Virtually every CFL I have had lasted less long than an incandesent. I major plus for this new technology would be a low wattage bright bulb that fits current fixtures. I have a lot of fixtures that cant use them, as well as outdoors or inside the oven.
What kind of CFLs did you use? In the last 3 years since I started using CFLs I've had to replace one, and that was the front porch light. When I replaced it it had been in use for 2.5 years, and we also leave the front porch light on all the time so that was constant use, not off and on useage. Also have you looked at what's available lately? CFLs are much more compact now and will fit under most lamp harps. You can get CFLs for smaller sockets, for outdoor spotlights and yellow bug lights which will probably cover most of what you said you wanted them for. I'm not sure about using them in an oven, but an outdoor rated one might be fine there. I believe I saw some of the smaller sockets CFLs at Wal-mart last time I was buying lightbulbs so you don't have to buy these only online.
I'd want neither bans nor taxes. Rather, leadership by example. Here's what I don't get: the State of California itself purchases a huge number of light bulbs of every sort. Why don't they just pass new procurement rules? If the government itself uses only Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs (or whatever's trendy), the rest of us Californians will be exposed to them.
It's certainly a good idea that they do use CFLs, even without a law. However, how many people pay any attention to what kinds of bulbs are being used in public buildings? I know I pretty much never notice and doubt I'm unique in this, so I really doubt this would help encourage very many, if any people to switch. I don't think the proposed ban is a good idea but it's going to take more than just using them and hoping people notice to get people to switch. Maybe a better idea would be work with the utilities and set it up so each household could get the cost of one pack of CFLs deducted from their electric bill by presenting a receipt showing their purchase. (Only one time per household, not monthly.) That would help encourage people to try them ("Hey, free lightbulbs!") and if they like them they'll probably buy more.
This is mostly a Political Marketing statement, trying to forestall bans or taxes on incandescent bulbs, as although incandescents costs more in the long run, they are cheaper when you pay at the register so people still buy a lot of them.
Why? General Electric is probably the largest manufacturer of CFLs. Because there's more to the manufacturing process of a CFL, they're more expensive to make. Assuming that they have a 10% profit margin on both, the CFL bulb will make them more money.
GE was also smart enough to go along with Wal-mart when they decided to do their big CFL push (I think they started about a year ago) which has helped them to increase CFL sales greatly while their incandescent sales decline. (I read about this in an article shortly before Wal-mart started their CFL push in the stores.) Still I can't say that this isn't at least partly to try to forestall the bans. It would be good business to try and forestall those so they don't lose more incandescent sales than possible, after all. Since CFLs last much longer so each CFL sale takes the place of at least 4 incandescents, even thought CFLs cost more they end up bring in less profit to GE (and other light bulb producters). I'm sure GE would like people to have the option of buying incandescents so that they can make money of them when they do.
I agree. And I should say that I dislike CFLs as lights anyway. They get dimmer the longer you use them (at least, the ones I have do), and are annoying in a lot of ways that everyone always points out when this subject comes up.
That's strange, I've never experienced that with them and I have some bulbs going on three years old now. Even the one in the porchlight (that burned out at 2.5 years) didn't get dimmer and I was kinda expecting it would being out in the cold. Have you tried any recently? I first tried CFLs back around 1997/1998 and hated them. The bulb was way too harsh, it made that high-pitched whine too, but the ones I've been buying for the past three years aren't harsh at all and I don't hear any whining noise from them. I've gotten all mine at Wal-mart, not special ordered online or bought at a lighting store so the ones I'm using are readily available. If you haven't tried them in a while consider giving them another chance, I know I hated them with a passion when I first tried them but they have improved drastically since then!
You and I both know that the majority of CFLs are not recycled and will not be recycled. Or at least we both know this; at the very least, I do. The mercury in CFLs will simply end up in the ground water, which is good for no one but manufacturers of water filtration systems.
Something really needs to be done about that, especially now that they're starting to get used more (since Wal-mart has really started pushing them more people in areas that have Wal-marts are buying CFLs over incandescents). Around here I've been unable to find anywhere to take them, which I'm not to happy about. Fortunately I've not had many burn out since I switched to them a few years ago. It would be nice if they would add a bin at the recycling centers for them. Even if it's a small bin instead of a full-sized dumpster level one it'd help. If one was available I'd be sure to keep my dead CFLs until I was going to drop off other recycling and drop them off too. I suspect a fair amount of people would do so as well since it'd be convenient. That won't get everyone doing it, but it'd certainly help.
but still too dim for good room lighting.
