Who the hell wants to 'share' a movie with others of p2p networks so much that they would go war-driving? I have a very strong feeling that this guy is lying. Of-course this will have to be proven in court, but it is just a gut feeling. In the case he actually did this, he deserves what is coming to him.
So you really think that $100,000 is a reasonable fine for uploading a movie? Personally I do feel he should be punished if he's guilty but I also feel that the punishment here is totally out of line with what this guy supposedly did. We need a bit of sanity right now with copyright infringement and $100k fines aren't part of that.
It is quite similar to worker's comp, in which employees who are injured on the job can get pre-set amounts of damages awarded to them, rather than wasting court time litigating each and every case. The general concept of statutory damages is pretty well entrenched. Even I don't have a serious problem with the idea. I might dislike the amounts, or who they are applied to, but I don't think we could have an effective system without them. Given that they have long been a mainstay of the copyright system (e.g. the 1790 Copyright Act had statuory penalties of 50 cents per sheet, IIRC) I don't think they're going anywhere.
The amounts are the key problem and to most people just see the whole thing as something that needs to go away (not knowing of other areas, like worker's comp, where it's useful to the everyday person). It's pretty sad that the damages set for maiming and killing a person (albeit accidentally) are lower than the damages set for copying a copyrighted work without permission. That alone tells you who congress is watching out for.
I can handle the concept of statutorially defined damages but the law still needs to be reasonable. The RIAA and MPAA are abusing these laws now, I seriously doubt congress' intent was for them to go after every single person who makes a copy or two and apply the (very high at that point) damages. These were intended to be used against large offenders, the real pirates who make bootlegs and sell them and really do cut into the company's profits. Instead people who share a file with a few friends can suddenly find themselves lumped into the same camp and subjected to absolutely insane damages in relation to the infringement they committed. Something has to change, I'm not saying people sharing copies without permission is right but $100k fines against them doing so aren't right either.
No. Not everything wrong should be criminalized; copyright infringement is a good example. Additionally, victims cannot cause their wrongdoers to be prosecuted, and so should not lose the opportunity to discourage wrongdoers from future wrongdoing, in cases where ordinary redress is insufficient deterrence.
I thought that large scale copyright infringement was indeed a criminal offense, where does it change from being civil offense only to criminal? Given that (if I am right), how does this all jive if the law is both civil and criminal, shouldn't the companies then be required to prove actual damages instead of statutory ones? (In a criminal case that is.)
I doubt that Paramount gives a shit. Even if he is unwitted, they're still gonna make an example out of him.
Undoubtably but will the example they make be the one they want? I'm sure they're hoping for abject fear among file sharers and a drop in that activity but it's much more likely people will feel like they're being abusive of the "little man" and start thumbing their nose at them and doing more file sharing. You know, sort of how file sharing of music has increased even though the lawsuits continue.
And I still get several (10+) spams a year about a domain I haven't owned since 1998 so you're either quite lucky or quite full of it. (The domain no longer exists at all in fact.)
PVR + DelayedStart + FastForward
= NoCommercials + InHouseReply
= BetterSportsEnjoyment
That doesn't address the issue at all, it's merely a patch applied to it. The grandparent's point was that the commercials shown during family friendly programming hours can be anything but family friendly because of the massive violence they show. To top it off the FCC doesn't even allow complaints about violent programming so you can't report those commercials to them as innapporpriate. But let someone's naked rear end be seen getting out of the shower and you can complain all you want.
That's a fundamental issue there, the FCC by their own complaint acceptance policies has decreed that violence is a-ok and not indecent.
The idea is that, in the FCC's collective mind, people should be able to sign up for cable programming without receiving, say, Comedy Central which they might find "offensive." Granted, the tools certainly already exist for irresponsi^Wconcerned parents to block these channels out; if you watch TV any, you've also seen that broadcast and cable networks are showing commercials for ControlYourTV.org and promoting parental responsibility.
