They try and tailor each game to nothing more than time sinks. The longer your play the more money they make. This right there takes the "fun" factor away and adds in the grind. Why do the developers think its fun to go on a 14 hr raid to maybe get a piece of eq that I might need at some point in my characters life. Also, after the initial time sinks have been reached, instead of rewarding you they add more! Look at EQ and DAoC. Both of which have added pay for expansions that do nothing more than give you more pretty pictures and a TON more time sinks.
At some point they have to realize that time sinks do not equal long term cash. Maybe back in the day when EQ and UO were the only game in town could this be done. Now, there are litterly hundreds of new MMORPGs on the horizon lining up to get a piece of the pie.
Devs!! It's time to remember that we play these games for FUN not for another grind akin to our every day lives.
Just like the situation with the RIAA spreading its propaganda in schools, I do not wish my childern to be subjected to this. Why is it ok for coperate entities to buy their ways into schools and spread their views to impressionable minds? Sorry MPAA/RIAA, this isnt about doing drugs or anything like that, its about you losing your iron grip on the current model of movie/music distro and you are afraid that you will finally lose it.
I will be keeping my childern out of school on the days that any coperate entity will be spewing their propaganda to my childern.
I agree and thats why I originally wrote "Atleast it feels like that from the people that they have been suing." Also, I'll bet you they would just drop the suit if it went to far thus still ensuring that it is never tested.
Intresting wording here. Looks like the RIAA is trying to pull the same stunt as VeriSign, make themselves out to be the underdog here. They have some huge public relations control to do here after suing the 12yr old (ya ya it was the parents but in the news, it was a 12yr old) and that old lady on a mac. Both made local news and gave the RIAA a very black eye to the every day citizen who has had nothing but info from the RIAA camp.
One thing about the mass suing by the RIAA though, I kind of wish it had more of an impact in the court systems. I was hopeing that they would have tried to sue someone very wealthy who didn't want to settle out of court and bring it up in the public eye and allow the DMCA to finally be challanged all the way though. As of now the RIAA is banking on the fact that the people they are suing will just setting and this will never see the light of day in any court room. Atleast it feels like that from the people that they have been suing. This type of situation is a win win for them. They get money, they set a court presidence, and they frighten people all by just sending out a letter.
One good thing is that some companies, like verizon, are still making a stand against their requests to fork over users. While they have ordered by the courst to hand over people so far, they are still fighting it and for that we have some hope that this mess of a law may soon be challanged and maybe, just maybe, finally thrown out.
I know that the gov created it to use for the ability to communicate and trasfer information incase of war. I belive everyone knows and understands that but it as grown well out of those early days and is now a freeflowing form of its former self.
Of course no one cared at the time, no one either knew about it or was using it outside of a select few schools and the gov itself. Now that the WORLD is using it it's a totally different story.
As I asked before, do you really want the gov to get involved with this or to put it more perciscly, with the internet the way it is TODAY.
I see big problems arising from this. One, if it looks like VeriSign will lose, they will more than likely settle out of court and make sure an issue like this stay untested as to be lawful or not. Just like the DMCA mess and the mass suing from the RIAA.
Second, VeriSign is handling the.com/.net domain on good faith really. No one has the power to remove them from handling these domains. There is no true law up to this point on who owns them and what guidelines they HAVE to follow. Even the RFC's don't contain any insight on how something like this should be handeled.
Do we really want the gov (at any level) to start getting their hands in this? Do we want another self appointed body saying what can and cannot go? Both of which, to me, are scary but it seems that the "self healing" that the internet was built apon is failing at this point. Even if another RFC is written, who's to say that VeriSign will follow it?
I see no good comming from this really. The only good ending would be that VeriSign halts its practice on its own and an RFC is drafted to prevent this in the future and people follow it. The only issue I see there is it's still done on faith and it looks like faith has gone the way of the dot.coms.
What ads? I use Yim at work and there are zero ads. The only ad that there is is a pop up screen when it starts that can be turned off in the options. No ads on the client itself like aim either. No hacking needed (eg. I'm not running DeadYim).
All this is is an update to their protocal that happened to break third party messengers. I looked for a license that you could purchace ala msn and couldnt find one. I believe that they will continue to allow third party messengers into their network.
