoke all his privileges."
Luckily, my teacher was able to think for himself.
(This was fairly early in my first semester there. Before I left after my second, I checked whether any of this had changed -- the routers were still accessible that way, still unprotected).
Note that I did not even have to look for these things (nor did I, actually). I noticed the broadcast traffic when trying to troubleshoot the network connectivity of a freshly installed Linux box there, and the open router when accidentlly mistyping an IP (I meant to type 10.X.11.1 instead of 10.X.1.1, since 10.X.11.1 was another linux machine I wanted to telnet into; yeah, I know, telnet sucks :)
The grades for that entire school (as well as attendance records, personal information on all the students, etc.) was handled by a UNIX server; guidance councillors would have a telnet session to that server open and do their work through that. When in the councillor's office you could see the IP of that server, as well as that it was a telnet connection. Needless to say, if you had any social engineering skills at all, or were able to read as councillors input their passwords, you would have had full access to all of those records. I did not pursue this, as, quite frankly, I had no interest to do so without supervision and permission. However, that attack vector would have been somewhat trivial (lab machines were running Windows; you could get to the network settings quite easily. Just set up the right address and netmask, and telnet to that machine -- remember, the two networks are connected ...)
Another interesting tidbit (and I did this supervised with nmap) : The machine was a HP-UX 9 server with more than a dozen open ports, some of which displaying nice version banners, at least two of which there were known security holes for. I did not mount an attack or exploit on the server, but, quite frankly, if anybody were determined to change their grades, they'd probably have an easy enough time doing so; same for wreaking havoc for the multiple-thousand student body.
Incidentally, the year after I left, they started offering Cisco Networking courses there. One of them dealt with security. I wonder when the first malicious student figured this stuff out; the skills required, however, are not so extensive as to require training equivalent to achieving an excellent academic record.
The RIAA sent DMCA notices to printers. It is trivial to make those unreviewed crappy opportunistic company-trash products that "track" piracy think that IP X has just downloaded Shrek 3 -- when IP X has done no such thing, ever. Do this 3 times and your neighbour is out his network access (serves him right, letting his tree grow over your yard !) -- or your son's teacher just lost his access since your son's classmate didn't like the grade he got ... Or you lose your access because your son's classmate thought it would be a funny prank.
This, all, of this, is not your own fault.
If you want to silence a blog you don't like ? Guess what, that just became a whole lot easier.
Review ? What review ? You got 3 warnings, obviously you must be a criminal.
As for mistakes : No judge ever reviews these, no court ever gets to see the accusation, and no ruling is ever dealt as to what constitutes fair use, citation, satire, or plain non-infringement (I can put a file online named Shrek 3.avi and it contains my review of that film in videoform. Want to bet that file won't get flagged, even if it's in a folder called "Reviews" and just 30 mbyte big ?)
It's a whole lot better then being sued for thousands of dollars, at least you get a chance to find out what's happening, or if you are the downloader, to stop with no consequences. Oh, you are assuming that the rights-holders give up their legal right of suing youYou can find out JUST as easily what is happening right now ... You get a threatening letter from attorney. You do not get sued straight away (if ever, for rules of evidence REALLY do apply, and evidence gathered by, say, LogiStep in Switzerland is just shoddy and not worthy of that designation).
It's par du course in modern governments. It appeases the soccermoms and those scared-of-the-evil-internet folk. It won't be reversed since your political opponent can then run a smear campaign against you claiming you are protecting childfuckers. It's obscene, has been for a while, and will only get worse.
Also thoroughly ineffective. Check any game on D2D, then check for it on P2P. Notice how none of the ones on D2D are not also on P2P ? Protection failed, customer hampered.
If and when you get LaTeX rendering implemented in Firefox and Opera, you can start complaining about XML.
(or if you are lucky you're just detained and harrassed until the border agents find a new game to play that day -- just don't expect your computer back, the captain's niece needed a new laptop, anyway).
The border agents have access to you while you are not in the country yet. They can trample on your rights all they want -- after all, it does not happen inside the US.
