"The google toolbar does this...Yet nobody complains that it updates without authorization."
The Google toolbar has never broken any existing functionality by being patched. Windows, Office, Xbox, just about every piece of software MS writes has had a patch break something that used to work. THAT is the difference, and why nobody has complained. Plus when Google updates, they ADD features, they don't take away features like MS has been known to do in the name of security.
After M$ just went out and said how they'd love to just patch any computer they want so the user "doesn't have to", does this really surprise anyone? I think this is just the test to see if people are outraged or not before they implement this full-scale in windows. Frankly, after personally witnessing M$ break a perfectly good and stable computer with windows update (I installed the latest IE patch on my win xp computer at work and it broke my IIS development server running on my machine - yes, sorry I code in asp and C#, I gotta pay the bills), I don't want them installing their garbage on my computer, good or bad.
The real crime...
on
RIAA Bits
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"The New York Times writes that record industry executives who are adamant that file sharing is stealing are not above stealing themselves."
You mean like artificially keeping CD prices high by using your power as a monopoly to steal more money from people who like music? I'd say the record industry has been stealing from all of us for many, many years. I will not shed a tear about their tiny loss of profit that is probably more due to their inability to put out good music and alienating their customers than file "sharing".
"Let's be serious. How often does this happen. I've been downloading contents from peer to peer networks since the advent of scour.net, and have had no gross misrepresentations of content such as you imply happen. The worst I've ever seen is badly labelled pornography (which was still clearly labelled as pornography). I maintain that this kind of misrepresentation happens on such an infrequent basis as to assume it to be insignificant."
Yeah, except for the artists themselves (Metallica, Madonna). Remember when those ass-clowns Metallica (well, they've been ass-clowns since the black album, anyway) passed off John Denver songs as their own? And when Madonna decided it would be funny to yell at file traders through mislabeled songs of hers (which I'm sure only led to the highest number of her songs ever being downloaded just to hear her yell, IMHO).
I've never seen porn on there masquerading as something else. Bad porn disguised as good porn, maybe, but who's going to report that? Perhaps they are trying to get the all-powerful pornography industry to try to sue file traders too? I don't think that would work, as the record industry is the only association dumb enough to sue their own potential customers.
If you want to have all episodes of the simpsons (thank you fox indianapolis for playing 3 episodes every day!) recorded and at your becon call, 2 weeks of recording space is barely adequate. There are what, 13 seasons of the simpsons, with around 13 episodes per season, at 30 minutes per episodes (without commercial skip), that makes about 84 hours, give or take. Then add in all the futuramas, all the family guy's, and you can fill up that drive pretty darn fast. Add in some stargate SG-1, and damn, i'm gonna need a terabyte drive. For well over a grand though, i'd hope it would have a DVD-R to pull stuff off of it (I can't read japanese, but it doesn't look like it has one in the picture).
"If there were significant visible markings on the disc that said something to the effect of "This disc does not meet the red-book standard for Compact Disc Digital Audio" then it would be reasonable to allow the sale of the crippled CD -- after all, the manufacturer has made it apparent that this disc is not a Compact Disc, but that it *might* support some of the same functionality."
Knowing the technical knowledge of most consumers, when you refer to "red book" they'll probably think the magazine and wonder what the hell that has to do with CDs and buy it anyway. I think the disclaimer needs to be... how should I say... dumbed down.
Funny how their phone prefix is 666... wonder if that is real?
Organization: The Bulk Club LLC The Bulk Club LLC The Bulk Club LLC 3867 W. Market St #272 Akron, OH 44333 US Phone: 330-666-7625 Email: aumaninc@hotmail.com
"Perhaps an array of sensors along the heat shield could report about the integrity of the vessel. Even external cameras are a possibility. A solution as simple as these could keep the aging shuttles flying safely for several more years while a more advanced space solution is developed."
What good is that going to do, exactly? So you figure out that the shuttle has a big gaping hole in the underside of the wing. What then? Its not like the shuttle carries replacement parts or even the tools needed to replace those things. Plus, keeping replacement parts for every possible thing that could go wrong would add to the liftoff weight and reduce the amount of useful experiments they can carry. Ok, so they could launch a rescue shuttle? Um, no. The shuttle takes too long to prep for launch, is too sensitive to weather to be able to launch in a pinch, and the cost of having a shuttle on standby 24-7 during an orbital mission would GREATLY increase the cost of missions, which is exactly what NASA doesn't need to keep operating long into the 21st century.
