"People take over other's computers all the time, to host porn sites, warez sites, to use them as hops/storage on the way to another computer, and for all sorts of other crap."
That will either work or confuse them, I don't think the RIAA lawyer would understand. What you'd need to do is go and buy a cheap mp3 player and visit a used CD store and buy a couple CDs containing a several of the alleged songs/pieces of "Intellectual Property" paying cash of course, or send a friend to do it for you. Walk into the court/hearing room with a box containing all the stuff you just bought, I mean have had for months, drop it on the table in front of the RIAA lawyer and say something like: "yes, some of those files do exist, I created them with iTunes from my CD collection for use with my MP3 player and they have never made available for copying on the Internet. When I spend my hard earned money on something I don't give it away. The only way someone could have seen the files is if they illegally entered my computer exploiting a yet unpatched Windows security hole. I have no idea how the rest of that filler got on the list, before seeing them on the list I didn't know they existed."
Or try arguing that while the songs may be property, they are far from intellectual and should not becovered by the so called "IP" laws. Or everytime the RIAA laywer says "IP" you reply with "yes, my computer uses 'Internet Protocol'" Or question who and how they obtained the IP and timestamp if you have DSL or dialup or any other service that gives you a different IP everytime you connect. I'd go with the first one.
"The red envelopes are signature." They can also be a nice big red, or yellow&blue, target for anyone who might want to "borrow" some of your movies. I say borrow because it once took two weeks for BBOnline to update the status of two of my rentals, I sent all three back on a Mon morning, Tues one was received and the other two weren't. I contacted support before reporting them returned but not received. Their status remained sent by BB for a few weeks.
"I can't really speak to BB's online service; they might have similar selection and pricing, but they also have the same disadvantages. And after dealing with Netflix ("oh, the movie never came? here, we'll ship you another free of charge")"
I've used Netflix and BBOnline and can say the selection is nearly the same and the pricing is the same, a little higher now than when I subscribed a few months ago, now $17.99/mo for 3 at a time, was $14.99. And the policies for lost in the mail/not received by customer/not received by warehouse are the same as far as I could tell. The larger used base seems to be all about the advertising, which one did people think of when choosing a DVD rental by mail service. I've seen far more Netflix commercials than BBOnline commercials.
The plaintiffs were probably a bunch of people with "lawyer friends" who never bothered to read the sign on the mailbox that said "last pickup 10am/3pm/5pm" and expected to be able to drop their movie in the mailbox around 10pm and have the next one delivered with the next day's mail. While there are limits to "unlimited rentals" they're understandable limits, there is no maximum number you can rent each month, you can rent as many as you can in 30days, the number depends on how fast you watch and return them. It will be a lot more if you watch it the night it arrives and drop it in a mailbox the next morning before 9am on your way to work than if you keep it for a week. The turnover probably relies on the speed and efficency of the local warehouse. I tried Blockbuster and Netflix for 3-4mo each ending in Aug. The address on the return envelope for both was in the same city but Netflix took a day or two longer, If I sent one back Monday with Blockbuster I'd get the next Wed, but Thurs or Fri with Netflix. My schedule has since changed and I've canceled opting to buy or record seasons of TV. Blockbuster has the slight advantage with the two in-store rentals each month, nice if there's a store near by.
And if they are convicted/found guilty of price fixing the lawyers and gov will get the bulk of any monetary settlement and we as the end consumers will probably end up with a coupon for $5 or $0.50 off the purchase to any of their already over priced CDs, either way they get your money. It's time for some creative sentencing, the price should be lowered by the difference between their fixed price and the market value. 99c has been the market value since the creation of iTunes, they wanted to fix prices at $2.50, the prices should be set to -$1.51. Or a coupon to buy a $125 or $75 iTunes gift card for $50. Gift cards are the same as cash with ebay.
Those sorry excuses for application included with the generic Windows installation are only temporary tools to use until you pick a better one. IE is needed until you pick a better browser to upgrade to, Firefox/Mozilla or Opera, and to get Windows updates. Wordpad works until you get MS Office or OpenOffice. And Windows Media player is a poor temporary substitue until you can get Media Player Classic or VideoLan player, when will RealNetworks learn and stop their useless lawsuits. And you have Paint until you get Photoshop or some other image editor. They don't have to compete with other options, they only have to be there for temporary use until you decide on another better application to use in place of them. Makes sense, Apple should know OSX the best and 'should' be able to make the best browser to go with their OS. IE for Mac is a leftover from when there was no Mac browser and people had to choose between IE and Netscape, and from what I remeber neither worked very well.
So some may think of MS as the evil empire, but this is about the people who've done good with their many billions. The Gates were chosen because unlike the folks at the RIAA who use their spare cash to sue people in the hope of getting a higher return, they've donated billions to disease research and other good causes.
