They obviously aren't going far enough when companies like Lepin are still making products that are not only a direct clone of the latest LEGO sets but in any number of cases rip off 3rd party IP like Star Wars or Super Heroes or Voltron.
If the Chinese were genuinely serious about this, they would shut down (or blacklist/apply these new restrictions to) all the hundreds of factories producing bootlegs of everything from smartphones to LEGO bricks to golf clubs to handbags.
Just because AT&T says they are going to move away form Satellite TV doesn't mean its the end for it. Not unless Dish Network also exits the market (something I have seen no signs they intend doing)
I have a landline since I need it to get ADSL2+ but I dont even have a phone plugged in so any attempts from scammers to call me on the landline will get nowhere. And I have never gotten such a call on my mobile either.
I do still see the ads for the scammers though (the ones with the annoying computer generated "critical alert from microsoft" audio and the popups that are impossible to click out of and such). When I see them I try my best to report them via "report deceptive site" so they can be blocked by whatever backend is being used for that but I have no idea if its helping or not.
They need to put a bunch of these guys into jail for a nice long time AND make a lot of noise about it all over the Indian media. Do that enough times to show its the new normal and a bunch of the people making all those phone calls might decide the risk of going to jail isn't worth whatever reward they get for carrying out the scams.
The practices of the big media companies dont help matters. Many examples where content has its local release (e.g. release into theaters, release on physical media, TV premiere, release on digital services) in a certain country or market delayed for no good reason. I gaurantee that reducing the time between the first release of the content and the release in that particular market will result in less piracy.
Warner Bros made the decision to delay the Australian release of The LEGO Movie in Australia (worldwide release was in early February, Australian release didn't happen until late March). After the film was released, the boss of the local distributor admitted that the decision to delay the local release was "one hell of a mistake". Yet despite admitting it was a huge mistake, they did it again with The LEGO Batman Movie and are doing it a third time The LEGO Movie 2.
That's just one example of the ways in which the content industry is making it harder for consumers to actually give the content creators money for their content.
Wreck-It Ralph 2 has only just hit theaters this week and I can already find pirated copies out there without much effort. (I intend to give the creators some money for the film and go see it in the cinemas which is why I didn't download any of the copies I found).
I dont like the idea of having to install spy software but $15/hour for software development C++ work (which I am good at) may well in theory be better than what I do now. Especially if it qualified as "commercial experience in software development" for my resume.
If my bank can run an online banking website that prevents anyone but me getting into the data (using a combination of both strong authentication and the latest HTTPS standards, why cant medical providers do the same thing? Diagnostic lab makes the data available via a secure portal, doctor logs onto the secure portal and downloads it. Need a different doctor to get the information, easy enough to authorize that different doctor to get it as well.
Its only a fairly basic keyboard but it gets the job done. I have considered the Unicomp but I have heard its not so good for fast paced gaming. And I cant justify spending that much on any keyboard if I can't at least get a feel for what its like to type on.
Here in Australia I was able to walk into a branch of the Bank of Queensland (the bank I currently bank with) and open an account and all I needed was a $1 coin and sufficient ID. In the years I have had that account, I have paid a grand total of $0 in monthly fees and $0 in normal transaction fees.
The only fees I have paid in that time are for foreign online purchases and in a few cases fees for taking money of an ATM that charged fees (something I only do when one of the thousands of fee-free ATMs I get access to is not available at whatever location I am).
Oh and if for some bizarre reason I actually needed to deposit or write cheques (I haven't had to deal with a cheque in years and can't remember ever needing to write one) my account doesn't charge any fees for doing that either.
And I am sure I could do the same thing (open an account with no fees with near zero deposit required) at any number of other Australian banks.
I will never understand why no-one has been able to come in and offer such accounts in the US (accounts that give people with low amounts of money and low incomes genuine banking access with low or no fees) and put the greedy scumbags at the payday loan/check cashing places (the ones that in many cases are the only real way for low income earners to turn their paychecks into actual spendable cash) out of business.
I still run an anti-virus (AVG free) just to alert me if it finds something suspicious (just because I dont run random exe files doesn't mean something I get that seems legitimate enough can't be something malicious instead) but I have some of the more advanced crap turned off so it doesn't get in the way.
Once upon a time I used to run Norton but then I tried Norton Internet Security. Worked so good that it stopped my internet and web browsing from working completely. After that I blacklisted Norton and Symantec programs and will never install them on any PC I own.
Maybe its time for BGP (the protocol that is used by all these networks to talk to each other) to get some security so that people can't advertise routes for IP blocks they dont actually own.
When picking which goods to apply tariffs to, instead of targeting inputs to other things (such as circuit boards and components) they should have targeted finished consumer goods, especially those where China isn't the only country that makes them.
