Seriously though isn't it ironic that one of the most vocal, vigorous, and litigious defenders of copyright, The Walt Disney Corporation, was built by a man, Walt Disney, who specialized in taking common stories, themes, and myths from the public domain and repackaging them (some would say diminishing them) with some rather dubious original additions and modifications for mass consumption? They benefited from the public domain and now they aggressively pull the ladder up after themselves and attack the very thing that made it possible for them to get their start? Do they share any of their profits with the descendants of the brothers Grimm? I doubt it.
Perhaps you can answer that when the taxman comes to collect what is due. I don't know about you, but most people would consider the penalties dished out by the IRS as not worth dodging the taxes in the first place aside from any moral compunctions about not paying one's fair share. In any case, it is more common for people to dispute what amount is fair than to pay nothing at all. You may be disobedient if you wish, but do not be surprised by the consequences.
What you want is not possible simply because it is human nature for the strong to take what they want from the weak through violence or threat thereof in the absence of any countervailing force to prevent it. The purpose of government is to provide a single unified force to protect you from coercion at the hands of your fellow man (i.e. give me what I want or I will take it from your cold dead hands). Taxes are a form of coercion on behalf of the government yes, but we as a society have decided that this small tyranny is better than the alternative which is barbarism and anarchy. It is a small price to pay for the assurance that even the weakest member of society will have his life, liberty, and property protected against coercion by the strong. You may disagree about how your tax money is spent and in fact many people do just that, but you must pay the taxes even so because you enjoy the protection that the rest of us are paying for and it is not possible to separate your desire to be entirely on your own from the protections enjoyed by the rest of us. This is what economists call the free rider problem of which the canonical example is national defense. Taxes are part of the bargain that we all must accept in return for the privilege of living in a civilized society.
as the other voting machine vendors, such as Diebold, did not support the competition.
Of course they didn't support it. The first or second place projects in the competition are both better than the crappy voting system marketed by Diebold and they are *free*. If your competition is free and it is better then you are in a world of hurt. Diebold is the classic example of a company which didn't make a very good transition of expertise in physical real world security products to software products.
All of these features have been implemented and implemented better in other games (Dark Age of Camelot and Everquest come to mind). The one thing that was nice about the *original* Ultima Online was the PvP system where anyone could kill anyone at any time and for any reason whatsoever. However, even UO was forced to nix that "feature" because of whiners who didn't understand the benefits of text chat spammer and loot farmer control. Among the things that UO did worse than just about everyone else was *housing* with massive house and tent spammers cluttering up the landscape in a medieval version of urban sprawl (hint: this is why modern cities have urban planning). Ultima Online was first, but it certainly is not the best and it has been arguably surpassed entirely by subsequent games. It deserves credit for being first, but at this point that is about all it deserves.
Or a real managed runtime with virtual machine and a more modern programming language. There are really fewer and fewer excuses every year for most programmers to continue using 1970s vintage languages, such as C, which allow these sorts of mistakes to be made by programmers that almost certainly do not understand the consequences. Is it possible to write a stable and secure program in these languages? Of course, but there are simply too many gotchas in these languages to justify their continued use, especially in new applications, for most developers. If you want to write a business application then do yourself a favor and pick a managed environment such as Java or C#.NET and leave the C code to the kernel and driver programmers. Unless of course you enjoy pain and simply must have that last bit of speed (by which time your competitors would have beaten you to market anyway). It just isn't worth the trouble anymore and I started my programming career with C++ so I know how irritating it can be to track down these pernicious runtime errors.
Clinton and Bush both new that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons because the USA sold them to him
There were certain American companies that sold him (Saddam) precursor chemicals (those dual use ones that can be used to make any number of products from plastics to fertilizer to chemical weapons depending upon one's intent). It was a gray area since most people in the know knew what he (Saddam) was *probably* going to do with those precursors, but it is not quite as bad as the United States handing him finished and fully functional weapons, which we did not do. In fact, the United States had long since scrapped our own offensive chemical and biological weapons programs at that point in favor of concentrating our WMD efforts on our nuclear weapons (although the Soviets continued full swing well into the the 1980s and the programs did not finally completely go away until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 and the chaos of the early 1990s). The other thing to remember is that following the hostage situation, Iran is famous for its hostage taking after all, nobody in the United States was going stand up for Iran (the target of chemical attacks by the Iraqis) if and when someone else wanted to give the Iranians a black eye.
