Re:Dispelling the Myth of Wireless Security
on
Wireless Hacks
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· Score: 3, Interesting
A guy I do computer work for actually accidentally hacked his neighbours wireless network. His wireless network that I set up for him (with a WEP key, for what it's worth...) went down because somebody reset the box, but his laptop upstairs just picked up another network and started using it. He wouldn't have even noticed except the signal strength was poor, so his interent was slow.
SunnComm CEO Says Whoever the Hell Wrote 'top' Owes Them Some Serious Coin.
PHOENIX--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 9, 2003--SunnComm Technologies Inc. (OTC: STEH), a leader in digital rights management so retarded a lobotomized goat could circumvent it, announced today that it intends to take legal action against the writer of 'top,' alleging it makes erroneous assumptions as to what users should be capable of seeing and doing with their own computer. According to Peter Jacobs, SunnComm's CEO, "The conclusions contained in the 'top' man page were derived from incorrect assumptions by its author. The author did not ask for, or receive, SunnComm's MediaMax 'white paper' documentation entitled "What Users Can't See, they Can't Kill -9," available on the technology prior to concluding that 'MediaMax and similar copy-prevention systems are so moronic my n00b grandfather could get around it...'"
This is the worst news of the week. EMusic was the site I pointed everyone to to say, "look, there is a service offering high-quality, no-DRM restricted mp3s with unlimited downloading for a (more than) fair price." The unlimited downloading is the ENTIRE POINT of EMusic. This gives you the freedom to discover new artists without fear of being charged for it. This more than made up for the fact that they didn't have major bands, as the had an entire system in place for music discovery (their My List feature was ingenious). Where else would I have found Reggie and the Full Effect, or St. Thomas? Arrrrggghhh! I'm so mad I could go on, but I have to go download as much as possible right now!
I don't know much about AA, but wouldn't you want to save a game somehow? How do you do that?
A new 64-bit Linux CD can instantly turn an AMD Opteron-equipped PC into the ultimate gaming console, according to Super Computer Inc. (SCI).
P.S. You (probably) also need an nvidia graphics card.
Company Marketing Manager Jay Majumdar says America's Army on GameStorm will be distributed free by AMD with Opteron-equipped PCs
Translation: People buying a $3000 PC won't notice an extra $50.
Anyway, I guess I'm being too hard on them. It's cool, I hope it works, if it's been done before and they're using that work (as some have suggested), I hope they give credit.
How is Windows any easier than Mandrake's urpmi? First give it any rpm directory (remote or not), which is just as easy as going to downloads.com (or tucows, or wherever you get Windows software from). You can do this graphically from the Mandrake Control Centre (Add Software Location, or something like that). Then you go to Install Software, search for a package, it gives you matches with descriptions, you click the checkboxes, it figures out the dependancies, and installs them. If you just want updates, you can just use Mandrake Update, which finds the remote repositories for you. The rest of the steps are pretty much the same. Then you just sit back and let it do its thing. Try doing that with Windows update. You have to babysit it, as it will come up with boxes requiring you to hit Ok, or Next, Next, Next... or it needs a reboot, and doesn't continue the process on reboot. Sorry, I know that you are also a Mandrake fan trying to get people to realize how great it is, I just get tired of my friends saying that Linux just isn't as easy to use as Windows, then turn around and ask me to help them with one of their miriad Windows problems, which often make me think, "Well, this would be easy to solve if you were using Linux, but seeing as you're not..."
If an online music store wants to charge $1 for a 128kb/s mp3, I'm not going to whine. I'm just going to keep paying my $10/month to EMusic for up to 2000 tracks/month VBR 192kb/s-average mp3s. Excuse me while I go back to listening to the Pixies.
ANY famous person is helpful to the cause, whether they're in the music industry or not.
I think this is only half right. I think Orson Scott Card coming out and saying he's pro-file- sharing is pretty much useless, as the only people who know who OSC is, or care what he has to say, are geeks, who are also pro-file-sharing (generally).
So, I would say any famous person who reaches an audience of the uninformed (wrt to the RIAA/mp3/file-sharing debate) is helpful to the cause.
While not really a national newspaper, the Toronto Star should also be mentioned, as it has a readership greater than that of the G&B or the Post. I still like the G&B the best.
Occasionally the legitimate item might not be available, so fans go for bootlegs in this case too.
And who's fault is this? I wouldn't even call this bootlegging.
Translation: Official items are unavailable in certain regions, so consumers in those regions have a right to obtain them in any way they see fit.