Why is it just because they upgrade something and it breaks other programs that they didn't code people call out the wolves on them? Not all companies are M$ here. On the other side, not all companies are Opensource based and fully backwards compaible. In this case, Yahoo upgraded their core protocal and in doing that broke all backwards comptability. This, in my eyes, isn't some evil plot to get people to look at ads or get license money, it's just the way they do things.
After suing a 12 yr old, knowing that they did it, and STILL they settled for $2k US? I think they should play a game called "Greedy Lawyer". Here the kids go up infront of the class, make a band, songs, album art, etc... then the RIAA says "Hey thanks for that, you get 1 cent an album we sell!".
Is this even legal? They are not a public entity like the Fire Dept or Police Dept that can come in and give lecutures on safety and saying no to strangers. They are a privatly owned firm of lawyers that will brainwash our kids to think their way. I really don't want my kids comming subjected to that. Yes, I could keep my child out of school that day but then they would lose any other classes that they would have that day also.
Is this what the education system is comming to these days now? Coperate sponsed education? It's bad enough that M$ is pushed in all the schools (nice that they get free computers though) now we're going to have the RIAA pushing their ethics? What's next? No, seriously, this is frightning to me. My two childern are just entering the school system now and with things like this croping up what will they be learning?
I'll probably get moded down to troll or flaimbait but really, how much better are any other OS? On the heels of the two OpenSSH and the sendmail exploit, this comes out. Arn't OpenSSH and sendmail both *nix based programs? Yes, the actual OS itself isnt to blame in this circumstance but don't these tools come stock with most *nix distros?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that M$ shouldn't be held liable for the craptastic OS that it spews out all the time but really, how much worse is it security wise vanilla compaired to a vanilla install of any other os? If I remember correctly, after installing redhat 9 the other day, 2 hrs of d/ling for patchs commenced to update all the packages on it.
Seen this on my network at work. Most of the from addresses are faked anyway so were getting bounce backs from these anti-virus software daemons saying that we sent so and so a virus. Now, not only is our network underheavy load from the actual sobig.x virus but were also dealing with these bogus e-mails.
Server load went from 55% usage up to 98% usage. 17% of all emails comming in were these bounce backs to either us or our customers. 17%!! This is totally unexceptable expectially when most of not all of the current breed of e-mail bourn virus's fake the e-mail address.
Personaly, I think this option should just be removed totally from the software packages. Barring that, have it off by default not on. I have enough spam and virus emails comming in without having to deal with the extra load of warning emails from poorly configured virus walls.
"Yes, its still illegal for someone to enter the house and steal someting but doenst common sense tell us "Hey dummy, close and lock the doors and windows!"."
I know its illegal but it still doenst take away from the fact that these companies would rather sue people then actually make sure that their networks were secure. How sorry would you feel for someone who left their house wide open and kept getting broken into? Yup, its totally illegal for the burglers to enter the house but im sure even you would be saying "WTF why dont they lock the damn door!"
"You don't get on the news by writing letters. You get on the news by "making news.""
I don't want to get on the news, I just want other news broadcasted, like this wired article. Big difference there.
We kinda already knew this. Many people go out and buy music based about what they download from p2p networks. I myself have done that.
Again though, this isnt in the main stream media so it will make little impact against this constant onslaught of press the RIAA is getting. We need more stories like this to come up on 60mins and the local news to debunk the crap that the RIAA is spewing forth.
I have written to my local news stations around my area about the other sides to many of the RIAA and DMCA related stories and havent even gotten back a form letter reply. I have done this via e-mail and snail mail. Looks like they really don't care to be objective (I know, I know, Thank you Captain Obvious!).
This is again along the lines of "We dont really want to make sure were secure so we'll just sue/have arrested anyone who finds anything." These are also the same people who loby the gov to pass laws to do this. It's amazing how little people acutally care about how secure their network or computers are and instead care more about huge fines and sentences so they can keep their networks insecure.
None of this has ever made any sense to me. Why is it that leaving a network insecure is fine and dandy but someone comming along and finding out its insecure then entering it a bitter no no then breaking and entering into a house? Didn't we learn long ago to close and lock our doors at night and when we where away? Some of these security holes are equvilant to a wide open window with no screen in it while were on vacation for a month. Yes, its still illegal for someone to enter the house and steal someting but doenst common sense tell us "Hey dummy, close and lock the doors and windows!".
I'm also wondering if they have any case on this. Didn't the NY Times take his help originaly to secure the network? I know the statue of limitations hasnt paned out on this but at some point someone kinda has to say "Ahh well why are you taking him to court now after he helped out originally?". Just another "See what we do to these bad bad men!" cases.