33% of Fox viewers said that the U.S. had actually physically found WMDs in the course of the invasion
Unfortunately, the issue is not as black and white as the pundits on either side would like you to believe. There is, unfortunately, some wiggle room that gets used to support either one side or the other depending upon the speaker. The problem lies in the strictness of one's definition of WMDs and the categorization by some people of certain chemical weapons as WMDs despite the fact that such weapons are orders or magnitude less destructive than say the nuclear weapons that they are grouped with. Now, having said that it *is* true that US forces in Iraq have, from time to time, come across the odd Artillery shell filled with mustard or even a binary form of sarin in one case (used as a roadside bomb and a couple of US soldiers experienced minor symptoms, but no deaths). At best one could say that such finds are execeedingly rare and do not in and of themselves constitute evidence of a vast and active program on the part of Saddam to develop and use these weapons in the years immediately prior to the invasion. However, proof is proof and if even one shell is found then the number of "WMDs" was not zero and that is why the pundits continue arguing the points. This is splitting hairs maybe but if one argues that there were absolutely *no* WMDs in Iraq prior to the invasion then strictly speaking that person would be wrong. The problem lies in the use of absolutes in argumentation where even one counter-example disproves the argument.
I agree, Ceasars should take their loss and quietly forget about the whole affair. Think of all of the negative publicity if they litigated to get back the $500,000 and all of the details came out in court and the press. Is that the image of Ceasers that they want the public to have? That they are incompetent to run a casino and sue their "winners" to get their money back? Isn't that cause for having the gaming license of a casino in Nevada revoked? No, if they are smart then they will let it go and take steps to ensure that it doesn't happen again.
This should be treated much like counting cards at blackjack. If you do it in your head with no mechanical help, you are playing within the rules, and you are not cheating.
The issue of whether or not card counting constitutes cheating was and is a hot topic in the gaming industry with strong opinions on both sides of the issue. The courts have consistently ruled that it is not cheating, from the legal definition of cheating (i.e. the one that results in a criminal prosecution), to count cards provided that one is not assisted in this endeavor by any sort of device (i.e. mechanical, electronic, electro-mechanical, etc). The casinos on the other hand, not surprisingly, consider all forms of card counting, even the type that courts have ruled legal as "intelligent play" (i.e. using your brain), as "cheating". This is where it gets interesting. In Las Vegas the casinos have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason and it is not unheard of for card counters to get the back-room treatment (i.e. casino security goons try to verbally intimidate you into not coming back again and in the old days that did more than just talk if you know what I mean). However in Atlantic City they are not allowed to refuse someone a game, provided that the casino is open to the public and the player is not creating an overt disturbance, so they do things like switch decks frequently, deal from multiple decks, deal only partway through the decks, use automatic shufflers, etc...to discourage card counting.
The gaming industry is not a nice industry to be in, either as a player or an owner, being classically considered as a vice industry which means that you are going to attract many of the "wrong sort of people" if you know what I mean. The casinos deal harshly with anyone they perceive to be hurting the bottom line precisely because the entire atmosphere of gambling is already highly adversarial and involves the one thing that everyone wants more of...money...and lots of it. Personally, I don't much care for gambling, even as a form of entertainment, but if you plan to try card counting then all I can say is watch out...either you wont be any good at it and the casinos will encourage you to "count" more often or you will be in which case you will end up in their database and be bared from just about every casino on the face of the earth.
People cynically patent anything as another revenue stream making a mockery of the purpose of protecting IP in the first place.
There is also a perverse incentive for the patent examiners to approve even half baked or marginally plausible patents because their agency and its funding is based primarily on, you guessed it...patent fees. If they start tightening up what gets approved and what doesn't then fewer companies will apply for patents and pay fees which means less revenue to their (the patent examiners') agency.
Perhaps, but the RIAA and those they represent (i.e. the major record labels) might find themselves the target of a class action SLAAP in retaliation for abusing the legal system in this way. That should at least be enough to make them think twice.