In fact, I heard you were a child porn collector. Your opinion has no value, because you are clearly suspected of being a child porn collector. I just said it. Nobody is going to come to your rescue, since, quite possibly, you are the scum of the earth. Possibly. Let's not take any chances and shoot you on sight. You know. To be safe.
Thereby ensuring that websites are going to try to insert even more obnoxious ads that do not get blocked by the default install ? No thanks.
The visuals of that video are interesting, the soundtrack is beyond condescending.
Here is a literal transcript.
"GINA is an acronym -- a set of letters -- that stand for geometry -- shapes -- and function -- how things work -- an N -- n is a way of saying 'an infinite number' -- of adaptations -- meaning, there is a lot of change possible."
Their target audience does not know that an acronym is a set of letters, that geometry deals with shapes, that function is related to how things work, that N is a variable, and that adaptating means changing.
He goes on to babble a whole lot of meaningless babbling. "Context over Dogma, that's it!" are the last words in that presentations. Seldomly have I heard a saying so devoid of meaning.
'"attempting to impeach a president because he got a BJ"'
'Correction. "Impeached a president because a lying about a BJ". Yes, Bill was impeached. Look it up.'
Correction. "Impeached a president because evading a question nobody had the right to ask, anyway". Yes, Bill was impeached. Because of a Blowjob, and nosy fucks having no decency.
"Tread lightly or be out of a job after your employment has ended, anyway", you mean. Impeachments take a while. Let's be really optimistic and give it 4 months. That would cut his job short by 3 months. Nice, free winter vacation !
If anything, it sends the signal "you have to fuck up at least this bad to get slap on the wrists".
I remember it differently. AT&T was the largest carrier available willing to cut Apple in on more of the profits. "let the pone be what Apple wanted it to be" -- this statement is quite correct, if you assume Apple wanted the phone to be a cash cow. The tech stuff is not that hard.
What havoc does it cause them ? We are talking about transit providers here, i.e. the guys who are starting to count their bandwidth in terabit/s -- it takes a rather large bit of dDoS to adversely affect their entire networks -- and it's hardly just a single network they are connected to.
As an enduser, it's hard to vote with your dollars in this case; sure, you can shun Comcast. But do
Word of mouth is a powerful tool, to be sure, but so are broad ad barrages on MTV. Have you ever considered what kind of person buys CD-singles ? As long as you have a negative attitude you will most likely get negative results. The opposite, unfortunately, is not true.
As long as you have a realistic attitude you will most likely not be disappointed. Remember, you are the consumer, it's your money they're after, Fat chance in hell they'll get
GP said: "there ought to be a law". I said: "there already is, dumbo". Your argument misses the point. From your argument it read as if you were holding up the "we all sign it, so we could never do such a thing !"-card as well, though. Sure, there is a law -- in some industries, the law gets broken without missing a beat, as a matter of course -- and it is never prosecuted. Take, for instance, again the Deutsche Telekom AG. They, as a matter of course, have breached existing law for years by saving call data at variance with the BDSG and TMG -- of course now they are required to do so by law (even though that law is being examined by the Bundesverfassungsgericht), but for the years before they were obligated not to do such a thing. No, they did not care -- and in the one lawsuit they lost in, the only outcome was that for that single customer, they would purge the records immediately -- all other customers' call data would be collected and saved as before.
So sure, it may be against the law, some people and managers may have signed a worthless piece of paper saying they would not break the law -- but if management is the party commanding subordinates to break that law (or simply not doing anything about such breaches even though they know they occur), that signature is truly worthless. Well, maybe not, in a scandal like this the head of the tech that did the surveillance will roll. Managers will just insulate themselves by pointing to that piece of paper.
There are plenty of honorable people in the business, but there are also plenty of opportunistic bastards who will sign these things and never give them a second thought.
"Pidgin, the premier multi-protocol instant messaging client, has been forked."
How is Pidgin the premier one ? Who decided that ? After that, the blurb became even more ridiculous. Who, the ****, cares ?
Why is Linux "our" favourite operating system ? How does a programmer allegedly, or convictedly murdering his wife impact it, at all ? He's one of many, and probably not the first Linux coder to commit a criminal offense.
Emotional impact. Riiiight.