Its intent was not to cause terror, but to inflict economic damage.
In a country that was already rife with the underpinnings of civil war due to economic issues, don't you think that its intent was EXACTLY that? If those people had any more economic problems to face, a lot of people were going to die fighting.
I'd say that its intent was to INDIRECTLY cause terror.
If your purchase doesn't make you a "true" convert, how many windows users are "true" windows users?
What would they be a convert from? Nintendo? No, they are Windows users originally and now this article is claiming that they are Mac "converts" from Windows because they have an iPod or bought a Mac. That's entirely false!
They might be a Mac user or an iPod user but they don't necessarily have to be "converts".
I think you don't like change and having to learn how to do basic tasks again, rather than disliking OSX per se... ya know : )
I'm not debating the reasons why. I'm refuting the article's author's assumption that because someone buys a Mac or an iPod they are instantly a "convert".
Just because I bought a Mac does not make me a "convert". In fact, I don't particuarly care for OS X at all. Yeah, it does some stuff well but it's such a different UI for me that I'm just not all that comfortable using it.
I seriously hope that I'm not lumped in that 1 million figure.
On the other flip side, I had English teachers in high-school that told us how to properly "interpret" and answer questions about specific pieces of literature. It wasn't until college that I was told that "interpretation" meant free thinking. I was completely caught of guard.
Therein lies the problem - how do you know, ahead of time, what someone would be interested in?
they have plenty of other options on the Tivo unit. One of them should be an opt-out. In my perfect world it would be opt-in. Obviously, that would never work to the advantage of the corporations so I'm fine w/opt-out.
Of course I have no options to do that on a Tivo which is what sucks.
My TiVo ought to be downloading trailers for every movie in theaters, displaying show times, and letting me buy the ticket.
I've already had it downloading trailers. I don't like them being there because it makes them stand out in the menu. I wouldn't mind it offering me show times and then letting me buy the ticket though.
When I watch an episode of The Simpsons from Now Playing, there should be a link to buy the DVD box set from Amazon.
Sorry, I disagree. I *pay* for the Tivo to remove ads, not create new ones. *You* may not care but $14/month is a lot to remove ads just to get a bunch of different more targeted ones. If they want to move to that I expect that the price per month will go down. Of course it won't, so leave it off my commercial removing hardware.
A traditional degree is better for grad school because in a traditional school you are more likely to have opportunites for interaction with professors who can recommend you.
Plenty of online institutions (Capella University and Walden University to name two that I know of off the top of my head) offer Masters and PhD programs.
So, if you want to, you could continue into post-baccalaureate programs through other online universities. Whether or not those degrees with be deemed "acceptable" regardless of the institutions accreditation is another story.
What I do know, though, is that online education is growing at astronomical rates which is causing "pains" for these institutions. Lacking staff, lagging technology (funny eh?), and constant corporate changes and goal changes while referring to their students as customers or subscribers rather than learners, etc is a problem for these places.
Even with all that Capella was recently named one of the top 10 places to work in the Twin Cities.
Me? I turned down a job offer at an online institution -- there's something "safe and secure" in knowing that I work for an actual brick and morter school that doesn't have new student enrollment dates ever 30 days (or earlier!)
"With these maps, you can see down to the room on campus how many people are logged on," said Carlo Ratti, director of the school's SENSEable City Laboratory, which created the maps. "You can even watch someone go from room to room if they have a handheld device that's connected."
Very interesting from both sides of the privacy/security standpoint. You could theoretically track someone's daily habits or watch their track (and others nearby) if there was some sort of emergency. It would then be fairly easy to possibly narrow down who was in the area at the time which would lead to effective questioning, etc.
Obviously it would be unlikely that a would-be attacker would have his device turned on at the time but even an MIT student might make a mistake;)
Let's try that again: The demo was yesterday afternoon, and while it didn't include a functioning prototype, I learned a great deal more about machine than I have from previous articles, or Negroponte's talk at Pop!Tech. He was able to answer a whole set of questions for me, and raise an entire set of new ones, which, I suspect, will take a number of years to answer accurately.
I'll wait for this to be actual news. I'm filing this under the "proposed" WiMax killer. I accidentally clicked "Submit" instead of "Preview". My bad.
The demo was yesterday afternoon, and while , I learned a great deal more about machine than I have from previous articles, or Negroponte's talk at Pop!Tech. He was able to answer a whole set of questions for me, and raise an entire set of new ones, which, I suspect, will take a number of years to answer accurately.