"When the shuttle was originally planned, there were going to be several different models."
Yeah, it was also supposed to be ready in time to push skylab back into a correct orbit before gravity had its way with it, and instead it was delayed and skylab made a big impact (har) in Australia. The shuttle was also supposed to only take a team of around 10 men about a month to service between missions. The heat resistant tiles ended up being waaaay to complex for that idea to work (each tile is uniquely cut for an exact position on the shuttle). Lets all hope NASA gets this one right... I don't think their congressional watchdogs want another hard to maintain super complex glider on their hands.
For those too lazy to read the article, this is only designed to be a commuter to the space station and back. It only would have a crew of 4, and would carry light cargo. It isn't meant as a do-everything satellite launcher/people mover like the current space shuttle. They plan on developing another vehicle to do the other chores of the space shuttle. Frankly, with the budget constraints NASA is under, I'm really surprised to read about them seriously developing more than one type of shuttle replacement, although I do think they are going in the right direction. We have several rockets designed to carry heavy payloads, I really don't see why they need to have the payload and crew all in one vehicle. What they should do is keep the rockets to lift the heavy payloads safely into space, then have the humans do what they need to do to the payload once it is in space (such as fine tuning, final preparation, and/or activation).
"They are a reactive organization - it comes with the territory of having a dominant market position and being scared shitless of change, unless and until it forces itself on them, usually by inducing fear of losing the dominant market position."
Well thank you for summing up the US, the most reactive country out there. It sure seems to me that no laws get passed until someone ends up dead or it would threaten the US's dominance over, well, everyone. No wonder the DOJ loves MS, their change models are the same! If someone died because of a hole in Windows (say an exploit run on a hospital computer that caused prescriptions to change or something), you'd bet your ass the US would be making laws to make Windows more secure.
"She claims that she can be prepared to crack the system within a week..."
Perhaps I'm missing the point of this, but doesn't an election system just have to be good enough to last one day without being hacked? How many one week long elections are there? As long as you leave the system secluded before you release it, then only expose it to the public for one day (election day), I think that there wouldn't be any time for people to realize exploits on it, providing it is a unique system that doesn't use components that are publicly accessible. After the election, they can do what they want with the system, but I'm guessing a full year is enough time to come up with a newly created system for the next election. It keeps programmers in work, and keeps their system so unique as to be difficult to hack. What do you all think? Am I missing the point on this?
"To be honest, what keeps most people from pirating movies is there are so few worth downloading for free."
Brilliant! You've figured out their plan, make movies soooo bad no one will want to pirate them! It certainly would explain Gigli, Battlefield Earth, and Freddy got Fingered. It all makes sense now.
'I was a bit curious as to the reason why there seems to be no speculation about this "giant ape" being a chimpanzee/human hybrid. Of course, humans have a different number of chromosomes than the other great apes, but that in itself doesn't seem to be an absolute bar to cross-breeding. The answer seems to be in this article [prometheussociety.org], where it basically says that human DNA has a number of chromosomal "inversions" with respect to chimpanzee DNA, and those inversions would lead to cross-breeding sterility."
Are you ACTUALLY suggesting that a chimp was raped by a man? Wouldn't a human baby be too large or a chimp to birth (all the chimp babies i've seen in film have been especially tiny). Or are you suggesting that a chimp raped a human? I bet the human wouldn't want to report that out of embarrassment, but would she birth it? I think you're going out on a limb here. And the limb doesn't have any chimps or humans on it.
I'd be more interested in seeing a comparison of people's caring about downloading copyrighted music before the RIAA started suing everyone and their uncle versus now. I bet people would have cared a bit more then (a bit, not entirely). More and more I think people are downloading music just to spite the RIAA and their band of thugs (am I the only one that imagines a group of dimwits running around muttering "hup! hup! hup! hup!" ala the FBI in South Park?). If they want to come up with a valuable sales loss figure to tell their management, why don't they calculate the amount of money lost by bullying their customers into never wanting to buy from them again? If they keep targeting college students, they are targeting a group that has a whole lifetime of potential CD buying ahead of them, and I know if they tried to sue me, i'd never buy another album again (I still do, but they haven't released more then two albums a year worth buying in the last five or more years, IMHO). I'm certainly not going to buy an entire album of crap if I like only one song (and usually marginally at that). I just wish there was more selection on iTunes Music Service so I could consider using that instead of "breaking the law" and commiting what is in their twisted little mind a felony. The fact is, even if there was never any Napster, or Kaaza, etc. I'd still be borrowing people's CDs to rip the one song I want off of it. They shouldn't blame the internet when they only have to blame themselves for being a poorly managed organization that causes their product to be overpriced and undesirable.
