What would stop me from getting an unlimited account for one month, downloading the entire iTunes catalog, and then canceling the service?
It's called "a contract".
Even if they DRM the music I can still stream rip it. I mean after all, the data still has to be transmitted to me and stored on an iPod somehow.
So in other words, you're going to pay a proportion of each track you buy to have it DRMed license only to rip the DRM out afterwards? ***FANTASTIC*** I really can't keep up with you youngsters these days! And there's "silly old me" just feeding my credit card number into Amazon occasionally and getting a boring old CD through the post with no DRM on it in the first place.
The solution seems simple to me. Apple et. al., should charge $20-40 per iPod for 2-3 year unlimited access to the DRM'ed iTunes catalog, then allow users to buy permanent rights to individual songs DRM free for $ 0.25-0.50 per song.
I don't listen to songs, I listen to entire albums. I also listen to a lot of Tangerine Dream's music where many of their older albums have only two tracks on them - "Side 1" and "Side 2" as a legacy from LP days - though each track is 20 minutes long. Does this mean I'll get an entire Tangerine Dream album for $ 0.50-1.00 (by your calculations)?
Music companies get the best of both world, i.e., the steady income from subscriptions plus the ability to benefit from a mega-hit via direct sales.
But I don't want to "subscribe" to music. I want to buy it, know it's mine and take reassurance from the fact that I don't have to keep paying for it.
Users benefit since they can try before the buy, and only buy music they really wan to keep.
Since most music fans, like me, only like a small proportion of the music they hear, then by your "solution", I have to pay to listen to a lot of music I know I won't like. And that's a benefit?
Additionally 2-3 years is the expected life of most iPods anyway, so most users won't be inconvenienced when the subscription goes out.
No, they'll just have no access to their music when their iPod dies. Yet when the CD player in my hifi dies, I can still listen to the CD in my CD-ROM drive or in my car. Or on the portable CD player. Or in my wife's car. Or my laptop.
Finally, the cheaper, DRM-free purchase ability will separate those of us willing to pay a fair price for music we'd like to own from those just looking to justify their own personal piracy.
I already do this - it's called ***BUYING MUSIC CDS*** of which I own 1200+, all original, all mine. So please do NOT make the dangerous assumption that anyone who is unwilling to buy an iPod, accept DRM or pay for a download is automatically a software pirate. When YOU have downloaded and paid for 12000+ songs from iTunes, we can start talking on the same level because you'll then be getting close to putting as much money into the music industry as I have over the years.
You make the assumption that your "pick and mix bag of musical sweeties" model for music for everyone who listens to music when in reality, it just satisfies those people who've sold their souls to the devil by buying into the iTunes model of DRM-ed rental music.
No thanks. I'll keep my CDs and keep buying them as long as they make good ones.
If you've got an iPod and unlimited access to the catalog, DRM seems like a fair trade given a lack of a subscription fee.
Even though, like the parent, I'm a CD buyer and have never paid for a single downloaded, I was understanding your argument until you reached this point.
People have always shared music. No, I don't consider that it's acceptable that "sharing" on the scale of Bittorrent or Usenet happens and I have over 1200 original CDs in my collection that proves I'm more than happy to pay a fair price for a good piece of music.
However, by purchasing a CD, I reserve the (very important to me) right to play it to a group of friends or lend it to them if they want to hear it in the comfort of their own homes. The music industry might even benefit from another CD sale or two.
I also reserve the right to format change that music in whatever way I please - what I do with that CD for myself is none of the music industry's / RIAA's / BPI's business and they know it; that's why nobody's ever been taken to court for ripping their own CDs.
DRM stops those rights I've reserved - I can't (practically) lend it to someone else to listen to and I can't format change it either. Plus I no longer own anything, I just "rent" it.
If there was a protection system for music such that you could do anything with it apart from upload it to the Internet, it wouldn't bother me. I might even support it on the basis that if I take the trouble to buy every CD, why should a whole load of other people get it for free?