Why it's wrong: Owners of copyright have no obligation to distribute their work in every country in the world. As it is pointed out in the FAQ, it is illegal to import unlicensed works into any country that has signed the Berne Convention.
Official goods normally have good quality packaging that is well designed.
That just isn't true. Ditto for pirated Anime but all of the Anime I own has average to crappy packaging.
I have a lot of very nice packaging for my anime dvds. The Evangelion box set packaging is nice, the Escaflowne movie box is georgeous, the FLCL box is cool. Bootleg dvds tend to have ugly packaging, especially on the back. It's not universal, and bootleg packaging is improving, but generally bootleg packaging is inferior to licensed packaging.
If the price is too good to be true, then it is not the real thing.
That's a wonderfull way to spot a bootlegger! Unless they charge $30 for a 2 to 4 episode DVD they probably aren't legit. Does anyone know why they cost so much? Can't be the English subtitling, since they don't even have to know English to do their work
Most DVDs retail for about $30, even popular ones like Daredevil and the like. Large retail chains will discount from these suggested prices, assuming that the increased volume of sales will make them more money than they would have made selling less copies at the $30. Because anime does not have as large a market, there is not as much interest by large retail chains to discount them, or even carry them. When Future Shop, a large retail chain here in Toronto, decided to carry anime, they had discounts on a lot of anime, and it was about the same price as their mainstream releases. Now if some Ebay seller is selling anime at well below what I know is a reasonable rate (basically anything below $20 for a new anime dvd), I'm naturally going to be suspicious.
How about a Nex IIe for $89? It's not $20, but it does have a pretty good LCD and good sound. Plus it shows up as a general USB storage device (USB 1.1, unfortunately). I like mine, anyway. Chrisd seems to like the old model (warning, very old review).
Thank you for injecting a much-needed reality check into a/. discussion on music swapping. If there's anything about your comment where I would nitpick is the use of the word "stealing". I think that copyright infringement is not "stealing", it's copyright infringement. This doesn't make it any less illegal, I just wanted to be clear.
As for conscience-clear cheap music aquisition, try out EMusic. It's not for everyone, but if you're into indie rock and/or jazz, it's well worth it. $10-$15/month for all-you-can-eat, no-DRM, 192Kb/s average VBR mp3s (encoded with LAME, no less). Support for Mac/Windows/Linux.
I hear this sort of argument all the time on/. (I sample using P2P, then I buy, because the RIAA is trying to trick me into buying crap), and it makes me curious how people would answer this question:
Does a recording artist get to choose how the consumer samples their music?
Set aside the issue of the recording artist's label, or the RIAA, telling the recording artist how their music should/can be distributed. Set aside what constitutes "fair use" with the CD once you buy it. If a recording artist says "I do not want P2P services to be a mechanism for distribution of the music I create," then what, morally, should the consumer do?
Seeing as you've asked for a North American tour and got simply an American tour, I'll speak up on behalf of all Toronto. I would visit a chunk of Yonge St. Just start at Bloor (at the north), and end around Queen (at the south). This stretch consists mostly of porn shops, arcades, restaraunts of varying ethnicity, strip bars, electronics stores, huge record stores, and cool bookstores (some new, some used, one all sci-fi). What more could a geek ask for? Skip the Eaton Centre (unless you were a big fan of The 6th Day (parts were filmed there), and head west on Queen to Silver Snail. This is a great comic book store, often with elaborate display windows. Lots of other stuff to do in TO, just not especially geeky stuff. Other Torontonians can fill in any activities they think I've missed.
If you're holding out for the totally unrestricted, uncompressed downloads for $0.04 per song, like some folks here seem to be doing, I think you'll be hearing a lot of silence. Or using illegal services.
I know that it's not the Big 5, but Emusic serves up (almost) all you can eat downloads (LAME-encoded, VBR, 192kb/s average, no-DRM mp3s), for $10 or $15 (depends only on whether you want it for 12 months or 3). The "(almost)" is because I've heard they'll cap you at 2000 tracks. Still, $15/2000 tracks = $0.0075/track. I never hit the cap, though.
So far, sooooo good for me. The only catch, and it's pretty minor, is that they force a download manager on you. There's a version for Windows, OSX, and Linux, but the Linux version doesn't have all the kinks worked out. It's running fine for me now, on Mandrake 9.1, but there were lots of complaints from Linux users for a while. The quality of mp3s is fantastic, they're tagged well enough for me, and I get to discover bands like the Pernice Brothers. It's become the source of 99% of my music.
