Go watch Gattica if you'd like to know why this is an issue. Just because a genetic profile says that someone is disposed to getting cancer or have a temper, etc doesn't make it true, nor should we discriminate against those seen as 'not perfect'.
Have a genetic predisposition to, oh, heart disease, and you may find it impossible to get health insurance. Gattica took it one step further and showed a civilization divided between haves and have-nots based solely on a person's genetic profile and not their abilities/work ethics/etc.
Definitely troll. The exact same post has been posted and reposted for years.
There is a recent article on the Toronto Sun website - it reminded me of the Slashdot as soon as I read it. Sam the Record Man still exists on Yonge Street, despite the implication in the article that it doesn't.
It isn't just Hollywood or Scifi's fault. It's mainly the audience's kneejerk science-fiction-is-always-campy responses that are mainly to blame.
I've introduced scifi television shows to a bunch of folks at work by swapping box sets of Firefly and the current Battlestar Galactica. One of the coworkers is a chick who is utterly entranced with Gilmore Girls and now adores BSG, but if I hadn't loaned her my boxsets, she admitted she never would have even given the scifi genre a chance.
Once they watch it, they like it, but getting them to watch it in the first place is like having teeth pulled.
I was slowly starting to get into the itunes world on my xp computer, when the software took to crashing without cause. I keep getting these 'click send to report the problem' popups and nothing else every time I double click on the itunes icon. Tried the apple-recommended workaround without success and then had to undo the workaround as it was screwing other applications up. Tried to repair the program. Tried reinstalling the program. No success.
Only thing I haven't tried is reformatting and reinstalling the operating system and there's no way in heck I'm doing that just so I can pay $1 for "Jesus Walks".
I'm very meh on renting hardware - ie. the tv cable box. Often it's cheaper in the long run to purchase it, and I don't like the idea that I can't upgrade/hack/pry it apart/trip over it/take a hammer to it as it belongs to somone else.
And generally, rented hardware is all about the owner's idea of what the hardware should do, it's very rarely about what I think the hardware should do, features-wise.
*Unless mrshowtime has moved to Russia since Katrina, it is not a legal way for him to purchase mp3s.*
Says who? Or more to the point, says what?
Is there a portion of the DMCA that covers downloading music from servers/companies physically located outside the US? Or is this part of different legislation? I'm genuinely interested in this as up until your statement, no one has even hinted that it's illegal for Americans to purchase music outside the US.
If Windows Vista and its DRM can harm your business, don't use them as your OS. Use MACs, or try Linux. Or go with an old version of Windows - XP or ME if you can't get over the Windows addiction.
The good professor seems fairly certain that the computer in question was absolutely sharing files via Kazaa, and that the hard drive in question has no remnants of Kazaa files on it. So he doesn't believe this was the hard drive that Kazaa-shared files.
This leads me to question the utter lack of data in the pdf file on the specific evidence on what led the prof to believe that your client's computer was sharing files via Kazaa. How can they be so sure of this? How can they be sure that the ISP simply didn't get the client associated with that IP address wrong? Wouldn't a lack of data on the hard drive indicate they were given the wrong client by the ISP?
Is it possible that someone inside the ISP could have hacked client accounts in order to cover their own activities? Ie. employee X surfs the net at home, uploads/downloads all kinds of crap using all kinds of crap programs, then edits the customer database so that all activity associated with employee X's IP is associated with another client's IP. The IP logs would hard to fake - too frakking big - but I'd want to take a look at how the ISP associates the IP addy with one of their individual clients, and if any part of the association can be faked/hacked. If it all comes down to one client database, then the database can be hacked, but if the ISP is run properly, they should have backups of that database. A re-creation of the database should give you an idea if your client's entry on the database(s) is the same as what exists on the current database. Any changes and...
If the hard drive was removed and the OS/files were reinstalled, wouldn't XP do one of those authentication things with Microsoft? Does Microsoft keep logs of this sort of thing? What kind of XP updates were downloaded to the computer - if very recent updates were downloaded, then it's the same hard drive as always, but a reinstallation from an old cd would mean that older updates would need to be downloaded and installed.
What the frak does a hard drive replacement have to do with the network card/MAC/IP address? Each network card has their own unique MAC address, or something like that. If the network card wasn't changed, then at the very least the MAC address wasn't changed and somewhere there should be records of the MAC used. My network info is sketchy as it's been awhile since dwelling on things like this, but changing out the hard drive shouldn't change the MAC address.
Wikipedia states http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address that the MAC address can be virtually and physically spoofed. Virtual spoofing seems to be easy, but a hardware spoof requires desoldering equipment. Does your expert see any evidence that the MAC on your client's computer has been spoofed, virtually or physically?
