I suspect that the poster is referring to Windows users who use MS Office over OpenOffice. Currently open are Thunderbird, Firefox, and Sunbird. I have FreeBSD installed on another partition, although I'm not using it now. I try to use open source stuff as much as practical. Yet I fall into the category of users above. I use OO.org on FreeBSD, but uninstalled it from Windows because I prefer MS Office.
There's just a bunch of little things I like better in, say, Word over Writer, while there are very few things I like better about Writer. We'll see if OOo v.2 helps things though...
Yeah, yeah, this is what I get when I decide "I won't need that book over break" and leave it in my dorm room at college so I can't remember exactly what the specifics are. Didn't think to check Amazon.
Only slightly related, but I found this interesting. It's a few people who broke the "security" of PlanetPoker by exploiting flaws in their shuffling algorithm. They were able to combine weaknesses in the actual algorithm with weaknesses in the random number generator with weaknesses in how the random number generator was used to essentially completely determine the cards everyone has in any deal just from the face up cards.
It really drives home the point that security is much more difficult to right do than you might think.
I see the same thing with, "Laughing so hard X was coming out my nose." Come on. As an adult, unless have a serious degenerative disease affecting your ability to control bodily reactions, that doesn't happen.
It can happen, if something really funny comes up at just the wrong moment. I had it happen to me a couple years ago with lemonade as I was playing Scattergories with some friends. Lemonade is actually quite painful in the sinuses.
That said, I'm sure that 99.9% of the times you see that it's not true.
The chapter in Surely You're Joking only mentions two or three instances where he actually used stuff like that. Once when some other people needed a safe opened, and the people thought he might use a date. Feynmann tried every date in the 1900s* until he found what it was. Another time he needed something, and tried a couple mathematical constants, and 27-18-28 opened it. But that's about as far as he pushed that method.
Most of what he talks about that chapter was when he was able to figure out the last two numbers in someone's combination by fiddling with the lock when it was open. So the only human factor there was just people leaving their safes open.
Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynmann has a chapter called "Safecracker Meets Safecracker." It describes his time at Los Alamos during which he repeatedly opened people's safes. (The ease with which he did this actually quite disturbing.) Anyway, at the end of the chapter, he talks about how he learned that a particular lock came factory set at either 0-30-0 or 60-30-60 (I think those were the two), following which the owner would change it to something more secure.
He said he went around Los Alamos after he learned this trying those two combinations and opened about 1/3 of the locks with one or the other.
I personally hope I never have to buy a cornea. I hope my corneas last throughout my life. I'm not even sure how you would install one. I mean the installation bay is pretty inaccessable, and the wire connections would be a pain.
I agree. It's frustrating somewhat, and only "somewhat" because I wouldn't actually be able to afford one if there was one out.
I run my 19" CRT at 1600x1200 and know I'm not alone, so can't understand why they would think that no one would want a 19" LCD, a bigger screen, that can go up to that resolution.
On a P2P network, there's no such thing as a "legitimate source" for the file, because everyone is sharing.
Which is why you downloaded it from Interscope itself instead of a website.
It's a common misconceptio that Linux-based OS's are free. What if I got a copy of the new Xandros Desktop 3 off P2P/torrent? Release 2 is available as an Open distibution, but the only way to get 3 is to buy it right now. I could easily think release 3 was available but instead be infringing on copyrights for using it. The exact same mistake can be made with music.
And there's a very good chance that mistake wouldn't provide a defense in court, except to the extent that they defend against willful violation. It might mitigate any punative damages, but you would be held responsible.
What if the RIAA subcontractor was distributing files of independant bands laden with malware?
They probably wouldn't, it's too risky, because then that band could sue them and turn all of their FUD against them.
Sounds just like what the subcontractor is doing, but I would obviously get in some deep hot water for it.
I agree. I think these people should be dunked in boiling oil a few times. I'm not trying to say that they are okay by doing this, just that if you try to download great_rock_song.wma yourself and it turns out to have the RIAA's malware attached, you're going to have a hard time suing them for damages from the malware while still defending yourself against a copyright infringement claim.
You second defense (you downloaded "Beautiful Day" legally) would be sound. But, the legitimate source wouldn't be distributing the malware version, would it? Even if you had downloaded the song from another source during the promotion, it'd be no less illegal than if there hadn't been a promotion going on.
