You are right about what the market will bear, but what's not talked about is all the licensing of music that goes on. Satellite music providers like Muzac, DirecTV, DISHnetworks, XM, Sirus and movies/TV programs needing music bring in big bucks to BMI/RIAA/Univeral, etc.
The RIAA isn't going to go out quietly. If every single person today stopped buying CD's, the most that would happen would be the last remaining Fye's and Sam Goody's would be closed - an event likely to happen anyway. Meanwhile, the licencing revenues generated for almost 80 past years continues to add to their coffers.
The RIAA can't/won't be stopped until the gov't steps in, and with all that money involved, it's no surprise that we're all the industries' bitch and 'loving' it...
When is spyware a virus? Don't ask your average anti-virus vendor. When I tried to nail down Sophos on this issue they were evasive - to say the least.
If this trojan is killed by an anti-virus program, is it securing your machine or committing an illegal act? I had this very discussion w/Sophos' techs. I had just cleaned the VX/2 trojan out of a computer - and it took HOURS of work to get it fully out of there. I sent a sample to Sophos and they told me that it was legal adware.
My question was obvious: What methods are allowable for adware, and how is that any different than a virus/trojan.
VX/2 was installed on one of my workstations here through a fault of the OS (unpatched at the time). It installed itself without permission. It left no way to uninstall it. It attempted to shut down Adaware and resisted any attempts to kill it.
So.... THIS ISN'T A VIRUS? Then what the hell is?
And so, overpeer's actions come as no big surprise to me. And I have no doubt that the anti-virus people will continue to turn a blind eye because of their FEAR of a lawsuit.
Damnit, don't we PAY THEM to protect us against this sort of thing?
There's no way this will suck. In fact, I would go as far as believe that this will ship with 10.4 (Tiger), and it will be heavily optimized (as 10.3 was) to reduce memory footprint and increase overall speed. If they ship this thing w/64 MB of graphics RAM (all too likely), then the eye candy alone will make people crowd around the machine at Circuit City.
This isn't one of those cheap Microsoft MSN boxes - this is a real computer with real hardware running a world-class secure OS.
I'll bet you that a 1.25 GHz G4 running Tiger will kick your average home PC in the ASS - especially because of your average homes PC's spyware. Being a spyware cleaner myself, I've seen people actually go out and BUY another computer because they think the performance problems are hardware related!
I think that Steve Jobs has gained wisdom from his experience at Pixar (not a bad movie yet!), and from NeXT. He has learned to listen to his customers. Companies that continue to do that rarely fail. That, coupled with his drive for perfection is turning Apple around.
I have a lot more to say on the mini iMac convergence issue in my journal. I truly believe this is a revolution in the making for Apple.
The mini iMac is a rumor that won't be confirmed until Jan. 15th (MacWorld), but the source is reliable and it is almost certain to be released in March/April. I'm guessing that it's going to be a HUGE hit for Apple just because of the security issues people have been having.
As to remote connection, yes it's easy to do. You can use a Unix-based utility called 'Rdesktop' to connect remotely through Windows Terminal Services, or better still, use VNC and Apples management tool. It allows you to have up to 16 computer windows open on the same screen at the same time, all scaled to fit. Totally amazing!
It's going to be security in general. MS doesn't want to truly fix IE because that would mean having to re-write large portions of OS code (XP Service Pack 3?). That's why they're waiting until Longhorn. The effort would be enormous.
But with this new under $500 mini iMac coming, THAT should scare MS. I know a lot of people I'll be recommending it to (provided it lives up to the hype on release), simply to get out from under all the spyware and viruses.
Remember, a 1.2 GHz G4 is a LOT faster than a 4 GHz spyware-laden PC. And the eye candy of Tiger (OSX 10.4) will blow consumers away...
MUTE is a program I've enjoyed supporting directly..4 was just released this week and has several improvements.