Very true but here in America the idea seems to be that parents shouldn't have to actually parent nowadays. I don't really think a-la-carte channel selection will help much here, little Timmy can just download the indecent stuff his parents don't want him to see from the Internet. That'll be the next area that'll get attacked (again) but I seriously doubt any number of laws and regulations will ever stop TV shows from showing up online for download illegally.
I believe the issue now is that people are upset that they're having to pay for/subsidize certain channels that they've got no interest in receiving or viewing. Like another poster said, a-la-carte pricing is the right idea, but it's being promoted for the wrong reason.
Very true, but just this once I think I can stand it because the results will be beneficial instead of restrictive. There's tons of channels I'd gladly drop and others I'd like to have. The implementation of this will be the key though, if I'm willing to drop 20 channels from my lineup can I get a channel that's not currently part of the regular channel lineup in replacement for a discount or even free? Somehow I suspect the answer will be a resounding "hell no" from the cable companies.
There's almost certainly a discount per unit that the retailer gets from Microsoft, and if the unit goes through distribution as well, there will be another discount there. Someone might jump in here if they know what the distribution chain is. In any case, though, you have to add the discounts for the businesses between Microsoft and the consumer.
The discount is likely negligible, it was on all three of the current console generation. I worked at a Wal-mart for a few years and had access to see the markups on stuff. The markups on all three consoles was 1% or so, this is why the consoles cost the same pretty much everywhere, the wholesale price is the same, volume or not. Retailers sell the consoles and make their money on the games and accessories. This is not unusual, most electronics hardware is this way. Markups on things like TVs, VCRs, DVD Players, etc. are very small and they make their money on accessories, especially cables. (The markup on A/V cables is insane.)
So while the article is very simplistic and seems to be out of touch with reality in places (as others have noted, the wholesale cost on some of the items listed are far less then what they used as prices), it's fair to consider the retail price of the console as the "final" price MS and Sony will get since that's the way it is now.
I question the methodology. As far as I can tell, he's reporting which DNS servers have resolved queries for First4Internet. And he's doing it after the scandal has been all over the online news sites, all over the blogosphere and links to First4Internet's sites posted in a couple of dozen +5 comments on/.
I'd be surprised if there was a DNS server left on earth that hadn't recently handled a query for First4Internet by now.
I think the methodology is sounder than you think, the info on his page seems to indicate he didn't go by resolutions for just any F4I addresses but for addresses the rootkit used, particularly he mentions updates.xcp-aurora.com, something curious/outraged people aren't likely to try resolving for the hell of it.
In any case it's worth investigating, notice that not all of Europe is covered in red, although I'm sure the scandal has been reported there as well. There's a good possibility here that Sony has sold the CDs in the UK, and frankly it should be investigated because Sony deserves to be nailed with every law they violated for this little stunt.
Besides, has Sony ever released a list of all affected CDs yet?
Also I wouldn't be surprised if F4I included indemity for damages of just type of thing for their customers (not just Sony, and heavens I hope no one else is using their shitware). That would put Sony squarely off the hook for the GPL and LGPL violations but firmly place F4I even more in the line of fire.
I think we're going to come out of this with F4I effectively, if not actually, out of business and with some criminal charges being brought up against them.
I said right off the bat, that the Sony DRM package would be full of other's code. Seems to me that Sony hired some blackhats to get the job done for them.
Honestly I'm not sure the First 4 Internet coders even rate black-hat status, perhaps script kiddie might fit. Look at what we know of their products, they're buggy, poorly coded, cause system instabilities (even in "normal" operating mode") and when they write an uninstall utility they open a gaping security hole big enough that the goats.cx guy's probably jealous.
I think they're simply incompetent hacks. The only upside I can see to all this is that other media companies are likely to be very wary of using F4I's software now, at least for the near future. With luck they'll go out of business.
I might add that even though these discs are not available in the UK, the Computer Misuse Act still holds.