Yup, I'm being reduntant as others have probably have and will post about this but its a serious thing here. How many patents have we seen lately that have had mounds of prior art? How many of them have been so blatently obvious that even non-techies are shaking their heads? How many non-techies know that this patent was granted? There is the crux of the issue.
This patent might actually be good for us as it may jack up pricing on current programs but one has to think, how far reaching will they allow this to go in a court? Hey, I filter out port 135 traffic (gg people patch your machines!!) and some known spam networks at the core end, will they now come after me for filtering? It seems that more and more the patents are being granted on the overly obvious and are being abused to the hilt by the company to which it is granted.
I see mass law suits in our future over this one and with the state of the clueless judges presideing over the cases this could turn sour.
While this in and of itself is horrible, so is them going out and blanket suing people. Maybe this will make the law makers finally wake up and realize that give an origanization like the RIAA the power to do this is not as good as they thought. I don't even think that the RIAA's deep pockets can fix this mess.
Maybe, just maybe this is the begining of the end for this type of behavior. One can only hope.
While this really is a "Thank you Captain Obvious!" statement, it is nice to know where the EFF stands. While so many other lawyers are out there drooling over the opportunity to scrape up wads of cash at the RIAA's biding, these guys come right out and tell people that the RIAA is full of crap.
Only thing is I wish more non-techy people even know the EFF existed. I told my mom about this as she had heard all about the RIAA and this new amesty thing from the local news, she had no idea who the EFF was. Apparently the news is only running the RIAA's side of the story. No great suprise here but it kind of limits the impact of their statment now doesnt it?
What time? They are not trying to send these people to jail, they are trying to squeeze money out of them. They know that if they actually had to bring up a real case agaisnt these people then they would, more than likely, lose. So instead, they sue which makes it harder on the defendant as THEY have to prove their innocence instead of the other way around.
Lovely isnt it? Weither these people are guilty or not means nothing. They will be finiancly ruined by either paying out the absurd suit, a lawyer to defend them, or the RIAA's "Ok well just give us THIS much and we'll go away" deal.
So ya, I think I will whine about this thank you very much.
A quick google search turned up tons. Not just on the columbine insident but a few others. Here is a link to one of them.
Parents really need to start taking responsibility for their childerns actions. I'm a parent of two little girls. You don't see me trying to sue the company who made my sofa because my child fell of off it do you? It's a sad state of affairs when parents would rather sue some external company then look in apon themselves and their methods (or lack there of) of parenting.
Many questions surface in this too. Why did they have access to guns? Why were they playing this game in the first place? Who bought the gun/game? I have no guns in my house and I monitor what my childern watch and play. This is not a very difficult task and on top of it all it gives me time to spend with my childern. I watch tv with them, help them to play games (ok they are young but I don't use the TV as a baby sitter).
Really people, this whole "Let's sue so we can continue to let the gov/state gov raise our kids for us!" is getting old and dangerous. Not only that, it doenst work. Apparently these parents dont see that. I can put a thousand warning labels on things, sue a ton of movie and gaming companies, and it won't do a thing. All it will do is force a company to pay out money or put a label on something they these type of parents probably won't pay attention to any way. Instead of suing they need to stop what ever it is in their busy lives, reevaluate their lives and their childerns, and start being parents. Take the time that you would have used to sue a company and instead spend it with your kids.
Now, I do understand that one of the victims is pressing suit here but it still doesnt change the fact that my above statements hold true. I think the victims should spend their time trying to work community instead of suing an entertainment company.
"And what that point would be? An iPod or WinAmp or XMMS is unlikely to display photos or movies. Short of file(1), most casual users would never even find out what the file really contains. They will just delete it as corrupted..."
Correct but how many people in congress or any other legistating body would care when the RIAA presents a search, d/ls some child porn while searching for the latest trash song, opens it in an image viewer and shows the assembly? Do you think they would even understand that its pointless to retag like that?
The RIAA could also say that we (being the people using p2p) are just being tricky and hiding it out if the challange that you presented is brought up.
I understand your point 100%, and so does everyone else here. How about your mother? Grandfather? Any non-tech person? Those are the people eaiest to fool and the RIAA seems to be fooling them pretty well up to now.
"Unfortunately for them, a search for a common song rarely turns up porn. Not a lot of porn around with MP3 headers."