Unfortunately, DRM does that but also affects me. Some of the reasons I buy music for are taken away with DRM. So not only do I have to accept that even though I don't copy music for other people, I am treated like someone who does, but also some of the reasons I buy music for in the first place are taken away from me. Plus, with DRM, if someone somewhere deems that I've listened to the music for long enough or enough times, they can use DRM to just stop me listening to it until I pay more money. (I believe the Mafia used to have a similar policy with small businesses and protection money and they were criminalised as a result.)
So please stop being so naive - if you pay for music, DRM is bad. It may be being touted as a weapon against piracy but, as usual, it's real use is to target the honest saps like you and me that already pay for our music and squeeze a bit more money out of us - that's it's prime goal.
Don't support DRM and don't buy DRM-ed products because ultimately all you are doing is making music a whole lot more expensive and restrictive for you.
This disclosure should be made without qualifications or caveats (i.e. "I only downloaded it to sample" or "I intend to buy it later" still count as unauthorized d/l's).
I download it to sample from Usenet or Bittorrent. I own 1200+ CDs. The music industry does well out of me and because I've heard any CD before I buy it, I do well out of it, I don't own a bad album and I think CDs are reasonably priced as a result.
I never have, and never will, pay for a download. Music is important to me, it's not disposable because I don't listen to "cheap-to-produce" plastic crap in the charts. If they stopped making CDs tomorrow, I would buy no more music. It doesn't worry me, I've a big enough collection to last me a lifetime anyway.
My disclosure: I have downloaded content from an unauthorized source. But I've pumped around £12,000 into the music industry through my CD purchases over the years.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Clam AV just on there purely for picking up harmful attachments that may get delivered to a Windows email client via a Linux server? I've simply never used it because none of my home Linux servers do any mail services for the XP ones I have.
Again, I'm not denying the potential for viruses and malware to exist on any OS but the fact is that Linux, by it's very nature of being customised down to the smallest embedded device up to large clusters of servers, and not to mention the number of different distros, is far more difficult to target "en masse" with a single virus because what runs on one of these servers might not run on any of the others.
I just had a horrific vision of me as schoolkid with Bill Gates stood by my front door in a padded dressing gown, giving me a peck on the cheek, putting my schoolcap on my head and saying "Bye, dear, have a nice day at school!"
And Steve Ballmer as my dad waiting in his car by the school gates as I climb into the passenger seat after a hard day at school. And as he turns the key in the ignition, he looks at me and says:
"Son, I think our holiday photos are ready so on the way home I'm going to make a quick stop at the DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS", bouncing up and down in his seat with spittle coming out of his mouth and bashing his bald head against inside of the vinyl upholstered roof of the car...
Good stuff. Now that you're happy will you kindly bugger off to your dark corner of Starbucks so the rest of us shit eaters can get on with what we were doing before you interrupted us.
Oh, and here's £2.50 - go buy yourself a coffee with a chocolate flake in it while you're waiting.
Apparently, even subliminal exposure to the Apple logo can make you 'think different.'
Hence the reason all the new Mac users immediately go out and buy extra big designer tables for their lounges and a few African tribal relics to display in their hallways.
It also makes them caffeine-addicted hermits since I usually see solitary Mac users sat in the darkest corners of Starbucks with a large chocca-flocca-socca-moccachino in front of them. And I know they're Mac users because no matter where I sit, they always make sure I can see the little logo.
...if Vista SP1 brings it closer to the expectations of its users then I'm very happy for them.
But why do I still get the feeling that very few people ***CHOSE*** to upgrade to it but just accepted it because it came on their new PC and they couldn't do anything about it because XP had been artificially phased out by Microsoft?
In my view, those are not good indications that Vista is, in any way, a successful product.
Thanks for clearing that up - and if the AC that raised that point ever makes his identity known rest assured I'll let you know so I can hold him down while you give him a good kicking...