"And after cornering the market on email worms, imagine the benefits they can bring to NNTP!"
Hmmm.... I think I sense a bit of sarcasm out of Mr. Taco on that one. I'm not used to the admins making such direct blows to microsoft in the news postings!
Yeah, I have TW Cable in Indianapolis (now called Brighthouse), and we've had access to this unit for several months now (I have one). I have had the annoying crash you described, it used to happen at least once a week. I guess some of the firmware updates may have slowed that down. It seemed to happen when I was scrolling through the channels at the same time it started recording something. It would just turn off with an error code on the display, and then reboot itself five minutes later, resulting in a gap in the recording and no access to cable during that time. As for the recording quality, It isn't exactly as good as the broadcast signal, there is clearly artifacting (might be easier to tell through the S-VIdeo cable I use). I'd put the quality a bit above a good VHS tape. Despite with the original poster said, you can record 2 shows and watch a 3rd, although the unit gets very sluggish (I can forgive it for that). If the power goes out too (or you unplug it), you'll have to wait about 5 minutes for the thing to reload all the program info as well. For the extra $8/month, I'd say it is really worth it. One strange thing though, when the unit is connected and turned off, you cannot get your regular cable channels to pass through the unit as I expected. All you see is a black screen. This means that if your unit fails for any reason, you'll have to disconnect it to get your channels to pass through to the TV (obviously no digital ones).
Now if only SBC, Verizon, and all the other major ISPs got together in one big court case the RIAA might get frightened. I don't see why they are filing all these lawsuits separately, I'm sure the more evil lawyers they throw at this issue at once, the more the courts might agree with them (or at least get the media to pick up on this story a bit more, instead of just having an AP wire somewhere on the back pages of their websites).
Not only that, but I think manufacturing would be much more efficient in terms of raw materials as only the products that are needed would get built. There would be no more overstock, no more items sent back to the manufacturer because no one bought them. If someone wants your product, they just order it up. No waiting for items to be in stock, no wasted resources. This technology (which I see as being waaaaay off in teh future for anything substantial) would allow companies to focus on R&D instead of manufacturing which would (theoretically) produce better designed prodcuts. I can't wait! There are, however, severe implications to the manufacturing workforce currently employed. I'm sure they don't have quite the same optimistic outlook I have.
"There should be no need to iterate thousands of times over the pattern recognition algorithms when you can just take anouther FFT of the log magnitude spectrum to eliminate doppler shift (the same as what audio engineers would call 'pitch.')"
Whatcha talkin' about willis? No flex capacitor? What were you thinking.
"Any takers on a pool for how long before our good buddies at Microsoft start some legal action?"
I think that if they have felt this way for any amount of time, they would have done so already. I suspect they would only do so if their market share were to slip by any significant margin (they don't want to look even more like the convicted monopoly they are). OTOH, without mentioning any specific parts of code they feel open source software has borrowed their IP, this could just be a case of MS saying "well, there HAS to be some of our code in there if the stuff talks with our software." I guess we'll see though.
Agreed. If Ford decided to start selling the Exploder (Explorer to you) at a big loss for $1000 each hoping to make the money up on broken part replacements and gasoline, and I buy one and buy someone elses gasoline and parts, what would they be able to do? Nothing. Just sit there and take a loss. That is why virtually no business outside of the computer world does this. All I can think of off the top of my head are Ink Jet printers, XBox, and razor blades. Ink Jet printer makers and Microsoft seem to be quick to use the DMCA to stifle competition. I don't think Gillette or Bic would start suing people for making razor blades that happened to fit their razor handle. They'd probably try to make their blades better so no one would want to use the cometitions, or they change their business model.
Slashdot Mirror
The Google toolbar has never broken any existing functionality by being patched. Windows, Office, Xbox, just about every piece of software MS writes has had a patch break something that used to work. THAT is the difference, and why nobody has complained. Plus when Google updates, they ADD features, they don't take away features like MS has been known to do in the name of security.