Are we certain they weren't available in the UK? Check out the map Dan Kaminsky did of the rootkit's detected prescence in Europe. The UK's almost solid red, indicating that the rootkit is most abundant there.
I somehow find it hard to believe that US imported CDs alone would have accounted for that much spread, it looks like Sony sold CDs with the XCP rootkit on them in the UK but realizes admitting it would be a Very Bad Thing (tm) (not that they don't have enough bad things to worry about already.)
What's the big deal?
I can't believe no one else has brought this up, I guess it's most definitely not RTFA day but in any case the "big deal" is the observed behavior (the bots were added to all users' buddy lists without asking prior permission) is expressly counter to how AOL claims the program will work, to wit:
It's up to each user to add the robots he's interested in, and he can remove them whenever he wants, Curry said. Robot operators agree not to distribute users' screen names and pledge to only use the robots for their stated purpose, so that AIM users don't face the type of spam nuisance affecting e-mail, Curry said.
So they're likely violating their own TOS and privacy policies.
To me that's the big deal here. AOL wanting to use AIMbots to advertise is fine and dandy, it is their network after all, but if they say they're going to do one thing then do another I do have a problem with it, and so should everyone else who uses AIM and agreed to their TOS. That document works both ways, AOL has certain obligations under it.
Personally I wonder how this will affect their COPPA compliance. I don't know if they just flat out reject anyone under 13 or what but having bots that advertise to your users, and forcing those bots onto every user's buddy list, is very likely to run afoul of COPPA if they do have (known) users under 13 on their AIM network. COPPA's a bitch, it's simpler to just deny access to anyone under 13 than it is to even try to comply with it. Somehow I suspect AOL hasn't gone that route though, and even if they require users under 13 to have the proper forms filled out by their parents a change this large would require new documentation or additional documentation.
Last time I checked you were not allowed to burn the US Flag, though.
This has never been true, at least not since the US became the US so unless you're over 300 years old you're just vastly misinformed. Don't believe me, check Google as always. To ban burning the US flag would require a constitutional amendment. While there are those that support it there are plenty that don't.
I can burn any flag I like.
My point is that Europe and US are largely similarly free. The difference is in the details.
The only point you've made is you're very misinformed about US freedoms. I'm not saying you're right or wrong, but you need to get your facts straight or no one's going to give your argument any credence (with good reason.)
The following year, all traces of this were removed in the next version and, afaik, it has never returned. I, for one, however, haven't bought their product since and don't plan to ever buy from them again.
Not only that, Intuit took out full page ads in major newspapers like the New York Times announcing that Turbotax had no DRM software in it and never would again. They also apologized for screwing with their customers the previous year. They said they ran the ads because they didn't think many of their (former) customers would get the message otherwise. They were very truly cowed by the massive outrage, I'm not sure if their sales recovered any though.
I prefer American comic art, myself. I can't recall ever seeing any manga that looks like something I'd want framed and hanging on my wall, but there's tons of American comic art that'd look great up there. Anything by Alex Ross, for example.
Frankly I don't read manga or comics based on how pretty they'd look on my wall. I prefer to read stuff with interesting stories and characters. Most American comics nowadays are bad rehashes on ancient superhero strips and they have neither interesting stories or characters. I do know that there are some American comics with interesting stories but they are by far a miniority in the market.
Besides, as another poster pointed out, there manga artists that's work is simply astounding beautiful. You've just not seen it yet.
not to buy CDs. Like I needed more reasons. They are already too expensive and they force me to buy tracks I don't want just to get the 1 or 2 I want. I know Sony *thinks* they are *adding value* which will incent me to buy CDs, but obviously they miscalculated.