It's all about the price. All but one of the Christmas gifts I'm giving are TV seasons on DVD purchased for $20-$30(on sale of course) Seinfeld(s), CSI, Family Guy. Why am I going to spend $15 for maybe 60min on a CD when for the price of 2 CDs or less I can many hours of video? And then there's the budget, say someone has an annual entertainment budget of $400 and they want an iPod, If they get a 4GB Nano there goes $250 and maybe another $30 for accessories. Other than a pre existing CD collection where are they going to get their music? iTunes might be the place where they can the most for the remaining budget. Can't forget the massive amounts of flops by the entertainment industry this year, and the last few years, There were two big movies, SW3 and King Kong then the many disasters in the form of TV remakes. And they had to blame their favorite scapegoat, "piracy"(ARRRG!!!) which according to the one study I believe has very close to NO effect on music sales. The made bad entertainment, sales fell, what don't they understand.
All of that is assuming they got the right IP and time stamp. I like saving power during the overnight hours and just turned on my cable modem and oh look, my IP is different. So 20min ago it could have been assigned to someone using edonkey or some other file sharing application for some "piracy"(ARRRG!!!) related activity. If the **A's "agents" were to record the incorrect time, maybe they forgot about daylight savings time or are on metric time, they error could implicate me. One of the few "advantages" of DSL is you're guaranteed a different IP, at least around here, everytime you connect so there's always the chance you're receiveing traffic requested by the previous user. And a possibly unsecured wireless connection could help, we all know how "secure" wireless connections really are, not secure.
If someone were to buy all the land that's eventually going to be at the bottom of this new ocean does that mean they'll own the water over it? I've always wanted to own an ocean. Hey Ethopia, you want access to the ocean? It's going to cost you.
I prefer WOG for Web lOG(from SPiced hAM), but for some reason every time I use it my comments get modded troll or flamebait. I guess someone didn't get the joke. Yes, enough with the new "words" for anything that might be considered new. If anything this is an RSS exploit, not an iPod virus/malware.
so they "claim" to be "31it3 810g3rZ" but can they hack a Gibson? No, but they can complain about it. I prefer to call them WOGS in the tradition, if you can call it one, of SPAM SPiced hAM -> WOG Web lOG, there's a lot of them and not many people like them.
That would work in most cases, but only where there is no need for periphals. If there is a reason to use a digital camera, not sure why, maybe insurace agents taking pictures for claims, the peripheral has already been installed and an authorized device is being used to steal company data. A 1GB memory card can hold millions in business secrets. In most cases a 'no usb devices' policy will work. You can bring in your iPod, but not the USB/firewire cable, if you want to charge it, you cna spend the $10-$20 for an AC charger. I'm sure if enough companies were serious enough, Dell would make a PC with no USB ports or floppy or CD/DVD recorders. Of course then you run into problems with the company laptop,unless you want to cover it with tamper evident stickers and encrypt the hdd so it can't be removed and copied. The only other fix I see is to pay the employees enough to encourage them not to even consider "borrowing" company data. The RIAA doesn't do that and look at all the copies of CD that find their way onto the Internets.
It's possible the cashier did notice and informed her(I say "her" because he said he targeted female cashiers) manager who informed security and they pulled the tape from the camera covering her register at the time of the alleged fraud. And then that saw some kid with a "University of Colorado Engineering" shirt or hat or jacket and thought "he'll be back" and then he went back to the store and got busted. iPod for $4.99? I pitty the fool, wait no I don't, trying something like that is asking for trouble. At least the group who tried that in Home Depot swapped tags for similar items, tag for $199 fan replaced with one for $150 and then returned for full price, profit $50. If he had some cash he could have swapped the tags for the 4 and 2gb nano. If the store is one of those that retags some items with their own store brand bar code he could at least try and blame it on a labeling mistake and didn't think he should have had to report paying less due to an error that wasn't his. Damn thief, in some countries the penalty is or at least was cutting off their hands. To stop the tag swapping scams stores need educated cashiers and displays larger than an one line with confusing abreviations. "Toy 29.99" can be anything, "1GB iPod Shuffle $149.99" is a little more specific. I'm guessing they let him leave the first time and got it on tape and waited until they had enough evidence to convict him as a repeat offender. Now he has a felony on his record and whatever immediate penalties Colorado has for a Class 5, probably no jail time for a first conviction. Unfortunately cashiers are sometimes encouraged to go for most items scanner per minute, at least in the Walmarts around here they have a cashier hall of fame on the wall by the door. The management may be favoring speed over acuracy. Now that stores are stocking even more items it's impossible for cashiers to be familar with every item and people know it's possible to get away with tag swapping and will keep trying and the over greedy, like this kid, are going to get caught.
"How the hell are they going to do that based on an IP address?"
First thing to do is challenge how they got the IP, oh wait, it's IPA now, they're trying to hijack the use of "IP". We all know they're not doing any of the work themselves, they're just hiring "agents" who secretly enter people's computers to search for music files. If another company said it's true, then it must be true because large corporations and their contractors would *never* ever even think of saying anything that isn't true or do anything moraly questionable, like . It's possible they're borrowing the server IP logs of some RIAA bashing message boards, adding a couple songs, file sizes and time stamps and suddenly it goes from "you said something bad about our cartel" to "you're stealing sound". Ok, so it may not happen that way, but does snyone really know how the RIAA gets that information? People are challenging breathalizers because the firmware use closed source. It's all about the money, places in Vegas used, possibly still try, to rig slot machines to pay out fewer jackpots resulting in fewer payouts and more PROFIT. It may be unlikely, but still slightly possible.