I'll wait for this to be actual news. I'm filing this under the "proposed" WiMax killer.
But it mystifies 99% of the population and that's what counts in this day and age.
One would HOPE that the police would have evidence before they start impounding things. But this is about 'fishing' for evidence for 'suspected' terrorists.
This is just another way to justify holding *anyone* until they can find *anything* that might be incriminating. Remember, only terrorists use encryption.
Once websites start working better with the standard adhering Firefox browser, IE use will begin to drop off as it will annoy users by not showing pages correctly.
Take my bank for instance. Their online banking doesn't work all that well in any other browser than IE. I don't use Firefox but I do use Safari and a mobile browser. It doesn't work in either... Their response? "Use IE."
So, just because the market share is there and growing, doesn't mean that all sites are going to code for it. I switched away from a bank that had usable online banking for mobile devices, Safari, and Firefox. You know why? Because they charged $2.95/mo to use it.
The rush just isn't there. I'm certainly not going to switch to Firefox anytime soon. Not until IE just doesn't work at all on any site. I just don't see it coming to that though.
Why do you assume that he bought the CD from Amazon in the first place? He probably bought it elsewhere.
Why do I assume that people research and read what I'm talking about unless I paste it for them? I should really know better but just for fuck's sake, from his entry about this issue:
I hadn't noticed when I purchased the CD from Amazon.com that it's protected with DRM software, but if I had looked more closely at the text on the Amazon.com web page I would have known:
See there? Where it says "I purchased the CD from Amazon.com"? That's how I "assume" he bought the CD from Amazon.
Perhaps you didn't read it that time. Let me make certain you saw it:
I hadn't noticed when I purchased the CD from Amazon.com that it's protected with DRM software, but if I had looked more closely at the text on the Amazon.com web page I would have known:
Did you see it that time? Don't waste our time in the future if you aren't going to even bother to read what I'm talking about. Ok?
Which has absolutely no bearing on Sony's deceptive business practices, the legality of which can still be questioned in a court of law, as can the interpretation of the DMCA, FYTW.
I'll wait for you to foot the legal costs associated with that. I highly doubt that your claimed "deception" will attribute to anything more than "programmer error".
On Mark Russinovich's Blog, at least one guy claimed to be a lawyer and he asked California residents who were affected to contact him about a lawsuit.
First off, a lawyer will do just about anything to make money and that includes getting a group of people together to talk about suing via class-action.
Second, how the fuck did you get modded up for talking about someone on the Internet *claiming* anything? When the lawyer actually makes the press-release (and you know they will) and you post a link to that, then you should be modded up. Until then, let's keep it to the facts.
You have got that backwards. Those who know what DRM is cares. The problem is that not many people know about it.
Nah, when I tell people about it they still don't care. Even after I started attempting to tell people about the evils that were to come people just shrugged it off.
I guarantee that 99% of people that use a CD like this in their machine will have no problems with it. That's what matters. That the majority doesn't understand the implications of EULAs, software like this, and the further erosion of their rights due to the smear campaign forged by the corporations.
The EULA, which you cited, is intentionally vague and misleading, and certainly does not absolve Sony of responsibility for the above problems caused by their SOFTWARE. Also, just because it's in the EULA, sorta(!), does not make it legal. Sony is clearly being deceptive with these products and their EULA, and there are laws on the books to protect consumers from such action.
The DMCA is deceptive and vague but yet it still stands. Welcome to law.
Furthermore, it is not a safe bet to assume an EULA is a binding contract, there is precedent both ways on this, it depends on the EULA and the judge's opinion, and there are all kinds of laws regarding contract validity.
There is yes, but the EULA hasn't been truly tested, thus why it still stands. You know why? Because no one has the time and financial ability to go up against Microsoft, Sony, etc. So, regardless of YOUR opinion on the subject, you can certainly guarantee that this particular EULA will stand until another fails.
You either work for Sony or you didn't read any of the several articles on this topic. From TFA:
I checked the EULA and saw no mention of the fact that I was agreeing to have software put on my system that I couldn't uninstall.
Well, see, you apparently didn't read his entire blog about the issue. Him saying that he didn't see that part of the EULA (blantantly written at the top) but he also didn't notice that another CD he recently bought from Amazon was crippled by DRM yet his screenshots of the Amazon page show (rather blatantly) that the CD is DRMd.