With luck this little incident will cause a change in attitude among a larger portion of the populace. People have finally started figuring out that spyware/adware/malware/rootkits are Evil (tm) and if it gets plastered all over the news that Sony's CDs were doing things like that they're going to figure out that Sony CDs = Evil at least. Once that happens it'll really hurt the recording industry because it's likely that people will start worrying if the other labels are doing similar stuff but just haven't been caught yet. (And honestly I wonder the same thing, I suspect Sony's not alone and we'll start hearing more discoveries of similar things from other labels and this will snowball into an absolutely HUGE issue.)
Of course even if it does happen and CD sales plummet like a rock the RIAA will claim it's all due to piracy. Maybe Congress won't buy it this time when they have angry constituents who's PCs were compromised because of Sony's rootkit though. That's something I expect too happen soon, there's more than enough people out there with a bone to pick with the recording industry that someone will likely develop an exploit and release it in the wild just to kick Sony while they're down.
If only someone would offer a digital download service with CD quality content.
Something like AllOfMp3.com, only definitely legal, would fit the bill. I'd be willing to buy music again under that type of plan. As it is I'm happy with the music I have and haven't bought a CD in years (or downloaded anything).
Looking from the outside, you may ask questions and try to poke holes. But you are assuming you are even in a position to evaluate the prospect of God.
You know you're in trouble when your theological-based argument fails even by theological standards. The problem with your assertation above is, even if we accept it, it applies to you as well. By posing the argument you are effectively "evaluat[ing] the prospect of God" and coming to the conclusion that, yep, he does exist.
You (and by you I mean the whole that assumes logic without a 100% self-attesting assumption) need to come up with some way to justify that you have any rightful position to be in the mindset of asking God questions.
Well, the last time I checked my Bible, and my Minister you don't have to be in a particular mindset to talk to God, and that includes asking questions. He might not answer, but, at least in protestant branches of christianity, it's even taught that you should have conversations with God, not just prayer.
So, are you saying that none of us are able to ask God questions, even if we're devote Christians (which you apparently feel you are)? If you're saying you have to be a devote Christian to ask God questions then please tell me exactly how a sinner goes about seeking forgiveness for his sins. Last I checked you just had to ask for forgiveness sincerely and you would be forgiven, thanks to Jesus dying.
You so know that being Christian doesn't mean you must be narrow-minded right? I'm a Christian, have been my whole life. I have no problems whatsoever with evolution and genesis coexisting, I never have. Frankly I think it speaks far higher of God to say he put all these processes into motion knowing that they would ultimately lead to the creation of everything spoken of in genesis than it does to say he just snapped his (or is it her?) fingers and *poof* there it all was. Is evolution the correct answer to what happened? I don't know, but it has survived many tests and it's the best theory so far. Does it contradict the Bible? No, it merely fills in the (possible) details as to how God went about creating our universe.
Intelligent Design doesn't do any of that, it's just a disguise tossed over the story of genesis and masqueraded as science.
The only thing is they will now require an additional year of university for all kansas high school students to Unlearn the garbage taught to them. Most of the time this only take 1 month to clear out the garbage from other states high school programs btu kansas willr equire a full year.
That's a very good point, I wouldn't be surprised if some universities stop accepting AP credits in Biology from students that come from Kansas either.
The whole thing is royally silly because we know what's going to happen next. After a year or two of continuous ridicule the ID folks will lose their seats in elections and the standards will be reverted back. Unforunately they'll probably repeat the cycle and keep going back and forth between the two. If they do I really feel sorry for kids in 1st or 2nd grade, they'll potentially see ID inserted and removed from the curriculum 4 times or more before they graduate!
If you cannot design a website, or know enough to hire someone who can, then "resources" like this one will not cover your ineptitude. If you are a good programmer but cannot design well, ask for help. Learn how. Don't take a template and use it. By the time you make it fit your needs, you could have learned something.
As someone who just had to make a new website for my employer in a rather short time period (3 weeks) using software I'd never used before (Joomla, used to be called Mambo) I can tell you that there are indeed times where taking an existing template and modifying it is quite necessary. Of course I wasn't hired as a web designer and the last time I designed a site was well before cascading style sheets were around.