LEDs are pretty cool for certain uses, but they SUCK for general purpose lighting.
Maybe now, but I think they'll work fine for them in the future. I'm not disputing the figures BTW, but basing this based on a small LED night-light we have in our bathroom. It has two LED bulbs in it, one is in the middle with a reflector above and below it. The other is on the top with a reflector below it. It puts out enough light that you could read by it if you had to. For general room lighting you'd want something much brighter yes, but the point is this thing's just designed to be a night light and it's getting close. Bigger/more bulbs, larger/more reflectors and you could get there without too much trouble. So I do think LEDs will be quite useable as general room lighting someday. Now whether or not they'll ever be inexpensive enough is a totally different matter. Also I have no idea if they'll be more or less efficient than CFLs ever. They may never be a viable replacement in general but I'll bet they'll get to a point where you wouldn't mind buying them to use for difficult to change bulbs at home.
I followed the developer link from Apple. Has anyone actually gone there? It looks like this is a hoax created to "scare" people into not pirating his program. He admits that it has backfired and actually driven away legit users.
Sure, he says that now, but which statement of his are we to believe? It doesn't look like the source code is available so the only way to test it is to install the program, find a pirated key, try it and see if you lose your home directory. I'd say it's far safer to just find another program and avoid this guy entirely.
Also note this:
However, this is not the case in reality. The whole purpose was to create a scare campaign. You can download, the file linked from the main page, which is now down(the link is still intact here), and check it for yourself. It has been this way since 2/7/07.
It was my hope that by creating a scare campaign, I could stop wasting time writing copy protection routines to be broken over and over. But, I was wrong, it backfired. People started buying multiple keys, which I never intended, and in the beginning when the protection was in place, people who did not even know they had committed piracy or what piracy was were left in the dark. Legitimate users started fearing the program, which I never imagined. (Emphasis added.)
Together these imply the deletion code was implemented and in the program prior to 2/7/2007. Based on the information available there's no way to tell how long it was in there, but it sounds like it was removed only on 2/7/2007.
So I don't think it was a hoax, I think the guy really did it, found out that it was the worst mistake he'd ever made and is now trying to do damage control. Personally I wouldn't use any program from him, at the least he lied about the code and has proven himself untrustworthy.
I'm not saying she doesn't exist, but her having a wikipedia page doesn't prove anything to me.
Very true, but the information on it can lead to much more substantial proof. It includes a quote from PJ explaining why she started the blog. That quote mentions that she started it shortly before the SCO lawsuits came about. Try doing a whois on the groklaw.com domain and you'll discover that the domain name was originally created on September 2, 2006. SCO didn't file a lawsuit against IBM until March of 2003! The Wikipedia article on the SCO controversies says that SCO first started making noises about their IP being in Linux at the beginning of 2003.
So, best case scenario is that Groklaw was created four months before SCO even started their whole campaign of FUD and lawsuits. Essentially SCO's motion is implying that IBM has a time machine, after all, how else could they have known to setup a shill site to publicly comment on a lawsuit that wouldn't even be hinted at for four months and wouldn't actually be filed for seven months.
I think it's safe to say that the odds of PJ being an IBM attorney are incredibly slim.
Unless it's some really weird DRM I haven't heard about, it shouldn't affect the sound quality at all. DRM is about protecting/locking the data, not the actual audio output. A DRM'ed file should output the exact same audio data as the non-DRM'ed file, if both are made from the same source and encoded with the same CODEC and parameters.
I don't remember the exact details but at least one DRM system was aimed mainly at preventing you from accessing the actual CDA tracks on the CD when you used it on your computer. Instead you'd get DRM'd Windows Audio files that were lower quality than the regular CDA tracks. I'm pretty sure it was pretty easily defeated (like by disabling auto-run) but they actually tried using DRM to give their legit customers a lower-quality audio experience if they dared to want to listen to their CD on their computer.
I agree they should both be the same, but what should happen often isn't what really happens with the recording industry. After all, they should have been adapting to the changing marketplace instead of using legislation (that they bought) and lawsuits to try and keep their old outmoded business model alive.
While that might be true in your little corner of the world, it's certainly not true worldwide. In Asia and Africa (and possibly South America) "pirate" CDs sell like hotcakes. Go there and you'll see some at every street corner. I suppose that this is what the RIAA is pointing at.