While it may not be as secure as Freenet, it does take advantage of IP obfustication and is a fair bit faster. No one user knows what machine is connected to what data. With enough users, it would virtually be impossible to determine data origin.
The author of the program continues to make progress as the funds continue to roll in - fair enough.
Give it a try at: mute-net.sf.net and think about supporting the ongoing project. It certainly seems to have more plusses than Exeem!
That doesn't sound too different than compiling processor-specific kernels for Linux. Even Windows has hacks for taking advantage of different features (X86-64 bits, the NX bit, PII multithread, Cyrix had some specific things added some years ago, etc.)
I don't think you can really avoid software patching to take advantage of newer archs.
No, I think what killed C= was the inept (and some would suggest, criminal) management. A lot of bad mistakes were made. They stopped listening to their customers. They they lost focus.
EVERYONE (including the engineers), knew what what working and what wasn't and why. Everyone but management.
- It was a CEO making 10+ million a year when his company was going down the tube.
- It was paying $800,000 a month for a huge factory building in West Chester, PA when most of manufacturing had long ago moved overseas.
- It was C= snubbing of third parties like Newtek (Video Toaster guys), until it was WAY too late.
- It was C= thinking they could sell crappy PC's under their name better than their own original product. They lost MILLIONS on those.
The fact that they lost the MHz war meant little as the Amiga relied on co-processing for most everything PC's were using the main processor for. However, C= delayed the production of the AA and AAA graphic chipsets far too long. By the time the 1200/4000 series was released, it was already all but old.
What better 'punishment' is there than losing your life savings? Not everyone is as well informed about things as you are apparently. My hat's off to you, but as for myself, I'm far more sympathetic to the victims of the crime than the perpetrators.
...but it still happens, sometimes almost unchecked in foreign countries. How is this really going to help unless you target the companies USING spam to hawk their goods?
The spammers are a symptom of a much larger problem. Don't get me wrong - I wouldn't mind seeing them strung up too - but I'd rather see the CEO of some penis enlarging / Viagra-distributing company do some hard time with big guys...
"...the actual problem: People buy the crap offered by spam! Spam is no longer free. If people would just stop buying based on spam, the problem would solve itself."
So what you are in effect saying is that people who hawk too-good-to-be-true investment schemes and storcks shouldn't be punished? People are gullible, people are going to continue to be taken in by their greed, ignorance, or even illness.
I think these parasites should be taken down. Whether you agree with Lycos or not, I commend them for at least bringing this possible solution to the spotlight.
Mute is gaining traction as an anonymous file sharing program. It's not fast - and there's real organization to it yet, but there is progress being made unlike almost every other anonymous file sharing utility.
If spam in any way threatened the hegemony of the Chinese government - people would be beaten, tortured, and killed - not necessarily in that order.
As it is, I think they LIKE the idea that the U.S. hangs itself with spam. Hacking into Chinese computers to do it make the irony that much more thick.
I also work at a school and I'm wondering the same thing. Check out something like the VX2 spyware/trojan. It:
- Is often installed without user permission (using holes in IE/Windows) - Has versions that restore themselves no matter how many anti-spyware proggies you use - Does not register itself in add/remove programs
In our case, I don't care if the user installed something anyway - IT'S NOT THEIR COMPUTER! School computer policy says 'no unauthorized software is to be installed without permission...' I want my A/V program to do what we pay them to help us do - keep malicious software off our machines!
I've been going rounds with Sophos about this particular piece of crap (VX2). Somehow, this thing ended up on a machine here and NO software was directly installed. Evidentally, this was a 'drive-by' download. So, I ask Sophos, why ISN'T this a trojan virus? It has many of the same characteristics.
They then proceed to tell me that it serves a commercial purpose (advertising). So I replied with something like, 'Let me get this straight: I could take a virus like Netsky and create my own variant that serves pop-ups and that would be ok?'
That was two weeks ago. I still haven't gotten back a reply. The fact is - anti-virus companies are pussies (Yeah, I said PUSSIES! Feel free to step up Sophos/Grisoft/Symantec/McAfee, etc.)