As for learning something, well yes I did, and I did it by going through the template's PHP and CSS files and methodically figuring out what sections affected the site's look. Mostly this was done with the CSS file since the PHP file was short and sweet. I picked a template with the basic layout we wanted for the site to start with, that saved some time. After I was done I had a far better understanding of CSS and PHP (I've not had cause to use PHP before either). I probably _could_ design a new site from scratch now, but not before.
Frankly I learn much faster using a real working example and modifying it. Not only does the template fit our needs I learned quite a lot. It also prepared me for the task of making the ExtCalendar component and Mini-Cal module match the site. Those use seperate style sheets of their own and had minimal documentation (or meaningful element names) for what styles modified what. It took me 6 hours of trial and error on each one simply to find out what each element modified and then change it. I also commented up the style sheet as I went and will be contributing it back to the project since it's open source. (It's also still a beta which is likely why the style sheets aren't easy to modify yet. In fact the Mini-Cal used an inline style sheet originally, now it uses an external one.)
So there you go, a case where using a template was not only necessary, using it lead to my learning quite a bit and even a contribution to an open source project. I had to modify the PHP code for the mini-cal a bit as well and more needs to be done. I'll be taking some time at work over the next few weeks to make some more substantial mods (basically allowing finer control over the appearance of the mini-cal, this will help make modifying its appearance far easier in the future) and contributing that as well.
You don't think there's an off-site copy anywhere?
The post by Aaron Nikula linked from the/. summary doesn't seem to indicate there is one, or if there is only Frank (the guy holding things in stasis) is the only one with access to it. His message is pretty clear: OSWD won't be coming back up until Frank either does the necessary work or allows someone else to do so.
Now all the individual contributors likely have copies of their templates and many people may have at least a handful they downloaded but it would still take a while to rebuild that way.
If people cared enough, a replacement would pop up. That was my point.
It probably will, but at this time no one but the guy holding OSWD in stasis has access to any of the files. It'll take a while to recreate the site from scratch so a replacement can't just "pop up" in this case. I'm sure the rest of the OSWD community will build a new site but it won't have as many templates as the old site for quite some time.
People have very short memories. I'm barely old enough to remember the days of $0.25/min long distance from Ma Bell (I'm 31), and I certainly agree with you. But my mom, who's in her 60s, wishes we could go back to those days because it was so much simpler than having all these different companies to deal with, plus the customer service these days is so horrible.
Like you I'm barely old enough to remember the days of Ma Bell before the breakup but I distinctly remember my parents and many others complaining about the customer service. Perhaps it just sucked here where I'm at but I somehow doubt it. I don't think customer service is much, if any, worse than before the breakup. I'm sure your Mom's viewing the past through rose-colored lenses as many people (of all ages) tend to do.:)
I am happy I'm not in SBC land at the moment though, sounds like they just went for gold in the title of "most customer antagonistic telco in the US".
The blow is to MIT's hiring practice and peer review. An instance of fraud indicates that the faculty there is verifiably capable of fraud. It indicates that their hiring practices are not infalliable, as may have previously been thought, and to which there was previously no example to turn to. While it may not produce any overwhelming skepticism of their other results, particularly with their reaction, it does show a falliability in hiring practice, and a lack of internal peer review prior to publication.
I know this is/. and RTFA is not common but I'll ask anyway. Did you RTFA? I suspect not as there's something pertinent at the end of it:
The California Institute of Technology has launched its own investigation into Van Parijs' research, including work with Cal Tech President David Baltimore "on problems in immunology," said school spokeswoman Jill Perry.
Van Parijs, who earned a doctorate in immunology from Harvard in 1997, was a postdoctural student at Cal Tech from 1998 to 2000.