How on earth can any service claim to have the lowest price on music downloads?!? Emusic works out to $0.005/download, if you use your max, which you probably won't (I certainly don't have time to download 6 albums a day). Emusic also has an active message board where users discuss their latest finds, top 10's of the year, latest mix cds with links to all the songs, and just random stuff.
Emusic is a music discovery service for me. Services like BuyMusic are for people who sit down and say, "I want the latest Linkin Park album," and they're given a link to the latest Linkin Park album. Emusic can be used like that to a certain extent, if what you listen to is jazz or indie rock. You can sit down and say, "I want the latest Yo La Tengo album," for instance. But my mental catalogue of what I want is pretty short, and I find myself saying, "I want an indie pop album that makes me feel like I just got laid," and I go look at the message boards, peruse the top 20 downloads in indie, check out some of the staff picks, and stumble across Dashboard Confessional. Anyway, I've rambled on long enough. In summary, Emusic good, everything else not so good.
They just had a release, actually. There's also a giFT-FastTrack plugin, but I can't get it to compile on my Mandrake 9.1 box. It complains in linking that it can't find../../src/libFastTrack.la. Maybe someone else has had better luck than I have...
Dslreports maintains an anti-spam forum, which discusses spam-fighting techniques. A recently registered user, AntiSpamCard, posts to the forum advertising its spam-fighting product, AntiSpamCard. This violates the rules of the forum, so another user, AmeritechTech, looks up the domain registration information (registration service: RegistryFly.com). It is full of false information (mostly na, na, na filled in everywhere). AntiSpamCard claims that false info is RegistryFly's fault. Further investigation leads AmeritechTech to believe AntiSpamCard are, in fact, spammers. The evidence:
- Privacy statement on antispamcard.com states that they have an opt-out policy on receiving info - Domain listed as unwelcome here and here
From these sites, AmeritechTech discovers that antispamcard.com and putamericatowork.com are both owned by Brad Heckman in Palm Beach, FL. IP address for antispamcard.com seems to be within a block assigned to Crescive, Inc. (not to be confused with some car company), which is also mentioned on antispamcard.com. The host for this block of IPs is traci.net. Traci.net has a strict anti-spam policy. Name servers also appear to be owned by Brad, and hosted by traci.net. Registration of the domain names of the name servers also has na, na, na filled into most fields. Putamericatowork.com turns out to be hosted by aitcom.net, which has a very strict anti-spam policy. AmeritechTech also claims Brad owns spaminsurance.com, but I'm not sure why. IP in the same block (which it is) and identical layouts (can't check, antispamcard.com/.'ed), I think.
After various emails to the various hosting companies, antispamcard.com and spaminsurance.com magically have valid registration information. AmeritechTech also gets an email from Brad from igpbrad@hotmail.com (remember that email) saying the registration info is updated. Antispamcard.com registered to Brad, spaminsurance.com registered to Chad Deckard. Same guy? Associates? Who knows, but there seems to be a link (in later posts, this is contested by "mystery poster" Ry2k, but the link seems pretty strong). Hunting around for Chad Deckard stuff turns up claims on this board that he's associated with a scam to sell Kazaa "Gold", which is really just Kazaa Lite, but with a 9.95 price tag, plus it harvests your email. The site's still up, but I couldn't repeat the behaviour claimed by the message poster (posted back on Sept. 11, 2002) that takes you to infogeneratorpro.com, which seems to be the site registered to Chad. Also conspicuous is that Chad's name shows up on putamericatowork.com, a site owned by Brad (link). Also VERY conspicuous is that Brad emailed from igpbrad@hotmail.com, i.e. InfoGeneratorPro? Maybe a coincidence...
Some more looking uncovers other domains in Chad's name: infogenerator.com, usub.net, and finder-network.com. This is along with spaminsurance.com and infogeneratorpro.com. About this time Ry2k shows up to claim that Kazaa Gold was just a client of Chad's, and when Chad found out what they were doing, the account was eliminated. Ry2k claims to be a former employee of Chad's, and warns the forum of tarnishing the good name of legitimate businesses in their persuit of spammers. I go to bullet mode, as it's getting late, and I'm tired:
- Reverse look-ups on contact info for antispamcard.com produce a fax number registered to infogenerator.com. - Domain name servers (safeidentity.net) for antispamcard.com has contact info updated to Crescive, Inc. - Someone points out that RegisarFly.com may be shady, something about "using CNAME for their MX records". Maybe someone can fill me in... - google groups turns up complaints about spam from
Emusic? Multi-platform support (including Linux), VBR mp3s at 192kb/s average (encoded with LAME, no less), subscription based (all you can eat for $10 or $15). The only thing they DON'T have is the records of the big ones (unless you think Yo La Tengo and Modest Mouse are big).