I can't side with someone who apparently skims pages (EULAs are one thing but Amazon's page is another). Perhaps you should take another look at his entry for this issue and look at it with what I noticed.
... but they conveniently forget to point out that their software can't be removed or deleted by the common user...
You can have a Sony rep contact you and they will help you remove it. Sounds like good service to them.
but what they are doing is still morally very wrong...
I don't see what this has to do with the discussion at hand. Yes, we all know that corporations have little or negative morals. The beginning point of this thread was whether or not Sony could be chased down legally for this install. I proposed that they could not. My hypothesis still stands unchallenged.
this EULA was MODIFIED after the story has surfaced - so if you are going to claim reading the documents - at least try to get the right ones.
Well, the research that we were able to do came from a site that has been highly regarded as one of the most well researched and documented about this issue. If their copy of the EULA is what we have displayed, then I would father that it's the "correct" copy. Perhaps Mark Russinovich isn't really the guru and expert on this issue that Slashdot and multiple posters claim he is?
It is not stated in the EULA that this rootkit will be installed, plus there's no way to uninstall it through add.remove programs
I assume that you were trying to somehow infer that I didn't read the EULA? Well, I did, but I'll post the important part of it here because it's fairly apparent that you did not, or at least didn't fully comprehend what it said:
As soon as you have agreed to be bound by the terms and conditions of the EULA, this CD will automatically install a small proprietary software program (the "SOFTWARE") onto YOUR COMPUTER. The SOFTWARE is intended to protect the audio files embodied on the CD, and it may also facilitate your use of the DIGITAL CONTENT. Once installed, the SOFTWARE will reside on YOUR COMPUTER until removed or deleted. However, the SOFTWARE will not be used at any time to collect any personal information from you, whether stored on YOUR COMPUTER or otherwise.
See that part about "the SOFTWARE will reside on YOUR COMPUTER until removed or deleted"? That's what people agree to when they click "I agree" on the EULA screen.
As far as being able to uninstall it via "add/remove programs", I wasn't aware that this made software dismissable via legal grounds. I thought it just meant that you could proudly wear the "Made for Microsoft Windows" on your retail box.
Slashdot Mirror
Its intent was not to cause terror, but to inflict economic damage.
In a country that was already rife with the underpinnings of civil war due to economic issues, don't you think that its intent was EXACTLY that? If those people had any more economic problems to face, a lot of people were going to die fighting.
I'd say that its intent was to INDIRECTLY cause terror.
If your purchase doesn't make you a "true" convert, how many windows users are "true" windows users?
What would they be a convert from? Nintendo? No, they are Windows users originally and now this article is claiming that they are Mac "converts" from Windows because they have an iPod or bought a Mac. That's entirely false!
They might be a Mac user or an iPod user but they don't necessarily have to be "converts".
I think you don't like change and having to learn how to do basic tasks again, rather than disliking OSX per se... ya know : )
I'm not debating the reasons why. I'm refuting the article's author's assumption that because someone buys a Mac or an iPod they are instantly a "convert".
Just because I bought a Mac does not make me a "convert". In fact, I don't particuarly care for OS X at all. Yeah, it does some stuff well but it's such a different UI for me that I'm just not all that comfortable using it.
I seriously hope that I'm not lumped in that 1 million figure.
On the other flip side, I had English teachers in high-school that told us how to properly "interpret" and answer questions about specific pieces of literature. It wasn't until college that I was told that "interpretation" meant free thinking. I was completely caught of guard.
Therein lies the problem - how do you know, ahead of time, what someone would be interested in?
they have plenty of other options on the Tivo unit. One of them should be an opt-out. In my perfect world it would be opt-in. Obviously, that would never work to the advantage of the corporations so I'm fine w/opt-out.
Of course I have no options to do that on a Tivo which is what sucks.
My TiVo ought to be downloading trailers for every movie in theaters, displaying show times, and letting me buy the ticket.
I've already had it downloading trailers. I don't like them being there because it makes them stand out in the menu. I wouldn't mind it offering me show times and then letting me buy the ticket though.
When I watch an episode of The Simpsons from Now Playing, there should be a link to buy the DVD box set from Amazon.
Sorry, I disagree. I *pay* for the Tivo to remove ads, not create new ones. *You* may not care but $14/month is a lot to remove ads just to get a bunch of different more targeted ones. If they want to move to that I expect that the price per month will go down. Of course it won't, so leave it off my commercial removing hardware.
A traditional degree is better for grad school because in a traditional school you are more likely to have opportunites for interaction with professors who can recommend you.