After M$ just went out and said how they'd love to just patch any computer they want so the user "doesn't have to", does this really surprise anyone? I think this is just the test to see if people are outraged or not before they implement this full-scale in windows. Frankly, after personally witnessing M$ break a perfectly good and stable computer with windows update (I installed the latest IE patch on my win xp computer at work and it broke my IIS development server running on my machine - yes, sorry I code in asp and C#, I gotta pay the bills), I don't want them installing their garbage on my computer, good or bad.
You mean like artificially keeping CD prices high by using your power as a monopoly to steal more money from people who like music? I'd say the record industry has been stealing from all of us for many, many years. I will not shed a tear about their tiny loss of profit that is probably more due to their inability to put out good music and alienating their customers than file "sharing".
BobTM(R)(C)
I'm just going to sit here with a cold one and let all the armchair lawyers hash it out. Game on. -M
Yeah, except for the artists themselves (Metallica, Madonna). Remember when those ass-clowns Metallica (well, they've been ass-clowns since the black album, anyway) passed off John Denver songs as their own? And when Madonna decided it would be funny to yell at file traders through mislabeled songs of hers (which I'm sure only led to the highest number of her songs ever being downloaded just to hear her yell, IMHO).
I've never seen porn on there masquerading as something else. Bad porn disguised as good porn, maybe, but who's going to report that? Perhaps they are trying to get the all-powerful pornography industry to try to sue file traders too? I don't think that would work, as the record industry is the only association dumb enough to sue their own potential customers.
If you want to have all episodes of the simpsons (thank you fox indianapolis for playing 3 episodes every day!) recorded and at your becon call, 2 weeks of recording space is barely adequate. There are what, 13 seasons of the simpsons, with around 13 episodes per season, at 30 minutes per episodes (without commercial skip), that makes about 84 hours, give or take. Then add in all the futuramas, all the family guy's, and you can fill up that drive pretty darn fast. Add in some stargate SG-1, and damn, i'm gonna need a terabyte drive. For well over a grand though, i'd hope it would have a DVD-R to pull stuff off of it (I can't read japanese, but it doesn't look like it has one in the picture).
Knowing the technical knowledge of most consumers, when you refer to "red book" they'll probably think the magazine and wonder what the hell that has to do with CDs and buy it anyway. I think the disclaimer needs to be... how should I say... dumbed down.
What good is that going to do, exactly? So you figure out that the shuttle has a big gaping hole in the underside of the wing. What then? Its not like the shuttle carries replacement parts or even the tools needed to replace those things. Plus, keeping replacement parts for every possible thing that could go wrong would add to the liftoff weight and reduce the amount of useful experiments they can carry. Ok, so they could launch a rescue shuttle? Um, no. The shuttle takes too long to prep for launch, is too sensitive to weather to be able to launch in a pinch, and the cost of having a shuttle on standby 24-7 during an orbital mission would GREATLY increase the cost of missions, which is exactly what NASA doesn't need to keep operating long into the 21st century.
Yeah, it was also supposed to be ready in time to push skylab back into a correct orbit before gravity had its way with it, and instead it was delayed and skylab made a big impact (har) in Australia. The shuttle was also supposed to only take a team of around 10 men about a month to service between missions. The heat resistant tiles ended up being waaaay to complex for that idea to work (each tile is uniquely cut for an exact position on the shuttle). Lets all hope NASA gets this one right... I don't think their congressional watchdogs want another hard to maintain super complex glider on their hands.
For those too lazy to read the article, this is only designed to be a commuter to the space station and back. It only would have a crew of 4, and would carry light cargo. It isn't meant as a do-everything satellite launcher/people mover like the current space shuttle. They plan on developing another vehicle to do the other chores of the space shuttle. Frankly, with the budget constraints NASA is under, I'm really surprised to read about them seriously developing more than one type of shuttle replacement, although I do think they are going in the right direction. We have several rockets designed to carry heavy payloads, I really don't see why they need to have the payload and crew all in one vehicle. What they should do is keep the rockets to lift the heavy payloads safely into space, then have the humans do what they need to do to the payload once it is in space (such as fine tuning, final preparation, and/or activation).
Well thank you for summing up the US, the most reactive country out there. It sure seems to me that no laws get passed until someone ends up dead or it would threaten the US's dominance over, well, everyone. No wonder the DOJ loves MS, their change models are the same! If someone died because of a hole in Windows (say an exploit run on a hospital computer that caused prescriptions to change or something), you'd bet your ass the US would be making laws to make Windows more secure.