Look, Max, I'm not trying to make myself feel like less of a dick, and I'm not looking for a free ride. I pay my $15/month to emusic and find my music there. Nor am I calling you a thief. I'm fully aware that there are people using KaZaA (Lite) in a morally legitimate manner, if not neccessarily legally legitimate manner, and I'm fine with that. More power to you. You can cite all the psychological studies you want (and I would be interested if you did, as opposed to the vague studies of "time and again" that you mention), but I'd like you to answer this: of the 5-10 million people on kazaa at any given time, what percentage of them are using it exclusively for morally legitimate purposes? I'm not saying that if this number is less than 50% or something that kazaa should be shut down, I'm just saying we should be honest about what the MAJORITY of it's users are doing, and how the parent company intends it's product to be used.
Now, as on to your 'try before you buy' argument. I'm glad that you use kazaa as a method of sampling music that you then go out and buy. That's how I used to use it, and I continue to use it occasionally in this manner (still buy, occasionally use). However, you and I don't get to dictate to an artist how we sample their content. If Evanescence have come out and said that they don't mind or encourage the trading of their songs on kazaa (presumably because they think it will help their sales, or at least bring their music to a wider audience), then that's fine. Otherwise, you and I should stick to listening to Evanescence through the channels that they, the band (you know, the guys who actually produce the music?), approve of. I think I'll go and try to find some of those channels so I can hear the band you're talking about.
I am soooooooo tired of this argument. It comes up every time, and always gets modded +5 insightful. Let's be honest, all right? We like KaZaA (Lite) because it lets us download music, movies, pr0n, and software without paying for it. Yes, it's a tool, and I'm sure that there are people using it to download Phish and Pat Matheny concert bootlegs (which I'm told is legal). However, it's EXPRESS PURPOSE is a spyware delivery device. Sharman knows EXACTLY what people want to use it for, and they design it to facilitate us grabbing content that we have no legal right to, so that we download it 200 million times, so that they can charge oodles of money to companies who want access to that large user base.
FTP and HTTP are not next, just as I don't see anybody outlawing P2P protocols. Maybe I'm wrong here. Does anybody know about an attack on the gnutella protocol? Not Bearshare or whomever, but the protocol?
CD's are not $24!!!! Where the hell are you buying CD's? I walk into most record stores in Toronto and 99% of the time pay no more than $18 Canadian! Popular music is often found for $14. I know that it's similar pricing for CD's in American dollars, and that this is still too much, but dude, let's be realistic. And what CD's are you buying where there's only one good song? I think you need to reevaluate your tastes. There are plenty of good venues for low CD prices. Various online merchants, and emusic have been mentioned in this thread.
I don't think content providers have really broken the relationship with customers. At least they are not solely responsible for it. Customers have told them, "given sufficiently convenient tools, we will avoid paying for content that you produce", and content providers have reacted poorly, enacting overly-restrictive laws like the DMCA. I don't know what the ideal reaction would have been, I just know that it's not that. If we want them to start repairing the relationship with us, we have to start owning up to what it is that we're really doing.
Although it's not there yet, Frontier Labs makes a little player called the Nex IIe that they've pledged will have Ogg Vorbis support in the next firmware upgrade. It's small, cheap, and takes compact flash as it's memory. Also, it works as a general USB storage device, so it works in Linux, without the need for special software. It's not perfect, but I love mine, and I keep checking their site waiting for the Vorbis support.
So your solution is to not run flash? Then I couldn't watch Strong Bad! Strangely, the sound in flash often goes off when I listen to xmms, even after I close xmms. If someone knows why this is, please let me know (using esound w/ nvaudio driver for sound card). But this is besides the point. If you want to block flash ads, I think the following lines in the ever-so-handy userContent.css file will do it:
I do stoop so low. That alias is a good idea, but there are two problems:
1) the "cd" before the semicolon needs to be able to take the argument (i.e. the directory that you want to cd to). I forget how to do this, I'll go look it up after I post...
2) this will open a new konqueror every time you change directories, I think, unless that "dcop" you have in there causes it to use an already open konq. I'm not sure what that is, and I couldn't bring up a man page on it.
Slashdot Mirror
A guy I do computer work for actually accidentally hacked his neighbours wireless network. His wireless network that I set up for him (with a WEP key, for what it's worth...) went down because somebody reset the box, but his laptop upstairs just picked up another network and started using it. He wouldn't have even noticed except the signal strength was poor, so his interent was slow.