I think they've had it pretty good - stopping would-be script kiddies and the like. But this is apparently a challenge that they can't or won't step up to. My suggestion? ALL you A/V companies should file lawsuits against the first spyware company that bitches. United, you'd have nothing to fear...
Backups for big gig drives...
on
Digital Packrats
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
"Do increases in storage capacity appeal to some basic pack-rat nature?"
Maybe. But I wonder how shocked some of these people will be when their 250 GB HD bites the dust. It was bad enough losing 40+ GB to a head crash but now...!
You know, I think it's really cool that this guy is getting his jollies going after these scum but he may want to tone down his direct involvement with these people or at least do it more quietly. Why? Until recently, jail time wasn't even discussed as a possible punishment - now it's a harsh reality.
Faced with jail time I wouldn't be surprised to hear of some spammer tracker getting killed (or beat up) for his efforts to report them. We already know the kind of people that are mixed up in spam so it doesn't seem like to far a stretch...
It's like when they raise tolls in Virginia. They say that part of the reason why their doing it is to scale back traffic - great idea but it doesn't work.
Bob: "Hey boss, they raised the tolls on Rt. 7 another $1 yesterday!"
Boss: "No problems Bob, here's a small $350 raise to cover it..."
Will the original voice talent stand for this? Could you see Tom Hanks voicing Woody again if the script sucked? I don't think so. In fact, I would be willing to bet that most of those actors will hold out.
It sure would suck for disney to find other vocals here...
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You are right about what the market will bear, but what's not talked about is all the licensing of music that goes on. Satellite music providers like Muzac, DirecTV, DISHnetworks, XM, Sirus and movies/TV programs needing music bring in big bucks to BMI/RIAA/Univeral, etc.
The RIAA isn't going to go out quietly. If every single person today stopped buying CD's, the most that would happen would be the last remaining Fye's and Sam Goody's would be closed - an event likely to happen anyway. Meanwhile, the licencing revenues generated for almost 80 past years continues to add to their coffers.
The RIAA can't/won't be stopped until the gov't steps in, and with all that money involved, it's no surprise that we're all the industries' bitch and 'loving' it...
When is spyware a virus? Don't ask your average anti-virus vendor. When I tried to nail down Sophos on this issue they were evasive - to say the least.
If this trojan is killed by an anti-virus program, is it securing your machine or committing an illegal act? I had this very discussion w/Sophos' techs. I had just cleaned the VX/2 trojan out of a computer - and it took HOURS of work to get it fully out of there. I sent a sample to Sophos and they told me that it was legal adware.
My question was obvious: What methods are allowable for adware, and how is that any different than a virus/trojan.
VX/2 was installed on one of my workstations here through a fault of the OS (unpatched at the time). It installed itself without permission. It left no way to uninstall it. It attempted to shut down Adaware and resisted any attempts to kill it.
So.... THIS ISN'T A VIRUS? Then what the hell is?
And so, overpeer's actions come as no big surprise to me. And I have no doubt that the anti-virus people will continue to turn a blind eye because of their FEAR of a lawsuit.
Damnit, don't we PAY THEM to protect us against this sort of thing?
There's no way this will suck. In fact, I would go as far as believe that this will ship with 10.4 (Tiger), and it will be heavily optimized (as 10.3 was) to reduce memory footprint and increase overall speed. If they ship this thing w/64 MB of graphics RAM (all too likely), then the eye candy alone will make people crowd around the machine at Circuit City.
This isn't one of those cheap Microsoft MSN boxes - this is a real computer with real hardware running a world-class secure OS.
I'll bet you that a 1.25 GHz G4 running Tiger will kick your average home PC in the ASS - especially because of your average homes PC's spyware. Being a spyware cleaner myself, I've seen people actually go out and BUY another computer because they think the performance problems are hardware related!