Shared folders are not evidence that you're running p2p programs. My freakin Windows XP Media Centre PC came with shared folders that I still can't get rid of.
Works for me. If someone isn't intelligent enough to read a bus schedule, I sure as frak don't want 'em behind a wheel trying to read road signs. And if you couldn't read the bus schedule, the odds are pretty good you didn't read the driver's manual or the car's manual.
Driving is a privilege, not the right you imply it is.
I work as an operator who uses email to alert support to non-responsive systems, failed jobs, etc etc, and under no circumstances do I want you wrapping your frakking car around a frakking concrete pole in the middle of your frakking commute home because you were reading my frakking email for fraks' sake. TURN IT OFF!
If I can't get hold of you in X minutes, I'll go find someone else who can fix the frakking problem.
I disagree. HDTV over the air is a cleaner, sharper picture than the same HD channel received via cable, for far less money. And if the money ever gets tight, I can cancel the cable subscription and not have an expensive monitor sitting in the living room.
* The manufacturers of the "genuine" products will need to compete based on price. *
They don't just need to compete based on price, but on features, particularly products with artificial restrictions on them. Any hardware for the entertainment industry comes to mind here.
For example, I wanted an mp3 player that acted as a USB key device, played/recorded FM radio, allowed me to drag and drop my mp3 files, didn't restrict me in regards to any form of DRM, and worked using AA batteries. If it worked as a voice recorder, that was an added bonus. I looked around and most of the mp3 players were powered using a built-in rechargeable battery, and the ones that weren't ran on AAA batteries. The only model I could find that used AA batteries is the Iriver T10.
The T10 looked like it could act as a USB key device, play/record FM radio, and work using AA batteries. So I purchased it, took it home and found out it would only allow me to upload mp3 files to it via Windows Media Player. The promised 'turn it into a drag and drop mp3 files device' firmware upgrade did not work. A cursory check via Google revealed that older, unavailable firmware upgrades did work, and that others encountered the same issues as myself with the current firmware upgrade.
I took the T10 back for a full refund and sent an irate email off to Iriver. At this point, if an obvious Iriver bootleg mp3 player came on the market, calling itself the Riveri, so long as the damn thing did what I want it to, I'd buy it. And when I went looking for its replacement in the future, my first choice of mp3 player wouldn't be Iriver, I'd go looking for Riveri products.
Same for next-gen DVDs and their players, computers, hell, widgets of all types.
Price wouldn't be the issue, features/restrictions are. The bootlegger isn't restricted by agreements with music corporations and film studios or PATENT OWNERS so I wouldn't expect their devices to cater to the music corporation/film studio/patent owner requirements. I'd expect the bootlegger would put MY requirements first, and in a market where both original and bootlegger products have the same quality, the bootlegger would have a competitive edge over the original manufacturer.
Computer Operator. Lowest of the low. Works rotating 12 hour shifts in a 24/7 environment - no OT available. But I find it very hard to disrespect support when every time I woke 'em at 2am to fix X Y or Z, they were cheerful when speaking with me, never took out their frustrations with management out on me, and got X Y or Z fixed by 4am (back in office for 8am).
And even from my lowly perch I could see the work going on behind the scenes to fix the computers - the vast majority of which were NOT mainframes. 2 years they worked - find the y2k flaws, fix the y2k flaws, test the y2k flaws, fail the testing, find the &^%$ y2k flaws, etc etc etc repeated for 2 years. No, I'm neither kidding nor exaggerating.
And I was on shift for that midnight - I got no y2k premium paid for working that night, and neither did any of our support. It would have been nice to see the sobs pay SOMEONE in the damn department handsomely for a frakking change, no matter what the reason why.
Why on earth do you tar and feather every IT department with the same brush? You make your IT department sound like it was frakking tiny, and your working experience limited.
No, we had no VAX on site. Get off the VAX-track fergawdsake.
Slashdot Mirror
Go watch Gattica if you'd like to know why this is an issue. Just because a genetic profile says that someone is disposed to getting cancer or have a temper, etc doesn't make it true, nor should we discriminate against those seen as 'not perfect'.
Have a genetic predisposition to, oh, heart disease, and you may find it impossible to get health insurance. Gattica took it one step further and showed a civilization divided between haves and have-nots based solely on a person's genetic profile and not their abilities/work ethics/etc.
Oops, article's at http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Bonokosk i_Mark/2007/04/20/4078973.html
Definitely troll. The exact same post has been posted and reposted for years.