SunnComm CEO Says Whoever the Hell Wrote 'top' Owes Them Some Serious Coin.
PHOENIX--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 9, 2003--SunnComm Technologies Inc. (OTC: STEH), a leader in digital rights management so retarded a lobotomized goat could circumvent it, announced today that it intends to take legal action against the writer of 'top,' alleging it makes erroneous assumptions as to what users should be capable of seeing and doing with their own computer. According to Peter Jacobs, SunnComm's CEO, "The conclusions contained in the 'top' man page were derived from incorrect assumptions by its author. The author did not ask for, or receive, SunnComm's MediaMax 'white paper' documentation entitled "What Users Can't See, they Can't Kill -9," available on the technology prior to concluding that 'MediaMax and similar copy-prevention systems are so moronic my n00b grandfather could get around it...'"
This is the worst news of the week. EMusic was the site I pointed everyone to to say, "look, there is a service offering high-quality, no-DRM restricted mp3s with unlimited downloading for a (more than) fair price." The unlimited downloading is the ENTIRE POINT of EMusic. This gives you the freedom to discover new artists without fear of being charged for it. This more than made up for the fact that they didn't have major bands, as the had an entire system in place for music discovery (their My List feature was ingenious). Where else would I have found Reggie and the Full Effect, or St. Thomas? Arrrrggghhh! I'm so mad I could go on, but I have to go download as much as possible right now!
I don't know much about AA, but wouldn't you want to save a game somehow? How do you do that?
A new 64-bit Linux CD can instantly turn an AMD Opteron-equipped PC into the ultimate gaming console, according to Super Computer Inc. (SCI).
P.S. You (probably) also need an nvidia graphics card.
Company Marketing Manager Jay Majumdar says America's Army on GameStorm will be distributed free by AMD with Opteron-equipped PCs
Translation: People buying a $3000 PC won't notice an extra $50.
Anyway, I guess I'm being too hard on them. It's cool, I hope it works, if it's been done before and they're using that work (as some have suggested), I hope they give credit.
Begin... rant... NOW!
How is Windows any easier than Mandrake's urpmi? First give it any rpm directory (remote or not), which is just as easy as going to downloads.com (or tucows, or wherever you get Windows software from). You can do this graphically from the Mandrake Control Centre (Add Software Location, or something like that). Then you go to Install Software, search for a package, it gives you matches with descriptions, you click the checkboxes, it figures out the dependancies, and installs them. If you just want updates, you can just use Mandrake Update, which finds the remote repositories for you. The rest of the steps are pretty much the same. Then you just sit back and let it do its thing. Try doing that with Windows update. You have to babysit it, as it will come up with boxes requiring you to hit Ok, or Next, Next, Next... or it needs a reboot, and doesn't continue the process on reboot. Sorry, I know that you are also a Mandrake fan trying to get people to realize how great it is, I just get tired of my friends saying that Linux just isn't as easy to use as Windows, then turn around and ask me to help them with one of their miriad Windows problems, which often make me think, "Well, this would be easy to solve if you were using Linux, but seeing as you're not..."
If an online music store wants to charge $1 for a 128kb/s mp3, I'm not going to whine. I'm just going to keep paying my $10/month to EMusic for up to 2000 tracks/month VBR 192kb/s-average mp3s. Excuse me while I go back to listening to the Pixies.
ANY famous person is helpful to the cause, whether they're in the music industry or not.
I think this is only half right. I think Orson Scott Card coming out and saying he's pro-file- sharing is pretty much useless, as the only people who know who OSC is, or care what he has to say, are geeks, who are also pro-file-sharing (generally).
So, I would say any famous person who reaches an audience of the uninformed (wrt to the RIAA/mp3/file-sharing debate) is helpful to the cause.
While not really a national newspaper, the Toronto Star should also be mentioned, as it has a readership greater than that of the G&B or the Post. I still like the G&B the best.
I'll try and go point by point here:
Occasionally the legitimate item might not be available, so fans go for bootlegs in this case too.
And who's fault is this? I wouldn't even call this bootlegging.
Translation: Official items are unavailable in certain regions, so consumers in those regions have a right to obtain them in any way they see fit.
Why it's wrong: Owners of copyright have no obligation to distribute their work in every country in the world. As it is pointed out in the FAQ, it is illegal to import unlicensed works into any country that has signed the Berne Convention.
Official goods normally have good quality packaging that is well designed.