This is an intresting statement. While true, for how long? We know that the RIAA (or an oursourced company) is interjecting junk mp3's into the system now, whats to stop them from retagging porn with mp3 headers to make their point?
Ya ya it would probably be illegal but looking at their track record they are toeing the line now as it is by sending out mass supinias (sp?) with little to no evidence. Isn't stoping them one bit though is it?
This whole idea scares the crap out of me to put it bluntly. A massive collection of lawyers who are more underhanded then most. We know that they pull every underhanded and questionably legal stunt they can to get what they want. Now I'm wondering if the cops are going to be knocking on my door because I use DC or bittorent and claim im part of some child porn ring.
Another thing, this is beyond coat tailing a law, this is pretty much blatenly lying or stateing the overly obvious to get their way. One has to think that the public or atleast congress will see that not only is this NOT any of their business (since when did the RIAA care about porn or even kids?) but is nothing more than a thinly vailed attack against totally legal programs.
Of course, the DMCA passed and is still a law.
Wow, not only is the RIAA kicking and screaming all the way down, but now they are calling in imaginary pink elephants to help!
Really? I work for an isp and we provide the backbone for a local powercompany to do just this. Also, there are 3 other, smaller, powercompanies in my area (SE MASS) doing this.
Bah, running 0's over the drive, like i said, is good enuf to wipe what I have on my drives. If you REALLY want to spend the time running over my drive block by block to find out I had all the star trek eps in divx format, be my guest.
Seems to me that writing 0's to the drive is pretty sufficiant for most peoples needs. As it is its near impossible to impossible to retreive data from a disk that way. Turning one into slag after demag and what not is probalby pointless rite now. Of course, if you are thinking long term and have really sensative data that you are storing on a disk somewhere, then slaging is always an option.
On the the writing of 0's to the disk. Best that I have come up with for windows is a bootable floppy/cdrom that had any type of program with the ability to write 0's block by block to the drive. This has worked 100% of the times that I have used it. Of course I havent done the extensive work of the MIT students but from the few programs that I've tried to use for recovery, I have come up blank which for what I keep on my drives is good enuf.
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They try and tailor each game to nothing more than time sinks. The longer your play the more money they make. This right there takes the "fun" factor away and adds in the grind. Why do the developers think its fun to go on a 14 hr raid to maybe get a piece of eq that I might need at some point in my characters life. Also, after the initial time sinks have been reached, instead of rewarding you they add more! Look at EQ and DAoC. Both of which have added pay for expansions that do nothing more than give you more pretty pictures and a TON more time sinks.
At some point they have to realize that time sinks do not equal long term cash. Maybe back in the day when EQ and UO were the only game in town could this be done. Now, there are litterly hundreds of new MMORPGs on the horizon lining up to get a piece of the pie.
Devs!! It's time to remember that we play these games for FUN not for another grind akin to our every day lives.
Just like the situation with the RIAA spreading its propaganda in schools, I do not wish my childern to be subjected to this. Why is it ok for coperate entities to buy their ways into schools and spread their views to impressionable minds? Sorry MPAA/RIAA, this isnt about doing drugs or anything like that, its about you losing your iron grip on the current model of movie/music distro and you are afraid that you will finally lose it.
I will be keeping my childern out of school on the days that any coperate entity will be spewing their propaganda to my childern.
I agree and thats why I originally wrote "Atleast it feels like that from the people that they have been suing." Also, I'll bet you they would just drop the suit if it went to far thus still ensuring that it is never tested.
Intresting wording here. Looks like the RIAA is trying to pull the same stunt as VeriSign, make themselves out to be the underdog here. They have some huge public relations control to do here after suing the 12yr old (ya ya it was the parents but in the news, it was a 12yr old) and that old lady on a mac. Both made local news and gave the RIAA a very black eye to the every day citizen who has had nothing but info from the RIAA camp.
One thing about the mass suing by the RIAA though, I kind of wish it had more of an impact in the court systems. I was hopeing that they would have tried to sue someone very wealthy who didn't want to settle out of court and bring it up in the public eye and allow the DMCA to finally be challanged all the way though. As of now the RIAA is banking on the fact that the people they are suing will just setting and this will never see the light of day in any court room. Atleast it feels like that from the people that they have been suing. This type of situation is a win win for them. They get money, they set a court presidence, and they frighten people all by just sending out a letter.
