Oh yeah? How about when I rip a CD to HDD and it adds DRM to the files? How about when it doesn't let me watch a cable show (which I bloody payed for already) because it has DRM bits in it that say I can't watch it on my computer? How about not being able to record TV shows for personal use (which is perfectly legal) for the same reason? How about one day a vendor pushes a recall for certain DRM'ed files through a WMP update and I lose the ability to play my own freaking files?
I've been with BitComet for a while, I suffered through the tracker bans, and quite frankly if tracker operators think it wise to exclude people based on their software preference, it's really their loss because I can go elsewhere.
They don't ban clients just because of "software preference". Usually that client does something bad or dumb, which causes problems and unneeded extra bandwidth consumption for the tracker, for the peers or for everybody. Gratuitous extra bandwidth consumption in a piece of software whose main purpose is to reduce it is pretty stupid, you have to admit.
Furthermore, the BitComet client had its history of acting like an asshole, ignoring tracker restrictions, not respecting private flags and so on. And that's just bad form.
This is not fair use, it's how the copyright law works. In regard to computer code it specifically allows you to produce code that does the exact same thing, as long as you take the "clean start" approach. In simpler words, you have to work for it, not simply copy&paste.
Fair use is another section of the copyright law, which says you can use copyrighted material for free and without requiring permission in certain cases: teaching, news, criticism, review, research etc.
(Just putting things in place. A lot of people confuse fair use with "regular" copyright.)
That's because the FCC authorized the average volume of advertising can equal the peak volume of any given show (up to a max predetermined level). The louder the show, the louder the advertising. It is a constant race.
And in countries where only the max loudness level applies, they get around the limitation by processing the commercial sound in such a manner that is "feels" louder. I don't know the specifics, someone explained it to me once but I forget. It involves filtering the soundtrack and insisting on certain frequencies. It's not loud if you actually test it, but it feels louder to the human ear. Pretty damn mischevious.
Bullshit, the actors got paid that much because it was an insanely popular programme that depended on those characters being in it.
...AAAAnd why do you think they made the programme? Purely for the amuzement of the masses, or to rake in the dough through advertising? Do you really think they payed them millions and got nothing in return? Be serious. They afforded to pay the actors that much because they made at least double in the process.
It might feel wrong, but maybe we should just accept the free help... If someone offers you a dildo, conveniently pre-lubricated, and even offers to shove it if you'll be so kind as to turn around and bend over... should you "just accept the free help"?
"It was not intentional, we got to them practically by mistake, very easily, considering that those systems were not adapted (updated?), the techniques in use didn't really have care for the systems. I did not try to bring damages to the US state or US, if I knew that my actions would lead to damages I wouldn't have tried to do it", he declared.
Which IMHO contrasts wildly with the following fact, also reported by Los Angeles Times:
[..]the young man is the leader of a hacker team known as "WhiteHat Team". The main purpose of the group is to break into US administration computers to prove that they are not the most secure in the world, as it is believed.
My take (and I've been around Romania enough to speak the language and know what goes around): just another bunch of stupid kids with nothing better to do. They piss around with sensitive stuff like this, and when the FBI comes looking for them they whine "we didn't want to do it, it just 'happened'".
They don't even make a moral or political stand, they're simply stupid. There was an old saying, don't do the time if you can't do the time, wasn't it? It's all the more idiotical considering these are skilled people, this one claimed to have worked for IBM at some point. Way to throw it all out the window.
Granted, 54 years in jail is a rough punishment for stupidity. I doubt they'll be extradited, but they will have just as rough a time in Romania. The government is trying to make up for the country's standing negative fame on the Internet by dealing excessive prison sentences in such cases. And trust me, an American prison looks like a spa compared to the dumps they call prisons around here.
On the other hand, his daddy used to be the head of a local county hospital. I doubt he hasn't made some connections and dough, which would come in handy right about now. If the son is prosecuted in Romania there's a 50/50 chance he'll be able to bribe his way out of it clean or with a minimal sentence. Of course, the moment he steps out of the country he's fair game.
CPUs Jumped The Shark circa the 200MHz era. Except for gaming, these CPUs were quite fast enough for word processing, accounting, internet access, email, etceteras.