Aside from a glaring error in chapter 12 where Abagnale erroneously writes that true authentication is impossible on the Internet
While strictly speaking, from a theoretical standpoint, he is, as you say, wrong about true authentication being impossible it is also important to consider the audience to whom this book is speaking. In fact, it can be very difficult for the average user, in practice, to be certain that a particular electronic transaction is secure (there have been several recent studies confirming this). This combined with the fact that the phishers, identity thieves, spammers, and other malcontents are actively subverting the system to trick users in ever more sophisticated and clever ways means that from a practical standpoint, for the average user, this may be good advice (i.e. to consider internet transactions to be unsecured or at the very least suspect). I know that this is Slashdot and we all know better here (i.e. we wouldn't be easily fooled by phishers or get hit with a rootkit or keylogger...or so we hope), but if experts have difficulties then just imagine how the average users feel.
as soon as you start to pump, the volume BOOMS out loud and (sadly) clear, advertising some crap to you.
I wonder where the content is coming from? Is it local or merely a synchronized satellite stream? This is something that is just begging to be an article in 2600 magazine. Imagine pulling up to the gas pump (the one that has been p0wnd by the h4x0|2z) and instead of some advertisement for more crappy consumer goods you hear a critical dissertation on the oil companies' negative environmental activities (complete w/pictures!) while pumping your gas (be sure to pay in ca$h). Brilliant!
What I was trying to say is that if the 3rd world countries aren't forced to raise their standards, than we are going to be forced to lower ours in order to compete, which is bad for our country and environment
You speak as if lowering one's standards to compete was the obvious choice. If third world countries want certain jobs bad enough that they are willing to poison their children with heavy metals and dioxins to get them then I say let them. If that is what it takes to keep those jobs in the United States then let them go where there are people willing to do them. The standard of living here in the United States is high enough now that we should be willing to sacrifice some potentially less desiriable jobs for the sake of more environmental quality. The thing about environmental quality, and the reason why we here in the United States care about it and can afford it, is that it is a luxury good. What do I mean by that you say? Well, environmental quality is a luxury good insofar as people are willing to pay more for it (i.e. sacrifice a few low desirability jobs) the better off they are. There are millions of people in the third world who are struggling to survive and therefore they cannot afford to be as picky. There is no way that you are going to win a race to the bottom to compete with a desparate Bangladeshi for that last sweatshop manufacturing job, nor should you even want to...just let it go.
The problem is that those 80-100 refinery jobs create a special interest group (i.e. those people who may want or need those refinery jobs) for which the enforcement of environment regulations is a voting issue (since it means either not getting or losing their jobs). It is this web of special interests (horse trading) that results in hundreds of thousands of people in Indiana all paying a small price (somewhat reduced environmental quality) so that 80-100 people can have jobs. There are millions of such horse trades per year at both the federal and state levels, each of them too small to get worked up about individually when the costs are aggregated over all of the rest of us, but which hurt us collectively all the same (i.e. death by a thousand cuts). The best way to counter the BP deal would be for enough Indiana citizens to lobby their state and local governments for better environmental enforcement. The only question now is how bad do you want it? Lobbying is hard work and you can bet that those job seekers want those refinery jobs so it boils down to a question of who wants it more...I am bettting that in Indiana it is probably the potential refinery workers and not the environmental lobbyists.
Never had DVD Decrypter fail to rip a DVD for me, but then again my taste in film tends to be a little more off-beat and eclectic. Perhaps you can provide and example of a DVD that you own which DVD Decrypter has failed to rip? For my own part DVD Decrypter is spartan and simple to use while at the same time presenting powerful options for the more advanced user to filter the inputs and fine tune the outputs. You can even use your favorite MPEG encoder to convert the VOBs into your favorite formats (I am partial to Flask myself, but there are certainly better and more professional packages if you want to spend a buck or two). The all in one tools are invariably lacking in some areas, or at least that has been my experience.
Can anybody point me at a utility (Linux or Windows, I have both) that does this without me having to baby step it through 5 different utilities and a hundred command line options?
1. Use DVD Decrypter (last available version was 3.5.4.0 - MAFIAA tried to kill them but you can still Google it, the name of the file is SetupDVDDecrypter_3.5.4.0.exe and the size is 879 KB) to rip the VOB files, stripping macrovision, region coding, and encryption (of course). There are other more advanced options too but ripping the VOB files to a directory on your HDD will be enough for the next step.
2. Use DVD Shrink to cut out all of the stuff you don't want to burn onto your copy disc (i.e. other languages, commentary tracks, advertisements, FBI warning, etc). Burn your copy (sans junk, no macrovision or encryption and region free) and save an image of the project or burn yourself a second backup so that you can dupe the DVD again, without having to go through step 1 and most of 2 again using the original store bought DVD, when your kids destroy the copy DVD for the Nth time and you have to burn them another one.