I'm sure that if you were to analyse the private lives of any number of talented musicians, artists, sculptors, authors, etc, there's a chance you'll uncover something they don't want uncovered.
However, your comments are based merely on rumour and are both irrelevant and insensitive at this particular juncture.
The only *facts* that exist and matter to me at the moment are that he was a talented author, highly scientifically minded, and the person who got me into science fiction when I read "Childhood's End" as my first sci-fi book and saw "2001" as my first sci-fi movie. Therefore he earnt my respect from a very early age and his family get my deepest sympathies now.
Aren't these essentially the same thing? I've always thought that an exploitable buffer overflow is just a type of security hole, and if the program that's being overflowed is running without high-level privileges, then the arbitrary code you should be able to execute won't have access to do anything beyond what the program being overflowed could do.
It's a valid point you make.
Buffer overflow attacks originated more from manual hacking as a method of getting into a system. If you buffer overflow a daemon running with limited privileges, then you probably still need to get a root shell prompt before doing what you want to with the system. Although such attacks can be automated, the chances are that a buffer overflow attack is directed at a specific system to either damage it or get some data off of it (or even put a Trojan on it).
A virus, on the other hand, just cares about finding one or more similar systems somewhere without much regard for what or where that system is.
So in loose terms, you can think of a buffer overflow as being fairly discriminate while a virus is pretty indiscriminate. It's a simplistic way of looking at it but it does explain the differences (I hope!)
Deal with it Macs are very secure compared to PCs.
PS. If you mean "Windows" then say "Windows" rather than "PCs". I'm not getting into a "my brother is bigger than your brother" argument but my Linux PCs are probably far more secure than your Mac. That's because security is my job, I've a decade of Linux experience with an additional 15 years of UNIX experience and I am forever fiddling about with the bloody things to make them as secure as possible. If you do the same with your Mac(s) then good on you.
PPS. And before I get called a zealot, I also run a number of XP PCs with AVG Antivirus on them that also never get viruses because I watch where I surf, never install pirated software and never open an email attachment that I'm not 100% confident about.
People don't seem to understand how antivirus software works.
If that's a subtle dig at me then I suggest you read my other posts in this thread in order to fully understand what I am actually saying rather than getting all defensive because you think I'm launching a personal attack at you.
AV does a specific job of *doing it's best* to eliminate viruses on your machine. AV is not a *complete* security solution, it's one more additional layer of protection that you deploy *over and above* regular software updates, NAT-ing/firewalling, regular updates, locking down unnecessary services and running software with minimum permissions.
I ended up writing my own antivirus flash banner inspector that decompiles the banner and checks for specific strings.
Good on you. That's one more additional layer of protection you can deploy to further limit risks of malware.
Why? How dangerous? And how is it dangerous to assume otherwise?
Please see my other responses in this thread - they should go some way to explaining why.
Why should I spend my time, money, and CPU cycles on running AV on a system that has an essentially 0 rate of virus infection?
Please Google for OS X viruses, they do exist.
As to why you should deploy AV? Because it's a cheap way of adding another level of security protection to your machine. Everything else you've done is entirely sensible and helps stop a virus actually getting onto your machine. But on the basis they do exist for Macs, how are you going to know if one has got through without AV?
And how is the antivirus going to catch the problem when it first appears?
It probably won't until it's updated. But you can also lock down the services on your machine, install updates as quickly as possible, deploy a NAT router/firewall and run any potentially exploitable software at the lowest permission levels.
No single one of these is a 100% solution to the problem - but then security is about deploying layers of protection, not just one single thing.
Any computer expert doesn't need anti-virus. As a matter of a fact, anyone remotely computer savvy doesn't need anti-virus. As long as you keep your patches up to date you're basically as secure as you can be from viruses assuming you don't allow the virus in.
Please do not say that in any interview you may ever attend for an IT security job. You need to Google for "zero-day exploits" which essentially means the time between an exploit being discovered and it being patched.
I have run without anti-virus for about 15 years or so and I have only been infected with two viruses.
