By extortion, I mean that they are suing owners of certain programmable PC smart cards that can be used to hack a DTV receiver box to pirate the signal.
They are doing this with no regard to the actual use of the card. They've sued actual pirates, they've sued loyal customers who have always paid for their service and they've sued people who have never used DTV service at all, paid or pirated.
The card in question is perfectly legal and has numerous legitimate uses. Ownership or use is not a crime in any jurisdiction in the world (as far as I know), but DTV will sue anyone whose name/address they can find who has purchased one.
They start with a demand for money that is slightly less than the cost of defending against the lawsuit, with a promise that the "damages" they'll seek will be much more if it goes to court. That's pure extortion and I don't know why the FCC/FTC are letting them get away with it.
My first thought at reading the story was, "Cool, maybe I'll look into that." My second was, "Oh wait, these are the assholes running an extortion racket across North America."
I'm sure they couldn't give a shit about this one loss of a customer, but in the corporate world we vote with our wallets, so there's the one vote I'm allotted. I'll look at Dish Network instead when I move into my new place next week.
By the way, my third thought was "Oh shit, my radar detector's gonna go nuts!"
No more than French law applies to US company with headquarters and equipment within US borders.
Regardless of the French government's opinion of its subjects, the French are not children and should not be treated as such. France will survive quite well if a Parisian wants to read Mein Kempf.
We should not be forced to censor every piece of speech or expression that embarasses some other country. If that offends the thought police in France, Germany, China and other such countries, tough.
(1) Lack of money to pursue it. They had switched from doing a down payment + 3 monthly payments to a down payment + 4 monthly payments and I didn't realize it. The bill for the final payment never arrived and I was cut off for nonpayment. And no, I never received a notice of being cut off.
(2) I was at the exit of a supermarket that turns onto a very busy highway. A goddamn fireman parked a firetruck in the turning lane where people can slow down before turning into the parking lot and blocked the view of oncoming traffic. I edged out a little too far trying to see what was coming and got nailed by a delivery van.
The fireman was the cause of the collision, but the court disagreed because I was pulling out when I was hit. If I hadn't been dead broke at the time I would have sued his ass and the county (the county runs the fire department).
(3) The court assigned liability to me anyway, so it wouldn't have mattered even if I had gotten it vacated. The repeat lawsuit would have ended the same way.
It wouldn't be that difficult to find it if they wanted to. They know where it dropped. All they need is for a P3 Orion to make a few passes with the Magnetic Anomoly Detecter and a team of marines on the ground to follow up on any detections until they find the thing.
The US Air Force (brilliant buggers that they are) managed to drop a nuclear bomb into one of the swamps nearby (Savannah, GA, USA) back in the 1950's. I'm sure that even back in the 50's the detonators were made safe enough that it won't explode randomnly. Still, I'd rather they dug that damned thing up and removed it.
I went through this scenario years ago. My insurance got canceled (without my knowledge) 10 days before I got into a collision. Although I wasn't the cause of the collision, the court decided I was liable.
$6,700+ for the other vehicle $6,200+ remaining to pay off on my now totaled car
I moved shortly afterward. The other insurance company sued me, served my previous address and some dimwit signed for it. Insurance company wins a default judgement because I never knew of the suit.
The state suspends my drivers license because I didn't pay a court judgement I knew nothing about, making me lose my job (currently I live in the middle of nowhere).
For 5 years, I lived leeching off my mother, with no money, no job and no ability to find a job. It wasn't until my web site started making money that I was able to pull myself out of this shit. My credit report still looks like shit but I'm working on that now.
"Most, like SpamCop list the origin of the spam. Not the spamvertized website, but the IP address of the sending mail server. "
Actually, someone reported a Kim Kommando newsletter as spam to Spamcop. My site happened to be featured in that issue. Two days later my host forwards a Spamcop complaint forwarded from the owner of their datacenter.
A few issues here. First, Spamcop did report a so-called spamvertised site (mine) Second, it was a legitimate newsletter, not a spam. They managed to track down the owners of dozens of sites linked in the newsletter but never bothered to notice it wasn't spam Third, if I hadn't know my host's owner personally, I would have had my site shut down because they have no mercy for real spammers using their service.
I do hope these UK ISPs are a little more careful than is Spamcop.
Then don't go to registration sites. They do not have a monopoly on news, you know. That is the whole point. You have a right to choose. You DON'T have a right to tell others how to do business.
Never said I did. I do have a right to point out false, that giving personal information is a fair trade for reading an article with a 24 hour shelf life.
The problem is that it is not a fair trade. Their one article, locked behind a registration barrier and available elsewhere most likely, becomes outdated 24 hours later. My personal information does not and is much more valuable than that soon-to-be-outdated article.