There are manuals with the software or you can check out Doom9 for detailed FAQs, How-To, and Walkthroughs. Good luck.
But the company added a password protection to its FTP site after the AP's inquiry
I hope they realize that FTP does not encrypt the transport, and thus the password, and that this is only marginally better than no password at all until they bother with encrypting the underlying connection (port forwarding 21 or whatever port they are using through an SSH tunnel for example).
It has been precisely the lax means and methods in Microsoft's anti-piracy efforts of the past that helped it to grow so quickly.
Perhaps, but how is that different than all of those dot bomb startups who planned to loose money on each sale to gain market share, but make it up on volume?
Yes, it probably is all that you would get. The United States Government has a long history of seizing patents which they claim are vital to the national security interests of the United States. They usually pay the inventor some pittance sum, swear him to secrecy, and politely suggest that he get lost...perhaps not so politely if he doesn't take the hint the first time. Of course, this eliminates any chance that the inventor and his backers might have had at a market rate return on the idea or invention, but those are the breaks. If you don't believe that this can happen, then have a look at Secrecy Power Sinks Patent Case to receive your edification.
Because it's not only about reform, it's about retribution.
People would do well to remember the admonition of Confucius before they so eagerly set out in search of their vengeance, "Before you embark upon a journey of revenge, dig two graves."
Why they didn't use edge contacts like everyone else in the industry I can't even fathom.
The reason is simple really, there isn't enough space inside that 'ultra slim' case to accommodate edge contacts that will stay in contact with the phone through all of the bumps, drops, and assorted user abuses. The only way to ensure that the battery contacts never lose contact, causing the power to cycle at seemingly random times, is to solder the battery directly to those contacts. Apple was apparently not willing to sacrifice even a couple of millimeters of extra thickness in order to accommodate a battery connector with wires. They did the same thing with their iPod nano. There appears to be an 'utlra-slim' fetish in the marketplace, but how many people would be willing to sacrifice a few millimeters of slimness for a more user-friendly battery replacement option? Probably more than just a few.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously though isn't it ironic that one of the most vocal, vigorous, and litigious defenders of copyright, The Walt Disney Corporation, was built by a man, Walt Disney, who specialized in taking common stories, themes, and myths from the public domain and repackaging them (some would say diminishing them) with some rather dubious original additions and modifications for mass consumption? They benefited from the public domain and now they aggressively pull the ladder up after themselves and attack the very thing that made it possible for them to get their start? Do they share any of their profits with the descendants of the brothers Grimm? I doubt it.
Perhaps you can answer that when the taxman comes to collect what is due. I don't know about you, but most people would consider the penalties dished out by the IRS as not worth dodging the taxes in the first place aside from any moral compunctions about not paying one's fair share. In any case, it is more common for people to dispute what amount is fair than to pay nothing at all. You may be disobedient if you wish, but do not be surprised by the consequences.
What you want is not possible simply because it is human nature for the strong to take what they want from the weak through violence or threat thereof in the absence of any countervailing force to prevent it. The purpose of government is to provide a single unified force to protect you from coercion at the hands of your fellow man (i.e. give me what I want or I will take it from your cold dead hands). Taxes are a form of coercion on behalf of the government yes, but we as a society have decided that this small tyranny is better than the alternative which is barbarism and anarchy. It is a small price to pay for the assurance that even the weakest member of society will have his life, liberty, and property protected against coercion by the strong. You may disagree about how your tax money is spent and in fact many people do just that, but you must pay the taxes even so because you enjoy the protection that the rest of us are paying for and it is not possible to separate your desire to be entirely on your own from the protections enjoyed by the rest of us. This is what economists call the free rider problem of which the canonical example is national defense. Taxes are part of the bargain that we all must accept in return for the privilege of living in a civilized society.
as the other voting machine vendors, such as Diebold, did not support the competition.
Of course they didn't support it. The first or second place projects in the competition are both better than the crappy voting system marketed by Diebold and they are *free*. If your competition is free and it is better then you are in a world of hurt. Diebold is the classic example of a company which didn't make a very good transition of expertise in physical real world security products to software products.