One good thing is that some companies, like verizon, are still making a stand against their requests to fork over users. While they have ordered by the courst to hand over people so far, they are still fighting it and for that we have some hope that this mess of a law may soon be challanged and maybe, just maybe, finally thrown out.
I know that the gov created it to use for the ability to communicate and trasfer information incase of war. I belive everyone knows and understands that but it as grown well out of those early days and is now a freeflowing form of its former self.
Of course no one cared at the time, no one either knew about it or was using it outside of a select few schools and the gov itself. Now that the WORLD is using it it's a totally different story.
As I asked before, do you really want the gov to get involved with this or to put it more perciscly, with the internet the way it is TODAY.
I see big problems arising from this. One, if it looks like VeriSign will lose, they will more than likely settle out of court and make sure an issue like this stay untested as to be lawful or not. Just like the DMCA mess and the mass suing from the RIAA.
.com/.net domain on good faith really. No one has the power to remove them from handling these domains. There is no true law up to this point on who owns them and what guidelines they HAVE to follow. Even the RFC's don't contain any insight on how something like this should be handeled.
Second, VeriSign is handling the
Do we really want the gov (at any level) to start getting their hands in this? Do we want another self appointed body saying what can and cannot go? Both of which, to me, are scary but it seems that the "self healing" that the internet was built apon is failing at this point. Even if another RFC is written, who's to say that VeriSign will follow it?
I see no good comming from this really. The only good ending would be that VeriSign halts its practice on its own and an RFC is drafted to prevent this in the future and people follow it. The only issue I see there is it's still done on faith and it looks like faith has gone the way of the dot.coms.
What ads? I use Yim at work and there are zero ads. The only ad that there is is a pop up screen when it starts that can be turned off in the options. No ads on the client itself like aim either. No hacking needed (eg. I'm not running DeadYim).
All this is is an update to their protocal that happened to break third party messengers. I looked for a license that you could purchace ala msn and couldnt find one. I believe that they will continue to allow third party messengers into their network.
Why is it just because they upgrade something and it breaks other programs that they didn't code people call out the wolves on them? Not all companies are M$ here. On the other side, not all companies are Opensource based and fully backwards compaible. In this case, Yahoo upgraded their core protocal and in doing that broke all backwards comptability. This, in my eyes, isn't some evil plot to get people to look at ads or get license money, it's just the way they do things.
After suing a 12 yr old, knowing that they did it, and STILL they settled for $2k US? I think they should play a game called "Greedy Lawyer". Here the kids go up infront of the class, make a band, songs, album art, etc... then the RIAA says "Hey thanks for that, you get 1 cent an album we sell!".
Is this even legal? They are not a public entity like the Fire Dept or Police Dept that can come in and give lecutures on safety and saying no to strangers. They are a privatly owned firm of lawyers that will brainwash our kids to think their way. I really don't want my kids comming subjected to that. Yes, I could keep my child out of school that day but then they would lose any other classes that they would have that day also.
Is this what the education system is comming to these days now? Coperate sponsed education? It's bad enough that M$ is pushed in all the schools (nice that they get free computers though) now we're going to have the RIAA pushing their ethics? What's next? No, seriously, this is frightning to me. My two childern are just entering the school system now and with things like this croping up what will they be learning?
I'll probably get moded down to troll or flaimbait but really, how much better are any other OS? On the heels of the two OpenSSH and the sendmail exploit, this comes out. Arn't OpenSSH and sendmail both *nix based programs? Yes, the actual OS itself isnt to blame in this circumstance but don't these tools come stock with most *nix distros?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that M$ shouldn't be held liable for the craptastic OS that it spews out all the time but really, how much worse is it security wise vanilla compaired to a vanilla install of any other os? If I remember correctly, after installing redhat 9 the other day, 2 hrs of d/ling for patchs commenced to update all the packages on it.
Seen this on my network at work. Most of the from addresses are faked anyway so were getting bounce backs from these anti-virus software daemons saying that we sent so and so a virus. Now, not only is our network underheavy load from the actual sobig.x virus but were also dealing with these bogus e-mails.
Server load went from 55% usage up to 98% usage. 17% of all emails comming in were these bounce backs to either us or our customers. 17%!! This is totally unexceptable expectially when most of not all of the current breed of e-mail bourn virus's fake the e-mail address.
Personaly, I think this option should just be removed totally from the software packages. Barring that, have it off by default not on. I have enough spam and virus emails comming in without having to deal with the extra load of warning emails from poorly configured virus walls.
Did you miss this?