Another myth from the article that should be debunked as the rubbish it is is "people are reading for free what home subscribers pay for". I've worked at a newspaper, in the circulation department. The subscription fee is only for covering the cost of delivering it, not the content. They'd give it away for free just to distribute the ads inside of them and in fact the newspaper I worked for did just that by delivering a weekly newspaper to nonsubscribers (real world spamming).
Just when Congress appears ready to force auto makers to stop locking nondealer mechanics out of the car's diagnostic computer, they come up with a way to lock them out of changing parts. If they prove to be resistant to the average screwdriver or wrench, we'll know for sure what's up.
Microchips embedded in fasteners respond only to encrypted signals, restricting access to service procedures. These procedures would be stored in fastener control software, ensuring installation of authorized replacement parts. A central database would retain information on fastener status and maintenance history. All data would be accessible instantly to document warranty claims.
I'm sure you know this already, but in case you don't, there are two players that will play Real files fine, Jet Audio and Real Alternative. I don't know if they're legal or not, but they've both been around for a long time. Jet Audio is a pretty good media player. Jet Audio Real Alternative
Your point is still valid of course. I'm not sure how these two play Real files but I'm sure Real doesn't like it.
The default option in that extension is to switch back to the real user agent as soon as the browser is closed and restarted. Even if someone forgot to switch back after visiting the obnoxious site trying to lock them out, it would switch on its own.
That's also useful for that ridiculous Sun java bug that tries to tell you that you can't use the netscape java plug in with Internet Explorer if you leave the user agent set to MSIE. At one point Firefox was unable to load because of Sun's bug (which Sun refuses to fix).
This site is really good for learning tricks. HTML Help also has some good stuff. W3C is useful if you're stuck on something, but it's awful technical.
There are some good message boards where you can ask for help too.
I disagree entirely. If someone can learn to do html, they can learn to do xhtml as well. It's not like teaching someone to read binary. It's just html set to certain rules. I taught myself how to do both and xhtml is a lot easier as far as I'm concerned.
CSS is trickier to learn, especially if you want multiple columns or other cute tricks. It *is* learnable however, especially if you can find the right references online.
I had a catchall going for spywareinfo.com so that I could make up an email address on the spot. netflix@, paypal@, pcpitstop@, etc.
Earlier this year, several different spammers and viruses started dictionary attacking the domain. After three months of 3,000+ spam and viruses a day, I finally gave up. I turned off the catch all, bought a new domain which is parked (no content and no one's ever heard of it) and turned on the catchall there. I have a dozen or so dedicated web servers, so I just pointed mail.newdomain.com to one of them. The accounts that I actively used at @spywareinfo.com now forward to the new domain and everything else goes to/dev/null.
I have three addresses@spywareinfo.com that I can't turn off and an amazing amount of spam still comes to them, but not one spam has ever hit the new domain and I don't expect any to do so. I've started chaining Thunderbird to K9, both of which have bayesian filtering, and together they catch damned near every spam that comes through on the old addresses.
Does PC Mag not "fact check" their articles? Something as simple as a google search would have shown them that ActiveX is an optional plug-in. In my results for firefox activex, the site of the person who develops the plugin is listed 2nd among 47,000 hits. If they have a burning desire to use ActiveX, they can do so.
That said, I would never recommend that anyone use that plugin. That's like being rescued from a burning building and setting fire to the ambulance on your way to the hospital.
I believe he meant the episode where they find a planet populated with Native Americans who were transplanted by an alien race during our 19th or 20th century.
"The notion of anonymity in one's reading habits reeks of someone who is too afraid of their peer group, and not the government."
Attempting to cause some sort of embarassment in the person arguing against your opinion doesn't answer their point. It only covers the weakness of your own.
The point being that no one has any right or privelege to know what another person chooses to read, unless that person is under investigation.
If that person is under investigation, then the investigation itself should be disclosed to an oversight body, specifically to avoid the kind of abuses the FBI carried out before they were required to answer to Congress.
I guess those who actually keep their Windows box up-to-date and secure will need to dual boot Linux. When the computer sturmtruppen come tromping down the corridor they will have to quickly reboot into it.
"Sorry Obergruppenfuehrer, no Windows here!"
On the bright side, maybe it will force them stay booted into Linux long enough to realize it's not some strange, complicated beast and start to prefer it to Windows anyway.
I care about it, that's who. Their one article, which will be old in 24 hours, is not adequate compensation for providing them and their advertisers with my personal information, which does not become old. The trade is not a good value, especially since news.google.com can find that exact article or a similar article elsewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
No, although it is pricey.
By extortion, I mean that they are suing owners of certain programmable PC smart cards that can be used to hack a DTV receiver box to pirate the signal.