All of these features have been implemented and implemented better in other games (Dark Age of Camelot and Everquest come to mind). The one thing that was nice about the *original* Ultima Online was the PvP system where anyone could kill anyone at any time and for any reason whatsoever. However, even UO was forced to nix that "feature" because of whiners who didn't understand the benefits of text chat spammer and loot farmer control. Among the things that UO did worse than just about everyone else was *housing* with massive house and tent spammers cluttering up the landscape in a medieval version of urban sprawl (hint: this is why modern cities have urban planning). Ultima Online was first, but it certainly is not the best and it has been arguably surpassed entirely by subsequent games. It deserves credit for being first, but at this point that is about all it deserves.
You need a real managed string API
.NET and leave the C code to the kernel and driver programmers. Unless of course you enjoy pain and simply must have that last bit of speed (by which time your competitors would have beaten you to market anyway). It just isn't worth the trouble anymore and I started my programming career with C++ so I know how irritating it can be to track down these pernicious runtime errors.
Or a real managed runtime with virtual machine and a more modern programming language. There are really fewer and fewer excuses every year for most programmers to continue using 1970s vintage languages, such as C, which allow these sorts of mistakes to be made by programmers that almost certainly do not understand the consequences. Is it possible to write a stable and secure program in these languages? Of course, but there are simply too many gotchas in these languages to justify their continued use, especially in new applications, for most developers. If you want to write a business application then do yourself a favor and pick a managed environment such as Java or C#
Clinton and Bush both new that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons because the USA sold them to him
There were certain American companies that sold him (Saddam) precursor chemicals (those dual use ones that can be used to make any number of products from plastics to fertilizer to chemical weapons depending upon one's intent). It was a gray area since most people in the know knew what he (Saddam) was *probably* going to do with those precursors, but it is not quite as bad as the United States handing him finished and fully functional weapons, which we did not do. In fact, the United States had long since scrapped our own offensive chemical and biological weapons programs at that point in favor of concentrating our WMD efforts on our nuclear weapons (although the Soviets continued full swing well into the the 1980s and the programs did not finally completely go away until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 and the chaos of the early 1990s). The other thing to remember is that following the hostage situation, Iran is famous for its hostage taking after all, nobody in the United States was going stand up for Iran (the target of chemical attacks by the Iraqis) if and when someone else wanted to give the Iranians a black eye.
33% of Fox viewers said that the U.S. had actually physically found WMDs in the course of the invasion
Unfortunately, the issue is not as black and white as the pundits on either side would like you to believe. There is, unfortunately, some wiggle room that gets used to support either one side or the other depending upon the speaker. The problem lies in the strictness of one's definition of WMDs and the categorization by some people of certain chemical weapons as WMDs despite the fact that such weapons are orders or magnitude less destructive than say the nuclear weapons that they are grouped with. Now, having said that it *is* true that US forces in Iraq have, from time to time, come across the odd Artillery shell filled with mustard or even a binary form of sarin in one case (used as a roadside bomb and a couple of US soldiers experienced minor symptoms, but no deaths). At best one could say that such finds are execeedingly rare and do not in and of themselves constitute evidence of a vast and active program on the part of Saddam to develop and use these weapons in the years immediately prior to the invasion. However, proof is proof and if even one shell is found then the number of "WMDs" was not zero and that is why the pundits continue arguing the points. This is splitting hairs maybe but if one argues that there were absolutely *no* WMDs in Iraq prior to the invasion then strictly speaking that person would be wrong. The problem lies in the use of absolutes in argumentation where even one counter-example disproves the argument.
I agree, Ceasars should take their loss and quietly forget about the whole affair. Think of all of the negative publicity if they litigated to get back the $500,000 and all of the details came out in court and the press. Is that the image of Ceasers that they want the public to have? That they are incompetent to run a casino and sue their "winners" to get their money back? Isn't that cause for having the gaming license of a casino in Nevada revoked? No, if they are smart then they will let it go and take steps to ensure that it doesn't happen again.
This should be treated much like counting cards at blackjack. If you do it in your head with no mechanical help, you are playing within the rules, and you are not cheating.
The issue of whether or not card counting constitutes cheating was and is a hot topic in the gaming industry with strong opinions on both sides of the issue. The courts have consistently ruled that it is not cheating, from the legal definition of cheating (i.e. the one that results in a criminal prosecution), to count cards provided that one is not assisted in this endeavor by any sort of device (i.e. mechanical, electronic, electro-mechanical, etc). The casinos on the other hand, not surprisingly, consider all forms of card counting, even the type that courts have ruled legal as "intelligent play" (i.e. using your brain), as "cheating". This is where it gets interesting. In Las Vegas the casinos have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason and it is not unheard of for card counters to get the back-room treatment (i.e. casino security goons try to verbally intimidate you into not coming back again and in the old days that did more than just talk if you know what I mean). However in Atlantic City they are not allowed to refuse someone a game, provided that the casino is open to the public and the player is not creating an overt disturbance, so they do things like switch decks frequently, deal from multiple decks, deal only partway through the decks, use automatic shufflers, etc...to discourage card counting.