From this it appears this guy has done this before but never been caught. He had a clean record, and apparently had squeaked through peer reviews many times in the past already. On the other hand this may be just a red herring and it will turn out the guy was squeaky-clean before he was hired by MIT. In either case you can't blame MIT's hiring process.
If the guy had been fabricating data in the past and gotten through peer review then he simply appeared to be an honest scientist. If he didn't fabricate data in the past but started after MIT hired him this also isn't the fault of the hiring process. The fault lays squarely at this guy's feet. He tried to cheat the system and he was finally caught. Until a fraudster is caught there's no way to know he's a fraudster so how exactly did you expect MIT's hiring process to magically figure out he was something other than he appeared to be based on his history?
This incident doesn't make me think any less of MIT or their hiring process at all. In fact their handling of this bests most universities. He was put on immediate leave, locked out of his lab and given no opportunity to hide his misdeeds. They spent a YEAR investigating the charges thoroughly and are even turning the results over to the Feds for further action. While they can't magically figure out someone has committed undetected crimes/fabrications they can, and did, make sure that any allegations of such are taken VERY seriously.
This is how lawyers "solve problems". They sue people.
Except he's not sued (yet), he's just filed a complaint with the police and tried to get Gabe & Tycho arrested. That's a pretty big difference there.
While I'm not a lawyer I have to wonder how he can legally get away with some of the things he states as fact in the complaint. Others have noted this as well, in particular the bit about their "extorting" him. In my opinion it looks like the only laws broken so far have all been by Mr. Thompson, those being libel of Gabe & Tycho and filing a false police report.
I somehow doubt justice will be served and he end up in trouble for those acts (if indeed I am correct) but it would be nice to see. Overlooking his attacks on gamers and free speech the man still comes across as a real jerk, one that you'd just love to see karma come back and bite.
You're kidding right? All three things say the same thing. The Great-Grandparent says "no money went to SCO from MySQL", the Grandparent says "Since SCO paid money to MySQL" then you say "Let me reiteratre, no money went to SCO from MySQL". Well yeah that's right, and everyone agrees with you
Say it with me, you and all the other people who posted the exact same claim below:
no money went to SCO from MySQL
We've already been saying it with you, you're just apparently not reading things correctly.
The concerns the Grandparent post raised are that SCO will try to pull the same type of stunt with MySQL that they have with IBM, not that they paid SCO money. Even overlooking that SCO is paying money to MySQL as part of this deal, the sheer fact there is a partnership of sorts is potentially dangerous. Would you want to partner with SCO given the tactics they've used in the lawsuit against IBM? I know I wouldn't, given their past actions that's like begging to sued. Even if a case has no merit it takes money to defend against. I hope MySQL factored that risk in when they did this deal.
I do think the outrage is a bit much but I can understand it. Most people would like to see SCO die, the sooner the better, and even deals like this that draw money from SCO's coffers may help prolong that death by giving the company the appearance of more legitimancy.
Slashdot Mirror
Who the hell wants to 'share' a movie with others of p2p networks so much that they would go war-driving? I have a very strong feeling that this guy is lying. Of-course this will have to be proven in court, but it is just a gut feeling. In the case he actually did this, he deserves what is coming to him. So you really think that $100,000 is a reasonable fine for uploading a movie? Personally I do feel he should be punished if he's guilty but I also feel that the punishment here is totally out of line with what this guy supposedly did. We need a bit of sanity right now with copyright infringement and $100k fines aren't part of that.
I can handle the concept of statutorially defined damages but the law still needs to be reasonable. The RIAA and MPAA are abusing these laws now, I seriously doubt congress' intent was for them to go after every single person who makes a copy or two and apply the (very high at that point) damages. These were intended to be used against large offenders, the real pirates who make bootlegs and sell them and really do cut into the company's profits. Instead people who share a file with a few friends can suddenly find themselves lumped into the same camp and subjected to absolutely insane damages in relation to the infringement they committed. Something has to change, I'm not saying people sharing copies without permission is right but $100k fines against them doing so aren't right either.