Perhaps I'm missing the point of this, but doesn't an election system just have to be good enough to last one day without being hacked? How many one week long elections are there? As long as you leave the system secluded before you release it, then only expose it to the public for one day (election day), I think that there wouldn't be any time for people to realize exploits on it, providing it is a unique system that doesn't use components that are publicly accessible. After the election, they can do what they want with the system, but I'm guessing a full year is enough time to come up with a newly created system for the next election. It keeps programmers in work, and keeps their system so unique as to be difficult to hack. What do you all think? Am I missing the point on this?
Brilliant! You've figured out their plan, make movies soooo bad no one will want to pirate them! It certainly would explain Gigli, Battlefield Earth, and Freddy got Fingered. It all makes sense now.
Are you ACTUALLY suggesting that a chimp was raped by a man? Wouldn't a human baby be too large or a chimp to birth (all the chimp babies i've seen in film have been especially tiny). Or are you suggesting that a chimp raped a human? I bet the human wouldn't want to report that out of embarrassment, but would she birth it? I think you're going out on a limb here. And the limb doesn't have any chimps or humans on it.
From: billg@microsoft.com Does the easter bunny or santa claus collect for your imaginary license? --end-- enquiring minds want to know
I'd be more interested in seeing a comparison of people's caring about downloading copyrighted music before the RIAA started suing everyone and their uncle versus now. I bet people would have cared a bit more then (a bit, not entirely). More and more I think people are downloading music just to spite the RIAA and their band of thugs (am I the only one that imagines a group of dimwits running around muttering "hup! hup! hup! hup!" ala the FBI in South Park?). If they want to come up with a valuable sales loss figure to tell their management, why don't they calculate the amount of money lost by bullying their customers into never wanting to buy from them again? If they keep targeting college students, they are targeting a group that has a whole lifetime of potential CD buying ahead of them, and I know if they tried to sue me, i'd never buy another album again (I still do, but they haven't released more then two albums a year worth buying in the last five or more years, IMHO). I'm certainly not going to buy an entire album of crap if I like only one song (and usually marginally at that). I just wish there was more selection on iTunes Music Service so I could consider using that instead of "breaking the law" and commiting what is in their twisted little mind a felony. The fact is, even if there was never any Napster, or Kaaza, etc. I'd still be borrowing people's CDs to rip the one song I want off of it. They shouldn't blame the internet when they only have to blame themselves for being a poorly managed organization that causes their product to be overpriced and undesirable.
Hmmm.... I think I sense a bit of sarcasm out of Mr. Taco on that one. I'm not used to the admins making such direct blows to microsoft in the news postings!
Hope that helps.
Just my 2 cents.
Not only that, but I think manufacturing would be much more efficient in terms of raw materials as only the products that are needed would get built. There would be no more overstock, no more items sent back to the manufacturer because no one bought them. If someone wants your product, they just order it up. No waiting for items to be in stock, no wasted resources. This technology (which I see as being waaaaay off in teh future for anything substantial) would allow companies to focus on R&D instead of manufacturing which would (theoretically) produce better designed prodcuts. I can't wait! There are, however, severe implications to the manufacturing workforce currently employed. I'm sure they don't have quite the same optimistic outlook I have.
Whatcha talkin' about willis? No flex capacitor? What were you thinking.
I think that if they have felt this way for any amount of time, they would have done so already. I suspect they would only do so if their market share were to slip by any significant margin (they don't want to look even more like the convicted monopoly they are). OTOH, without mentioning any specific parts of code they feel open source software has borrowed their IP, this could just be a case of MS saying "well, there HAS to be some of our code in there if the stuff talks with our software." I guess we'll see though.
Agreed. If Ford decided to start selling the Exploder (Explorer to you) at a big loss for $1000 each hoping to make the money up on broken part replacements and gasoline, and I buy one and buy someone elses gasoline and parts, what would they be able to do? Nothing. Just sit there and take a loss. That is why virtually no business outside of the computer world does this. All I can think of off the top of my head are Ink Jet printers, XBox, and razor blades. Ink Jet printer makers and Microsoft seem to be quick to use the DMCA to stifle competition. I don't think Gillette or Bic would start suing people for making razor blades that happened to fit their razor handle. They'd probably try to make their blades better so no one would want to use the cometitions, or they change their business model.