That just isn't true. Ditto for pirated Anime but all of the Anime I own has average to crappy packaging.
I have a lot of very nice packaging for my anime dvds. The Evangelion box set packaging is nice, the Escaflowne movie box is georgeous, the FLCL box is cool. Bootleg dvds tend to have ugly packaging, especially on the back. It's not universal, and bootleg packaging is improving, but generally bootleg packaging is inferior to licensed packaging.
If the price is too good to be true, then it is not the real thing.
That's a wonderfull way to spot a bootlegger! Unless they charge $30 for a 2 to 4 episode DVD they probably aren't legit. Does anyone know why they cost so much? Can't be the English subtitling, since they don't even have to know English to do their work
Most DVDs retail for about $30, even popular ones like Daredevil and the like. Large retail chains will discount from these suggested prices, assuming that the increased volume of sales will make them more money than they would have made selling less copies at the $30. Because anime does not have as large a market, there is not as much interest by large retail chains to discount them, or even carry them. When Future Shop, a large retail chain here in Toronto, decided to carry anime, they had discounts on a lot of anime, and it was about the same price as their mainstream releases. Now if some Ebay seller is selling anime at well below what I know is a reasonable rate (basically anything below $20 for a new anime dvd), I'm naturally going to be suspicious.
How about a Nex IIe for $89? It's not $20, but it does have a pretty good LCD and good sound. Plus it shows up as a general USB storage device (USB 1.1, unfortunately). I like mine, anyway. Chrisd seems to like the old model (warning, very old review).
You can sign up for three months for $15/month. Their stuff is simple mp3s, so you own it even after you finish your subscription.
Thank you for injecting a much-needed reality check into a /. discussion on music swapping. If there's anything about your comment where I would nitpick is the use of the word "stealing". I think that copyright infringement is not "stealing", it's copyright infringement. This doesn't make it any less illegal, I just wanted to be clear.
As for conscience-clear cheap music aquisition, try out EMusic. It's not for everyone, but if you're into indie rock and/or jazz, it's well worth it. $10-$15/month for all-you-can-eat, no-DRM, 192Kb/s average VBR mp3s (encoded with LAME, no less). Support for Mac/Windows/Linux.
I hear this sort of argument all the time on /. (I sample using P2P, then I buy, because the RIAA is trying to trick me into buying crap), and it makes me curious how people would answer this question:
Does a recording artist get to choose how the consumer samples their music?
Set aside the issue of the recording artist's label, or the RIAA, telling the recording artist how their music should/can be distributed. Set aside what constitutes "fair use" with the CD once you buy it. If a recording artist says "I do not want P2P services to be a mechanism for distribution of the music I create," then what, morally, should the consumer do?
Seeing as you've asked for a North American tour and got simply an American tour, I'll speak up on behalf of all Toronto. I would visit a chunk of Yonge St. Just start at Bloor (at the north), and end around Queen (at the south). This stretch consists mostly of porn shops, arcades, restaraunts of varying ethnicity, strip bars, electronics stores, huge record stores, and cool bookstores (some new, some used, one all sci-fi). What more could a geek ask for? Skip the Eaton Centre (unless you were a big fan of The 6th Day (parts were filmed there), and head west on Queen to Silver Snail. This is a great comic book store, often with elaborate display windows. Lots of other stuff to do in TO, just not especially geeky stuff. Other Torontonians can fill in any activities they think I've missed.
If you're holding out for the totally unrestricted, uncompressed downloads for $0.04 per song, like some folks here seem to be doing, I think you'll be hearing a lot of silence. Or using illegal services.
I know that it's not the Big 5, but Emusic serves up (almost) all you can eat downloads (LAME-encoded, VBR, 192kb/s average, no-DRM mp3s), for $10 or $15 (depends only on whether you want it for 12 months or 3). The "(almost)" is because I've heard they'll cap you at 2000 tracks. Still, $15/2000 tracks = $0.0075/track. I never hit the cap, though.
So far, sooooo good for me. The only catch, and it's pretty minor, is that they force a download manager on you. There's a version for Windows, OSX, and Linux, but the Linux version doesn't have all the kinks worked out. It's running fine for me now, on Mandrake 9.1, but there were lots of complaints from Linux users for a while. The quality of mp3s is fantastic, they're tagged well enough for me, and I get to discover bands like the Pernice Brothers. It's become the source of 99% of my music.
How on earth can any service claim to have the lowest price on music downloads?!? Emusic works out to $0.005/download, if you use your max, which you probably won't (I certainly don't have time to download 6 albums a day). Emusic also has an active message board where users discuss their latest finds, top 10's of the year, latest mix cds with links to all the songs, and just random stuff.