And the claims of lost billions due to what they call "piracy". I'd like to see some proof of that too. Yes, there are people who borrow audio files using the Internets, but does anyone really know how many and how much revenuse is lost because of it? I know people with large music collections they didn't buy, but I know more people with hundreds of pounds of records and CDs. My favorite stats are $250billion lost and 3% of sales lost. That's like claiming 3% of their sales is $250billion, do a little math and see that those "stats" are very questionable, they may be large corporations, but I don't think they're worth that much.
They make up stats of lost PROFITs and inflate claims of "piracy" and like to pull a SCO and sue people to offset lower sales due to poor quality products. Their cases need to be thrown out until they produce some real proof.
As for a jury deciding for defendant, not everyone reads/. and thinks poorly of the RIAA. It's possible the jury will be stacked with people with hundreds of records who will want to fry anyone who hasn't spent half as much as they have on music or believe some RIAA claims that "piracy"(ARRRG!!!) *not* price fixing is the cause of high CD prices.
While on the subject TVs, what effects does his contraption have on those four legged furry things we call dogs? There is a reason our parents and the older folks still call the TV remote a "clicker". They used to make high frequency clicks to relay simple commands, volume up/down and channel up/down. Then some people noticed that something was making their dogs go crazy, yes the high frequency "click". We'll just have to wait until the local kennel club installs one to keep those damn kids away. I wonder if he bothered to figure out what the youngest effected age is. Think of parents trying to make their infant stop crying, but unable to hear the teen-away driving their baby crazy, unless stores are required have clearly visable "Teen-Away in Use" signs, if for some unknown reason this thing becomes popular.
So RFID tags are not easy to change, but I don't think bar codes are going to be replaced as the primary thing to scan at the checkout counters for at least the next couple years. If you're going to try some swap the barcode scam make sure the store has an small appliance section with working floor model microwaves. Just to make it look more convincing give the box a couple kicks and small tears while you're walking around looking for the microwaves. That way if a store employee asks you can try something like "it was the last one on the shelf" and ask for an open-box/item discount and don't forget to pull the price tag off the shelf so you can act like you don't know how much it should cost and it will require even more effort for someone to find the real price. As for the store employees noticing, have you been to a Target or Walmart recently? At least around here they seem to be staffed by highschool dropouts and people who don't speak english, ok, so you once in a while you might run into a college student with a crappy job who is paying attention. If the store employees cared enough and knew enough, these swap the bar code scams wouldn't be successful enough to have thousands in profit. And the stores arn't doing much to help.
The supermarket where I worked during HS replaced the one line abreviated display with 10" LCD monitors so the cashiers can see the full item name and price to make it harder for someone to successfully swap price tags. At least at the local Target and KMart they're still using the small one line displays with abreviations that most of the cashiers don't even understand and Lego's appear as "TOY - $29.99" even if it's the Millennium Falcon which retails anywhere from $49.99 to $99.99 and it's not going to get caught unless that cashier collects SW Legos and flags it. If you were a part time cashier at Target, how likely would you be to call your manager over if you though a price was higher? If you're wrong, you've just wasted a customer's time and implied they were doing something dishonest. Any penalties might be lower if they were like that guy and buying ten at a time and you don't recall seeing the item on sale in the weekly flier.
This reminds me of that King of the Hill where Hank successfully fights to keep his "normal flow" toilet because the bill to mandate low flow tiolets was proposed by the guy who makes them, using politics for personal financial gain. In most of the US there's plenty of water for use in toilets, except California, probably why the article's in the LA times, where there's a shortage of everything but lawsuits. A large part of the state was desert, you can try to conserve and stockpile water and bring water to the desert, but it's still desert. Probably a simpler solution would be delayed flushing, a good number of the urinals over here on the east coast have sensors that flush when you're done. All they would need to do is change the toilet's firmware to flush once every 10-20 uses. There will still be that pool of water and blue disk at the bottom but it will only use less water.
If they want to stop looking like a bunch of greedy fools once in a while they might try donating some of their excess cash to a "good cause" in the last month cnn.com has had: " EBay founder gives $100 million to university" and " Gates loses 'top philanthropist' title" On the list of the top 50 people who have donated the most, not one is connected to the MPAA or RIAA, either they don't have that much donatable cash laying around or they really are that greedy. Now they're even lazier, first they wanted the government to pick up the tab for their "people(RIAA) v possibly suspected music pirate" lawsuits, now they want governments to spend the money, time and effort investigating, prosecuting and imprisoning/executing people who they don't like. That's hundreds to thousands in legal fees a day for the trial and a few hundred for the prison, the governments probably prefer fines so they can get some money out of it, but the industry likes the sound of up to 5 years in federal prison. Even when they were forced to "donate" CDs to public libraries they sent dozens to hundreds of copies of the same unpopular disk. Here's another one against "Intelligent Design" if the word was intellegently designed the RIAA wouldn't exist or wouldn't be as greedy.