Plenty of online institutions (Capella University and Walden University to name two that I know of off the top of my head) offer Masters and PhD programs.
So, if you want to, you could continue into post-baccalaureate programs through other online universities. Whether or not those degrees with be deemed "acceptable" regardless of the institutions accreditation is another story.
What I do know, though, is that online education is growing at astronomical rates which is causing "pains" for these institutions. Lacking staff, lagging technology (funny eh?), and constant corporate changes and goal changes while referring to their students as customers or subscribers rather than learners, etc is a problem for these places.
Even with all that Capella was recently named one of the top 10 places to work in the Twin Cities.
Me? I turned down a job offer at an online institution -- there's something "safe and secure" in knowing that I work for an actual brick and morter school that doesn't have new student enrollment dates ever 30 days (or earlier!)
"With these maps, you can see down to the room on campus how many people are logged on," said Carlo Ratti, director of the school's SENSEable City Laboratory, which created the maps. "You can even watch someone go from room to room if they have a handheld device that's connected."
;)
Very interesting from both sides of the privacy/security standpoint. You could theoretically track someone's daily habits or watch their track (and others nearby) if there was some sort of emergency. It would then be fairly easy to possibly narrow down who was in the area at the time which would lead to effective questioning, etc.
Obviously it would be unlikely that a would-be attacker would have his device turned on at the time but even an MIT student might make a mistake
Let's try that again: The demo was yesterday afternoon, and while it didn't include a functioning prototype, I learned a great deal more about machine than I have from previous articles, or Negroponte's talk at Pop!Tech. He was able to answer a whole set of questions for me, and raise an entire set of new ones, which, I suspect, will take a number of years to answer accurately.
I'll wait for this to be actual news. I'm filing this under the "proposed" WiMax killer. I accidentally clicked "Submit" instead of "Preview". My bad.
The demo was yesterday afternoon, and while , I learned a great deal more about machine than I have from previous articles, or Negroponte's talk at Pop!Tech. He was able to answer a whole set of questions for me, and raise an entire set of new ones, which, I suspect, will take a number of years to answer accurately.
I'll wait for this to be actual news. I'm filing this under the "proposed" WiMax killer.
Ouch. Technobabble at its worst.
But it mystifies 99% of the population and that's what counts in this day and age.
One would HOPE that the police would have evidence before they start impounding things. But this is about 'fishing' for evidence for 'suspected' terrorists.
This is just another way to justify holding *anyone* until they can find *anything* that might be incriminating. Remember, only terrorists use encryption.
Once websites start working better with the standard adhering Firefox browser, IE use will begin to drop off as it will annoy users by not showing pages correctly.
Take my bank for instance. Their online banking doesn't work all that well in any other browser than IE. I don't use Firefox but I do use Safari and a mobile browser. It doesn't work in either... Their response? "Use IE."
So, just because the market share is there and growing, doesn't mean that all sites are going to code for it. I switched away from a bank that had usable online banking for mobile devices, Safari, and Firefox. You know why? Because they charged $2.95/mo to use it.
The rush just isn't there. I'm certainly not going to switch to Firefox anytime soon. Not until IE just doesn't work at all on any site. I just don't see it coming to that though.
Thanks for proving my point.
My money is on Rick Wagoner or William Ford Jr.
Why do you assume that he bought the CD from Amazon in the first place? He probably bought it elsewhere.
Why do I assume that people research and read what I'm talking about unless I paste it for them? I should really know better but just for fuck's sake, from his entry about this issue:
I hadn't noticed when I purchased the CD from Amazon.com that it's protected with DRM software, but if I had looked more closely at the text on the Amazon.com web page I would have known:
See there? Where it says "I purchased the CD from Amazon.com"? That's how I "assume" he bought the CD from Amazon.
Perhaps you didn't read it that time. Let me make certain you saw it:
I hadn't noticed when I purchased the CD from Amazon.com that it's protected with DRM software, but if I had looked more closely at the text on the Amazon.com web page I would have known:
Did you see it that time? Don't waste our time in the future if you aren't going to even bother to read what I'm talking about. Ok?
Which has absolutely no bearing on Sony's deceptive business practices, the legality of which can still be questioned in a court of law, as can the interpretation of the DMCA, FYTW.
I'll wait for you to foot the legal costs associated with that. I highly doubt that your claimed "deception" will attribute to anything more than "programmer error".
That's real nice, Garcia.
No one ever said I was nice.