And even gaming is debatable. It's no secret that it's the one part of the software industry working most closely with the hardware industry to pump up the specs -- particularly graphic cards, CPU's, RAM, and as a side effect PSU's and motherboards.
Eye candy is nice, but not the decisive factor, it never was. Some of the best games I've ever played were on pathetic computers by today's standards, averaging in the ~100MHz area.
I tried the proof of concept with Firefox 2 and it FAILED for me. How? I use the NoScript extension. NoScript for the win once again, in case anyone still doubted its claim: There's a browser safer than Firefox... it is Firefox, with NoScript!
Let me get this straight, you waited for Outlook 2007 to move away from Pine? As in, it's the first Outlook that beats Pine? The Pine that hit version 4 in 1998 and had only minor version releases since? Seriously, almost a decade? Wow. Kudos to Microsoft. Took their time but finally made at least one customer happy.
If there's one thing that Microsoft does well, it's business. Their technical skills may be poorly managed, but they do killer business. How else do you think they kept their position if their software is so bad?
Try as they might, they won't be able to poison all the packages in your regular Linux distro. It makes sense that they're going to concentrate on the high profile ones. And by high profile I mean those that pose the biggest threat to Microsoft. Open Office is one. Mono, Samba are other prime targets. Perhaps Apache as well, Firefox, and so on. Perhaps they'll even go for the kernel, GCC or core parts of GNU.
These aren't knee-jerk reactions. I fear it is a long and carefully planned strategy.
Like I'm having a tought time teaching my 5yr-old that a bad-tasting medicine now will mean relief later, or that a lot of delicious chocolate now will mean a tummy ache later?
Have these people missed this talk when they were 5?
Just FWIW, color blindness is actually about not being able to percieve one of the colors in RGB: green, red or blue, in roughly this order of how widespread they are. People who percieve only shades of gray are not technically "color blind" and that condition is extremely rare. Not that it shouldn't be also considered, of course, it's just that it's VERY hard to come up with a color combination that will work well for ALL kinds of color blindness AND for normal people at the same time. So the best alternative is to just use symbols.
Why on sweet God does Firefox accept IP numbers encoded in hex??? I can't see the reason. And even if there is one, why doesn't anti-phishing consider this?
The whitelisting is not such a bad idea. It certainly beats the blacklisting, which is inherently a stupid idea because you never end the race to keep the list updated.
But why not take whitelisting the extra step and put it in the hands of the user? Allow the user to "flag" sites he goes to as good, and make the flag visually imposing in some manner. Or, even better, deduce if the site is one he usually visits from his browsing history and flag it automatically.
And how about using Bayesian statistics to compute phishing warnings? If a site with a URL that has a very low (or zero) count in the history contains words that resemble to almost 100% the content of another site which is visited frequently... You get the idea.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yeah? How about when I rip a CD to HDD and it adds DRM to the files? How about when it doesn't let me watch a cable show (which I bloody payed for already) because it has DRM bits in it that say I can't watch it on my computer? How about not being able to record TV shows for personal use (which is perfectly legal) for the same reason? How about one day a vendor pushes a recall for certain DRM'ed files through a WMP update and I lose the ability to play my own freaking files?
Yeah, WMP and DRM are really "good" to me.
Furthermore, the BitComet client had its history of acting like an asshole, ignoring tracker restrictions, not respecting private flags and so on. And that's just bad form.
This is not fair use, it's how the copyright law works. In regard to computer code it specifically allows you to produce code that does the exact same thing, as long as you take the "clean start" approach. In simpler words, you have to work for it, not simply copy&paste.
Fair use is another section of the copyright law, which says you can use copyrighted material for free and without requiring permission in certain cases: teaching, news, criticism, review, research etc.
(Just putting things in place. A lot of people confuse fair use with "regular" copyright.)
It might feel wrong, but maybe we should just accept the free help... If someone offers you a dildo, conveniently pre-lubricated, and even offers to shove it if you'll be so kind as to turn around and bend over... should you "just accept the free help"?
http://www.realitatea.net/27615_Hackerul-roman-su
Rough translation:
Which IMHO contrasts wildly with the following fact, also reported by Los Angeles Times:
My take (and I've been around Romania enough to speak the language and know what goes around): just another bunch of stupid kids with nothing better to do. They piss around with sensitive stuff like this, and when the FBI comes looking for them they whine "we didn't want to do it, it just 'happened'".