It very well may be what they're pointing at, but the fact remains that the RIAA directs most of their "sue 'em all" campaign at people in the US, NOT in Asia/Africa/South America. I'm sure part of this is because the RIAA is an US organization (although they sure manage to overcome that when they want, like the recent crap with AllOfMp3).
The Recording Industry Association of America represents the recording industry, like record labels and distributors, not artists.
Yes, but they like to use the artists for sympathy in their anti-piracy propaganda. But don't take my word for it, check out this page on their website where we have the following (emphasis added):
Though it would appear that record companies are still making their money and that artists are still getting rich, these impressions are mere fallacies. Each sale by a pirate represents a lost legitimate sale, thereby depriving not only the record company of profits, but also the artist, producer, songwriter, publisher, retailer,... and the list goes on.
...
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the creative artists lose. Musicians, singers, songwriters and producers don't get the royalties and fees they've earned. Virtually all artists (95%) depend on these fees to make a living. The artists also depend on their reputations, which are damaged by the inferior quality of pirated copies sold to the public.
So yes, they DO claim they're doing this for the sake of the artists, you and the grandparent are both correct. The RIAA are claiming to be fighting piracy at least partially for the artists' benefit (although note it says "perhaps most importantly" about the artists) while at the same time trying to stab the artists in the back (again) by lowering their royalties even though they say that 95% of artists depend on those royalties to make a living. That last bit about artists' reputations suffering from sales of inferior quality pirated copies is kinda questionable in this day and age. A pirated CD should sound the same as the real thing, sometimes better since they'll remove any DRM crap from it.
Personally I don't see how they do it, having a soul-ectomy must be a job requirement.
If anyone doesn't think viral marketing works - then they should read this. The first I heard about Serenity was on a friend's blog. I think they'd got into a preview screening on the basis that they'd blog about it. I then watched the first eight minutes of it which was being shown to promote the film and enjoyed it. I then went to see the film and enjoyed it and thought it was worth it too.
It was indeed a great viral marketing campaign, and most of the people/groups who participated will either be directly affected by Universal's actions (by getting a letter from Universal's lawyers) or know someone who was (often through being participants on a site that has been targeted). The thing that Universal isn't considering is that viral marketing can work to put out the negative word at least as easily as it puts out the positive ones. (It's likely it will be even more effective because people that are mad about something tend to complain to more people than they would if they were complementing something.) This will affect the sales of Serenity going forward, but Universal probably doesn't care about that as they've made the majority of the money from it already (or at least they think they have). I don't think it'll stop there though, people are going to look up what current and future stuff (as well as past titles) Universal owns, and they're going to tell others what those are and what Universal has done to fans of Serenity. It's going to have a financial impact, although it's hard to say how big of one. Univeral's throwing away future income here. I know I'm not going to be going to see any of their movies or buying any of their DVDs from now on and I doubt I'm alone.
Of course Universal will attribute any drop in sales to piracy and never figure out it's their own damn fault.
And, finally two points also worth mentioning. Firstly the blogs may be in contravention of the blog providers' terms of service:
I think it's safe to say that Google doesn't feel that they are or they'd have already taken them down using that as the reason.
and secondly, they may also be illegal under Australian law:
Perhaps, but Google's a US company.
So at what point does the expression of a "different perspective" become an incitement to violence or intimidation?
Sounds like something for the courts to decide to me. That appears to be what Google believes as well. Really, are you sure you'd want Google to play judge & jury over something like this? I'd rather they let the courts decide it and then follow whatever order the court issues, which is exactly what they're doing.
If you lock them down, they'll work but you'll have a lot of complaints as people are restricted from using the computers for any purpose you haven't specifically allowed. In a business environment, this is fine, you pay the people to work and they aren't using the computer as a toy. In an educational environment though, you want students to be able to experiment.
This makes no sense, the article's talking about a LAB, and unless your school's very different than most the lab has specific classes taught in it through most (if not all) of the day. The machines need only the software for those classes and nothing else. Allowing students to "experiment" on a lab machine and hosing it affects the teachers' ability to teach those lab classes. So taking this attitude actually harms the students that need to be learning.
I've done systems administration at both college level and K-12. Any software that was purchased or needed for the labs were installed quickly, and there were no complaints from the teachers about anything else being missing. The students will complain, yes, but if they want to break a computer they can do that at home unless you have a lab specifically for that type of thing. You don't want students experimenting and breaking the computers needed for typing class.
