My concern with using unsubscribe links is that I would effectively be testifying to a lie. Someone sends me a spam, claiming that I opted-in and offering me a way to opt-out. If I go ahead and opt-out then it could be argued that I am showing my trust for this person, which would make it difficult to accuse them of lying in the first place.
I can't immediately think of any reason why this would be harmful on an individual basis, but over time, with hundreds of spammers being able to claim that I have shown trust for them, I fear this could come back to haunt me.
But any decently run business should be able to verify the authenticity of the sale by checking the billing address and security numbers on the card.
Wrong. In its simplest terms, the system works like this:
1. Customer fills out a form with name, address, card number, etc.
2. Details are transmitted to banking network.
3. Banking network either gives the go-ahead or declines the charge.
4. Retailer proceeds based on banking network's response.
This system is flawed in several ways:
1. The retailer doesn't have access to the banking network's records, so there is no way for the retailer to perform his own checks. The banking network must be trusted without question. Try this: Pay for something on a web site, giving your legitimate credit card details but a made-up name and address. The charge will probably be accepted. Why? Because the name/address comparison is done loosely to allow for people typing stuff differently from how it is recorded, ie: "14a Halifax Street" is typed as "14 A HALIFAX ST". Bear in mind that credit card companies PROFIT from fraud, you can imagine how loose this comparison is. Some people would allege that there is no comparison done at all.
2. Sometimes the banking network will enter a "default positive" state, during which time ALL charge attempts will be approved. Fraudulent charges accepted during this time, which may only last for a few minutes, will often not be cancelled for several days. The merchant may or may not be fined for these charges.
3. The banking network's block list is based on factors such as reports of stolen cards, police information, etc. As far as I know there is no system in place to allow merchants to report fraudulent charges. A merchant is able to cancel a suspicious charge (and, as a slap in the face for running his business ethically, be fined for doing so) but that's all it is, a cancellation, the banking network will still allow the same fraudster to make another charge on the same card elsewhere.
Believe me, if other retailers are anything like me, they are ultra-paranoid in trying to prevent fraud. But ultimately we don't have access to the data we need, our on-the-ground feedback isn't wanted, and when the banking network lets us down we lose money on the sale and we are automatically fined with no appeals process and no way of knowing who fined us.
The person I reported for fraud (I'm in the UK too, btw) was a repeat offender who was targeting me specifically.
After I'd done everything I could to prevent him from using his credit card on my site, which basically came down to wildcard blocking, he started trying to pay by cheque and even sent me two cheques, both of which were made out incorrectly. I assumed they would bounce so I didn't even try to pay them into my bank, I just gave the police the details.
The info I gave to the police was:
1. The guy's e-mail address from a major ISP that charges a monthly fee, which should mean they have his correct name and address on file, a valid card number, or at the very least a record of his phone number.
2. Several aliases and alternative e-mail addresses that he used.
3. His bank account number and branch address.
4. And I offered to supply copies of all e-mails he had sent me, including headers, but these weren't wanted.
So far, nearly 18 months later, the result has been precisely nothing.
The situation with credit card fraud on the Internet gets me so mad. I have seriously considered committing fraud against a bank or a major retailer and then reporting myself to the police, just to create a 'newsworthy' story for the media to cover, to raise awareness of the larger issue.
I couldn't really give a damn about the money. I get by from day to day, not rich, not poor, and that's fine for me. But the principle makes my blood boil. I believe in FAIRNESS and credit card companies are NOT fair. They treat merchants like their own personal piggybanks, taking money whenever they feel like it because of their own slack security, and then they tell the public that they're committed to preventing fraud. They aren't preventing fraud at all, at least not from where I'm sitting -- they're just reaping the rewards by allowing merchants to be ripped off and then fining them.
To offer some personal experience, I've reported credit card fraud to the police and been told by the investigating officer: "I have a pile of drugs cases that will take a year to investigate. This report will go to the bottom of that pile."
Credit card fraud isn't taken seriously. The reason is that credit card companies *profit* from fraud, so they don't make a fuss. If someone uses a stolen credit card number to make a $100 purchase then all the credit card company does is take the $100 back from the retailer and charge them $15+ for the privilege.