They don't even make a moral or political stand, they're simply stupid. There was an old saying, don't do the time if you can't do the time, wasn't it? It's all the more idiotical considering these are skilled people, this one claimed to have worked for IBM at some point. Way to throw it all out the window.
Granted, 54 years in jail is a rough punishment for stupidity. I doubt they'll be extradited, but they will have just as rough a time in Romania. The government is trying to make up for the country's standing negative fame on the Internet by dealing excessive prison sentences in such cases. And trust me, an American prison looks like a spa compared to the dumps they call prisons around here.
On the other hand, his daddy used to be the head of a local county hospital. I doubt he hasn't made some connections and dough, which would come in handy right about now. If the son is prosecuted in Romania there's a 50/50 chance he'll be able to bribe his way out of it clean or with a minimal sentence. Of course, the moment he steps out of the country he's fair game.
Eye candy is nice, but not the decisive factor, it never was. Some of the best games I've ever played were on pathetic computers by today's standards, averaging in the ~100MHz area.
Sometimes I really wish we could moderate stories too. Slap a -1 Troll or Flamebait on stuff like this one.
Sorry, but to me self-recycling means "walks to the bin by itself".
He must be French, you insensitive clod!
My bad, I got too happy too soon. It had to do with letting FF remember the password, of course, not with JavaScript.
But on a related note, it's good to see that if you only allow FF to remember usernames, they're not affected by this.
I tried the proof of concept with Firefox 2 and it FAILED for me. How? I use the NoScript extension. NoScript for the win once again, in case anyone still doubted its claim: There's a browser safer than Firefox... it is Firefox, with NoScript!
There was a saying going something like "the average IQ of a group is the IQ of the smartest member divided by the number of members."
Let me get this straight, you waited for Outlook 2007 to move away from Pine? As in, it's the first Outlook that beats Pine? The Pine that hit version 4 in 1998 and had only minor version releases since? Seriously, almost a decade? Wow. Kudos to Microsoft. Took their time but finally made at least one customer happy.
We cannot afford to be quiet just based on the off chance that "someone" will come along and magically fix things.
And no, "we" are not smart. People in general are and can be incredibly stupid in many ways.
Did they happen to mention if the Power Glove was the ONLY thing he was wearing?...
If there's one thing that Microsoft does well, it's business. Their technical skills may be poorly managed, but they do killer business. How else do you think they kept their position if their software is so bad?
Try as they might, they won't be able to poison all the packages in your regular Linux distro. It makes sense that they're going to concentrate on the high profile ones. And by high profile I mean those that pose the biggest threat to Microsoft. Open Office is one. Mono, Samba are other prime targets. Perhaps Apache as well, Firefox, and so on. Perhaps they'll even go for the kernel, GCC or core parts of GNU.
These aren't knee-jerk reactions. I fear it is a long and carefully planned strategy.
Like I'm having a tought time teaching my 5yr-old that a bad-tasting medicine now will mean relief later, or that a lot of delicious chocolate now will mean a tummy ache later?
Have these people missed this talk when they were 5?
Just FWIW, color blindness is actually about not being able to percieve one of the colors in RGB: green, red or blue, in roughly this order of how widespread they are. People who percieve only shades of gray are not technically "color blind" and that condition is extremely rare. Not that it shouldn't be also considered, of course, it's just that it's VERY hard to come up with a color combination that will work well for ALL kinds of color blindness AND for normal people at the same time. So the best alternative is to just use symbols.
Why on sweet God does Firefox accept IP numbers encoded in hex??? I can't see the reason. And even if there is one, why doesn't anti-phishing consider this?
The whitelisting is not such a bad idea. It certainly beats the blacklisting, which is inherently a stupid idea because you never end the race to keep the list updated.
But why not take whitelisting the extra step and put it in the hands of the user? Allow the user to "flag" sites he goes to as good, and make the flag visually imposing in some manner. Or, even better, deduce if the site is one he usually visits from his browsing history and flag it automatically.
And how about using Bayesian statistics to compute phishing warnings? If a site with a URL that has a very low (or zero) count in the history contains words that resemble to almost 100% the content of another site which is visited frequently... You get the idea.