What I would do is try to create a network disk image that could be quickly and easily reverted to when the machines inevitably get messed up. Let the students play and learn, a large part of learning is in messing things up and trying to fix them.
In the right context this is true, but you have to consider how their messing things up will affect others. You're going to get yelled at a lot more if the teachers can't teach their lab classes because Johnny Hacker broke half the computers in the lab trying out some "l33t tool" he found online. (And note it won't be just the teachers yelling, you'll get parents mad that their kids are not learning because the admins allowed Johnny Hacker to break things. Those parents have a tendency to complain not to IT, but to the school board and the superintendant.)
The reality of K-12 systems administration doesn't allow for noble ideals of letting the kids hack to learn. Most schools have limited resources to buy computers, most have only one computer lab which must accomodate all the students and all classes that need it. If you let the kids break the computers in those circumstances you've royally failed to do your job and you will hear about it -- a lot. If the school is very lucky they may have a second lab that can be left more open for the kids to hack on, but that's not very common.
I've been using Vern (Virtual Environment Resource Navigator) for many years now. I'm not sure how he handles doing the virtual desktops but it works quite well. I run a 4x4 grid so I have 16 virtual desktops and I put one application per window. (Granted I rarely use all 16 simultaneously.) I've only encountered a few programs that refuse to stay on their desktop and display on all of them, and nothing I use regularly does that. (Excluding Rainlander but I want it to be on all desktops. I had to set my clock widgit with the Yahoo! Widgit Engine to stay sticky.) Vern reminds me a lot of the pager I used in FVWM back when I was in college. I've always preferred that style pager vs the one in Gnome/KDE so I'm quite happy with it. I definitely recommend you give it a try if you've been wanting decent virtual desktops on Windows.
I know that with Comcast, they have a fairly complete newsfeed, but they limit you to 2GB per month of transfer; basically if you want to leech more than that, you have to go to a different provider like Giganews.
Comcast has been outsourcing their Usenet to Giganews for about 4 years now. It used to be just 1GB a month at first, then went up to 2GB. Giganews is one of the best providers, they just recently upped their retention to 90 days in binary groups. It'll drop gradually as traffic increases but they do storage upgrades fairly regular to keep the retention very high.:)
If I register with e.g GigaNews or whoever, they have at the very least my contact / credit card details, and even if they may not leave private information to just about anyone, I wouldn't be too confident in antipiracy organizations not being capable of using their user registries to proceed with their investigation.
If you're uploading, then yes this is very true. However if you're just downloading it becomes very difficult for the MPAA, RIAA or anyone else to get Giganews/etc. to turn over their records. Basically they'd have to get a court order to do so and to get the court order they'd have to know already that you were downloading stuff illegally. Also most of the lawsuits have been aimed at those who've uploaded instead of downloaded anyway. So just don't upload anything and don't post any requests for things and you should be fine.
And people will continue to upload, there are providers in other countries, providers that intentionally keep logs for just a few days (just to check for spammers) then delete them, and so on. Their even used to be providers that would let you pay with a money order making it even more difficult for you to be tracked. I don't know if any still do this, but I wouldn't be surprised if at least a few do.
Be damn sure you read the fine print though, I recall that one provider at least used to burn their logs off onto CDs/DVDs and keep them indefinitely. I don't know if they still do so I won't name names, but I wouldn't want to do business with a place like that just on general principle.
I guess Autorun on by default is another flaw in Windows, but I wasn't aware that USB devices would autorun by default. Are iPods presenting themselves as CDRoms now?
Windows XP at least, by default, autoruns on ALL removeable drives/media. I have external firewire and USB hard drives, it would try to autorun them too doing a scan of the drive contents to figure out what to run or what options to put into the menu it'll show you if it fails to find an autorun file. I also use Bestcrypt and it did the same thing on the virtual encrypted drives whenever they were mounted. Ditto for my USB flash drives. It really seems that Microsoft thinks everyone needs to have autorun because they're too stupid to figure out what to do with any removeable drive on their own.
The solution is to install TweakUI and disable autoplay on all drives. Then you don't have to worry about it anymore and it stops annoying the hell out of you. (It's damned annoying with external hard drives.)
I think he may be refering to a US law that protects minor's information. I'm not sure the details of the law or what this spyware is collecting exactly, but this could be an issue.