If the retailer doesn't like it then they have two options, either (1) shut up or (2) stop accepting credit cards and close their business.
It beggars belief that the mainstream media hasn't covered this, but I guess it all boils down to it being "business vs business" (credit card companies vs retailers) so as long as consumers aren't getting hurt, the media doesn't have an audience to tell the story to.
Last year, Visa introduced a $375 annual charge for Internet merchants that want to accept Visa payments. They even had the cheek to charge double the first year. The stated reason was to cover the costs of fraud. Following the introduction of the annual charge, the fines imposed upon merchants went UP. Internet merchants cannot prevent fraudulent charges because that is the responsibility of the credit card companies, but merchants are now paying an annual charge to cover any fines, as well as still paying the fines which are higher than ever. Credit card companies continue to do practically nothing to prevent fraud. Again, every time someone commits credit card fraud, the card company gets richer.
If you think you've ever had a raw deal as a consumer, you should try working with credit card companies. They -- especially Visa -- are the personification of corporate evil. They operate with practically no accountability and no appeals procedure, imposing new rules and charges whenever they choose and merchants have little choice but to agree to them. Some merchants do not even have any way of knowing which company they have been fined by! Think of credit card companies as PayPal at their worst, multiplied by a thousand.
One idea I've had, inspired largely by the "full disclosure" ethos of the software security community, is to write a text file explaining the very simple way to make credit card payments for services over the Internet without (1) ever having to pay for the service, or (b) breaking the law in a way that can be prosecuted. I'd then post the document on a server in a country with a zero censorship policy and distribute the link. The hope, perhaps foolish, would be that *widely* disclosing a known loophole would cause credit card fraud to go through the roof and, amid a flood of bad publicity, force the card companies to change their policies.
The only reason I haven't done this yet is because -- and I know it's selfish -- my business accepts credit cards over the Internet so I'd be committing financial suicide.
Someone's going to do it, though, sooner or later.
I've read through maybe half of this thread and frankly I can't stand to read any more of the horrible negativity.
Please don't anyone try to "save" the film.
I liked Episode I, and I mean really liked it, especially Jar Jar.
I didn't like Episode II but then I watched it a few times and "got it" and now I really like it too.
I expect to like Episode III as well. I don't think it will need saving.
The person behind five good Star Wars films is the same person who is making the sixth one. I want that person to make the film that he wants to make. I don't want a bunch of film critics and over-sensitive "fans" trying to take control of his vision and turn it into theirs.
I recently moved my web site to a hosting company that allows me to use, along with a lot of other cool stuff, procmail filters. In one morning I learned enough about writing procmail rules to cut my daily spam amount from 1000 to 300 without risking false positives. (I have so far resisted using spamassassin, etc, preferring to use Mailwasher so I can quickly review what will be deleted.)
Following the links posted in this thread, I've been looking at the list of Chinese and Korean IP blocks at this site...
What would be the best way for me to block any e-mails originating from within these blocks?
Can it be done (reliably) with procmail or is it possible for spammers to fake the originating IP address? Come to think of it, I don't even know if e-mail headers include an originating address.
Is it something that must be done at the time of connection from an SMTP server? Does procmail work its magic too far down the line?
Thanks for any help! Going from 1000 down to 300 spams per day was an experience like no other, so I would dearly love to reduce that number even further!
This story reminds me of the fuss George Broussard of 3DRealms used to make about web sites using screenshots without his approval. I don't know if he still has such strong opinions on the subject but if he does, future arrests for copyright infringement wouldn't surprise me, especially if the screenshots are used as part of a negative review.
Surely screenshots are no different from brief book quotes? Why aren't they fair use?
Spam has gone crazy for me in the last few days. I've gone from 600+ every day, a figure I've been approaching gradually over the last couple of years, to well over 1,000 per day this week.
I've also noticed that I get blocks of maybe a dozen of the same three or four spams, and while the 40+ Kb ones are still arriving they've been joined by dozens of 100+ Kb ones.