As I said in my other reply, that probably has a lot more to do with a sensible approach to not using software like IE or Outlook that embeds itself deeply within Windows - avoiding the reasons that allow a virus to propogate on your PCs does not make you immune to getting one, it just reduces the chances.
I've had nothing but grief with anti virus software on my PCs. I've run my Mac for nearly 2 years without a single problem including Adware/Malware.
That statement actually means nothing. It might be your surfing habits are different on a Windows PC, plus there's a lot more dodgy software out there for Windows than there is for anything else.
Yes, there are thousands more viruses for Windows than any other OS but that doesn't mean you shouldn't run anti-virus on a Mac.
Slashdot Mirror
Now about that prize you've won. Do you want the "I sold my soul to Apple" T-shirt in black or white?
It's called "a contract".
Even if they DRM the music I can still stream rip it. I mean after all, the data still has to be transmitted to me and stored on an iPod somehow.
So in other words, you're going to pay a proportion of each track you buy to have it DRMed license only to rip the DRM out afterwards? ***FANTASTIC*** I really can't keep up with you youngsters these days! And there's "silly old me" just feeding my credit card number into Amazon occasionally and getting a boring old CD through the post with no DRM on it in the first place.
I don't listen to songs, I listen to entire albums. I also listen to a lot of Tangerine Dream's music where many of their older albums have only two tracks on them - "Side 1" and "Side 2" as a legacy from LP days - though each track is 20 minutes long. Does this mean I'll get an entire Tangerine Dream album for $ 0.50-1.00 (by your calculations)?
Music companies get the best of both world, i.e., the steady income from subscriptions plus the ability to benefit from a mega-hit via direct sales.
But I don't want to "subscribe" to music. I want to buy it, know it's mine and take reassurance from the fact that I don't have to keep paying for it.
Users benefit since they can try before the buy, and only buy music they really wan to keep.
Since most music fans, like me, only like a small proportion of the music they hear, then by your "solution", I have to pay to listen to a lot of music I know I won't like. And that's a benefit?
Additionally 2-3 years is the expected life of most iPods anyway, so most users won't be inconvenienced when the subscription goes out.
No, they'll just have no access to their music when their iPod dies. Yet when the CD player in my hifi dies, I can still listen to the CD in my CD-ROM drive or in my car. Or on the portable CD player. Or in my wife's car. Or my laptop.
Finally, the cheaper, DRM-free purchase ability will separate those of us willing to pay a fair price for music we'd like to own from those just looking to justify their own personal piracy.
I already do this - it's called ***BUYING MUSIC CDS*** of which I own 1200+, all original, all mine. So please do NOT make the dangerous assumption that anyone who is unwilling to buy an iPod, accept DRM or pay for a download is automatically a software pirate. When YOU have downloaded and paid for 12000+ songs from iTunes, we can start talking on the same level because you'll then be getting close to putting as much money into the music industry as I have over the years.
You make the assumption that your "pick and mix bag of musical sweeties" model for music for everyone who listens to music when in reality, it just satisfies those people who've sold their souls to the devil by buying into the iTunes model of DRM-ed rental music.
No thanks. I'll keep my CDs and keep buying them as long as they make good ones.
Even though, like the parent, I'm a CD buyer and have never paid for a single downloaded, I was understanding your argument until you reached this point.
People have always shared music. No, I don't consider that it's acceptable that "sharing" on the scale of Bittorrent or Usenet happens and I have over 1200 original CDs in my collection that proves I'm more than happy to pay a fair price for a good piece of music.
However, by purchasing a CD, I reserve the (very important to me) right to play it to a group of friends or lend it to them if they want to hear it in the comfort of their own homes. The music industry might even benefit from another CD sale or two.
I also reserve the right to format change that music in whatever way I please - what I do with that CD for myself is none of the music industry's / RIAA's / BPI's business and they know it; that's why nobody's ever been taken to court for ripping their own CDs.