You're thinking of COPA probably, which is the Child Online Protection Act. The magic age for it is 13, anyone 13 or older doesn't need special handling if you collect personal data on users (which is broadly defined, E-mail addresses count so just running a forum you have to deal with COPA, or do what many do and just modify the software to not allow anyone who says they're under 13 to register. Yes I'm sure the kids are smart enough to go try again and lie, but that's not your problem any longer.) Since the program would be monitoring web surfing and such I would think COPA would apply to it, but I believe a Teen rating would put the recommended minimum age above COPA's cutoff. So sadly, EA probably can get away with this in regards to COPA since a parent would be logically assumed to have approved the child buying/installing the game if they're under the minimum age.
I'm not a lawyer though so my understanding of this may not be totally accurate.
I wonder how many false positives he got? I suspect the answer will illustrate why a white hat wouldn't be doing this sort of thing.
He took those into consideration, from TFA:
The code swept in a vast number of false or unverifiable matches. Working part time for several months, I sifted the data and manually compared photographs, ages and other data, until enhanced privacy features MySpace launched in June began frustrating the analysis.
Excluding a handful of obvious fakes, I confirmed 744 sex offenders with MySpace profiles, after an examination of about a third of the data. Of those, 497 are registered for sex crimes against children. In this group, six of them are listed as repeat offenders, though Lubrano's previous convictions were not in the registry, so this number may be low. At least 243 of the 497 have convictions in 2000 or later.
I'm afraid that any vigilantes who decide to use his software after it's released won't be so thorough.
Yes, children are resilient, but another instinct that is supposedly hardwired into us is protection of our offspring. This (perhaps more than the "I want government to raise our kids" thing) is a big factor in heightened reactions to crimes against children.
I would argue that wanting the government to protect your children violates that supposed hardwired protection of offspring instinct. If you're trying to shove the job off on someone else then you don't care very much about how well it's done now do you? To be fair this isn't always true, most people that hire nannies or babysitters are careful about who they hire, but wanting the government to do they job by passing laws is NOT the same thing and won't have the same effect.
Add in the more rational sympathy for living beings that can't protect themselves like adults can, and you can end up with people overreacting to, and often overestimating the frequency of, these crimes.
I'm not sure this is the case, if it was you'd see people just as up in arms about protecting the mentally handicapped who can be well past the age we consider childhood but are less able to protect themselves than most children. Yet we never see that happen, it's always "think of the children", not "think of those who can't defend themselves, regardless of age".
Besides, all the research I've ever seen shows that overwhelmingly most sexual abuse of children happens by relatives or other adults that are close to them (like close family friends). Sex offender lists don't help much when uncle John's sneaking around and molesting your kids behind your back now do they?
I'm going to make a general comment - I find MySpace unbearably creepy and exhibitionistic. I wonder if its purpose was to provide titillation and unhealthy fascination in young people because it appears to be doing an excellent job at that.
I think you'll find that it's mostly the young people providing the "titillation and unhealthy fascination" to each other.
They may already have, yesterday when I went to watch a video Youtube told me that I needed a newer version of Flash. I had to go get the latest version (I'm running Firefox on Windows XP) and install that before it would play the video. I'm not sure if it was just that one video or if they're changing all of them though.
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What kind of CFLs did you use? In the last 3 years since I started using CFLs I've had to replace one, and that was the front porch light. When I replaced it it had been in use for 2.5 years, and we also leave the front porch light on all the time so that was constant use, not off and on useage. Also have you looked at what's available lately? CFLs are much more compact now and will fit under most lamp harps. You can get CFLs for smaller sockets, for outdoor spotlights and yellow bug lights which will probably cover most of what you said you wanted them for. I'm not sure about using them in an oven, but an outdoor rated one might be fine there. I believe I saw some of the smaller sockets CFLs at Wal-mart last time I was buying lightbulbs so you don't have to buy these only online.
It's certainly a good idea that they do use CFLs, even without a law. However, how many people pay any attention to what kinds of bulbs are being used in public buildings? I know I pretty much never notice and doubt I'm unique in this, so I really doubt this would help encourage very many, if any people to switch. I don't think the proposed ban is a good idea but it's going to take more than just using them and hoping people notice to get people to switch. Maybe a better idea would be work with the utilities and set it up so each household could get the cost of one pack of CFLs deducted from their electric bill by presenting a receipt showing their purchase. (Only one time per household, not monthly.) That would help encourage people to try them ("Hey, free lightbulbs!") and if they like them they'll probably buy more.