I use Mailwasher and frankly it's a joke nowadays. Easily 50% of my legitimate mails are flagged as spam because of blacklisting, and 100+ spams per day are listed as legitimate. So I still need to check through every single mail apart from the ones that I have manually flagged by filters.
Does anyone know why there might have been such a dramatic increase in spam this last week?
And can anyone recommend a better anti-spam solution? I'm using Eudora on Windows so some of the more advanced (and presumably more reliable) solutions are either unsuitable or unavailable.
I run a web site commercially and after putting it off for months I'm getting to the point that my only realistic option is to start using web-based customer support. I dislike web-based support but the risk of erroneously deleting legitimate customer e-mails is simply too high now.
And what do you watch those DVDs on? Your computer monitor? A dedicated non-TV display?
The quandary I'm in at the moment is that at the end of my current TV license I intend to stop watching television. There are many programmes that I want to watch but I have objections to some of the BBC's policies and therefore I will choose to no longer finance them.
The law, as it stands at the moment, is that if I stop funding the BBC then I am not allowed to watch any other channels either, so I will obey the law. I'm going to cancel Sky and have both the dish and aerial removed so it will be impossible for me to receive a TV signal.
But I still want to be able to watch DVDs on my widescreem TV. Doh! That will make me a criminal. Because the TV will theoretically be "capable of receiving a television signal" (because I could plug a portable aerial into it) I'll be legally obliged to pay for a TV license, even though I'll never watch television.
With an ethical, quality, viewer-oriented BBC, the licensing system was something that had my full support. But with today's BBC the licensing system is an unfair, out-dated disgrace.
Also a mess of logos, branding and other on-screen, in-programme advertising junk. A channel that I pay for with my license fee but can't stand to watch because of the aforementioned distracting junk. A channel that I *must* pay for if I own a television, otherwise I'll go to jail. Yeah, I love BBC3.
Oh, it was me and most of the other anti-piracy folk, jumping from one side of the debate...
... to the other.
And now an angry voice inside my aching head is shouting words at me. Words like greed and hubris. And then nasty words that somehow form entire sentences about music execs and arrogance. No! Surely these words can't be true! They CAN'T! Can they?
I don't know if these have been mentioned but on first thought I'd say Turrican 2 on the Amiga, Metal Slug on the Neo Geo, Rygar, Jet Set Willy and (don't laugh) Chuckie Egg on the Spectrum, Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands on everything, and another one that bizarrely I can't remember the name of and my mate isn't answering his mobile so I'll have to leave you wondering...
Seems that every time I post an anti-piracy comment I get modded down as flamebait or troll, so for once I'll be one of those people who say "mod me down but..."
[...] even sharing a single file [...]
Would your disdain change at all if it was your single file that was being shared?
My opinion on this is simple: If you want to share music for free then make music yourself and share it for free. NOBODY will stop you. But if *I* want to make music and sell it then at what point exactly do you think *you* have a right to take it without paying?
This is another law that should NOT be required and WILL be abused but exists ONLY because of a bunch of silly kids thinking "duh, music should be, like, free, dude". It isn't a conspiracy. It isn't corporations running the country or whatever nonsense someone will come up with. It's legitimate corporations pushing for legitimate legal protections and quite rightly being granted them.
So there you go. Now just change the little box to say flamebait, click the button, and the annoying counter-argument will go away and you can go back to blissfully swapping someone else's property.
I was in a similar situation myself recently. I wanted a program to rip the audio from a stand-up DVD so I could listen to it on the PC without needing to play the DVD.
After a looong search I eventually found one free program that could do the job. Downloaded it, installed it, started ripping. Five minutes later it stopped. Time-limited, you see. But good news! Apparently there was a commercial version which could record for longer than five minutes! So after being tricked like that, obviously I rushed to order the commercial version... NOT.
Obviously that was a dirty bait-and-switch trick but I can think of one legitimate reason why more ethical coders may be moving away from free releases...
A few years ago I wrote a video capture program. It was for my own personal use because I wasn't happy with any of the commercial options available. I decided to release the software for free, and included in the zip file a brief text file explaining how to use it and stating the one very limited, specific job that it was designed to perform.
The software was listed on one download site and the reviewers there ripped it to shreds.
Why?