If you download a song that you have on CD, things are much more tricky. AFAIK, there isn't a court case to decide if this is illegal. You'd probably have a decent defense though.
However, claiming that you didn't know the music was copyrighted is a very dangerous defense. You almost certainly do not need to know that the music is copyrighted. It's not like the stolen property laws, where if you are clueless as to the origins of something you're in the clear.
But I decided to actually go try to check it out. It looks like there isn't a general crime of intent, so there might actually be a good defense there.
Of course, the RIAA could just include the song in it and then you would be infringing, but then you could argue that they were distributing it which constiuted implicit permission to download.
There's an attempted crime if you actually thought the file you were downloading was legitimate. I don't know if the federal crimes code has a generalized attempt provision or if it specifically lists crimes that can be attempted, but if it's the former, you could probably be charged with attempted copyright infringement.
(Most states I think have a general provision like New York's, but this may be a relatively modern addition with the Model Penal Code inspired revisions of the 70s. If so, the federal code might not have such a provision and might actually define each attempted crime seperately.)
Anyone else remember a scene in Reno 911 where there are two undercover cops on the drug scene from different jurisdictions (local and federal), one trying to act as a client and one as a dealer, and both of them are beating around the bush tring to get the other person to offer to buy/sell pot explicitly? I didn't watch that show much, but that was a good clip...
You know, I have a lot of problems with this country in general and this government in particular, and I wanted to see a Bush defeat probably even more than the next guy, but really, if you thought that $35 million was all we were going to give I really don't think you're giving us enough credit.
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I'll be interested to see if MS sues for trademark infringement over MS Works vs. iWork...
I suspect that the poster is referring to Windows users who use MS Office over OpenOffice. Currently open are Thunderbird, Firefox, and Sunbird. I have FreeBSD installed on another partition, although I'm not using it now. I try to use open source stuff as much as practical. Yet I fall into the category of users above. I use OO.org on FreeBSD, but uninstalled it from Windows because I prefer MS Office.
There's just a bunch of little things I like better in, say, Word over Writer, while there are very few things I like better about Writer. We'll see if OOo v.2 helps things though...
*Goes to Pricewatch*
*Types in 243T*
*Looks at price*
*Has cardiac arrest*
Man, I so want one, but that monitor costs more than my entire computer setup now.
Yeah, yeah, this is what I get when I decide "I won't need that book over break" and leave it in my dorm room at college so I can't remember exactly what the specifics are. Didn't think to check Amazon.
Fine, there is actually a realistic, if remote, chance that it will happen.
Only slightly related, but I found this interesting. It's a few people who broke the "security" of PlanetPoker by exploiting flaws in their shuffling algorithm. They were able to combine weaknesses in the actual algorithm with weaknesses in the random number generator with weaknesses in how the random number generator was used to essentially completely determine the cards everyone has in any deal just from the face up cards.
It really drives home the point that security is much more difficult to right do than you might think.
I see the same thing with, "Laughing so hard X was coming out my nose." Come on. As an adult, unless have a serious degenerative disease affecting your ability to control bodily reactions, that doesn't happen.
It can happen, if something really funny comes up at just the wrong moment. I had it happen to me a couple years ago with lemonade as I was playing Scattergories with some friends. Lemonade is actually quite painful in the sinuses.
That said, I'm sure that 99.9% of the times you see that it's not true.
The chapter in Surely You're Joking only mentions two or three instances where he actually used stuff like that. Once when some other people needed a safe opened, and the people thought he might use a date. Feynmann tried every date in the 1900s* until he found what it was. Another time he needed something, and tried a couple mathematical constants, and 27-18-28 opened it. But that's about as far as he pushed that method.
Most of what he talks about that chapter was when he was able to figure out the last two numbers in someone's combination by fiddling with the lock when it was open. So the only human factor there was just people leaving their safes open.
*Rounded to the nearest multiple of 5
Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynmann has a chapter called "Safecracker Meets Safecracker." It describes his time at Los Alamos during which he repeatedly opened people's safes. (The ease with which he did this actually quite disturbing.) Anyway, at the end of the chapter, he talks about how he learned that a particular lock came factory set at either 0-30-0 or 60-30-60 (I think those were the two), following which the owner would change it to something more secure.
He said he went around Los Alamos after he learned this trying those two combinations and opened about 1/3 of the locks with one or the other.