I think that Steve Jobs has gained wisdom from his experience at Pixar (not a bad movie yet!), and from NeXT. He has learned to listen to his customers. Companies that continue to do that rarely fail. That, coupled with his drive for perfection is turning Apple around.
I have a lot more to say on the mini iMac convergence issue in my journal. I truly believe this is a revolution in the making for Apple.
The mini iMac is a rumor that won't be confirmed until Jan. 15th (MacWorld), but the source is reliable and it is almost certain to be released in March/April. I'm guessing that it's going to be a HUGE hit for Apple just because of the security issues people have been having.
As to remote connection, yes it's easy to do. You can use a Unix-based utility called 'Rdesktop' to connect remotely through Windows Terminal Services, or better still, use VNC and Apples management tool. It allows you to have up to 16 computer windows open on the same screen at the same time, all scaled to fit. Totally amazing!
It's going to be security in general. MS doesn't want to truly fix IE because that would mean having to re-write large portions of OS code (XP Service Pack 3?). That's why they're waiting until Longhorn. The effort would be enormous.
But with this new under $500 mini iMac coming, THAT should scare MS. I know a lot of people I'll be recommending it to (provided it lives up to the hype on release), simply to get out from under all the spyware and viruses.
Remember, a 1.2 GHz G4 is a LOT faster than a 4 GHz spyware-laden PC. And the eye candy of Tiger (OSX 10.4) will blow consumers away...
See my journal for more mini-iMac ruminations...
MUTE is a program I've enjoyed supporting directly. .4 was just released this week and has several improvements.
While it may not be as secure as Freenet, it does take advantage of IP obfustication and is a fair bit faster. No one user knows what machine is connected to what data. With enough users, it would virtually be impossible to determine data origin.
The author of the program continues to make progress as the funds continue to roll in - fair enough.
Give it a try at: mute-net.sf.net and think about supporting the ongoing project. It certainly seems to have more plusses than Exeem!
That doesn't sound too different than compiling processor-specific kernels for Linux. Even Windows has hacks for taking advantage of different features (X86-64 bits, the NX bit, PII multithread, Cyrix had some specific things added some years ago, etc.)
I don't think you can really avoid software patching to take advantage of newer archs.
No, I think what killed C= was the inept (and some would suggest, criminal) management. A lot of bad mistakes were made. They stopped listening to their customers. They they lost focus.
EVERYONE (including the engineers), knew what what working and what wasn't and why. Everyone but management.
It was a lot of things.
- It was a CEO making 10+ million a year when his company was going down the tube.
- It was paying $800,000 a month for a huge factory building in West Chester, PA when most of manufacturing had long ago moved overseas.
- It was C= snubbing of third parties like Newtek (Video Toaster guys), until it was WAY too late.
- It was C= thinking they could sell crappy PC's under their name better than their own original product. They lost MILLIONS on those.
The fact that they lost the MHz war meant little as the Amiga relied on co-processing for most everything PC's were using the main processor for. However, C= delayed the production of the AA and AAA graphic chipsets far too long. By the time the 1200/4000 series was released, it was already all but old.
What better 'punishment' is there than losing your life savings? Not everyone is as well informed about things as you are apparently. My hat's off to you, but as for myself, I'm far more sympathetic to the victims of the crime than the perpetrators.
Yeah! That's EXACTLY what it amounts to - that or other's asses... :)
...but it still happens, sometimes almost unchecked in foreign countries. How is this really going to help unless you target the companies USING spam to hawk their goods?
The spammers are a symptom of a much larger problem. Don't get me wrong - I wouldn't mind seeing them strung up too - but I'd rather see the CEO of some penis enlarging / Viagra-distributing company do some hard time with big guys...
"...the actual problem: People buy the crap offered by spam! Spam is no longer free. If people would just stop buying based on spam, the problem would solve itself."
So what you are in effect saying is that people who hawk too-good-to-be-true investment schemes and storcks shouldn't be punished? People are gullible, people are going to continue to be taken in by their greed, ignorance, or even illness.