No. Not everything wrong should be criminalized; copyright infringement is a good example. Additionally, victims cannot cause their wrongdoers to be prosecuted, and so should not lose the opportunity to discourage wrongdoers from future wrongdoing, in cases where ordinary redress is insufficient deterrence. I thought that large scale copyright infringement was indeed a criminal offense, where does it change from being civil offense only to criminal? Given that (if I am right), how does this all jive if the law is both civil and criminal, shouldn't the companies then be required to prove actual damages instead of statutory ones? (In a criminal case that is.)I doubt that Paramount gives a shit. Even if he is unwitted, they're still gonna make an example out of him. Undoubtably but will the example they make be the one they want? I'm sure they're hoping for abject fear among file sharers and a drop in that activity but it's much more likely people will feel like they're being abusive of the "little man" and start thumbing their nose at them and doing more file sharing. You know, sort of how file sharing of music has increased even though the lawsuits continue.
And I still get several (10+) spams a year about a domain I haven't owned since 1998 so you're either quite lucky or quite full of it. (The domain no longer exists at all in fact.)
That's a fundamental issue there, the FCC by their own complaint acceptance policies has decreed that violence is a-ok and not indecent.
The idea is that, in the FCC's collective mind, people should be able to sign up for cable programming without receiving, say, Comedy Central which they might find "offensive." Granted, the tools certainly already exist for irresponsi^Wconcerned parents to block these channels out; if you watch TV any, you've also seen that broadcast and cable networks are showing commercials for ControlYourTV.org and promoting parental responsibility. Very true but here in America the idea seems to be that parents shouldn't have to actually parent nowadays. I don't really think a-la-carte channel selection will help much here, little Timmy can just download the indecent stuff his parents don't want him to see from the Internet. That'll be the next area that'll get attacked (again) but I seriously doubt any number of laws and regulations will ever stop TV shows from showing up online for download illegally. I believe the issue now is that people are upset that they're having to pay for/subsidize certain channels that they've got no interest in receiving or viewing. Like another poster said, a-la-carte pricing is the right idea, but it's being promoted for the wrong reason. Very true, but just this once I think I can stand it because the results will be beneficial instead of restrictive. There's tons of channels I'd gladly drop and others I'd like to have. The implementation of this will be the key though, if I'm willing to drop 20 channels from my lineup can I get a channel that's not currently part of the regular channel lineup in replacement for a discount or even free? Somehow I suspect the answer will be a resounding "hell no" from the cable companies.
The discount is likely negligible, it was on all three of the current console generation. I worked at a Wal-mart for a few years and had access to see the markups on stuff. The markups on all three consoles was 1% or so, this is why the consoles cost the same pretty much everywhere, the wholesale price is the same, volume or not. Retailers sell the consoles and make their money on the games and accessories. This is not unusual, most electronics hardware is this way. Markups on things like TVs, VCRs, DVD Players, etc. are very small and they make their money on accessories, especially cables. (The markup on A/V cables is insane.)
So while the article is very simplistic and seems to be out of touch with reality in places (as others have noted, the wholesale cost on some of the items listed are far less then what they used as prices), it's fair to consider the retail price of the console as the "final" price MS and Sony will get since that's the way it is now.
I'd be surprised if there was a DNS server left on earth that hadn't recently handled a query for First4Internet by now.
I think the methodology is sounder than you think, the info on his page seems to indicate he didn't go by resolutions for just any F4I addresses but for addresses the rootkit used, particularly he mentions updates.xcp-aurora.com, something curious/outraged people aren't likely to try resolving for the hell of it.In any case it's worth investigating, notice that not all of Europe is covered in red, although I'm sure the scandal has been reported there as well. There's a good possibility here that Sony has sold the CDs in the UK, and frankly it should be investigated because Sony deserves to be nailed with every law they violated for this little stunt.