Emusic is a music discovery service for me. Services like BuyMusic are for people who sit down and say, "I want the latest Linkin Park album," and they're given a link to the latest Linkin Park album. Emusic can be used like that to a certain extent, if what you listen to is jazz or indie rock. You can sit down and say, "I want the latest Yo La Tengo album," for instance. But my mental catalogue of what I want is pretty short, and I find myself saying, "I want an indie pop album that makes me feel like I just got laid," and I go look at the message boards, peruse the top 20 downloads in indie, check out some of the staff picks, and stumble across Dashboard Confessional. Anyway, I've rambled on long enough. In summary, Emusic good, everything else not so good.
They just had a release, actually. There's also a giFT-FastTrack plugin, but I can't get it to compile on my Mandrake 9.1 box. It complains in linking that it can't find ../../src/libFastTrack.la. Maybe someone else has had better luck than I have...
Summary:
/.'ed), I think.
Dslreports maintains an anti-spam forum, which discusses spam-fighting techniques. A recently registered user, AntiSpamCard, posts to the forum advertising its spam-fighting product, AntiSpamCard. This violates the rules of the forum, so another user, AmeritechTech, looks up the domain registration information (registration service: RegistryFly.com). It is full of false information (mostly na, na, na filled in everywhere). AntiSpamCard claims that false info is RegistryFly's fault. Further investigation leads AmeritechTech to believe AntiSpamCard are, in fact, spammers. The evidence:
- Privacy statement on antispamcard.com states that they have an opt-out policy on receiving info
- Domain listed as unwelcome here and here
From these sites, AmeritechTech discovers that antispamcard.com and putamericatowork.com are both owned by Brad Heckman in Palm Beach, FL. IP address for antispamcard.com seems to be within a block assigned to Crescive, Inc. (not to be confused with some car company), which is also mentioned on antispamcard.com. The host for this block of IPs is traci.net. Traci.net has a strict anti-spam policy. Name servers also appear to be owned by Brad, and hosted by traci.net. Registration of the domain names of the name servers also has na, na, na filled into most fields. Putamericatowork.com turns out to be hosted by aitcom.net, which has a very strict anti-spam policy. AmeritechTech also claims Brad owns spaminsurance.com, but I'm not sure why. IP in the same block (which it is) and identical layouts (can't check, antispamcard.com
After various emails to the various hosting companies, antispamcard.com and spaminsurance.com magically have valid registration information. AmeritechTech also gets an email from Brad from igpbrad@hotmail.com (remember that email) saying the registration info is updated. Antispamcard.com registered to Brad, spaminsurance.com registered to Chad Deckard. Same guy? Associates? Who knows, but there seems to be a link (in later posts, this is contested by "mystery poster" Ry2k, but the link seems pretty strong). Hunting around for Chad Deckard stuff turns up claims on this board that he's associated with a scam to sell Kazaa "Gold", which is really just Kazaa Lite, but with a 9.95 price tag, plus it harvests your email. The site's still up, but I couldn't repeat the behaviour claimed by the message poster (posted back on Sept. 11, 2002) that takes you to infogeneratorpro.com, which seems to be the site registered to Chad. Also conspicuous is that Chad's name shows up on putamericatowork.com, a site owned by Brad (link). Also VERY conspicuous is that Brad emailed from igpbrad@hotmail.com, i.e. InfoGeneratorPro? Maybe a coincidence...
Some more looking uncovers other domains in Chad's name: infogenerator.com, usub.net, and finder-network.com. This is along with spaminsurance.com and infogeneratorpro.com. About this time Ry2k shows up to claim that Kazaa Gold was just a client of Chad's, and when Chad found out what they were doing, the account was eliminated. Ry2k claims to be a former employee of Chad's, and warns the forum of tarnishing the good name of legitimate businesses in their persuit of spammers. I go to bullet mode, as it's getting late, and I'm tired:
- Reverse look-ups on contact info for antispamcard.com produce a fax number registered to infogenerator.com.
- Domain name servers (safeidentity.net) for antispamcard.com has contact info updated to Crescive, Inc.
- Someone points out that RegisarFly.com may be shady, something about "using CNAME for their MX records". Maybe someone can fill me in...
- google groups turns up complaints about spam from
Emusic? Multi-platform support (including Linux), VBR mp3s at 192kb/s average (encoded with LAME, no less), subscription based (all you can eat for $10 or $15). The only thing they DON'T have is the records of the big ones (unless you think Yo La Tengo and Modest Mouse are big).