I'm just going to assume it was in fact Garcia, given how quickly it was posted and how quickly he was responding up to that point.
Sorry to disappoint.
On Mark Russinovich's Blog, at least one guy claimed to be a lawyer and he asked California residents who were affected to contact him about a lawsuit.
First off, a lawyer will do just about anything to make money and that includes getting a group of people together to talk about suing via class-action.
Second, how the fuck did you get modded up for talking about someone on the Internet *claiming* anything? When the lawyer actually makes the press-release (and you know they will) and you post a link to that, then you should be modded up. Until then, let's keep it to the facts.
You have got that backwards. Those who know what DRM is cares. The problem is that not many people know about it.
Nah, when I tell people about it they still don't care. Even after I started attempting to tell people about the evils that were to come people just shrugged it off.
I guarantee that 99% of people that use a CD like this in their machine will have no problems with it. That's what matters. That the majority doesn't understand the implications of EULAs, software like this, and the further erosion of their rights due to the smear campaign forged by the corporations.
The EULA, which you cited, is intentionally vague and misleading, and certainly does not absolve Sony of responsibility for the above problems caused by their SOFTWARE. Also, just because it's in the EULA, sorta(!), does not make it legal. Sony is clearly being deceptive with these products and their EULA, and there are laws on the books to protect consumers from such action.
The DMCA is deceptive and vague but yet it still stands. Welcome to law.
Furthermore, it is not a safe bet to assume an EULA is a binding contract, there is precedent both ways on this, it depends on the EULA and the judge's opinion, and there are all kinds of laws regarding contract validity.
There is yes, but the EULA hasn't been truly tested, thus why it still stands. You know why? Because no one has the time and financial ability to go up against Microsoft, Sony, etc. So, regardless of YOUR opinion on the subject, you can certainly guarantee that this particular EULA will stand until another fails.
You either work for Sony or you didn't read any of the several articles on this topic. From TFA:
I checked the EULA and saw no mention of the fact that I was agreeing to have software put on my system that I couldn't uninstall.
Well, see, you apparently didn't read his entire blog about the issue. Him saying that he didn't see that part of the EULA (blantantly written at the top) but he also didn't notice that another CD he recently bought from Amazon was crippled by DRM yet his screenshots of the Amazon page show (rather blatantly) that the CD is DRMd.
I can't side with someone who apparently skims pages (EULAs are one thing but Amazon's page is another). Perhaps you should take another look at his entry for this issue and look at it with what I noticed.
... but they conveniently forget to point out that their software can't be removed or deleted by the common user...
You can have a Sony rep contact you and they will help you remove it. Sounds like good service to them.
but what they are doing is still morally very wrong...
I don't see what this has to do with the discussion at hand. Yes, we all know that corporations have little or negative morals. The beginning point of this thread was whether or not Sony could be chased down legally for this install. I proposed that they could not. My hypothesis still stands unchallenged.
this EULA was MODIFIED after the story has surfaced - so if you are going to claim reading the documents - at least try to get the right ones.
Well, the research that we were able to do came from a site that has been highly regarded as one of the most well researched and documented about this issue. If their copy of the EULA is what we have displayed, then I would father that it's the "correct" copy. Perhaps Mark Russinovich isn't really the guru and expert on this issue that Slashdot and multiple posters claim he is?
It is not stated in the EULA that this rootkit will be installed, plus there's no way to uninstall it through add.remove programs
I assume that you were trying to somehow infer that I didn't read the EULA? Well, I did, but I'll post the important part of it here because it's fairly apparent that you did not, or at least didn't fully comprehend what it said:
As soon as you have agreed to be bound by the terms and conditions of the EULA, this CD will automatically install a small proprietary software program (the "SOFTWARE") onto YOUR COMPUTER. The SOFTWARE is intended to protect the audio files embodied on the CD, and it may also facilitate your use of the DIGITAL CONTENT. Once installed, the SOFTWARE will reside on YOUR COMPUTER until removed or deleted. However, the SOFTWARE will not be used at any time to collect any personal information from you, whether stored on YOUR COMPUTER or otherwise.
See that part about "the SOFTWARE will reside on YOUR COMPUTER until removed or deleted"? That's what people agree to when they click "I agree" on the EULA screen.
As far as being able to uninstall it via "add/remove programs", I wasn't aware that this made software dismissable via legal grounds. I thought it just meant that you could proudly wear the "Made for Microsoft Windows" on your retail box.