Re:This feature is built into the WIN XP license
on
RIAA Wants Right To Hack
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· Score: 5, Informative
And here's another interesting feature. I downloaded a content-protected.wma music file I purchased with my pepsi cap points from pepsistuff.com. For a test, I copied it to another computer and tried to listen to it. It not only denied it, but opened up my web browser and sent me to Pepsistuff.com where a message said I had no rights to listen to that content. Worse, the URL I was directed to had the full pathname of the "stolen" file in it, the drive letter, path, filename, and a bunch of other encoded data I have no idea what it is...
And get this, I tried to play that.wma file with winamp, not windows media player, so the protection is either in the file drivers somewhere or winamp has the wma protection code built in too...
What makes you think they'd contact your machine? Why not phone home via http? Like, ever notice when you install or update IE, no matter what your home page is, first time IE runs it loads a page from microsoft with/runonce/ in the URL?
As for a friend of mine who said he's OK because he runs ZoneAlarm, er, ZoneAlarm hooks into the IP stack. Microsoft wrote it, they can operate at a layer lower than zone alarm. The only real protection is to have an external gateway or firewall recognize and block whatever this mysterious ability to disable content is, and until they start doing it, we won't know what to look for.
I'm sticking with linux and w2k personally (I go both ways...) and definitely Linux with the ultra-cool iptables running as my firewall on a ratty old box in my basement!
This feature is built into the WIN XP license
on
RIAA Wants Right To Hack
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Read the license to Win XP carefully. It has a part in it that says that Microsoft may disable your access to copyrighted content at any time without notice upon request by content owners.
Interesting, and possibly so. Can you cite a place on the web that documents what plate formats are valid? You aren't just talking about a missing hyphen are you?
No, it's not a correct format. Number plates in UK are one of:
Three letters and 1-3 digits (used until early 60s)
Three letters, 1-3 digits, one letter (used from early 60s to around mid 80s). The last letter increments each year so you can tell the year a car was made by its number plate.
one letter, 1-3 digits, three letters (reverse of above). Used when they ran out of year letters.
So the cited plate of 8670amc couldn't be correct. Perhaps it was "B 670 AMC" for example.
p.s. I haven't been in UK for about 5 years. I assume they are about to run out of year letters again. What format comes next I wonder...
OK, point taken. I, as you can tell, am overly sensitive to this topic.
Applications on all PC-type platforms tend to default to horrible insecure modes with the attitude that the desktop computer itself has little need to be secured. That's a horrible attitude and drains productivity. It's a real problem.
But being an IT nazi isn't a solution I am comfortable with either. So we did our best to come up with a best-overall solution. The user gets to choose who manages their PC. Them or us. If them, then we give them local admin rights and if anything fails for whatever reason, our only action will be to reformat and reinstall to the state we gave it to them (still a pain but beats spending hours debugging issues with some crap program they installed). If they have data they value, they save it on a network drive. No PCs are backed up.
Maybe it was the term geek that set me off. The term geek is like so many racial slurs. It's OK if used within the ethnic group by the group members, but no one outside of that group better utter the word! I couldn't tell whether the original poster was himself a geek or not:)
Relative to the months of creative work and irreplacable personal data that can be lost, getting the local geek to spend a few hours reinstalling software is indeed trivial.
As someone who manages 25 local geeks, I take great offense to this statement, but it's pretty damn typical of user attitudes so it doesn't shock me.
The local geeks you talk about spend far too much time fixing your screwups and when we try to protect you from yourself by putting strict file perms on your desktop, you go screaming bloody murder because you can't install webshots or some other stupid program-of-the-week your friends told you about.
So instead of us doing something useful like planning for deploying new technologies, coding useful reports for the mountain of data you need to work with in the company's oracle database, ensuring the company doesn't get sued for license non-compliance, keeping server patches up-to-date, keeping up with security lists, etc, etc, we are running around fixing your screwups because you have no respect for the time or talents of your local geek.
Thanks for illustrating this common and typical attitude so well...
What makes you think Zone Alarm will alert you to this automatic update? Microsoft wrote the OS. They can hit the network at a layer lower than Zone Alarm sits. They can have the update be done via iexpore.exe which you told zone alarm to allow access to the net. There's a lot of ways this software can be automatically installed on your computer. Since they own the OS, the only way to stop it is something external to the computer...
Isn't the big thing about the BSD license is that it doesn't suppose to have restrictions like this? As in, any company can take the code, wrap it into their own code, and not pay, give credit, whatever?