There is a recent article on the Toronto Sun website - it reminded me of the Slashdot as soon as I read it. Sam the Record Man still exists on Yonge Street, despite the implication in the article that it doesn't.
It isn't just Hollywood or Scifi's fault. It's mainly the audience's kneejerk science-fiction-is-always-campy responses that are mainly to blame.
I've introduced scifi television shows to a bunch of folks at work by swapping box sets of Firefly and the current Battlestar Galactica. One of the coworkers is a chick who is utterly entranced with Gilmore Girls and now adores BSG, but if I hadn't loaned her my boxsets, she admitted she never would have even given the scifi genre a chance.
Once they watch it, they like it, but getting them to watch it in the first place is like having teeth pulled.
Hollywood will air what is popular.
If Britons are the most spied-upon citizens in Europe, why on earth is the passport office asking for consent?
Nope, and it hasn't been that long since I did a reformat and reinstallation.
I was slowly starting to get into the itunes world on my xp computer, when the software took to crashing without cause. I keep getting these 'click send to report the problem' popups and nothing else every time I double click on the itunes icon. Tried the apple-recommended workaround without success and then had to undo the workaround as it was screwing other applications up. Tried to repair the program. Tried reinstalling the program. No success.
Only thing I haven't tried is reformatting and reinstalling the operating system and there's no way in heck I'm doing that just so I can pay $1 for "Jesus Walks".
Jeez
I'm very meh on renting hardware - ie. the tv cable box. Often it's cheaper in the long run to purchase it, and I don't like the idea that I can't upgrade/hack/pry it apart/trip over it/take a hammer to it as it belongs to somone else.
And generally, rented hardware is all about the owner's idea of what the hardware should do, it's very rarely about what I think the hardware should do, features-wise.
It's not so much about renting their content inasmuch as I'd rather not have them control my hardware.
Nothing irritates me faster than being forced to watch that drivel BEFORE I get to watch the movie I PAID FOR!
I despise EMI. I haven't bought any EMI CDs since their Leahy CD overwrote the sound drivers on my pc. Frakkers!
I hope their cd sales tank and the company goes bankrupt.
*Unless mrshowtime has moved to Russia since Katrina, it is not a legal way for him to purchase mp3s.*
Says who? Or more to the point, says what?
Is there a portion of the DMCA that covers downloading music from servers/companies physically located outside the US? Or is this part of different legislation? I'm genuinely interested in this as up until your statement, no one has even hinted that it's illegal for Americans to purchase music outside the US.
I'd like like to mod you up, but I can't *&^% figure out how to. Posting reply in lieu thereof.
If Windows Vista and its DRM can harm your business, don't use them as your OS. Use MACs, or try Linux. Or go with an old version of Windows - XP or ME if you can't get over the Windows addiction.
The good professor seems fairly certain that the computer in question was absolutely sharing files via Kazaa, and that the hard drive in question has no remnants of Kazaa files on it. So he doesn't believe this was the hard drive that Kazaa-shared files.
...
This leads me to question the utter lack of data in the pdf file on the specific evidence on what led the prof to believe that your client's computer was sharing files via Kazaa. How can they be so sure of this? How can they be sure that the ISP simply didn't get the client associated with that IP address wrong? Wouldn't a lack of data on the hard drive indicate they were given the wrong client by the ISP?
Is it possible that someone inside the ISP could have hacked client accounts in order to cover their own activities? Ie. employee X surfs the net at home, uploads/downloads all kinds of crap using all kinds of crap programs, then edits the customer database so that all activity associated with employee X's IP is associated with another client's IP. The IP logs would hard to fake - too frakking big - but I'd want to take a look at how the ISP associates the IP addy with one of their individual clients, and if any part of the association can be faked/hacked. If it all comes down to one client database, then the database can be hacked, but if the ISP is run properly, they should have backups of that database. A re-creation of the database should give you an idea if your client's entry on the database(s) is the same as what exists on the current database. Any changes and
If the hard drive was removed and the OS/files were reinstalled, wouldn't XP do one of those authentication things with Microsoft? Does Microsoft keep logs of this sort of thing? What kind of XP updates were downloaded to the computer - if very recent updates were downloaded, then it's the same hard drive as always, but a reinstallation from an old cd would mean that older updates would need to be downloaded and installed.
What the frak does a hard drive replacement have to do with the network card/MAC/IP address? Each network card has their own unique MAC address, or something like that. If the network card wasn't changed, then at the very least the MAC address wasn't changed and somewhere there should be records of the MAC used. My network info is sketchy as it's been awhile since dwelling on things like this, but changing out the hard drive shouldn't change the MAC address.