But no, that would make all the cheap Chinese crap they sell at Walmart more expensive and given how powerful Walmart is (and how much money they likely give to politicians of all sorts via "donations") that would never fly. Better to target goods that are only imported by people who aren't powerful enough to matter to Trump and his supporters...
I have no problems paying for content when the content I want is available at a reasonable price, will play on the playback devices I have and doesn't require me to go out of my way to acquire it.
I regularly go to the cinema to see movies and I am more than willing to pay for that (saw Bohemian Rhapsody the other day in fact and planning to see the new Fantastic Beasts when it opens on Thursday and even went out of my way to go see The Lion King as part of a Disney Classics thing even though I already own it on DVD). And I will buy DVDs for my DVD collection (added Ready Player One to the collection recently along with the Oscar-winning Japanese film Spirited Away but I have an extensive collection). And I watch a lot of content (old and new) on free-to-air TV.
But when content is unavailable to buy from the retailers I have access to (e.g. the cult classic cyberpunk film Johnny Mnemonic which I still can't find on DVD except as a second hand import item that may not work on my DVD player due to region locks), isn't being shown at cinemas I have easy access to (as was the case with a recent theatrical screening of 2001 A Space Odyssey that was only playing in theaters I couldn't get to) or isn't being aired on local TV (e.g. the local TV network that has exclusive rights to Madam Secretary is many episodes behind the US airings) the incentive to pirate that content goes up dramatically.
And no, none of the content I want is available via the streaming services that I could purchase.
Even worse is when YouTube intentionally makes certain channels harder to find (e.g. not recommending videos from those channels to people, unsubscribing people from those channels at random, not notifying those people of new videos from those channels).
Evidence I have seen is that this happens for channels that dont opt for monetization (i.e. dont earn YouTube ad revenue), that are in any way controversial or on the nose or might be unpopular with advertisers (e.g. gun related channels) or that for whatever reason YouTube doesn't like.
Any hardware manufacturer that allows backdoors to even end up in a shipping device clearly has something wrong with the way they do software development. And when they do find things like this, they need to backtrack via version control and see who allowed this crap to happen (in terms of the developer and the all the different levels of people who were supposed to review that developers code before it got out there) and give the people who allowed it to happen or should have caught it a good talking to so the people involved change the way they do things so it cant happen again.
Then again, given what Snowden has told us, all these backdoors in all these internet connected things may well be intentional and only closed or covered up when someone not sworn to secrecy finds one...
There is a big difference between a clone block manufacturer (such as Mega Bloks) producing their own original set designs and securing their own licenses and what the Chinese bootleggers do where they directly copy the design of official LEGO products (often ripping off licensed brands like Star Wars or DC or Marvel or Harry Potter or Ferrari)
There is a BIG difference between something like this Call of Duty helicopter set https://shop.megabrands.com/en... produced legally and with full permission of Activision Blizzard as owners of the Call of Duty IP and something like this knock-off Star Wars set https://lepinstarwars.com/prod... which is a direct copy of the official LEGO Star Wars Cloud City set and has been produced without permission from LEGO (who own the rights to the design of the set as well as the exclusive rights to produce Star Wars building sets) or Disney/Lucasfilm (as owners of the Star Wars IP)
The #1 thing they need to do if they are serious about combating IP theft is to stamp out all the bootlegging that goes on in their country.
LEGO have recently won a court case against a major Chinese bootlegger but other than a minor fine and possibly a need to redesign or stop selling a few products (out of the many bootleg products they currently make and sell around the world) it wont do a thing to stop the knock-offs.
Enforcement action by the government and its agencies to shut down the bootlegging (of everything from LEGO to designer bags to golf clubs to baby formula) would be the single biggest thing the Chinese government could do to show the world that it is serious about respecting intellectual property rights.
Then again, if the episodes I have seen recently are any indication, I doubt Sesame Street plays the kind of really good educational clips it used to anymore (I suspect it started going downhill when someone decided they could make a lot of money selling plush toys (especially that ugly red thing) and switched the focus away from the educational clips and towards more clips featuring the Muppet characters who could be marketed via toys and such.
Good luck finding a politician in Canada who might actually be able to get elected and who is actually going to (not just promise to) make it harder for the big media companies to take anti-piracy actions like this.
Except that actually finding a politician you can vote for who wants to get rid of all this crap AND has a snowballs chance in hell of actually being elected is nearly impossible.
Except that the same TSA goons that you see at airports are not only doing the same checks are the borders with Mexico and Canada but now they are doing random checks on the highways as well.
Are the people using these "refurbished" batteries in any way claiming they are genuine unmodified Apple parts or lying about what has been done to them? Or are these people claiming they are somehow authorized Apple service providers?