If so, then nothing wrong has occured. It can also be recopyrighted under GPL. Don't like it, just copy and make use of the original BSD one that doesn't have that restriction.
I don't see Microsoft making the source for BSD bits they lift available for others, nor do they have to. BSD allows you to do whatever you want with the code, including sell it, right?
This isn't meant as a troll, if I'm mistaken, let me know. I'm just interpreting the numerous open-source vs free-source, BSD-vs-GPL flame wars that have been going on here forever...
You know, I sat and read that washington post article about falwell and robertson and couldn't believe it. It must have been taken out of context, not reported accurately, etc, etc...
My stance is softening -- a bit. I wouldn't object so much to being snooped on if it was only for national security purposes. Unfortunately, we can't trust the government to do just this. Stupid commercial interests would leverage it in some way so they'd also be snooping in to find people who loaned a CD to a friend, for example.
It's not the idea so much as the potential to abuse the power. That what turns my stomach. It's one thing to prevent a disaster like happened Tuesday. It's another thing to use it to protect the profits of corporations. I just don't think we can trust them to do one and not the other...:(
Yeah, I know. I *do* believe Microsoft orchestrated them and should be hung out to dry. I was just saying that the presence of similar phrases alone doesn't necessarily mean it's a case of manipulation. You need more evidence than that, and it sounds like the attorney generals have found it...
The presence of identical phrases doesn't necessarily indicate fraud. Even on slashdot, we often get people writing suggestions on letters to write to congress about DCMA, DeCSS, etc...
Face it, most people can't articulate themselves very well and prefer to use boilerplate letters. It doesn't make their opinions any less valid.
They both do something I hate, and that is code their page to a fixed pixel width/height. As if everyone in the world uses 800x600. On my 1600x1200 display, it takes up about 25% of my screen. Oh and then there are those that use fixed pixel sizes instead of the more prefered 'em' font measurement. Use ems and I can control the font size to my liking.
Good post. I'd personally be willing to pay much more if they'd just let me run a mail and web server for my own usage. The only way to do that is to place some sort of usage cap (as in, per gigabyte or something, not a bandwidth throttle).
The nice thing about cable is the speed. Burst of speeds in short periods are the best (like when scarfing a futurama episode you missed and can get 200 megs in two minutes). If you want to use 50 gigs a month, there should be a pricing option for that too.
I can't understand why they don't permit tiered service. Your biggest support costs probably go to supporting the lower usage person. Those that are willing to pay extra for bandwidth, want to run servers, etc, probably are savvy enough not to need technical help. They are willing to pay, and the only cost is the larger infrastructure to support the greater traffic, so amortize that in along with a profit and get more business.
They have the perfect damn weapon. I say this everytime this topic comes up.
Hey you stupid feds: JUST STOP BUYING MICROSOFT'S STUFF
The federal government should just move to a different competitor. I read that all fed agencies shovel over a billion a year at Microsoft in various license fees. Imagine how much a billion a year would help another software company become a viable competitor to Microsoft.
They don't need the courts, use the damn marketplace...
some of those sound pretty ridiculous. Got any references? My doubts are raised because I live near Claymont Delaware and follow the paper and local news carefully. I never heard of such a case....
but I'm pretty sure that they can't even put you in a minimum security prison until your convicted, I might be wrong but I think people awaiting trial are held somewhere a little more agreeable.
Probably differs depending on the state. In my state (Delaware) you get thrown into "Gander Hill" with the rest of the population. A lot of people who can't make bail spend quite a few months in there before their day in court. The place was designed with one-person cells to try to cut down on some of the prisoner-to-prisoner violence issues but due to the overcrowding because of all of the jail sentences given for drug USERS and such, they currently stick two and in some cases three people in one cell.
Seriously, those that are sitting around claiming that U.S. prisons are pieces of cake have obviously never been in one. My father, a minister, visits prisons all the times and it's not a nice place to be. Maybe if you're rich and in a fed prison for defrauding someone of 100 million bucks you're OK, but if you commit the more serious crime of holding up a 7-eleven for 20 bucks using the ole finger in the coat pocket trick, you get to do some hard time in a state pen...
p.s. slashdot can really suck at times. I try to be a nice @home customer and use their proxy servers to keep their inter-connect traffic down but whenever I try to post it says I can't cause my IP address has posted too many moded down posts recently. Well D'OH, that IP has a few million people behind it. Learn about how a proxy works guys. It just forces me to uncheck my proxy connection but then I can't post because I get an invalid key msg (probably cause my IP address changes). So I open up a new browser section, hit reply, copy/paste my reply over, and the bitch tells me I have to wait 20 seconds after hitting reply before I submit. Arrrgh...