The gaming industry is not a nice industry to be in, either as a player or an owner, being classically considered as a vice industry which means that you are going to attract many of the "wrong sort of people" if you know what I mean. The casinos deal harshly with anyone they perceive to be hurting the bottom line precisely because the entire atmosphere of gambling is already highly adversarial and involves the one thing that everyone wants more of...money...and lots of it. Personally, I don't much care for gambling, even as a form of entertainment, but if you plan to try card counting then all I can say is watch out...either you wont be any good at it and the casinos will encourage you to "count" more often or you will be in which case you will end up in their database and be bared from just about every casino on the face of the earth.
People cynically patent anything as another revenue stream making a mockery of the purpose of protecting IP in the first place.
There is also a perverse incentive for the patent examiners to approve even half baked or marginally plausible patents because their agency and its funding is based primarily on, you guessed it...patent fees. If they start tightening up what gets approved and what doesn't then fewer companies will apply for patents and pay fees which means less revenue to their (the patent examiners') agency.
We all know that's what the RIAA is doing, too..
Perhaps, but the RIAA and those they represent (i.e. the major record labels) might find themselves the target of a class action SLAAP in retaliation for abusing the legal system in this way. That should at least be enough to make them think twice.
Aside from a glaring error in chapter 12 where Abagnale erroneously writes that true authentication is impossible on the Internet
While strictly speaking, from a theoretical standpoint, he is, as you say, wrong about true authentication being impossible it is also important to consider the audience to whom this book is speaking. In fact, it can be very difficult for the average user, in practice, to be certain that a particular electronic transaction is secure (there have been several recent studies confirming this). This combined with the fact that the phishers, identity thieves, spammers, and other malcontents are actively subverting the system to trick users in ever more sophisticated and clever ways means that from a practical standpoint, for the average user, this may be good advice (i.e. to consider internet transactions to be unsecured or at the very least suspect). I know that this is Slashdot and we all know better here (i.e. we wouldn't be easily fooled by phishers or get hit with a rootkit or keylogger...or so we hope), but if experts have difficulties then just imagine how the average users feel.
as soon as you start to pump, the volume BOOMS out loud and (sadly) clear, advertising some crap to you.
I wonder where the content is coming from? Is it local or merely a synchronized satellite stream? This is something that is just begging to be an article in 2600 magazine. Imagine pulling up to the gas pump (the one that has been p0wnd by the h4x0|2z) and instead of some advertisement for more crappy consumer goods you hear a critical dissertation on the oil companies' negative environmental activities (complete w/pictures!) while pumping your gas (be sure to pay in ca$h). Brilliant!
What I was trying to say is that if the 3rd world countries aren't forced to raise their standards, than we are going to be forced to lower ours in order to compete, which is bad for our country and environment
You speak as if lowering one's standards to compete was the obvious choice. If third world countries want certain jobs bad enough that they are willing to poison their children with heavy metals and dioxins to get them then I say let them. If that is what it takes to keep those jobs in the United States then let them go where there are people willing to do them. The standard of living here in the United States is high enough now that we should be willing to sacrifice some potentially less desiriable jobs for the sake of more environmental quality. The thing about environmental quality, and the reason why we here in the United States care about it and can afford it, is that it is a luxury good. What do I mean by that you say? Well, environmental quality is a luxury good insofar as people are willing to pay more for it (i.e. sacrifice a few low desirability jobs) the better off they are. There are millions of people in the third world who are struggling to survive and therefore they cannot afford to be as picky. There is no way that you are going to win a race to the bottom to compete with a desparate Bangladeshi for that last sweatshop manufacturing job, nor should you even want to...just let it go.