Look, Max, I'm not trying to make myself feel like less of a dick, and I'm not looking for a free ride. I pay my $15/month to emusic and find my music there. Nor am I calling you a thief. I'm fully aware that there are people using KaZaA (Lite) in a morally legitimate manner, if not neccessarily legally legitimate manner, and I'm fine with that. More power to you. You can cite all the psychological studies you want (and I would be interested if you did, as opposed to the vague studies of "time and again" that you mention), but I'd like you to answer this: of the 5-10 million people on kazaa at any given time, what percentage of them are using it exclusively for morally legitimate purposes? I'm not saying that if this number is less than 50% or something that kazaa should be shut down, I'm just saying we should be honest about what the MAJORITY of it's users are doing, and how the parent company intends it's product to be used.
Now, as on to your 'try before you buy' argument. I'm glad that you use kazaa as a method of sampling music that you then go out and buy. That's how I used to use it, and I continue to use it occasionally in this manner (still buy, occasionally use). However, you and I don't get to dictate to an artist how we sample their content. If Evanescence have come out and said that they don't mind or encourage the trading of their songs on kazaa (presumably because they think it will help their sales, or at least bring their music to a wider audience), then that's fine. Otherwise, you and I should stick to listening to Evanescence through the channels that they, the band (you know, the guys who actually produce the music?), approve of. I think I'll go and try to find some of those channels so I can hear the band you're talking about.
I am soooooooo tired of this argument. It comes up every time, and always gets modded +5 insightful. Let's be honest, all right? We like KaZaA (Lite) because it lets us download music, movies, pr0n, and software without paying for it. Yes, it's a tool, and I'm sure that there are people using it to download Phish and Pat Matheny concert bootlegs (which I'm told is legal). However, it's EXPRESS PURPOSE is a spyware delivery device. Sharman knows EXACTLY what people want to use it for, and they design it to facilitate us grabbing content that we have no legal right to, so that we download it 200 million times, so that they can charge oodles of money to companies who want access to that large user base.
FTP and HTTP are not next, just as I don't see anybody outlawing P2P protocols. Maybe I'm wrong here. Does anybody know about an attack on the gnutella protocol? Not Bearshare or whomever, but the protocol?
CD's are not $24!!!! Where the hell are you buying CD's? I walk into most record stores in Toronto and 99% of the time pay no more than $18 Canadian! Popular music is often found for $14. I know that it's similar pricing for CD's in American dollars, and that this is still too much, but dude, let's be realistic. And what CD's are you buying where there's only one good song? I think you need to reevaluate your tastes. There are plenty of good venues for low CD prices. Various online merchants, and emusic have been mentioned in this thread.
I don't think content providers have really broken the relationship with customers. At least they are not solely responsible for it. Customers have told them, "given sufficiently convenient tools, we will avoid paying for content that you produce", and content providers have reacted poorly, enacting overly-restrictive laws like the DMCA. I don't know what the ideal reaction would have been, I just know that it's not that. If we want them to start repairing the relationship with us, we have to start owning up to what it is that we're really doing.
Kazaa is used for porn. CNN told me so.
Although it's not there yet, Frontier Labs makes a little player called the Nex IIe that they've pledged will have Ogg Vorbis support in the next firmware upgrade. It's small, cheap, and takes compact flash as it's memory. Also, it works as a general USB storage device, so it works in Linux, without the need for special software. It's not perfect, but I love mine, and I keep checking their site waiting for the Vorbis support.
So your solution is to not run flash? Then I couldn't watch Strong Bad! Strangely, the sound in flash often goes off when I listen to xmms, even after I close xmms. If someone knows why this is, please let me know (using esound w/ nvaudio driver for sound card). But this is besides the point. If you want to block flash ads, I think the following lines in the
t h= "468"][height="60"] {
t h= "728"][height="90"] {
ever-so-handy userContent.css file will do it:
embed[type="application/x-shockwave-flash"][wid
display: none !important;
visibility: hidden !important;
}
embed[type="application/x-shockwave-flash"][wid
display: none !important;
visibility: hidden !important;
}
I do stoop so low. That alias is a good idea, but there are two problems:
1) the "cd" before the semicolon needs to be able to take the argument (i.e. the directory that you want to cd to). I forget how to do this, I'll go look it up after I post...
2) this will open a new konqueror every time you change directories, I think, unless that "dcop" you have in there causes it to use an already open konq. I'm not sure what that is, and I couldn't bring up a man page on it.
Getting closer...