"The horrors experienced by many young inmates, particularly those who are convicted of nonviolent offenses, border on the unimaginable. Prison rape not only threatens the lives of those who fall prey to their aggressors, but it is potentially devastating to the human spirit. Shame, depression, and a shattering loss of self-esteem accompany the perpetual terror the victim thereafter must endure."
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, Farmer v. Brennan
Slashdot Mirror
And get this, I tried to play that .wma file with winamp, not windows media player, so the protection is either in the file drivers somewhere or winamp has the wma protection code built in too...
As for a friend of mine who said he's OK because he runs ZoneAlarm, er, ZoneAlarm hooks into the IP stack. Microsoft wrote it, they can operate at a layer lower than zone alarm. The only real protection is to have an external gateway or firewall recognize and block whatever this mysterious ability to disable content is, and until they start doing it, we won't know what to look for.
I'm sticking with linux and w2k personally (I go both ways...) and definitely Linux with the ultra-cool iptables running as my firewall on a ratty old box in my basement!
Read the license to Win XP carefully. It has a part in it that says that Microsoft may disable your access to copyrighted content at any time without notice upon request by content owners.
No, it's not a correct format. Number plates in UK are one of:
So the cited plate of 8670amc couldn't be correct. Perhaps it was "B 670 AMC" for example.
p.s. I haven't been in UK for about 5 years. I assume they are about to run out of year letters again. What format comes next I wonder...
Applications on all PC-type platforms tend to default to horrible insecure modes with the attitude that the desktop computer itself has little need to be secured. That's a horrible attitude and drains productivity. It's a real problem.
But being an IT nazi isn't a solution I am comfortable with either. So we did our best to come up with a best-overall solution. The user gets to choose who manages their PC. Them or us. If them, then we give them local admin rights and if anything fails for whatever reason, our only action will be to reformat and reinstall to the state we gave it to them (still a pain but beats spending hours debugging issues with some crap program they installed). If they have data they value, they save it on a network drive. No PCs are backed up.
Maybe it was the term geek that set me off. The term geek is like so many racial slurs. It's OK if used within the ethnic group by the group members, but no one outside of that group better utter the word! I couldn't tell whether the original poster was himself a geek or not :)
As someone who manages 25 local geeks, I take great offense to this statement, but it's pretty damn typical of user attitudes so it doesn't shock me.
The local geeks you talk about spend far too much time fixing your screwups and when we try to protect you from yourself by putting strict file perms on your desktop, you go screaming bloody murder because you can't install webshots or some other stupid program-of-the-week your friends told you about.
So instead of us doing something useful like planning for deploying new technologies, coding useful reports for the mountain of data you need to work with in the company's oracle database, ensuring the company doesn't get sued for license non-compliance, keeping server patches up-to-date, keeping up with security lists, etc, etc, we are running around fixing your screwups because you have no respect for the time or talents of your local geek.
Thanks for illustrating this common and typical attitude so well...
When you backclick or close, the next site(s) will attempt to pop up, but no further code will be loaded and hence the hell will eventually end.
I always click "work offline" before trying to exit or back out of any of these questionable sites now BEFORE the cascading crap starts...
What makes you think Zone Alarm will alert you to this automatic update? Microsoft wrote the OS. They can hit the network at a layer lower than Zone Alarm sits. They can have the update be done via iexpore.exe which you told zone alarm to allow access to the net. There's a lot of ways this software can be automatically installed on your computer. Since they own the OS, the only way to stop it is something external to the computer...
Just give me the tithead of the day award... :)
If so, then nothing wrong has occured. It can also be recopyrighted under GPL. Don't like it, just copy and make use of the original BSD one that doesn't have that restriction.
I don't see Microsoft making the source for BSD bits they lift available for others, nor do they have to. BSD allows you to do whatever you want with the code, including sell it, right?
This isn't meant as a troll, if I'm mistaken, let me know. I'm just interpreting the numerous open-source vs free-source, BSD-vs-GPL flame wars that have been going on here forever...
Wrong way:
Service Pack 6A
IIS cumulative rollup patch
Post SP6A security rollup patch
Right way:
Service Pack 6a
Post-SP6a Security Roll-up
IIS Cumulative Patch
We thought we were covered. Nope. :-(
(reference, focus-ms mailing list)
So I went to the source.