DRM stops those rights I've reserved - I can't (practically) lend it to someone else to listen to and I can't format change it either. Plus I no longer own anything, I just "rent" it.
If there was a protection system for music such that you could do anything with it apart from upload it to the Internet, it wouldn't bother me. I might even support it on the basis that if I take the trouble to buy every CD, why should a whole load of other people get it for free?
Unfortunately, DRM does that but also affects me. Some of the reasons I buy music for are taken away with DRM. So not only do I have to accept that even though I don't copy music for other people, I am treated like someone who does, but also some of the reasons I buy music for in the first place are taken away from me. Plus, with DRM, if someone somewhere deems that I've listened to the music for long enough or enough times, they can use DRM to just stop me listening to it until I pay more money. (I believe the Mafia used to have a similar policy with small businesses and protection money and they were criminalised as a result.)
So please stop being so naive - if you pay for music, DRM is bad. It may be being touted as a weapon against piracy but, as usual, it's real use is to target the honest saps like you and me that already pay for our music and squeeze a bit more money out of us - that's it's prime goal.
Don't support DRM and don't buy DRM-ed products because ultimately all you are doing is making music a whole lot more expensive and restrictive for you.
Radio costs $0-$0 a month (no other options), and you can listen to the music as long as you have ears that work.
I download it to sample from Usenet or Bittorrent. I own 1200+ CDs. The music industry does well out of me and because I've heard any CD before I buy it, I do well out of it, I don't own a bad album and I think CDs are reasonably priced as a result.
I never have, and never will, pay for a download. Music is important to me, it's not disposable because I don't listen to "cheap-to-produce" plastic crap in the charts. If they stopped making CDs tomorrow, I would buy no more music. It doesn't worry me, I've a big enough collection to last me a lifetime anyway.
My disclosure: I have downloaded content from an unauthorized source. But I've pumped around £12,000 into the music industry through my CD purchases over the years.
Again, I'm not denying the potential for viruses and malware to exist on any OS but the fact is that Linux, by it's very nature of being customised down to the smallest embedded device up to large clusters of servers, and not to mention the number of different distros, is far more difficult to target "en masse" with a single virus because what runs on one of these servers might not run on any of the others.
Yes, you are correct, these droids are of no interest to us.
I just had a horrific vision of me as schoolkid with Bill Gates stood by my front door in a padded dressing gown, giving me a peck on the cheek, putting my schoolcap on my head and saying "Bye, dear, have a nice day at school!"
And Steve Ballmer as my dad waiting in his car by the school gates as I climb into the passenger seat after a hard day at school. And as he turns the key in the ignition, he looks at me and says:
"Son, I think our holiday photos are ready so on the way home I'm going to make a quick stop at the DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS", bouncing up and down in his seat with spittle coming out of his mouth and bashing his bald head against inside of the vinyl upholstered roof of the car...
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!
Steve cannot lay hands.
Because Steve's hands are round his ankles.
Along with his pants.
As a mile long queue of adoring fanbois try to climb up his butt.
Finally! A Mac User with a sense of humour! In the words of Basil Fawlty "We should have him stuffed!"
Besides which most modern virus checkers also check files as a user opens them.
Oh, and here's £2.50 - go buy yourself a coffee with a chocolate flake in it while you're waiting.
Hence the reason all the new Mac users immediately go out and buy extra big designer tables for their lounges and a few African tribal relics to display in their hallways.
It also makes them caffeine-addicted hermits since I usually see solitary Mac users sat in the darkest corners of Starbucks with a large chocca-flocca-socca-moccachino in front of them. And I know they're Mac users because no matter where I sit, they always make sure I can see the little logo.
But why do I still get the feeling that very few people ***CHOSE*** to upgrade to it but just accepted it because it came on their new PC and they couldn't do anything about it because XP had been artificially phased out by Microsoft?
In my view, those are not good indications that Vista is, in any way, a successful product.