I have a 19" CRT and run at 1600x1200 and think it's fine...
Well duh, when I'm in my 40s I doubt you'll even be able to find a computer with a DVI port. The corneas I have now will be useless then.
(Okay, I'm taking this way too far...)
This is worth changing the summary for
I personally hope I never have to buy a cornea. I hope my corneas last throughout my life. I'm not even sure how you would install one. I mean the installation bay is pretty inaccessable, and the wire connections would be a pain.
(Sorry, but I couldn't resist.)
I agree. It's frustrating somewhat, and only "somewhat" because I wouldn't actually be able to afford one if there was one out.
I run my 19" CRT at 1600x1200 and know I'm not alone, so can't understand why they would think that no one would want a 19" LCD, a bigger screen, that can go up to that resolution.
The Man/Person of the Year is named by influence, not as an endorsement. Hitler, Stalin, and Ayatollah Khomeini all were Man of the Year too.
No mention either of any of the government's actions that easily trump Rather. Liberal media my ass.
On a P2P network, there's no such thing as a "legitimate source" for the file, because everyone is sharing.
Which is why you downloaded it from Interscope itself instead of a website.
It's a common misconceptio that Linux-based OS's are free. What if I got a copy of the new Xandros Desktop 3 off P2P/torrent? Release 2 is available as an Open distibution, but the only way to get 3 is to buy it right now. I could easily think release 3 was available but instead be infringing on copyrights for using it. The exact same mistake can be made with music.
And there's a very good chance that mistake wouldn't provide a defense in court, except to the extent that they defend against willful violation. It might mitigate any punative damages, but you would be held responsible.
What if the RIAA subcontractor was distributing files of independant bands laden with malware?
They probably wouldn't, it's too risky, because then that band could sue them and turn all of their FUD against them.
Sounds just like what the subcontractor is doing, but I would obviously get in some deep hot water for it.
I agree. I think these people should be dunked in boiling oil a few times. I'm not trying to say that they are okay by doing this, just that if you try to download great_rock_song.wma yourself and it turns out to have the RIAA's malware attached, you're going to have a hard time suing them for damages from the malware while still defending yourself against a copyright infringement claim.
You second defense (you downloaded "Beautiful Day" legally) would be sound. But, the legitimate source wouldn't be distributing the malware version, would it? Even if you had downloaded the song from another source during the promotion, it'd be no less illegal than if there hadn't been a promotion going on.
If you download a song that you have on CD, things are much more tricky. AFAIK, there isn't a court case to decide if this is illegal. You'd probably have a decent defense though.
However, claiming that you didn't know the music was copyrighted is a very dangerous defense. You almost certainly do not need to know that the music is copyrighted. It's not like the stolen property laws, where if you are clueless as to the origins of something you're in the clear.
But I decided to actually go try to check it out. It looks like there isn't a general crime of intent, so there might actually be a good defense there.
Of course, the RIAA could just include the song in it and then you would be infringing, but then you could argue that they were distributing it which constiuted implicit permission to download.
There's an attempted crime if you actually thought the file you were downloading was legitimate. I don't know if the federal crimes code has a generalized attempt provision or if it specifically lists crimes that can be attempted, but if it's the former, you could probably be charged with attempted copyright infringement.
(Most states I think have a general provision like New York's, but this may be a relatively modern addition with the Model Penal Code inspired revisions of the 70s. If so, the federal code might not have such a provision and might actually define each attempted crime seperately.)
Anyone else remember a scene in Reno 911 where there are two undercover cops on the drug scene from different jurisdictions (local and federal), one trying to act as a client and one as a dealer, and both of them are beating around the bush tring to get the other person to offer to buy/sell pot explicitly? I didn't watch that show much, but that was a good clip...
You know, I have a lot of problems with this country in general and this government in particular, and I wanted to see a Bush defeat probably even more than the next guy, but really, if you thought that $35 million was all we were going to give I really don't think you're giving us enough credit.
Nope.
:-p
Just slow getting up. Remember we're all really fat over here.
Just FYI, the US gov't has just announced $350 million in aid. (MSNBC link; that happened to be where I was in rotation. CNN; Fox.)
:-p
So it's not that we're stingy so much as just slow getting up off our fat asses.
I don't understand why The Hitchhiker's Guide is so low down on his poll of what to do next...