Chances are if someone is going to do something with an item and you hear that phrase it's a bad idea and someone should stop them before someone gets hurt/killed. And "Parental supervision required" is not a suggestion and people are responsible for their own action. If some kid dies from doing something the rest of the world considers dumb the state should sue the parents. If a kid drowns in a bucket or a (home)pool, it's not the bucket or pool maker's fault, it's the fault of whoever should have been watching the kid. You might be able to sue an Internet Cafe owner if someone dies after playing for 50hrs without a break, they can cover themselves from any denial of service attacks/suits with a couple limit of 4hrs signs. This article is talking about kids, it's their parents who are responsible for their well being, NOT the tv. GTA is rated M, if you buy it for your 13yr old, you're asking for trouble. Anything in excess is a bad thing, if your kid wants to play a game 15hrs a day, it's time to get them a football or model rocket kit w/ FAA permit.
HA! Their plans were foiled by Sony. They're not happy because they were all working on their own excessive CD DRM schemes and Sony just turned public opinion very much against it. This DRM-ing everything needs to stop. When will they realize that when people buy something, they're not going to give it away, sure some kids might sell copies to their friends for a few dollars, but that's not much. The people who want to "pirate" the RIAA crap on the Intarnets don't buy the CDs, they get the leaked master copies from someone industry insider before the DRM is added. It's like gun control, it just negatively affects those who try to do everything the legal way. It has been and should be when you BUY a CD you can do anything with it but this list of a few things, they seem to want it to be you can't do anything with it except for this list of a few things. I havn't bought a new CD in years and don't plan on it anytime soon.
Ahh, the good olde power supply switches, same effect as pulling the plug without having to duck under desks and tables to find it. My last 350W had one, my current 400W unfortunately doesn't. I like seeing the nice blinking green glow telling me when my network connection is active, but it isn't that necessary when the PC is turned OFF. My laser printer has a real off switch that breaks the circuit and makes off really off. Unfortunately my family's Dell PC and HP inkjet printer are always semi-on, the active network connection so XP can tell you you have new messages at the login screen isn't worth the cost in constant power use. I think I'll unplug it considering it hasn't been used since I gave my mother my 5yr old laptop and got a printserver for the HP inkjet that's also always semi-on, I think I've trained the family enough so they turn off the powerstrip when it's not in use. I havn't had the time to use my DVD player this week, but the red "standby" led has been sucking up power, it's not much but it's going to add up when on 24/7 except when it's on. Yes, more devices need to have a real power cut off switches again, they used to then someone decided people were to dumb or lazy to continue using them.
Are there any inexpensive devices that will monitor the power use of individual devices? I'm even more interested in how much power is being used by all the standby lights around the house.
I wonder if they're playing nice or are as pissed off at Sony as the people with infected computers. It's possible Sony 'forgot' to tell the CD retailers about the full effects of the rootkit in their new type of DRMed disks and/or just passed them off as their older type of "copy protected" disks that don't work with all CD players.
"The GK-1 is expected to cost between $10,000-$30,000 when marketed." They didn't specify if that's per unit or per airport or per security checkpoint. Either way 50 is going to get expensive. When it does someone is sure to PROFIT. The funding is going to come from higher ticket prices or taxes.
yes, I'm starting to like my 30min train ride to 2blocks from the office even more.
"the first stage of the test takes between 30-75 seconds" 30-75sec per person for just the first part, that's only going to add another few hours before boarding. If the terrorists can train their operatives to resist torture, you'd think they might be able to condition themselves to pass an audio lie detector. Say you ask if they're planning anything illegal and they don't believe hijacking a plane isn't illlegal, I think Seinfeld said it's only a lie if you don't believe it to be true.
"The one person found to be planning something illegal was the one who failed our test." Or they only caught one person planning something illegal and the rest got away.
"The rootkit was spyware that came along with something the user installed by choice, no different from weatherbug or any of that other silly BS."
Ok, so was it really installed by choice? I have no desire to spend my money on one of those disks and risk the security of my PC to test it. Is the user given a choice do hit "I don't agree" to an EULA and then return it to where they purchased it or does it take advantage of Windows autoplay to install without asking or informing the user first with a description of what it will do. An EFF explanation of the ELUA said if you no longer own the physical disk you must delete any and all copies of anything on the disk. Shouldn't it be the same for the rootkit? If someone no longer owns the CD, maybe they returned it for the recall/exchange offer, shouldn't any software installed by it also have to be removed? It claims the ability to do this unpunished with a legalese shrinkwrap ELUA and shrinkwrap ELUAs have never stood up in court. If a paying customer returns or resells or trashes a protected Sony disk, the rootkit and DRM should go with the disk, of it doesn't easily go away then it's unwanted spyware and the legal owner of the computer should have the right to remove it, other than having to try their luck with Windows system restore or reformat or reinstall.
Sony screwed up and it looks like the customers are going to have to pay for their mistake with decreased performance, system crashes, having to deal with malware specifically created to take advantage of security holes created by the rootkit, including purchasing additional security software to prevent infection and the time and effort to remove them and repair the damage and/or the monetary costs if they don't have the time or know enough and have to hire someone to do it for them.