"Yes, its still illegal for someone to enter the house and steal someting but doenst common sense tell us "Hey dummy, close and lock the doors and windows!"."
I know its illegal but it still doenst take away from the fact that these companies would rather sue people then actually make sure that their networks were secure. How sorry would you feel for someone who left their house wide open and kept getting broken into? Yup, its totally illegal for the burglers to enter the house but im sure even you would be saying "WTF why dont they lock the damn door!"
"You don't get on the news by writing letters. You get on the news by "making news."" I don't want to get on the news, I just want other news broadcasted, like this wired article. Big difference there.
We kinda already knew this. Many people go out and buy music based about what they download from p2p networks. I myself have done that.
Again though, this isnt in the main stream media so it will make little impact against this constant onslaught of press the RIAA is getting. We need more stories like this to come up on 60mins and the local news to debunk the crap that the RIAA is spewing forth.
I have written to my local news stations around my area about the other sides to many of the RIAA and DMCA related stories and havent even gotten back a form letter reply. I have done this via e-mail and snail mail. Looks like they really don't care to be objective (I know, I know, Thank you Captain Obvious!).
This is again along the lines of "We dont really want to make sure were secure so we'll just sue/have arrested anyone who finds anything." These are also the same people who loby the gov to pass laws to do this. It's amazing how little people acutally care about how secure their network or computers are and instead care more about huge fines and sentences so they can keep their networks insecure.
None of this has ever made any sense to me. Why is it that leaving a network insecure is fine and dandy but someone comming along and finding out its insecure then entering it a bitter no no then breaking and entering into a house? Didn't we learn long ago to close and lock our doors at night and when we where away? Some of these security holes are equvilant to a wide open window with no screen in it while were on vacation for a month. Yes, its still illegal for someone to enter the house and steal someting but doenst common sense tell us "Hey dummy, close and lock the doors and windows!".
I'm also wondering if they have any case on this. Didn't the NY Times take his help originaly to secure the network? I know the statue of limitations hasnt paned out on this but at some point someone kinda has to say "Ahh well why are you taking him to court now after he helped out originally?". Just another "See what we do to these bad bad men!" cases.
Yup, I'm being reduntant as others have probably have and will post about this but its a serious thing here. How many patents have we seen lately that have had mounds of prior art? How many of them have been so blatently obvious that even non-techies are shaking their heads? How many non-techies know that this patent was granted? There is the crux of the issue.
This patent might actually be good for us as it may jack up pricing on current programs but one has to think, how far reaching will they allow this to go in a court? Hey, I filter out port 135 traffic (gg people patch your machines!!) and some known spam networks at the core end, will they now come after me for filtering? It seems that more and more the patents are being granted on the overly obvious and are being abused to the hilt by the company to which it is granted.
I see mass law suits in our future over this one and with the state of the clueless judges presideing over the cases this could turn sour.
While this in and of itself is horrible, so is them going out and blanket suing people. Maybe this will make the law makers finally wake up and realize that give an origanization like the RIAA the power to do this is not as good as they thought. I don't even think that the RIAA's deep pockets can fix this mess.
Maybe, just maybe this is the begining of the end for this type of behavior. One can only hope.
While this really is a "Thank you Captain Obvious!" statement, it is nice to know where the EFF stands. While so many other lawyers are out there drooling over the opportunity to scrape up wads of cash at the RIAA's biding, these guys come right out and tell people that the RIAA is full of crap.
Only thing is I wish more non-techy people even know the EFF existed. I told my mom about this as she had heard all about the RIAA and this new amesty thing from the local news, she had no idea who the EFF was. Apparently the news is only running the RIAA's side of the story. No great suprise here but it kind of limits the impact of their statment now doesnt it?
Intresting, I tried to call and could not get though. Wonder if it's going to be like this in court:
"Well, we offered licensing. Publicized that we offered it but no one took us up on the offer your honor. What more could we do?"
Then they go about laying out lawsuits like the RIAA. Kinda scary when you think about it that way.
What time? They are not trying to send these people to jail, they are trying to squeeze money out of them. They know that if they actually had to bring up a real case agaisnt these people then they would, more than likely, lose. So instead, they sue which makes it harder on the defendant as THEY have to prove their innocence instead of the other way around.
Lovely isnt it? Weither these people are guilty or not means nothing. They will be finiancly ruined by either paying out the absurd suit, a lawyer to defend them, or the RIAA's "Ok well just give us THIS much and we'll go away" deal.