They are doing this with no regard to the actual use of the card. They've sued actual pirates, they've sued loyal customers who have always paid for their service and they've sued people who have never used DTV service at all, paid or pirated.
The card in question is perfectly legal and has numerous legitimate uses. Ownership or use is not a crime in any jurisdiction in the world (as far as I know), but DTV will sue anyone whose name/address they can find who has purchased one.
They start with a demand for money that is slightly less than the cost of defending against the lawsuit, with a promise that the "damages" they'll seek will be much more if it goes to court. That's pure extortion and I don't know why the FCC/FTC are letting them get away with it.
Read this site for more information about it
My first thought at reading the story was, "Cool, maybe I'll look into that." My second was, "Oh wait, these are the assholes running an extortion racket across North America."
I'm sure they couldn't give a shit about this one loss of a customer, but in the corporate world we vote with our wallets, so there's the one vote I'm allotted. I'll look at Dish Network instead when I move into my new place next week.
By the way, my third thought was "Oh shit, my radar detector's gonna go nuts!"
No more than French law applies to US company with headquarters and equipment within US borders.
Regardless of the French government's opinion of its subjects, the French are not children and should not be treated as such. France will survive quite well if a Parisian wants to read Mein Kempf.
We should not be forced to censor every piece of speech or expression that embarasses some other country. If that offends the thought police in France, Germany, China and other such countries, tough.
(1) Lack of money to pursue it. They had switched from doing a down payment + 3 monthly payments to a down payment + 4 monthly payments and I didn't realize it. The bill for the final payment never arrived and I was cut off for nonpayment. And no, I never received a notice of being cut off.
(2) I was at the exit of a supermarket that turns onto a very busy highway. A goddamn fireman parked a firetruck in the turning lane where people can slow down before turning into the parking lot and blocked the view of oncoming traffic. I edged out a little too far trying to see what was coming and got nailed by a delivery van.
The fireman was the cause of the collision, but the court disagreed because I was pulling out when I was hit. If I hadn't been dead broke at the time I would have sued his ass and the county (the county runs the fire department).
(3) The court assigned liability to me anyway, so it wouldn't have mattered even if I had gotten it vacated. The repeat lawsuit would have ended the same way.
It wouldn't be that difficult to find it if they wanted to. They know where it dropped. All they need is for a P3 Orion to make a few passes with the Magnetic Anomoly Detecter and a team of marines on the ground to follow up on any detections until they find the thing.
The US Air Force (brilliant buggers that they are) managed to drop a nuclear bomb into one of the swamps nearby (Savannah, GA, USA) back in the 1950's. I'm sure that even back in the 50's the detonators were made safe enough that it won't explode randomnly. Still, I'd rather they dug that damned thing up and removed it.
I went through this scenario years ago. My insurance got canceled (without my knowledge) 10 days before I got into a collision. Although I wasn't the cause of the collision, the court decided I was liable.
$6,700+ for the other vehicle
$6,200+ remaining to pay off on my now totaled car
I moved shortly afterward. The other insurance company sued me, served my previous address and some dimwit signed for it. Insurance company wins a default judgement because I never knew of the suit.
The state suspends my drivers license because I didn't pay a court judgement I knew nothing about, making me lose my job (currently I live in the middle of nowhere).
For 5 years, I lived leeching off my mother, with no money, no job and no ability to find a job. It wasn't until my web site started making money that I was able to pull myself out of this shit. My credit report still looks like shit but I'm working on that now.
"Most, like SpamCop list the origin of the spam. Not the spamvertized website, but the IP address of the sending mail server. "
Actually, someone reported a Kim Kommando newsletter as spam to Spamcop. My site happened to be featured in that issue. Two days later my host forwards a Spamcop complaint forwarded from the owner of their datacenter.
A few issues here.
First, Spamcop did report a so-called spamvertised site (mine)
Second, it was a legitimate newsletter, not a spam. They managed to track down the owners of dozens of sites linked in the newsletter but never bothered to notice it wasn't spam
Third, if I hadn't know my host's owner personally, I would have had my site shut down because they have no mercy for real spammers using their service.
I do hope these UK ISPs are a little more careful than is Spamcop.
"to point out false"
False INFORMATION....
Dammit slashdot, join the rest of us in the 21st century and put in an edit feature!
Then don't go to registration sites. They do not have a monopoly on news, you know. That is the whole point. You have a right to choose. You DON'T have a right to tell others how to do business.
Never said I did. I do have a right to point out false, that giving personal information is a fair trade for reading an article with a 24 hour shelf life.
True. They do, at least, mark those with (subscription) if you get the email news alerts.