Thanks for clearing that up - and if the AC that raised that point ever makes his identity known rest assured I'll let you know so I can hold him down while you give him a good kicking...
However, your comments are based merely on rumour and are both irrelevant and insensitive at this particular juncture.
The only *facts* that exist and matter to me at the moment are that he was a talented author, highly scientifically minded, and the person who got me into science fiction when I read "Childhood's End" as my first sci-fi book and saw "2001" as my first sci-fi movie. Therefore he earnt my respect from a very early age and his family get my deepest sympathies now.
It's a valid point you make.
Buffer overflow attacks originated more from manual hacking as a method of getting into a system. If you buffer overflow a daemon running with limited privileges, then you probably still need to get a root shell prompt before doing what you want to with the system. Although such attacks can be automated, the chances are that a buffer overflow attack is directed at a specific system to either damage it or get some data off of it (or even put a Trojan on it).
A virus, on the other hand, just cares about finding one or more similar systems somewhere without much regard for what or where that system is.
So in loose terms, you can think of a buffer overflow as being fairly discriminate while a virus is pretty indiscriminate. It's a simplistic way of looking at it but it does explain the differences (I hope!)
PS. If you mean "Windows" then say "Windows" rather than "PCs". I'm not getting into a "my brother is bigger than your brother" argument but my Linux PCs are probably far more secure than your Mac. That's because security is my job, I've a decade of Linux experience with an additional 15 years of UNIX experience and I am forever fiddling about with the bloody things to make them as secure as possible. If you do the same with your Mac(s) then good on you.
PPS. And before I get called a zealot, I also run a number of XP PCs with AVG Antivirus on them that also never get viruses because I watch where I surf, never install pirated software and never open an email attachment that I'm not 100% confident about.
If that's a subtle dig at me then I suggest you read my other posts in this thread in order to fully understand what I am actually saying rather than getting all defensive because you think I'm launching a personal attack at you.
AV does a specific job of *doing it's best* to eliminate viruses on your machine. AV is not a *complete* security solution, it's one more additional layer of protection that you deploy *over and above* regular software updates, NAT-ing/firewalling, regular updates, locking down unnecessary services and running software with minimum permissions.
I ended up writing my own antivirus flash banner inspector that decompiles the banner and checks for specific strings.
Good on you. That's one more additional layer of protection you can deploy to further limit risks of malware.
Please see my other responses in this thread - they should go some way to explaining why.
Why should I spend my time, money, and CPU cycles on running AV on a system that has an essentially 0 rate of virus infection?
Please Google for OS X viruses, they do exist.
As to why you should deploy AV? Because it's a cheap way of adding another level of security protection to your machine. Everything else you've done is entirely sensible and helps stop a virus actually getting onto your machine. But on the basis they do exist for Macs, how are you going to know if one has got through without AV?
Like I said, don't be blase about it.
It probably won't until it's updated. But you can also lock down the services on your machine, install updates as quickly as possible, deploy a NAT router/firewall and run any potentially exploitable software at the lowest permission levels.
No single one of these is a 100% solution to the problem - but then security is about deploying layers of protection, not just one single thing.
Please do not say that in any interview you may ever attend for an IT security job. You need to Google for "zero-day exploits" which essentially means the time between an exploit being discovered and it being patched.
I have run without anti-virus for about 15 years or so and I have only been infected with two viruses.
As I said in my other reply, that probably has a lot more to do with a sensible approach to not using software like IE or Outlook that embeds itself deeply within Windows - avoiding the reasons that allow a virus to propogate on your PCs does not make you immune to getting one, it just reduces the chances.
This was the first site that came up in a Google search for OS X viruses. There's not many Mac viruses but they definitely do exist.
That statement actually means nothing. It might be your surfing habits are different on a Windows PC, plus there's a lot more dodgy software out there for Windows than there is for anything else.
Yes, there are thousands more viruses for Windows than any other OS but that doesn't mean you shouldn't run anti-virus on a Mac.