So ya, I think I will whine about this thank you very much.
A quick google search turned up tons. Not just on the columbine insident but a few others. Here is a link to one of them.
Parents really need to start taking responsibility for their childerns actions. I'm a parent of two little girls. You don't see me trying to sue the company who made my sofa because my child fell of off it do you? It's a sad state of affairs when parents would rather sue some external company then look in apon themselves and their methods (or lack there of) of parenting.
Many questions surface in this too. Why did they have access to guns? Why were they playing this game in the first place? Who bought the gun/game? I have no guns in my house and I monitor what my childern watch and play. This is not a very difficult task and on top of it all it gives me time to spend with my childern. I watch tv with them, help them to play games (ok they are young but I don't use the TV as a baby sitter).
Really people, this whole "Let's sue so we can continue to let the gov/state gov raise our kids for us!" is getting old and dangerous. Not only that, it doenst work. Apparently these parents dont see that. I can put a thousand warning labels on things, sue a ton of movie and gaming companies, and it won't do a thing. All it will do is force a company to pay out money or put a label on something they these type of parents probably won't pay attention to any way. Instead of suing they need to stop what ever it is in their busy lives, reevaluate their lives and their childerns, and start being parents. Take the time that you would have used to sue a company and instead spend it with your kids. Now, I do understand that one of the victims is pressing suit here but it still doesnt change the fact that my above statements hold true. I think the victims should spend their time trying to work community instead of suing an entertainment company.
"And what that point would be? An iPod or WinAmp or XMMS is unlikely to display photos or movies. Short of file(1), most casual users would never even find out what the file really contains. They will just delete it as corrupted..."
Correct but how many people in congress or any other legistating body would care when the RIAA presents a search, d/ls some child porn while searching for the latest trash song, opens it in an image viewer and shows the assembly? Do you think they would even understand that its pointless to retag like that?
The RIAA could also say that we (being the people using p2p) are just being tricky and hiding it out if the challange that you presented is brought up.
I understand your point 100%, and so does everyone else here. How about your mother? Grandfather? Any non-tech person? Those are the people eaiest to fool and the RIAA seems to be fooling them pretty well up to now.
"Unfortunately for them, a search for a common song rarely turns up porn. Not a lot of porn around with MP3 headers."
This is an intresting statement. While true, for how long? We know that the RIAA (or an oursourced company) is interjecting junk mp3's into the system now, whats to stop them from retagging porn with mp3 headers to make their point?
Ya ya it would probably be illegal but looking at their track record they are toeing the line now as it is by sending out mass supinias (sp?) with little to no evidence. Isn't stoping them one bit though is it?
This whole idea scares the crap out of me to put it bluntly. A massive collection of lawyers who are more underhanded then most. We know that they pull every underhanded and questionably legal stunt they can to get what they want. Now I'm wondering if the cops are going to be knocking on my door because I use DC or bittorent and claim im part of some child porn ring.
Another thing, this is beyond coat tailing a law, this is pretty much blatenly lying or stateing the overly obvious to get their way. One has to think that the public or atleast congress will see that not only is this NOT any of their business (since when did the RIAA care about porn or even kids?) but is nothing more than a thinly vailed attack against totally legal programs.
Of course, the DMCA passed and is still a law.
Wow, not only is the RIAA kicking and screaming all the way down, but now they are calling in imaginary pink elephants to help!
Really? I work for an isp and we provide the backbone for a local powercompany to do just this. Also, there are 3 other, smaller, powercompanies in my area (SE MASS) doing this.
Bah, running 0's over the drive, like i said, is good enuf to wipe what I have on my drives. If you REALLY want to spend the time running over my drive block by block to find out I had all the star trek eps in divx format, be my guest.
Seems to me that writing 0's to the drive is pretty sufficiant for most peoples needs. As it is its near impossible to impossible to retreive data from a disk that way. Turning one into slag after demag and what not is probalby pointless rite now. Of course, if you are thinking long term and have really sensative data that you are storing on a disk somewhere, then slaging is always an option. On the the writing of 0's to the disk. Best that I have come up with for windows is a bootable floppy/cdrom that had any type of program with the ability to write 0's block by block to the drive. This has worked 100% of the times that I have used it. Of course I havent done the extensive work of the MIT students but from the few programs that I've tried to use for recovery, I have come up blank which for what I keep on my drives is good enuf.