Because they claimed that a certain feature didn't work.
Never mind the fact that the info file made no mention of that feature. Never mind the fact that the feature was way outside the scope of this particular program. These reviewers wanted a free video capture program with a certain feature, so when a free video capture program came out *without* that feature, they reviewed the program as defective.
Would I release a program for free in future?
Very unlikely.
If someone considers buying a program then they'll probably read the instructions to make sure it can do what they want. If they go ahead and buy it then they'll almost certainly have read the instructions. But if it's free, as with most free stuff online, people have unrealistic expectations and they react nastily when those expectations aren't met.
This is the first I'd heard of this rumour but one thing I do know is that the worst thing you can do when confronted with a rumour is give an answer that can be seen as evasive.
Seems the Yellowstone scientists don't know this. For example, the first question...
Q: There have been continuing rumors at various web sites that animals are either leaving the park en-masse, or dying in large numbers. These rumors include stories of large numbers of fish dying in Yellowstone Lake. The cause is stated as increased toxic gaseous emissions. Are there animals leaving the park? Or dying in large numbers? Are there large numbers of fish being found dead in the lake?
A: Toxic emissions are no worse than usual at Yellowstone. The park's wildlife population has undergone no problems due to toxic emissions. Some of the park's wildlife is migratory, such as bison, elk, and many species of birds. This year's migrations were not unusual. Large numbers of dead fish were not found in Yellowstone Lake, or any other lake in Yellowstone.
Even as someone who approached this story with an open mind and no preconceived ideas, when I read this answer I had two immediate thoughts...
This year's migrations were not unusual.
If animals were leaving due to some sort of environmental change then that wouldn't be migration, so saying that the "migrations were not unusual" doesn't answer the question. (ie: The migrations may have been perfectly normal but what about the thousands of animals leaving for unexplained reasons?)
Large numbers of dead fish were not found in Yellowstone Lake, or any other lake in Yellowstone.
Don't dead fish wash up on the shore? So isn't that where they'd be found? Again, saying that they weren't found *in* the lakes doesn't strictly answer the question.
Anyway, I'm not trying to side with the conspiracy folks here because to be honest I don't actually know what their 'side' is, but that interview did set off some alarm bells for me. Whenever I see answers that are very specific, but specifically not an answer to the exact question that was asked, I become suspicious.
It doesn't surprise me that one TV company is flaming another with scrolling messages. What does surprise me is the fact that a bunch of 80's demo coders managed to get these jobs in the first place.
As a former journalist, I know that journalism has never been about reporting the truth.
Then you are a former bad journalist.
I disagree with practically every statement in your post. Journalism is about the truth. Any "buts" or exceptions are simply bad journalists excusing their own faults and corruptions. Find the truth, tell the truth, end of story.
I'm new to this story and I read through a lot of the comments in this thread before I went and read the letter from Infinium. Well it's as if some of the people posting in this thread have read a different letter!
Unless HardOCP can prove that the contentious statements are in fact true, they are guilty of appalling journalism. They have mislead their readers, mainly by omission. Call me old-fashioned but as a reader and an occasional journalist myself, I believe journalism serves one purpose: To report the truth. You are a servant to your reader. Your reader is not someone whose trust you abuse to further your own agenda.
If I were a HardOCP reader I would ask for point-by-point rebuttals of every complaint made in the letter from Infinium Labs. If it transpired that anything in the original article was either knowingly false or misleading by deliberate omission then I would consider the site a no-go area for trustworthy reporting.
As it stands, to me as an outsider, Infinium is the victim here.
Remember the news stories about US TV stations removing 1 out of every 25 frames to 'create' time for a couple of extra adverts?
I'm sure someone with a PC and an analogue->digital->analogue converter (or just a digital camcorder) could record themselves playing a video game and edit the recording in this way to make it play faster.
I'm not suggesting that there was any cheating, though. All I'm saying is that if the video was intended to be proof that what appeared to happen did actually happen, well it really isn't any proof at all.
Acually public pressure is one of the few things that *does* work nowadays.
If a company will behave in this way then do you really think they'll respond well to polite e-mails and phone calls? No, they have to be faced with a cold, hard loss of business and a bad reputation.