I think these parasites should be taken down. Whether you agree with Lycos or not, I commend them for at least bringing this possible solution to the spotlight.
Maybe it's not the crime (taken one at a time), but the fact that spammers like you send out MILLIONS of your crimes everyday.
Rob a purse, go to jail. Rob it 4 billion times? Hmmmm...
I thought I was the only one who thought 'Colonel Mustard' when I heard that guy was replacing Yarro. Funny!
Mute is gaining traction as an anonymous file sharing program. It's not fast - and there's real organization to it yet, but there is progress being made unlike almost every other anonymous file sharing utility.
I use it daily...
So they'll be shutting down ports 25, 80, and 21 also? Only the method used to communicate the data is different, the end result is the same...
If spam in any way threatened the hegemony of the Chinese government - people would be beaten, tortured, and killed - not necessarily in that order.
As it is, I think they LIKE the idea that the U.S. hangs itself with spam. Hacking into Chinese computers to do it make the irony that much more thick.
Where the hell is it? Palm bought it years ago and presumably hasn't sat on it. So where IS IT?
It reminds me of how many delays the Mac OS went through before they finally got pre-emptive multitasking in the form of OSX.
I assume that many of Palm's limitations will be solved when this OS happens. IF it happens, that is...
I also work at a school and I'm wondering the same thing. Check out something like the VX2 spyware/trojan. It:
- Is often installed without user permission (using holes in IE/Windows)
- Has versions that restore themselves no matter how many anti-spyware proggies you use
- Does not register itself in add/remove programs
In our case, I don't care if the user installed something anyway - IT'S NOT THEIR COMPUTER! School computer policy says 'no unauthorized software is to be installed without permission...' I want my A/V program to do what we pay them to help us do - keep malicious software off our machines!
I've been going rounds with Sophos about this particular piece of crap (VX2). Somehow, this thing ended up on a machine here and NO software was directly installed. Evidentally, this was a 'drive-by' download. So, I ask Sophos, why ISN'T this a trojan virus? It has many of the same characteristics.
They then proceed to tell me that it serves a commercial purpose (advertising). So I replied with something like, 'Let me get this straight: I could take a virus like Netsky and create my own variant that serves pop-ups and that would be ok?'
That was two weeks ago. I still haven't gotten back a reply. The fact is - anti-virus companies are pussies (Yeah, I said PUSSIES! Feel free to step up Sophos/Grisoft/Symantec/McAfee, etc.)
I think they've had it pretty good - stopping would-be script kiddies and the like. But this is apparently a challenge that they can't or won't step up to. My suggestion? ALL you A/V companies should file lawsuits against the first spyware company that bitches. United, you'd have nothing to fear...
"Do increases in storage capacity appeal to some basic pack-rat nature?"
Maybe. But I wonder how shocked some of these people will be when their 250 GB HD bites the dust. It was bad enough losing 40+ GB to a head crash but now...!
This is sad. It was the first thing that popped into my head... :P
You know, I think it's really cool that this guy is getting his jollies going after these scum but he may want to tone down his direct involvement with these people or at least do it more quietly. Why? Until recently, jail time wasn't even discussed as a possible punishment - now it's a harsh reality.
Faced with jail time I wouldn't be surprised to hear of some spammer tracker getting killed (or beat up) for his efforts to report them. We already know the kind of people that are mixed up in spam so it doesn't seem like to far a stretch...
It's like when they raise tolls in Virginia. They say that part of the reason why their doing it is to scale back traffic - great idea but it doesn't work.
Bob: "Hey boss, they raised the tolls on Rt. 7 another $1 yesterday!"
Boss: "No problems Bob, here's a small $350 raise to cover it..."
Will the original voice talent stand for this? Could you see Tom Hanks voicing Woody again if the script sucked? I don't think so. In fact, I would be willing to bet that most of those actors will hold out.
It sure would suck for disney to find other vocals here...
Challenge EVERYTHING!
EOL