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"People take over other's computers all the time, to host porn sites, warez sites, to use them as hops/storage on the way to another computer, and for all sorts of other crap."
That will either work or confuse them, I don't think the RIAA lawyer would understand. What you'd need to do is go and buy a cheap mp3 player and visit a used CD store and buy a couple CDs containing a several of the alleged songs/pieces of "Intellectual Property" paying cash of course, or send a friend to do it for you. Walk into the court/hearing room with a box containing all the stuff you just bought, I mean have had for months, drop it on the table in front of the RIAA lawyer and say something like: "yes, some of those files do exist, I created them with iTunes from my CD collection for use with my MP3 player and they have never made available for copying on the Internet. When I spend my hard earned money on something I don't give it away. The only way someone could have seen the files is if they illegally entered my computer exploiting a yet unpatched Windows security hole. I have no idea how the rest of that filler got on the list, before seeing them on the list I didn't know they existed."
Or try arguing that while the songs may be property, they are far from intellectual and should not becovered by the so called "IP" laws. Or everytime the RIAA laywer says "IP" you reply with "yes, my computer uses 'Internet Protocol'" Or question who and how they obtained the IP and timestamp if you have DSL or dialup or any other service that gives you a different IP everytime you connect. I'd go with the first one.
"The red envelopes are signature."
They can also be a nice big red, or yellow&blue, target for anyone who might want to "borrow" some of your movies. I say borrow because it once took two weeks for BBOnline to update the status of two of my rentals, I sent all three back on a Mon morning, Tues one was received and the other two weren't. I contacted support before reporting them returned but not received. Their status remained sent by BB for a few weeks.
"I can't really speak to BB's online service; they might have similar selection and pricing, but they also have the same disadvantages. And after dealing with Netflix ("oh, the movie never came? here, we'll ship you another free of charge")"
I've used Netflix and BBOnline and can say the selection is nearly the same and the pricing is the same, a little higher now than when I subscribed a few months ago, now $17.99/mo for 3 at a time, was $14.99. And the policies for lost in the mail/not received by customer/not received by warehouse are the same as far as I could tell. The larger used base seems to be all about the advertising, which one did people think of when choosing a DVD rental by mail service. I've seen far more Netflix commercials than BBOnline commercials.
The plaintiffs were probably a bunch of people with "lawyer friends" who never bothered to read the sign on the mailbox that said "last pickup 10am/3pm/5pm" and expected to be able to drop their movie in the mailbox around 10pm and have the next one delivered with the next day's mail. While there are limits to "unlimited rentals" they're understandable limits, there is no maximum number you can rent each month, you can rent as many as you can in 30days, the number depends on how fast you watch and return them. It will be a lot more if you watch it the night it arrives and drop it in a mailbox the next morning before 9am on your way to work than if you keep it for a week. The turnover probably relies on the speed and efficency of the local warehouse. I tried Blockbuster and Netflix for 3-4mo each ending in Aug. The address on the return envelope for both was in the same city but Netflix took a day or two longer, If I sent one back Monday with Blockbuster I'd get the next Wed, but Thurs or Fri with Netflix. My schedule has since changed and I've canceled opting to buy or record seasons of TV. Blockbuster has the slight advantage with the two in-store rentals each month, nice if there's a store near by.
And if they are convicted/found guilty of price fixing the lawyers and gov will get the bulk of any monetary settlement and we as the end consumers will probably end up with a coupon for $5 or $0.50 off the purchase to any of their already over priced CDs, either way they get your money. It's time for some creative sentencing, the price should be lowered by the difference between their fixed price and the market value. 99c has been the market value since the creation of iTunes, they wanted to fix prices at $2.50, the prices should be set to -$1.51. Or a coupon to buy a $125 or $75 iTunes gift card for $50. Gift cards are the same as cash with ebay.
Those sorry excuses for application included with the generic Windows installation are only temporary tools to use until you pick a better one. IE is needed until you pick a better browser to upgrade to, Firefox/Mozilla or Opera, and to get Windows updates. Wordpad works until you get MS Office or OpenOffice. And Windows Media player is a poor temporary substitue until you can get Media Player Classic or VideoLan player, when will RealNetworks learn and stop their useless lawsuits. And you have Paint until you get Photoshop or some other image editor. They don't have to compete with other options, they only have to be there for temporary use until you decide on another better application to use in place of them.
Makes sense, Apple should know OSX the best and 'should' be able to make the best browser to go with their OS. IE for Mac is a leftover from when there was no Mac browser and people had to choose between IE and Netscape, and from what I remeber neither worked very well.
So some may think of MS as the evil empire, but this is about the people who've done good with their many billions. The Gates were chosen because unlike the folks at the RIAA who use their spare cash to sue people in the hope of getting a higher return, they've donated billions to disease research and other good causes.