Slashdot Mirror
They obviously aren't going far enough when companies like Lepin are still making products that are not only a direct clone of the latest LEGO sets but in any number of cases rip off 3rd party IP like Star Wars or Super Heroes or Voltron.
If the Chinese were genuinely serious about this, they would shut down (or blacklist/apply these new restrictions to) all the hundreds of factories producing bootlegs of everything from smartphones to LEGO bricks to golf clubs to handbags.
Just because AT&T says they are going to move away form Satellite TV doesn't mean its the end for it. Not unless Dish Network also exits the market (something I have seen no signs they intend doing)
I have a landline since I need it to get ADSL2+ but I dont even have a phone plugged in so any attempts from scammers to call me on the landline will get nowhere. And I have never gotten such a call on my mobile either.
I do still see the ads for the scammers though (the ones with the annoying computer generated "critical alert from microsoft" audio and the popups that are impossible to click out of and such). When I see them I try my best to report them via "report deceptive site" so they can be blocked by whatever backend is being used for that but I have no idea if its helping or not.
They need to put a bunch of these guys into jail for a nice long time AND make a lot of noise about it all over the Indian media. Do that enough times to show its the new normal and a bunch of the people making all those phone calls might decide the risk of going to jail isn't worth whatever reward they get for carrying out the scams.
The practices of the big media companies dont help matters.
Many examples where content has its local release (e.g. release into theaters, release on physical media, TV premiere, release on digital services) in a certain country or market delayed for no good reason. I gaurantee that reducing the time between the first release of the content and the release in that particular market will result in less piracy.
Warner Bros made the decision to delay the Australian release of The LEGO Movie in Australia (worldwide release was in early February, Australian release didn't happen until late March). After the film was released, the boss of the local distributor admitted that the decision to delay the local release was "one hell of a mistake". Yet despite admitting it was a huge mistake, they did it again with The LEGO Batman Movie and are doing it a third time The LEGO Movie 2.
That's just one example of the ways in which the content industry is making it harder for consumers to actually give the content creators money for their content.
Wreck-It Ralph 2 has only just hit theaters this week and I can already find pirated copies out there without much effort. (I intend to give the creators some money for the film and go see it in the cinemas which is why I didn't download any of the copies I found).
I dont like the idea of having to install spy software but $15/hour for software development C++ work (which I am good at) may well in theory be better than what I do now. Especially if it qualified as "commercial experience in software development" for my resume.
If my bank can run an online banking website that prevents anyone but me getting into the data (using a combination of both strong authentication and the latest HTTPS standards, why cant medical providers do the same thing? Diagnostic lab makes the data available via a secure portal, doctor logs onto the secure portal and downloads it. Need a different doctor to get the information, easy enough to authorize that different doctor to get it as well.
Its only a fairly basic keyboard but it gets the job done.
I have considered the Unicomp but I have heard its not so good for fast paced gaming. And I cant justify spending that much on any keyboard if I can't at least get a feel for what its like to type on.
Here in Australia I was able to walk into a branch of the Bank of Queensland (the bank I currently bank with) and open an account and all I needed was a $1 coin and sufficient ID. In the years I have had that account, I have paid a grand total of $0 in monthly fees and $0 in normal transaction fees.
The only fees I have paid in that time are for foreign online purchases and in a few cases fees for taking money of an ATM that charged fees (something I only do when one of the thousands of fee-free ATMs I get access to is not available at whatever location I am).
Oh and if for some bizarre reason I actually needed to deposit or write cheques (I haven't had to deal with a cheque in years and can't remember ever needing to write one) my account doesn't charge any fees for doing that either.
And I am sure I could do the same thing (open an account with no fees with near zero deposit required) at any number of other Australian banks.
I will never understand why no-one has been able to come in and offer such accounts in the US (accounts that give people with low amounts of money and low incomes genuine banking access with low or no fees) and put the greedy scumbags at the payday loan/check cashing places (the ones that in many cases are the only real way for low income earners to turn their paychecks into actual spendable cash) out of business.
I still run an anti-virus (AVG free) just to alert me if it finds something suspicious (just because I dont run random exe files doesn't mean something I get that seems legitimate enough can't be something malicious instead) but I have some of the more advanced crap turned off so it doesn't get in the way.
Once upon a time I used to run Norton but then I tried Norton Internet Security. Worked so good that it stopped my internet and web browsing from working completely. After that I blacklisted Norton and Symantec programs and will never install them on any PC I own.
Maybe its time for BGP (the protocol that is used by all these networks to talk to each other) to get some security so that people can't advertise routes for IP blocks they dont actually own.
When picking which goods to apply tariffs to, instead of targeting inputs to other things (such as circuit boards and components) they should have targeted finished consumer goods, especially those where China isn't the only country that makes them.