GE was also smart enough to go along with Wal-mart when they decided to do their big CFL push (I think they started about a year ago) which has helped them to increase CFL sales greatly while their incandescent sales decline. (I read about this in an article shortly before Wal-mart started their CFL push in the stores.) Still I can't say that this isn't at least partly to try to forestall the bans. It would be good business to try and forestall those so they don't lose more incandescent sales than possible, after all. Since CFLs last much longer so each CFL sale takes the place of at least 4 incandescents, even thought CFLs cost more they end up bring in less profit to GE (and other light bulb producters). I'm sure GE would like people to have the option of buying incandescents so that they can make money of them when they do.
That's strange, I've never experienced that with them and I have some bulbs going on three years old now. Even the one in the porchlight (that burned out at 2.5 years) didn't get dimmer and I was kinda expecting it would being out in the cold. Have you tried any recently? I first tried CFLs back around 1997/1998 and hated them. The bulb was way too harsh, it made that high-pitched whine too, but the ones I've been buying for the past three years aren't harsh at all and I don't hear any whining noise from them. I've gotten all mine at Wal-mart, not special ordered online or bought at a lighting store so the ones I'm using are readily available. If you haven't tried them in a while consider giving them another chance, I know I hated them with a passion when I first tried them but they have improved drastically since then!
Something really needs to be done about that, especially now that they're starting to get used more (since Wal-mart has really started pushing them more people in areas that have Wal-marts are buying CFLs over incandescents). Around here I've been unable to find anywhere to take them, which I'm not to happy about. Fortunately I've not had many burn out since I switched to them a few years ago. It would be nice if they would add a bin at the recycling centers for them. Even if it's a small bin instead of a full-sized dumpster level one it'd help. If one was available I'd be sure to keep my dead CFLs until I was going to drop off other recycling and drop them off too. I suspect a fair amount of people would do so as well since it'd be convenient. That won't get everyone doing it, but it'd certainly help.
Maybe now, but I think they'll work fine for them in the future. I'm not disputing the figures BTW, but basing this based on a small LED night-light we have in our bathroom. It has two LED bulbs in it, one is in the middle with a reflector above and below it. The other is on the top with a reflector below it. It puts out enough light that you could read by it if you had to. For general room lighting you'd want something much brighter yes, but the point is this thing's just designed to be a night light and it's getting close. Bigger/more bulbs, larger/more reflectors and you could get there without too much trouble. So I do think LEDs will be quite useable as general room lighting someday. Now whether or not they'll ever be inexpensive enough is a totally different matter. Also I have no idea if they'll be more or less efficient than CFLs ever. They may never be a viable replacement in general but I'll bet they'll get to a point where you wouldn't mind buying them to use for difficult to change bulbs at home.
Sure, he says that now, but which statement of his are we to believe? It doesn't look like the source code is available so the only way to test it is to install the program, find a pirated key, try it and see if you lose your home directory. I'd say it's far safer to just find another program and avoid this guy entirely.
Also note this:
Together these imply the deletion code was implemented and in the program prior to 2/7/2007. Based on the information available there's no way to tell how long it was in there, but it sounds like it was removed only on 2/7/2007.
So I don't think it was a hoax, I think the guy really did it, found out that it was the worst mistake he'd ever made and is now trying to do damage control. Personally I wouldn't use any program from him, at the least he lied about the code and has proven himself untrustworthy.
Very true, but the information on it can lead to much more substantial proof. It includes a quote from PJ explaining why she started the blog. That quote mentions that she started it shortly before the SCO lawsuits came about. Try doing a whois on the groklaw.com domain and you'll discover that the domain name was originally created on September 2, 2006. SCO didn't file a lawsuit against IBM until March of 2003! The Wikipedia article on the SCO controversies says that SCO first started making noises about their IP being in Linux at the beginning of 2003.
So, best case scenario is that Groklaw was created four months before SCO even started their whole campaign of FUD and lawsuits. Essentially SCO's motion is implying that IBM has a time machine, after all, how else could they have known to setup a shill site to publicly comment on a lawsuit that wouldn't even be hinted at for four months and wouldn't actually be filed for seven months.
I think it's safe to say that the odds of PJ being an IBM attorney are incredibly slim.
Definitely, but given his history he'll probably sue the Florida Bar (again).
I don't remember the exact details but at least one DRM system was aimed mainly at preventing you from accessing the actual CDA tracks on the CD when you used it on your computer. Instead you'd get DRM'd Windows Audio files that were lower quality than the regular CDA tracks. I'm pretty sure it was pretty easily defeated (like by disabling auto-run) but they actually tried using DRM to give their legit customers a lower-quality audio experience if they dared to want to listen to their CD on their computer.