I use 20500, which I believe is the white house zip code. It's somewhere in DC anyway.
The problem is that it is not a fair trade. Their one article, locked behind a registration barrier and available elsewhere most likely, becomes outdated 24 hours later. My personal information does not and is much more valuable than that soon-to-be-outdated article.
Another myth from the article that should be debunked as the rubbish it is is "people are reading for free what home subscribers pay for". I've worked at a newspaper, in the circulation department. The subscription fee is only for covering the cost of delivering it, not the content. They'd give it away for free just to distribute the ads inside of them and in fact the newspaper I worked for did just that by delivering a weekly newspaper to nonsubscribers (real world spamming).
Just when Congress appears ready to force auto makers to stop locking nondealer mechanics out of the car's diagnostic computer, they come up with a way to lock them out of changing parts. If they prove to be resistant to the average screwdriver or wrench, we'll know for sure what's up.
I'm sure you know this already, but in case you don't, there are two players that will play Real files fine, Jet Audio and Real Alternative. I don't know if they're legal or not, but they've both been around for a long time. Jet Audio is a pretty good media player.
Jet Audio
Real Alternative
Your point is still valid of course. I'm not sure how these two play Real files but I'm sure Real doesn't like it.
The default option in that extension is to switch back to the real user agent as soon as the browser is closed and restarted. Even if someone forgot to switch back after visiting the obnoxious site trying to lock them out, it would switch on its own.
That's also useful for that ridiculous Sun java bug that tries to tell you that you can't use the netscape java plug in with Internet Explorer if you leave the user agent set to MSIE. At one point Firefox was unable to load because of Sun's bug (which Sun refuses to fix).
This site is really good for learning tricks. HTML Help also has some good stuff. W3C is useful if you're stuck on something, but it's awful technical.
There are some good message boards where you can ask for help too.
I disagree entirely. If someone can learn to do html, they can learn to do xhtml as well. It's not like teaching someone to read binary. It's just html set to certain rules. I taught myself how to do both and xhtml is a lot easier as far as I'm concerned.
CSS is trickier to learn, especially if you want multiple columns or other cute tricks. It *is* learnable however, especially if you can find the right references online.
I had a catchall going for spywareinfo.com so that I could make up an email address on the spot. netflix@, paypal@, pcpitstop@, etc.
/dev/null.
Earlier this year, several different spammers and viruses started dictionary attacking the domain. After three months of 3,000+ spam and viruses a day, I finally gave up. I turned off the catch all, bought a new domain which is parked (no content and no one's ever heard of it) and turned on the catchall there. I have a dozen or so dedicated web servers, so I just pointed mail.newdomain.com to one of them. The accounts that I actively used at @spywareinfo.com now forward to the new domain and everything else goes to
I have three addresses@spywareinfo.com that I can't turn off and an amazing amount of spam still comes to them, but not one spam has ever hit the new domain and I don't expect any to do so. I've started chaining Thunderbird to K9, both of which have bayesian filtering, and together they catch damned near every spam that comes through on the old addresses.
Does PC Mag not "fact check" their articles? Something as simple as a google search would have shown them that ActiveX is an optional plug-in. In my results for firefox activex, the site of the person who develops the plugin is listed 2nd among 47,000 hits. If they have a burning desire to use ActiveX, they can do so.
That said, I would never recommend that anyone use that plugin. That's like being rescued from a burning building and setting fire to the ambulance on your way to the hospital.
I believe he meant the episode where they find a planet populated with Native Americans who were transplanted by an alien race during our 19th or 20th century.
"The notion of anonymity in one's reading habits reeks of someone who is too afraid of their peer group, and not the government."
Attempting to cause some sort of embarassment in the person arguing against your opinion doesn't answer their point. It only covers the weakness of your own.
The point being that no one has any right or privelege to know what another person chooses to read, unless that person is under investigation.
If that person is under investigation, then the investigation itself should be disclosed to an oversight body, specifically to avoid the kind of abuses the FBI carried out before they were required to answer to Congress.
I guess those who actually keep their Windows box up-to-date and secure will need to dual boot Linux. When the computer sturmtruppen come tromping down the corridor they will have to quickly reboot into it.
"Sorry Obergruppenfuehrer, no Windows here!"
On the bright side, maybe it will force them stay booted into Linux long enough to realize it's not some strange, complicated beast and start to prefer it to Windows anyway.
I sure as hell couldn't. My job is running two different web sites. My "office" is a computer desk 10 feet from my bed.
I care about it, that's who. Their one article, which will be old in 24 hours, is not adequate compensation for providing them and their advertisers with my personal information, which does not become old. The trade is not a good value, especially since news.google.com can find that exact article or a similar article elsewhere.