My first thought when I read the story was: Glad to see this guy is getting some help but what about all the thousands of other people in similar situations who *aren't* being featured on Slashdot?
The domain registration system is horrible, quite possibly the worst part of online life with the exception of spam. If you run a business online then literally you can wake up one morning and find that your entire livelihood has been brought to a halt by one person, who you've never met and never talked to, deciding to suspend your domain.
Note that this has never happened to me. If I sound bitter it's because I find the situation utterly frustrating and unjust, even though I have not been a victim of it myself. Yet.
Slashdot Mirror
My concern with using unsubscribe links is that I would effectively be testifying to a lie. Someone sends me a spam, claiming that I opted-in and offering me a way to opt-out. If I go ahead and opt-out then it could be argued that I am showing my trust for this person, which would make it difficult to accuse them of lying in the first place.
I can't immediately think of any reason why this would be harmful on an individual basis, but over time, with hundreds of spammers being able to claim that I have shown trust for them, I fear this could come back to haunt me.
1. Customer fills out a form with name, address, card number, etc.
2. Details are transmitted to banking network.
3. Banking network either gives the go-ahead or declines the charge.
4. Retailer proceeds based on banking network's response.
This system is flawed in several ways:
1. The retailer doesn't have access to the banking network's records, so there is no way for the retailer to perform his own checks. The banking network must be trusted without question. Try this: Pay for something on a web site, giving your legitimate credit card details but a made-up name and address. The charge will probably be accepted. Why? Because the name/address comparison is done loosely to allow for people typing stuff differently from how it is recorded, ie: "14a Halifax Street" is typed as "14 A HALIFAX ST". Bear in mind that credit card companies PROFIT from fraud, you can imagine how loose this comparison is. Some people would allege that there is no comparison done at all.
2. Sometimes the banking network will enter a "default positive" state, during which time ALL charge attempts will be approved. Fraudulent charges accepted during this time, which may only last for a few minutes, will often not be cancelled for several days. The merchant may or may not be fined for these charges.
3. The banking network's block list is based on factors such as reports of stolen cards, police information, etc. As far as I know there is no system in place to allow merchants to report fraudulent charges. A merchant is able to cancel a suspicious charge (and, as a slap in the face for running his business ethically, be fined for doing so) but that's all it is, a cancellation, the banking network will still allow the same fraudster to make another charge on the same card elsewhere.
Believe me, if other retailers are anything like me, they are ultra-paranoid in trying to prevent fraud. But ultimately we don't have access to the data we need, our on-the-ground feedback isn't wanted, and when the banking network lets us down we lose money on the sale and we are automatically fined with no appeals process and no way of knowing who fined us.
The person I reported for fraud (I'm in the UK too, btw) was a repeat offender who was targeting me specifically.
After I'd done everything I could to prevent him from using his credit card on my site, which basically came down to wildcard blocking, he started trying to pay by cheque and even sent me two cheques, both of which were made out incorrectly. I assumed they would bounce so I didn't even try to pay them into my bank, I just gave the police the details.
The info I gave to the police was:
1. The guy's e-mail address from a major ISP that charges a monthly fee, which should mean they have his correct name and address on file, a valid card number, or at the very least a record of his phone number.
2. Several aliases and alternative e-mail addresses that he used.
3. His bank account number and branch address.
4. And I offered to supply copies of all e-mails he had sent me, including headers, but these weren't wanted.
So far, nearly 18 months later, the result has been precisely nothing.
The situation with credit card fraud on the Internet gets me so mad. I have seriously considered committing fraud against a bank or a major retailer and then reporting myself to the police, just to create a 'newsworthy' story for the media to cover, to raise awareness of the larger issue.
I couldn't really give a damn about the money. I get by from day to day, not rich, not poor, and that's fine for me. But the principle makes my blood boil. I believe in FAIRNESS and credit card companies are NOT fair. They treat merchants like their own personal piggybanks, taking money whenever they feel like it because of their own slack security, and then they tell the public that they're committed to preventing fraud. They aren't preventing fraud at all, at least not from where I'm sitting -- they're just reaping the rewards by allowing merchants to be ripped off and then fining them.