I agree they should both be the same, but what should happen often isn't what really happens with the recording industry. After all, they should have been adapting to the changing marketplace instead of using legislation (that they bought) and lawsuits to try and keep their old outmoded business model alive.
It very well may be what they're pointing at, but the fact remains that the RIAA directs most of their "sue 'em all" campaign at people in the US, NOT in Asia/Africa/South America. I'm sure part of this is because the RIAA is an US organization (although they sure manage to overcome that when they want, like the recent crap with AllOfMp3).
Yes, but they like to use the artists for sympathy in their anti-piracy propaganda. But don't take my word for it, check out this page on their website where we have the following (emphasis added):
So yes, they DO claim they're doing this for the sake of the artists, you and the grandparent are both correct. The RIAA are claiming to be fighting piracy at least partially for the artists' benefit (although note it says "perhaps most importantly" about the artists) while at the same time trying to stab the artists in the back (again) by lowering their royalties even though they say that 95% of artists depend on those royalties to make a living. That last bit about artists' reputations suffering from sales of inferior quality pirated copies is kinda questionable in this day and age. A pirated CD should sound the same as the real thing, sometimes better since they'll remove any DRM crap from it.
Personally I don't see how they do it, having a soul-ectomy must be a job requirement.
There's no need to turn off DHT completely to do that, uTorrent allows you to turn it off on a per-torrent basis.
It was indeed a great viral marketing campaign, and most of the people/groups who participated will either be directly affected by Universal's actions (by getting a letter from Universal's lawyers) or know someone who was (often through being participants on a site that has been targeted). The thing that Universal isn't considering is that viral marketing can work to put out the negative word at least as easily as it puts out the positive ones. (It's likely it will be even more effective because people that are mad about something tend to complain to more people than they would if they were complementing something.) This will affect the sales of Serenity going forward, but Universal probably doesn't care about that as they've made the majority of the money from it already (or at least they think they have). I don't think it'll stop there though, people are going to look up what current and future stuff (as well as past titles) Universal owns, and they're going to tell others what those are and what Universal has done to fans of Serenity. It's going to have a financial impact, although it's hard to say how big of one. Univeral's throwing away future income here. I know I'm not going to be going to see any of their movies or buying any of their DVDs from now on and I doubt I'm alone.
Of course Universal will attribute any drop in sales to piracy and never figure out it's their own damn fault.
I think it's safe to say that Google doesn't feel that they are or they'd have already taken them down using that as the reason.
Perhaps, but Google's a US company.
Sounds like something for the courts to decide to me. That appears to be what Google believes as well. Really, are you sure you'd want Google to play judge & jury over something like this? I'd rather they let the courts decide it and then follow whatever order the court issues, which is exactly what they're doing.
This makes no sense, the article's talking about a LAB, and unless your school's very different than most the lab has specific classes taught in it through most (if not all) of the day. The machines need only the software for those classes and nothing else. Allowing students to "experiment" on a lab machine and hosing it affects the teachers' ability to teach those lab classes. So taking this attitude actually harms the students that need to be learning.
I've done systems administration at both college level and K-12. Any software that was purchased or needed for the labs were installed quickly, and there were no complaints from the teachers about anything else being missing. The students will complain, yes, but if they want to break a computer they can do that at home unless you have a lab specifically for that type of thing. You don't want students experimenting and breaking the computers needed for typing class.
In the right context this is true, but you have to consider how their messing things up will affect others. You're going to get yelled at a lot more if the teachers can't teach their lab classes because Johnny Hacker broke half the computers in the lab trying out some "l33t tool" he found online. (And note it won't be just the teachers yelling, you'll get parents mad that their kids are not learning because the admins allowed Johnny Hacker to break things. Those parents have a tendency to complain not to IT, but to the school board and the superintendant.)
The reality of K-12 systems administration doesn't allow for noble ideals of letting the kids hack to learn. Most schools have limited resources to buy computers, most have only one computer lab which must accomodate all the students and all classes that need it. If you let the kids break the computers in those circumstances you've royally failed to do your job and you will hear about it -- a lot. If the school is very lucky they may have a second lab that can be left more open for the kids to hack on, but that's not very common.