It's pretty much true, that's how he really feels. :-(
It's not the idea so much as the potential to abuse the power. That what turns my stomach. It's one thing to prevent a disaster like happened Tuesday. It's another thing to use it to protect the profits of corporations. I just don't think we can trust them to do one and not the other... :(
Yeah, I know. I *do* believe Microsoft orchestrated them and should be hung out to dry. I was just saying that the presence of similar phrases alone doesn't necessarily mean it's a case of manipulation. You need more evidence than that, and it sounds like the attorney generals have found it...
Face it, most people can't articulate themselves very well and prefer to use boilerplate letters. It doesn't make their opinions any less valid.
Is there still a two gig max file size limitation? I'm assuming so, since this seems to mainly be ext2fs with journaling tacked onto it.
They both do something I hate, and that is code their page to a fixed pixel width/height. As if everyone in the world uses 800x600. On my 1600x1200 display, it takes up about 25% of my screen. Oh and then there are those that use fixed pixel sizes instead of the more prefered 'em' font measurement. Use ems and I can control the font size to my liking.
Both of those sites suck.
The nice thing about cable is the speed. Burst of speeds in short periods are the best (like when scarfing a futurama episode you missed and can get 200 megs in two minutes). If you want to use 50 gigs a month, there should be a pricing option for that too.
I can't understand why they don't permit tiered service. Your biggest support costs probably go to supporting the lower usage person. Those that are willing to pay extra for bandwidth, want to run servers, etc, probably are savvy enough not to need technical help. They are willing to pay, and the only cost is the larger infrastructure to support the greater traffic, so amortize that in along with a profit and get more business.
Exactly. Remember Novell? Word Perfect? Lotus 1-2-3? dBASE? Borland?
Once upon a time they were #1 in their areas. Now they are all but dead. There is no real competition. That's the problem.
You don't see any potential issues with having our entire government dependant on software written by a company they are trying to sue?!
Why not move to Macs? There has to be an office suite besides Microsoft Office on the Mac for example. No? If not, that's pretty scarey...
Hey you stupid feds: JUST STOP BUYING MICROSOFT'S STUFF
The federal government should just move to a different competitor. I read that all fed agencies shovel over a billion a year at Microsoft in various license fees. Imagine how much a billion a year would help another software company become a viable competitor to Microsoft.
They don't need the courts, use the damn marketplace...
How about this? The federal government should stop being one of Microsoft's best customers.
some of those sound pretty ridiculous. Got any references? My doubts are raised because I live near Claymont Delaware and follow the paper and local news carefully. I never heard of such a case....
Probably differs depending on the state. In my state (Delaware) you get thrown into "Gander Hill" with the rest of the population. A lot of people who can't make bail spend quite a few months in there before their day in court. The place was designed with one-person cells to try to cut down on some of the prisoner-to-prisoner violence issues but due to the overcrowding because of all of the jail sentences given for drug USERS and such, they currently stick two and in some cases three people in one cell.
You forgot about the all the sex you can take part...
Seriously, those that are sitting around claiming that U.S. prisons are pieces of cake have obviously never been in one. My father, a minister, visits prisons all the times and it's not a nice place to be. Maybe if you're rich and in a fed prison for defrauding someone of 100 million bucks you're OK, but if you commit the more serious crime of holding up a 7-eleven for 20 bucks using the ole finger in the coat pocket trick, you get to do some hard time in a state pen...
p.s. slashdot can really suck at times. I try to be a nice @home customer and use their proxy servers to keep their inter-connect traffic down but whenever I try to post it says I can't cause my IP address has posted too many moded down posts recently. Well D'OH, that IP has a few million people behind it. Learn about how a proxy works guys. It just forces me to uncheck my proxy connection but then I can't post because I get an invalid key msg (probably cause my IP address changes). So I open up a new browser section, hit reply, copy/paste my reply over, and the bitch tells me I have to wait 20 seconds after hitting reply before I submit. Arrrgh...
Slightly behind prison rape I would guess...
"The horrors experienced by many young inmates, particularly those who are convicted of nonviolent offenses, border on the unimaginable. Prison rape not only threatens the lives of those who fall prey to their aggressors, but it is potentially devastating to the human spirit. Shame, depression, and a shattering loss of self-esteem accompany the perpetual terror the victim thereafter must endure."
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, Farmer v. Brennan