This comment sums everything up nicely.
To offer some personal experience, I've reported credit card fraud to the police and been told by the investigating officer: "I have a pile of drugs cases that will take a year to investigate. This report will go to the bottom of that pile."
Credit card fraud isn't taken seriously. The reason is that credit card companies *profit* from fraud, so they don't make a fuss. If someone uses a stolen credit card number to make a $100 purchase then all the credit card company does is take the $100 back from the retailer and charge them $15+ for the privilege.
If the retailer doesn't like it then they have two options, either (1) shut up or (2) stop accepting credit cards and close their business.
It beggars belief that the mainstream media hasn't covered this, but I guess it all boils down to it being "business vs business" (credit card companies vs retailers) so as long as consumers aren't getting hurt, the media doesn't have an audience to tell the story to.
Last year, Visa introduced a $375 annual charge for Internet merchants that want to accept Visa payments. They even had the cheek to charge double the first year. The stated reason was to cover the costs of fraud. Following the introduction of the annual charge, the fines imposed upon merchants went UP. Internet merchants cannot prevent fraudulent charges because that is the responsibility of the credit card companies, but merchants are now paying an annual charge to cover any fines, as well as still paying the fines which are higher than ever. Credit card companies continue to do practically nothing to prevent fraud. Again, every time someone commits credit card fraud, the card company gets richer.
If you think you've ever had a raw deal as a consumer, you should try working with credit card companies. They -- especially Visa -- are the personification of corporate evil. They operate with practically no accountability and no appeals procedure, imposing new rules and charges whenever they choose and merchants have little choice but to agree to them. Some merchants do not even have any way of knowing which company they have been fined by! Think of credit card companies as PayPal at their worst, multiplied by a thousand.
One idea I've had, inspired largely by the "full disclosure" ethos of the software security community, is to write a text file explaining the very simple way to make credit card payments for services over the Internet without (1) ever having to pay for the service, or (b) breaking the law in a way that can be prosecuted. I'd then post the document on a server in a country with a zero censorship policy and distribute the link. The hope, perhaps foolish, would be that *widely* disclosing a known loophole would cause credit card fraud to go through the roof and, amid a flood of bad publicity, force the card companies to change their policies.
The only reason I haven't done this yet is because -- and I know it's selfish -- my business accepts credit cards over the Internet so I'd be committing financial suicide.
Someone's going to do it, though, sooner or later.
I've read through maybe half of this thread and frankly I can't stand to read any more of the horrible negativity.
Please don't anyone try to "save" the film.
I liked Episode I, and I mean really liked it, especially Jar Jar.
I didn't like Episode II but then I watched it a few times and "got it" and now I really like it too.
I expect to like Episode III as well. I don't think it will need saving.
The person behind five good Star Wars films is the same person who is making the sixth one. I want that person to make the film that he wants to make. I don't want a bunch of film critics and over-sensitive "fans" trying to take control of his vision and turn it into theirs.
I recently moved my web site to a hosting company that allows me to use, along with a lot of other cool stuff, procmail filters. In one morning I learned enough about writing procmail rules to cut my daily spam amount from 1000 to 300 without risking false positives. (I have so far resisted using spamassassin, etc, preferring to use Mailwasher so I can quickly review what will be deleted.)
Following the links posted in this thread, I've been looking at the list of Chinese and Korean IP blocks at this site...
http://www.okean.com/asianspamblocks.html
What would be the best way for me to block any e-mails originating from within these blocks?
Can it be done (reliably) with procmail or is it possible for spammers to fake the originating IP address? Come to think of it, I don't even know if e-mail headers include an originating address.
Is it something that must be done at the time of connection from an SMTP server? Does procmail work its magic too far down the line?
Thanks for any help! Going from 1000 down to 300 spams per day was an experience like no other, so I would dearly love to reduce that number even further!
This story reminds me of the fuss George Broussard of 3DRealms used to make about web sites using screenshots without his approval. I don't know if he still has such strong opinions on the subject but if he does, future arrests for copyright infringement wouldn't surprise me, especially if the screenshots are used as part of a negative review.