Wikipedia states http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address that the MAC address can be virtually and physically spoofed. Virtual spoofing seems to be easy, but a hardware spoof requires desoldering equipment. Does your expert see any evidence that the MAC on your client's computer has been spoofed, virtually or physically?
Shared folders are not evidence that you're running p2p programs. My freakin Windows XP Media Centre PC came with shared folders that I still can't get rid of.
Works for me. If someone isn't intelligent enough to read a bus schedule, I sure as frak don't want 'em behind a wheel trying to read road signs. And if you couldn't read the bus schedule, the odds are pretty good you didn't read the driver's manual or the car's manual.
Driving is a privilege, not the right you imply it is.
Yes, turn the frakking thing off.
I work as an operator who uses email to alert support to non-responsive systems, failed jobs, etc etc, and under no circumstances do I want you wrapping your frakking car around a frakking concrete pole in the middle of your frakking commute home because you were reading my frakking email for fraks' sake. TURN IT OFF!
If I can't get hold of you in X minutes, I'll go find someone else who can fix the frakking problem.
Things must be different in your neck of the woods. Here I've no reason to subscribe to cable for HDTV, except for Discovery Canada.
Hell with the $50 hdmi cable, what about the $150 'clean' power supply the tv needs? Jeeze, that was one helluva surprise.
I disagree. HDTV over the air is a cleaner, sharper picture than the same HD channel received via cable, for far less money. And if the money ever gets tight, I can cancel the cable subscription and not have an expensive monitor sitting in the living room.
* The manufacturers of the "genuine" products will need to compete based on price. *
They don't just need to compete based on price, but on features, particularly products with artificial restrictions on them. Any hardware for the entertainment industry comes to mind here.
For example, I wanted an mp3 player that acted as a USB key device, played/recorded FM radio, allowed me to drag and drop my mp3 files, didn't restrict me in regards to any form of DRM, and worked using AA batteries. If it worked as a voice recorder, that was an added bonus. I looked around and most of the mp3 players were powered using a built-in rechargeable battery, and the ones that weren't ran on AAA batteries. The only model I could find that used AA batteries is the Iriver T10.
The T10 looked like it could act as a USB key device, play/record FM radio, and work using AA batteries. So I purchased it, took it home and found out it would only allow me to upload mp3 files to it via Windows Media Player. The promised 'turn it into a drag and drop mp3 files device' firmware upgrade did not work. A cursory check via Google revealed that older, unavailable firmware upgrades did work, and that others encountered the same issues as myself with the current firmware upgrade.
I took the T10 back for a full refund and sent an irate email off to Iriver. At this point, if an obvious Iriver bootleg mp3 player came on the market, calling itself the Riveri, so long as the damn thing did what I want it to, I'd buy it. And when I went looking for its replacement in the future, my first choice of mp3 player wouldn't be Iriver, I'd go looking for Riveri products.
Same for next-gen DVDs and their players, computers, hell, widgets of all types.
Price wouldn't be the issue, features/restrictions are. The bootlegger isn't restricted by agreements with music corporations and film studios or PATENT OWNERS so I wouldn't expect their devices to cater to the music corporation/film studio/patent owner requirements. I'd expect the bootlegger would put MY requirements first, and in a market where both original and bootlegger products have the same quality, the bootlegger would have a competitive edge over the original manufacturer.
*claps hands* Microsoft loves homebrew computer hobbyists after all! *rolls eyes*
NO! I still won't ever upgrade to Vista!
Computer Operator. Lowest of the low. Works rotating 12 hour shifts in a 24/7 environment - no OT available. But I find it very hard to disrespect support when every time I woke 'em at 2am to fix X Y or Z, they were cheerful when speaking with me, never took out their frustrations with management out on me, and got X Y or Z fixed by 4am (back in office for 8am).
And even from my lowly perch I could see the work going on behind the scenes to fix the computers - the vast majority of which were NOT mainframes. 2 years they worked - find the y2k flaws, fix the y2k flaws, test the y2k flaws, fail the testing, find the &^%$ y2k flaws, etc etc etc repeated for 2 years. No, I'm neither kidding nor exaggerating.
And I was on shift for that midnight - I got no y2k premium paid for working that night, and neither did any of our support. It would have been nice to see the sobs pay SOMEONE in the damn department handsomely for a frakking change, no matter what the reason why.
Why on earth do you tar and feather every IT department with the same brush? You make your IT department sound like it was frakking tiny, and your working experience limited.
No, we had no VAX on site. Get off the VAX-track fergawdsake.