It's all about the price. All but one of the Christmas gifts I'm giving are TV seasons on DVD purchased for $20-$30(on sale of course) Seinfeld(s), CSI, Family Guy. Why am I going to spend $15 for maybe 60min on a CD when for the price of 2 CDs or less I can many hours of video? And then there's the budget, say someone has an annual entertainment budget of $400 and they want an iPod, If they get a 4GB Nano there goes $250 and maybe another $30 for accessories. Other than a pre existing CD collection where are they going to get their music? iTunes might be the place where they can the most for the remaining budget. Can't forget the massive amounts of flops by the entertainment industry this year, and the last few years, There were two big movies, SW3 and King Kong then the many disasters in the form of TV remakes. And they had to blame their favorite scapegoat, "piracy"(ARRRG!!!) which according to the one study I believe has very close to NO effect on music sales.
The made bad entertainment, sales fell, what don't they understand.
All of that is assuming they got the right IP and time stamp. I like saving power during the overnight hours and just turned on my cable modem and oh look, my IP is different. So 20min ago it could have been assigned to someone using edonkey or some other file sharing application for some "piracy"(ARRRG!!!) related activity. If the **A's "agents" were to record the incorrect time, maybe they forgot about daylight savings time or are on metric time, they error could implicate me. One of the few "advantages" of DSL is you're guaranteed a different IP, at least around here, everytime you connect so there's always the chance you're receiveing traffic requested by the previous user. And a possibly unsecured wireless connection could help, we all know how "secure" wireless connections really are, not secure.
If someone were to buy all the land that's eventually going to be at the bottom of this new ocean does that mean they'll own the water over it? I've always wanted to own an ocean. Hey Ethopia, you want access to the ocean? It's going to cost you.
I prefer WOG for Web lOG(from SPiced hAM), but for some reason every time I use it my comments get modded troll or flamebait. I guess someone didn't get the joke.
Yes, enough with the new "words" for anything that might be considered new. If anything this is an RSS exploit, not an iPod virus/malware.
so they "claim" to be "31it3 810g3rZ" but can they hack a Gibson? No, but they can complain about it. I prefer to call them WOGS in the tradition, if you can call it one, of SPAM SPiced hAM -> WOG Web lOG, there's a lot of them and not many people like them.
That would work in most cases, but only where there is no need for periphals. If there is a reason to use a digital camera, not sure why, maybe insurace agents taking pictures for claims, the peripheral has already been installed and an authorized device is being used to steal company data. A 1GB memory card can hold millions in business secrets. In most cases a 'no usb devices' policy will work. You can bring in your iPod, but not the USB/firewire cable, if you want to charge it, you cna spend the $10-$20 for an AC charger. I'm sure if enough companies were serious enough, Dell would make a PC with no USB ports or floppy or CD/DVD recorders. Of course then you run into problems with the company laptop,unless you want to cover it with tamper evident stickers and encrypt the hdd so it can't be removed and copied. The only other fix I see is to pay the employees enough to encourage them not to even consider "borrowing" company data. The RIAA doesn't do that and look at all the copies of CD that find their way onto the Internets.
It's possible the cashier did notice and informed her(I say "her" because he said he targeted female cashiers) manager who informed security and they pulled the tape from the camera covering her register at the time of the alleged fraud. And then that saw some kid with a "University of Colorado Engineering" shirt or hat or jacket and thought "he'll be back" and then he went back to the store and got busted.
iPod for $4.99? I pitty the fool, wait no I don't, trying something like that is asking for trouble. At least the group who tried that in Home Depot swapped tags for similar items, tag for $199 fan replaced with one for $150 and then returned for full price, profit $50. If he had some cash he could have swapped the tags for the 4 and 2gb nano. If the store is one of those that retags some items with their own store brand bar code he could at least try and blame it on a labeling mistake and didn't think he should have had to report paying less due to an error that wasn't his. Damn thief, in some countries the penalty is or at least was cutting off their hands.
To stop the tag swapping scams stores need educated cashiers and displays larger than an one line with confusing abreviations. "Toy 29.99" can be anything, "1GB iPod Shuffle $149.99" is a little more specific. I'm guessing they let him leave the first time and got it on tape and waited until they had enough evidence to convict him as a repeat offender. Now he has a felony on his record and whatever immediate penalties Colorado has for a Class 5, probably no jail time for a first conviction. Unfortunately cashiers are sometimes encouraged to go for most items scanner per minute, at least in the Walmarts around here they have a cashier hall of fame on the wall by the door. The management may be favoring speed over acuracy. Now that stores are stocking even more items it's impossible for cashiers to be familar with every item and people know it's possible to get away with tag swapping and will keep trying and the over greedy, like this kid, are going to get caught.
"How the hell are they going to do that based on an IP address?"
/. and thinks poorly of the RIAA. It's possible the jury will be stacked with people with hundreds of records who will want to fry anyone who hasn't spent half as much as they have on music or believe some RIAA claims that "piracy"(ARRRG!!!) *not* price fixing is the cause of high CD prices.
First thing to do is challenge how they got the IP, oh wait, it's IPA now, they're trying to hijack the use of "IP". We all know they're not doing any of the work themselves, they're just hiring "agents" who secretly enter people's computers to search for music files. If another company said it's true, then it must be true because large corporations and their contractors would *never* ever even think of saying anything that isn't true or do anything moraly questionable, like . It's possible they're borrowing the server IP logs of some RIAA bashing message boards, adding a couple songs, file sizes and time stamps and suddenly it goes from "you said something bad about our cartel" to "you're stealing sound". Ok, so it may not happen that way, but does snyone really know how the RIAA gets that information? People are challenging breathalizers because the firmware use closed source. It's all about the money, places in Vegas used, possibly still try, to rig slot machines to pay out fewer jackpots resulting in fewer payouts and more PROFIT. It may be unlikely, but still slightly possible.