But no, that would make all the cheap Chinese crap they sell at Walmart more expensive and given how powerful Walmart is (and how much money they likely give to politicians of all sorts via "donations") that would never fly. Better to target goods that are only imported by people who aren't powerful enough to matter to Trump and his supporters...
Except that Vudu is unavailable here in Australia.
I have no problems paying for content when the content I want is available at a reasonable price, will play on the playback devices I have and doesn't require me to go out of my way to acquire it.
I regularly go to the cinema to see movies and I am more than willing to pay for that (saw Bohemian Rhapsody the other day in fact and planning to see the new Fantastic Beasts when it opens on Thursday and even went out of my way to go see The Lion King as part of a Disney Classics thing even though I already own it on DVD). And I will buy DVDs for my DVD collection (added Ready Player One to the collection recently along with the Oscar-winning Japanese film Spirited Away but I have an extensive collection). And I watch a lot of content (old and new) on free-to-air TV.
But when content is unavailable to buy from the retailers I have access to (e.g. the cult classic cyberpunk film Johnny Mnemonic which I still can't find on DVD except as a second hand import item that may not work on my DVD player due to region locks), isn't being shown at cinemas I have easy access to (as was the case with a recent theatrical screening of 2001 A Space Odyssey that was only playing in theaters I couldn't get to) or isn't being aired on local TV (e.g. the local TV network that has exclusive rights to Madam Secretary is many episodes behind the US airings) the incentive to pirate that content goes up dramatically.
And no, none of the content I want is available via the streaming services that I could purchase.
Even worse is when YouTube intentionally makes certain channels harder to find (e.g. not recommending videos from those channels to people, unsubscribing people from those channels at random, not notifying those people of new videos from those channels).
Evidence I have seen is that this happens for channels that dont opt for monetization (i.e. dont earn YouTube ad revenue), that are in any way controversial or on the nose or might be unpopular with advertisers (e.g. gun related channels) or that for whatever reason YouTube doesn't like.
Any hardware manufacturer that allows backdoors to even end up in a shipping device clearly has something wrong with the way they do software development. And when they do find things like this, they need to backtrack via version control and see who allowed this crap to happen (in terms of the developer and the all the different levels of people who were supposed to review that developers code before it got out there) and give the people who allowed it to happen or should have caught it a good talking to so the people involved change the way they do things so it cant happen again.
Then again, given what Snowden has told us, all these backdoors in all these internet connected things may well be intentional and only closed or covered up when someone not sworn to secrecy finds one...
There is a big difference between a clone block manufacturer (such as Mega Bloks) producing their own original set designs and securing their own licenses and what the Chinese bootleggers do where they directly copy the design of official LEGO products (often ripping off licensed brands like Star Wars or DC or Marvel or Harry Potter or Ferrari)
There is a BIG difference between something like this Call of Duty helicopter set
https://shop.megabrands.com/en...
produced legally and with full permission of Activision Blizzard as owners of the Call of Duty IP and something like this knock-off Star Wars set
https://lepinstarwars.com/prod...
which is a direct copy of the official LEGO Star Wars Cloud City set and has been produced without permission from LEGO (who own the rights to the design of the set as well as the exclusive rights to produce Star Wars building sets) or Disney/Lucasfilm (as owners of the Star Wars IP)
The #1 thing they need to do if they are serious about combating IP theft is to stamp out all the bootlegging that goes on in their country.
LEGO have recently won a court case against a major Chinese bootlegger but other than a minor fine and possibly a need to redesign or stop selling a few products (out of the many bootleg products they currently make and sell around the world) it wont do a thing to stop the knock-offs.
Enforcement action by the government and its agencies to shut down the bootlegging (of everything from LEGO to designer bags to golf clubs to baby formula) would be the single biggest thing the Chinese government could do to show the world that it is serious about respecting intellectual property rights.
Clearly the kids who made these drawings never saw this old Sesame Street clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Then again, if the episodes I have seen recently are any indication, I doubt Sesame Street plays the kind of really good educational clips it used to anymore (I suspect it started going downhill when someone decided they could make a lot of money selling plush toys (especially that ugly red thing) and switched the focus away from the educational clips and towards more clips featuring the Muppet characters who could be marketed via toys and such.
Good luck finding a politician in Canada who might actually be able to get elected and who is actually going to (not just promise to) make it harder for the big media companies to take anti-piracy actions like this.
Except that actually finding a politician you can vote for who wants to get rid of all this crap AND has a snowballs chance in hell of actually being elected is nearly impossible.
Except that the same TSA goons that you see at airports are not only doing the same checks are the borders with Mexico and Canada but now they are doing random checks on the highways as well.
Are the people using these "refurbished" batteries in any way claiming they are genuine unmodified Apple parts or lying about what has been done to them? Or are these people claiming they are somehow authorized Apple service providers?