Surely screenshots are no different from brief book quotes? Why aren't they fair use?
Spam has gone crazy for me in the last few days. I've gone from 600+ every day, a figure I've been approaching gradually over the last couple of years, to well over 1,000 per day this week.
I've also noticed that I get blocks of maybe a dozen of the same three or four spams, and while the 40+ Kb ones are still arriving they've been joined by dozens of 100+ Kb ones.
I use Mailwasher and frankly it's a joke nowadays. Easily 50% of my legitimate mails are flagged as spam because of blacklisting, and 100+ spams per day are listed as legitimate. So I still need to check through every single mail apart from the ones that I have manually flagged by filters.
Does anyone know why there might have been such a dramatic increase in spam this last week?
And can anyone recommend a better anti-spam solution? I'm using Eudora on Windows so some of the more advanced (and presumably more reliable) solutions are either unsuitable or unavailable.
I run a web site commercially and after putting it off for months I'm getting to the point that my only realistic option is to start using web-based customer support. I dislike web-based support but the risk of erroneously deleting legitimate customer e-mails is simply too high now.
I'm only typing this because I'm forced to.
And what do you watch those DVDs on? Your computer monitor? A dedicated non-TV display?
The quandary I'm in at the moment is that at the end of my current TV license I intend to stop watching television. There are many programmes that I want to watch but I have objections to some of the BBC's policies and therefore I will choose to no longer finance them.
The law, as it stands at the moment, is that if I stop funding the BBC then I am not allowed to watch any other channels either, so I will obey the law. I'm going to cancel Sky and have both the dish and aerial removed so it will be impossible for me to receive a TV signal.
But I still want to be able to watch DVDs on my widescreem TV. Doh! That will make me a criminal. Because the TV will theoretically be "capable of receiving a television signal" (because I could plug a portable aerial into it) I'll be legally obliged to pay for a TV license, even though I'll never watch television.
With an ethical, quality, viewer-oriented BBC, the licensing system was something that had my full support. But with today's BBC the licensing system is an unfair, out-dated disgrace.
"BBC 3, a digital TV channel"
Also a mess of logos, branding and other on-screen, in-programme advertising junk. A channel that I pay for with my license fee but can't stand to watch because of the aforementioned distracting junk. A channel that I *must* pay for if I own a television, otherwise I'll go to jail. Yeah, I love BBC3.
Oh, it was me and most of the other anti-piracy folk, jumping from one side of the debate...
... to the other.
And now an angry voice inside my aching head is shouting words at me. Words like greed and hubris. And then nasty words that somehow form entire sentences about music execs and arrogance. No! Surely these words can't be true! They CAN'T! Can they?
I don't know if these have been mentioned but on first thought I'd say Turrican 2 on the Amiga, Metal Slug on the Neo Geo, Rygar, Jet Set Willy and (don't laugh) Chuckie Egg on the Spectrum, Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands on everything, and another one that bizarrely I can't remember the name of and my mate isn't answering his mobile so I'll have to leave you wondering...
Is it really April already?
My opinion on this is simple: If you want to share music for free then make music yourself and share it for free. NOBODY will stop you. But if *I* want to make music and sell it then at what point exactly do you think *you* have a right to take it without paying?
This is another law that should NOT be required and WILL be abused but exists ONLY because of a bunch of silly kids thinking "duh, music should be, like, free, dude". It isn't a conspiracy. It isn't corporations running the country or whatever nonsense someone will come up with. It's legitimate corporations pushing for legitimate legal protections and quite rightly being granted them.
So there you go. Now just change the little box to say flamebait, click the button, and the annoying counter-argument will go away and you can go back to blissfully swapping someone else's property.
I was in a similar situation myself recently. I wanted a program to rip the audio from a stand-up DVD so I could listen to it on the PC without needing to play the DVD.
After a looong search I eventually found one free program that could do the job. Downloaded it, installed it, started ripping. Five minutes later it stopped. Time-limited, you see. But good news! Apparently there was a commercial version which could record for longer than five minutes! So after being tricked like that, obviously I rushed to order the commercial version... NOT.