And the claims of lost billions due to what they call "piracy". I'd like to see some proof of that too. Yes, there are people who borrow audio files using the Internets, but does anyone really know how many and how much revenuse is lost because of it? I know people with large music collections they didn't buy, but I know more people with hundreds of pounds of records and CDs. My favorite stats are $250billion lost and 3% of sales lost. That's like claiming 3% of their sales is $250billion, do a little math and see that those "stats" are very questionable, they may be large corporations, but I don't think they're worth that much.
They make up stats of lost PROFITs and inflate claims of "piracy" and like to pull a SCO and sue people to offset lower sales due to poor quality products. Their cases need to be thrown out until they produce some real proof.
As for a jury deciding for defendant, not everyone reads
While on the subject TVs, what effects does his contraption have on those four legged furry things we call dogs? There is a reason our parents and the older folks still call the TV remote a "clicker". They used to make high frequency clicks to relay simple commands, volume up/down and channel up/down. Then some people noticed that something was making their dogs go crazy, yes the high frequency "click". We'll just have to wait until the local kennel club installs one to keep those damn kids away. I wonder if he bothered to figure out what the youngest effected age is. Think of parents trying to make their infant stop crying, but unable to hear the teen-away driving their baby crazy, unless stores are required have clearly visable "Teen-Away in Use" signs, if for some unknown reason this thing becomes popular.
So RFID tags are not easy to change, but I don't think bar codes are going to be replaced as the primary thing to scan at the checkout counters for at least the next couple years. If you're going to try some swap the barcode scam make sure the store has an small appliance section with working floor model microwaves. Just to make it look more convincing give the box a couple kicks and small tears while you're walking around looking for the microwaves. That way if a store employee asks you can try something like "it was the last one on the shelf" and ask for an open-box/item discount and don't forget to pull the price tag off the shelf so you can act like you don't know how much it should cost and it will require even more effort for someone to find the real price.
As for the store employees noticing, have you been to a Target or Walmart recently? At least around here they seem to be staffed by highschool dropouts and people who don't speak english, ok, so you once in a while you might run into a college student with a crappy job who is paying attention. If the store employees cared enough and knew enough, these swap the bar code scams wouldn't be successful enough to have thousands in profit. And the stores arn't doing much to help.
The supermarket where I worked during HS replaced the one line abreviated display with 10" LCD monitors so the cashiers can see the full item name and price to make it harder for someone to successfully swap price tags. At least at the local Target and KMart they're still using the small one line displays with abreviations that most of the cashiers don't even understand and Lego's appear as "TOY - $29.99" even if it's the Millennium Falcon which retails anywhere from $49.99 to $99.99 and it's not going to get caught unless that cashier collects SW Legos and flags it.
If you were a part time cashier at Target, how likely would you be to call your manager over if you though a price was higher? If you're wrong, you've just wasted a customer's time and implied they were doing something dishonest. Any penalties might be lower if they were like that guy and buying ten at a time and you don't recall seeing the item on sale in the weekly flier.
This reminds me of that King of the Hill where Hank successfully fights to keep his "normal flow" toilet because the bill to mandate low flow tiolets was proposed by the guy who makes them, using politics for personal financial gain. In most of the US there's plenty of water for use in toilets, except California, probably why the article's in the LA times, where there's a shortage of everything but lawsuits. A large part of the state was desert, you can try to conserve and stockpile water and bring water to the desert, but it's still desert. Probably a simpler solution would be delayed flushing, a good number of the urinals over here on the east coast have sensors that flush when you're done. All they would need to do is change the toilet's firmware to flush once every 10-20 uses. There will still be that pool of water and blue disk at the bottom but it will only use less water.
If they want to stop looking like a bunch of greedy fools once in a while they might try donating some of their excess cash to a "good cause" in the last month cnn.com has had: " EBay founder gives $100 million to university" and " Gates loses 'top philanthropist' title" On the list of the top 50 people who have donated the most, not one is connected to the MPAA or RIAA, either they don't have that much donatable cash laying around or they really are that greedy. Now they're even lazier, first they wanted the government to pick up the tab for their "people(RIAA) v possibly suspected music pirate" lawsuits, now they want governments to spend the money, time and effort investigating, prosecuting and imprisoning/executing people who they don't like. That's hundreds to thousands in legal fees a day for the trial and a few hundred for the prison, the governments probably prefer fines so they can get some money out of it, but the industry likes the sound of up to 5 years in federal prison. Even when they were forced to "donate" CDs to public libraries they sent dozens to hundreds of copies of the same unpopular disk.
Here's another one against "Intelligent Design" if the word was intellegently designed the RIAA wouldn't exist or wouldn't be as greedy.
Chances are if someone is going to do something with an item and you hear that phrase it's a bad idea and someone should stop them before someone gets hurt/killed.