I've been using Vern (Virtual Environment Resource Navigator) for many years now. I'm not sure how he handles doing the virtual desktops but it works quite well. I run a 4x4 grid so I have 16 virtual desktops and I put one application per window. (Granted I rarely use all 16 simultaneously.) I've only encountered a few programs that refuse to stay on their desktop and display on all of them, and nothing I use regularly does that. (Excluding Rainlander but I want it to be on all desktops. I had to set my clock widgit with the Yahoo! Widgit Engine to stay sticky.) Vern reminds me a lot of the pager I used in FVWM back when I was in college. I've always preferred that style pager vs the one in Gnome/KDE so I'm quite happy with it. I definitely recommend you give it a try if you've been wanting decent virtual desktops on Windows.
Comcast has been outsourcing their Usenet to Giganews for about 4 years now. It used to be just 1GB a month at first, then went up to 2GB. Giganews is one of the best providers, they just recently upped their retention to 90 days in binary groups. It'll drop gradually as traffic increases but they do storage upgrades fairly regular to keep the retention very high. :)
If you're uploading, then yes this is very true. However if you're just downloading it becomes very difficult for the MPAA, RIAA or anyone else to get Giganews/etc. to turn over their records. Basically they'd have to get a court order to do so and to get the court order they'd have to know already that you were downloading stuff illegally. Also most of the lawsuits have been aimed at those who've uploaded instead of downloaded anyway. So just don't upload anything and don't post any requests for things and you should be fine.
And people will continue to upload, there are providers in other countries, providers that intentionally keep logs for just a few days (just to check for spammers) then delete them, and so on. Their even used to be providers that would let you pay with a money order making it even more difficult for you to be tracked. I don't know if any still do this, but I wouldn't be surprised if at least a few do.
Be damn sure you read the fine print though, I recall that one provider at least used to burn their logs off onto CDs/DVDs and keep them indefinitely. I don't know if they still do so I won't name names, but I wouldn't want to do business with a place like that just on general principle.
Windows XP at least, by default, autoruns on ALL removeable drives/media. I have external firewire and USB hard drives, it would try to autorun them too doing a scan of the drive contents to figure out what to run or what options to put into the menu it'll show you if it fails to find an autorun file. I also use Bestcrypt and it did the same thing on the virtual encrypted drives whenever they were mounted. Ditto for my USB flash drives. It really seems that Microsoft thinks everyone needs to have autorun because they're too stupid to figure out what to do with any removeable drive on their own.
The solution is to install TweakUI and disable autoplay on all drives. Then you don't have to worry about it anymore and it stops annoying the hell out of you. (It's damned annoying with external hard drives.)
You're thinking of COPA probably, which is the Child Online Protection Act. The magic age for it is 13, anyone 13 or older doesn't need special handling if you collect personal data on users (which is broadly defined, E-mail addresses count so just running a forum you have to deal with COPA, or do what many do and just modify the software to not allow anyone who says they're under 13 to register. Yes I'm sure the kids are smart enough to go try again and lie, but that's not your problem any longer.) Since the program would be monitoring web surfing and such I would think COPA would apply to it, but I believe a Teen rating would put the recommended minimum age above COPA's cutoff. So sadly, EA probably can get away with this in regards to COPA since a parent would be logically assumed to have approved the child buying/installing the game if they're under the minimum age.
I'm not a lawyer though so my understanding of this may not be totally accurate.
He took those into consideration, from TFA:
I'm afraid that any vigilantes who decide to use his software after it's released won't be so thorough.
I would argue that wanting the government to protect your children violates that supposed hardwired protection of offspring instinct. If you're trying to shove the job off on someone else then you don't care very much about how well it's done now do you? To be fair this isn't always true, most people that hire nannies or babysitters are careful about who they hire, but wanting the government to do they job by passing laws is NOT the same thing and won't have the same effect.
I'm not sure this is the case, if it was you'd see people just as up in arms about protecting the mentally handicapped who can be well past the age we consider childhood but are less able to protect themselves than most children. Yet we never see that happen, it's always "think of the children", not "think of those who can't defend themselves, regardless of age".
Besides, all the research I've ever seen shows that overwhelmingly most sexual abuse of children happens by relatives or other adults that are close to them (like close family friends). Sex offender lists don't help much when uncle John's sneaking around and molesting your kids behind your back now do they?
I think you'll find that it's mostly the young people providing the "titillation and unhealthy fascination" to each other.
They may already have, yesterday when I went to watch a video Youtube told me that I needed a newer version of Flash. I had to go get the latest version (I'm running Firefox on Windows XP) and install that before it would play the video. I'm not sure if it was just that one video or if they're changing all of them though.