Obviously that was a dirty bait-and-switch trick but I can think of one legitimate reason why more ethical coders may be moving away from free releases...
A few years ago I wrote a video capture program. It was for my own personal use because I wasn't happy with any of the commercial options available. I decided to release the software for free, and included in the zip file a brief text file explaining how to use it and stating the one very limited, specific job that it was designed to perform.
The software was listed on one download site and the reviewers there ripped it to shreds.
Why?
Because they claimed that a certain feature didn't work.
Never mind the fact that the info file made no mention of that feature. Never mind the fact that the feature was way outside the scope of this particular program. These reviewers wanted a free video capture program with a certain feature, so when a free video capture program came out *without* that feature, they reviewed the program as defective.
Would I release a program for free in future?
Very unlikely.
If someone considers buying a program then they'll probably read the instructions to make sure it can do what they want. If they go ahead and buy it then they'll almost certainly have read the instructions. But if it's free, as with most free stuff online, people have unrealistic expectations and they react nastily when those expectations aren't met.
Seems the Yellowstone scientists don't know this. For example, the first question...
Even as someone who approached this story with an open mind and no preconceived ideas, when I read this answer I had two immediate thoughts...
If animals were leaving due to some sort of environmental change then that wouldn't be migration, so saying that the "migrations were not unusual" doesn't answer the question. (ie: The migrations may have been perfectly normal but what about the thousands of animals leaving for unexplained reasons?)Don't dead fish wash up on the shore? So isn't that where they'd be found? Again, saying that they weren't found *in* the lakes doesn't strictly answer the question.
Anyway, I'm not trying to side with the conspiracy folks here because to be honest I don't actually know what their 'side' is, but that interview did set off some alarm bells for me. Whenever I see answers that are very specific, but specifically not an answer to the exact question that was asked, I become suspicious.
It doesn't surprise me that one TV company is flaming another with scrolling messages. What does surprise me is the fact that a bunch of 80's demo coders managed to get these jobs in the first place.
I disagree with practically every statement in your post. Journalism is about the truth. Any "buts" or exceptions are simply bad journalists excusing their own faults and corruptions. Find the truth, tell the truth, end of story.
I'm new to this story and I read through a lot of the comments in this thread before I went and read the letter from Infinium. Well it's as if some of the people posting in this thread have read a different letter!
Unless HardOCP can prove that the contentious statements are in fact true, they are guilty of appalling journalism. They have mislead their readers, mainly by omission. Call me old-fashioned but as a reader and an occasional journalist myself, I believe journalism serves one purpose: To report the truth. You are a servant to your reader. Your reader is not someone whose trust you abuse to further your own agenda.
If I were a HardOCP reader I would ask for point-by-point rebuttals of every complaint made in the letter from Infinium Labs. If it transpired that anything in the original article was either knowingly false or misleading by deliberate omission then I would consider the site a no-go area for trustworthy reporting.
As it stands, to me as an outsider, Infinium is the victim here.
This is similar to what I was going to suggest.
Remember the news stories about US TV stations removing 1 out of every 25 frames to 'create' time for a couple of extra adverts?
I'm sure someone with a PC and an analogue->digital->analogue converter (or just a digital camcorder) could record themselves playing a video game and edit the recording in this way to make it play faster.
I'm not suggesting that there was any cheating, though. All I'm saying is that if the video was intended to be proof that what appeared to happen did actually happen, well it really isn't any proof at all.
Acually public pressure is one of the few things that *does* work nowadays.
If a company will behave in this way then do you really think they'll respond well to polite e-mails and phone calls? No, they have to be faced with a cold, hard loss of business and a bad reputation.
My first thought when I read the story was: Glad to see this guy is getting some help but what about all the thousands of other people in similar situations who *aren't* being featured on Slashdot?
The domain registration system is horrible, quite possibly the worst part of online life with the exception of spam. If you run a business online then literally you can wake up one morning and find that your entire livelihood has been brought to a halt by one person, who you've never met and never talked to, deciding to suspend your domain.
Note that this has never happened to me. If I sound bitter it's because I find the situation utterly frustrating and unjust, even though I have not been a victim of it myself. Yet.