And "Parental supervision required" is not a suggestion and people are responsible for their own action. If some kid dies from doing something the rest of the world considers dumb the state should sue the parents. If a kid drowns in a bucket or a (home)pool, it's not the bucket or pool maker's fault, it's the fault of whoever should have been watching the kid. You might be able to sue an Internet Cafe owner if someone dies after playing for 50hrs without a break, they can cover themselves from any denial of service attacks/suits with a couple limit of 4hrs signs.
This article is talking about kids, it's their parents who are responsible for their well being, NOT the tv. GTA is rated M, if you buy it for your 13yr old, you're asking for trouble. Anything in excess is a bad thing, if your kid wants to play a game 15hrs a day, it's time to get them a football or model rocket kit w/ FAA permit.
HA! Their plans were foiled by Sony.
They're not happy because they were all working on their own excessive CD DRM schemes and Sony just turned public opinion very much against it. This DRM-ing everything needs to stop.
When will they realize that when people buy something, they're not going to give it away, sure some kids might sell copies to their friends for a few dollars, but that's not much. The people who want to "pirate" the RIAA crap on the Intarnets don't buy the CDs, they get the leaked master copies from someone industry insider before the DRM is added. It's like gun control, it just negatively affects those who try to do everything the legal way. It has been and should be when you BUY a CD you can do anything with it but this list of a few things, they seem to want it to be you can't do anything with it except for this list of a few things. I havn't bought a new CD in years and don't plan on it anytime soon.
Ahh, the good olde power supply switches, same effect as pulling the plug without having to duck under desks and tables to find it. My last 350W had one, my current 400W unfortunately doesn't. I like seeing the nice blinking green glow telling me when my network connection is active, but it isn't that necessary when the PC is turned OFF. My laser printer has a real off switch that breaks the circuit and makes off really off. Unfortunately my family's Dell PC and HP inkjet printer are always semi-on, the active network connection so XP can tell you you have new messages at the login screen isn't worth the cost in constant power use. I think I'll unplug it considering it hasn't been used since I gave my mother my 5yr old laptop and got a printserver for the HP inkjet that's also always semi-on, I think I've trained the family enough so they turn off the powerstrip when it's not in use. I havn't had the time to use my DVD player this week, but the red "standby" led has been sucking up power, it's not much but it's going to add up when on 24/7 except when it's on. Yes, more devices need to have a real power cut off switches again, they used to then someone decided people were to dumb or lazy to continue using them.
Are there any inexpensive devices that will monitor the power use of individual devices? I'm even more interested in how much power is being used by all the standby lights around the house.
"It's no wonder Amazon plays along nicely."
I wonder if they're playing nice or are as pissed off at Sony as the people with infected computers. It's possible Sony 'forgot' to tell the CD retailers about the full effects of the rootkit in their new type of DRMed disks and/or just passed them off as their older type of "copy protected" disks that don't work with all CD players.
"The GK-1 is expected to cost between $10,000-$30,000 when marketed." They didn't specify if that's per unit or per airport or per security checkpoint. Either way 50 is going to get expensive. When it does someone is sure to PROFIT. The funding is going to come from higher ticket prices or taxes.
yes, I'm starting to like my 30min train ride to 2blocks from the office even more.
"the first stage of the test takes between 30-75 seconds"
30-75sec per person for just the first part, that's only going to add another few hours before boarding. If the terrorists can train their operatives to resist torture, you'd think they might be able to condition themselves to pass an audio lie detector. Say you ask if they're planning anything illegal and they don't believe hijacking a plane isn't illlegal, I think Seinfeld said it's only a lie if you don't believe it to be true.
"The one person found to be planning something illegal was the one who failed our test." Or they only caught one person planning something illegal and the rest got away.
"The rootkit was spyware that came along with something the user installed by choice, no different from weatherbug or any of that other silly BS."
Ok, so was it really installed by choice? I have no desire to spend my money on one of those disks and risk the security of my PC to test it. Is the user given a choice do hit "I don't agree" to an EULA and then return it to where they purchased it or does it take advantage of Windows autoplay to install without asking or informing the user first with a description of what it will do.
An EFF explanation of the ELUA said if you no longer own the physical disk you must delete any and all copies of anything on the disk. Shouldn't it be the same for the rootkit? If someone no longer owns the CD, maybe they returned it for the recall/exchange offer, shouldn't any software installed by it also have to be removed? It claims the ability to do this unpunished with a legalese shrinkwrap ELUA and shrinkwrap ELUAs have never stood up in court. If a paying customer returns or resells or trashes a protected Sony disk, the rootkit and DRM should go with the disk, of it doesn't easily go away then it's unwanted spyware and the legal owner of the computer should have the right to remove it, other than having to try their luck with Windows system restore or reformat or reinstall.
Sony screwed up and it looks like the customers are going to have to pay for their mistake with decreased performance, system crashes, having to deal with malware specifically created to take advantage of security holes created by the rootkit, including purchasing additional security software to prevent infection and the time and effort to remove them and repair the damage and/or the monetary costs if they don't have the time or know enough and have to hire someone to do it for them.