The problem is that those 80-100 refinery jobs create a special interest group (i.e. those people who may want or need those refinery jobs) for which the enforcement of environment regulations is a voting issue (since it means either not getting or losing their jobs). It is this web of special interests (horse trading) that results in hundreds of thousands of people in Indiana all paying a small price (somewhat reduced environmental quality) so that 80-100 people can have jobs. There are millions of such horse trades per year at both the federal and state levels, each of them too small to get worked up about individually when the costs are aggregated over all of the rest of us, but which hurt us collectively all the same (i.e. death by a thousand cuts). The best way to counter the BP deal would be for enough Indiana citizens to lobby their state and local governments for better environmental enforcement. The only question now is how bad do you want it? Lobbying is hard work and you can bet that those job seekers want those refinery jobs so it boils down to a question of who wants it more...I am bettting that in Indiana it is probably the potential refinery workers and not the environmental lobbyists.
Never had DVD Decrypter fail to rip a DVD for me, but then again my taste in film tends to be a little more off-beat and eclectic. Perhaps you can provide and example of a DVD that you own which DVD Decrypter has failed to rip? For my own part DVD Decrypter is spartan and simple to use while at the same time presenting powerful options for the more advanced user to filter the inputs and fine tune the outputs. You can even use your favorite MPEG encoder to convert the VOBs into your favorite formats (I am partial to Flask myself, but there are certainly better and more professional packages if you want to spend a buck or two). The all in one tools are invariably lacking in some areas, or at least that has been my experience.
it will be RIAA supplied crap or silence.
or revolt and open warfare on the encrypted and onion routed P2P networks...they cannot track down and bust every last one of us after all.
Can anybody point me at a utility (Linux or Windows, I have both) that does this without me having to baby step it through 5 different utilities and a hundred command line options?
1. Use DVD Decrypter (last available version was 3.5.4.0 - MAFIAA tried to kill them but you can still Google it, the name of the file is SetupDVDDecrypter_3.5.4.0.exe and the size is 879 KB) to rip the VOB files, stripping macrovision, region coding, and encryption (of course). There are other more advanced options too but ripping the VOB files to a directory on your HDD will be enough for the next step.
2. Use DVD Shrink to cut out all of the stuff you don't want to burn onto your copy disc (i.e. other languages, commentary tracks, advertisements, FBI warning, etc). Burn your copy (sans junk, no macrovision or encryption and region free) and save an image of the project or burn yourself a second backup so that you can dupe the DVD again, without having to go through step 1 and most of 2 again using the original store bought DVD, when your kids destroy the copy DVD for the Nth time and you have to burn them another one.
There are manuals with the software or you can check out Doom9 for detailed FAQs, How-To, and Walkthroughs. Good luck.
actually it was more like a *their* space clone...unless you are one of those redpills
But the company added a password protection to its FTP site after the AP's inquiry
I hope they realize that FTP does not encrypt the transport, and thus the password, and that this is only marginally better than no password at all until they bother with encrypting the underlying connection (port forwarding 21 or whatever port they are using through an SSH tunnel for example).
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
- Cardinal Richelieu
It has been precisely the lax means and methods in Microsoft's anti-piracy efforts of the past that helped it to grow so quickly.
Perhaps, but how is that different than all of those dot bomb startups who planned to loose money on each sale to gain market share, but make it up on volume?
So it's not like 10^6 is all you'll get.
Yes, it probably is all that you would get. The United States Government has a long history of seizing patents which they claim are vital to the national security interests of the United States. They usually pay the inventor some pittance sum, swear him to secrecy, and politely suggest that he get lost...perhaps not so politely if he doesn't take the hint the first time. Of course, this eliminates any chance that the inventor and his backers might have had at a market rate return on the idea or invention, but those are the breaks. If you don't believe that this can happen, then have a look at Secrecy Power Sinks Patent Case to receive your edification.
Because it's not only about reform, it's about retribution.
People would do well to remember the admonition of Confucius before they so eagerly set out in search of their vengeance, "Before you embark upon a journey of revenge, dig two graves."
Why they didn't use edge contacts like everyone else in the industry I can't even fathom.
The reason is simple really, there isn't enough space inside that 'ultra slim' case to accommodate edge contacts that will stay in contact with the phone through all of the bumps, drops, and assorted user abuses. The only way to ensure that the battery contacts never lose contact, causing the power to cycle at seemingly random times, is to solder the battery directly to those contacts. Apple was apparently not willing to sacrifice even a couple of millimeters of extra thickness in order to accommodate a battery connector with wires. They did the same thing with their iPod nano. There appears to be an 'utlra-slim' fetish in the marketplace, but how many people would be willing to sacrifice a few millimeters of slimness for a more user-friendly battery replacement option? Probably more than just a few.