Besides, has Sony ever released a list of all affected CDs yet?
I think we're going to come out of this with F4I effectively, if not actually, out of business and with some criminal charges being brought up against them.
I think they're simply incompetent hacks. The only upside I can see to all this is that other media companies are likely to be very wary of using F4I's software now, at least for the near future. With luck they'll go out of business.
I somehow find it hard to believe that US imported CDs alone would have accounted for that much spread, it looks like Sony sold CDs with the XCP rootkit on them in the UK but realizes admitting it would be a Very Bad Thing (tm) (not that they don't have enough bad things to worry about already.)
It's up to each user to add the robots he's interested in, and he can remove them whenever he wants, Curry said. Robot operators agree not to distribute users' screen names and pledge to only use the robots for their stated purpose, so that AIM users don't face the type of spam nuisance affecting e-mail, Curry said.
So they're likely violating their own TOS and privacy policies.
To me that's the big deal here. AOL wanting to use AIMbots to advertise is fine and dandy, it is their network after all, but if they say they're going to do one thing then do another I do have a problem with it, and so should everyone else who uses AIM and agreed to their TOS. That document works both ways, AOL has certain obligations under it.
Personally I wonder how this will affect their COPPA compliance. I don't know if they just flat out reject anyone under 13 or what but having bots that advertise to your users, and forcing those bots onto every user's buddy list, is very likely to run afoul of COPPA if they do have (known) users under 13 on their AIM network. COPPA's a bitch, it's simpler to just deny access to anyone under 13 than it is to even try to comply with it. Somehow I suspect AOL hasn't gone that route though, and even if they require users under 13 to have the proper forms filled out by their parents a change this large would require new documentation or additional documentation.
My point is that Europe and US are largely similarly free. The difference is in the details.
The only point you've made is you're very misinformed about US freedoms. I'm not saying you're right or wrong, but you need to get your facts straight or no one's going to give your argument any credence (with good reason.)The following year, all traces of this were removed in the next version and, afaik, it has never returned. I, for one, however, haven't bought their product since and don't plan to ever buy from them again. Not only that, Intuit took out full page ads in major newspapers like the New York Times announcing that Turbotax had no DRM software in it and never would again. They also apologized for screwing with their customers the previous year. They said they ran the ads because they didn't think many of their (former) customers would get the message otherwise. They were very truly cowed by the massive outrage, I'm not sure if their sales recovered any though.
Besides, as another poster pointed out, there manga artists that's work is simply astounding beautiful. You've just not seen it yet.
Of course even if it does happen and CD sales plummet like a rock the RIAA will claim it's all due to piracy. Maybe Congress won't buy it this time when they have angry constituents who's PCs were compromised because of Sony's rootkit though. That's something I expect too happen soon, there's more than enough people out there with a bone to pick with the recording industry that someone will likely develop an exploit and release it in the wild just to kick Sony while they're down.
If only someone would offer a digital download service with CD quality content. Something like AllOfMp3.com, only definitely legal, would fit the bill. I'd be willing to buy music again under that type of plan. As it is I'm happy with the music I have and haven't bought a CD in years (or downloaded anything).So, are you saying that none of us are able to ask God questions, even if we're devote Christians (which you apparently feel you are)? If you're saying you have to be a devote Christian to ask God questions then please tell me exactly how a sinner goes about seeking forgiveness for his sins. Last I checked you just had to ask for forgiveness sincerely and you would be forgiven, thanks to Jesus dying.
You so know that being Christian doesn't mean you must be narrow-minded right? I'm a Christian, have been my whole life. I have no problems whatsoever with evolution and genesis coexisting, I never have. Frankly I think it speaks far higher of God to say he put all these processes into motion knowing that they would ultimately lead to the creation of everything spoken of in genesis than it does to say he just snapped his (or is it her?) fingers and *poof* there it all was. Is evolution the correct answer to what happened? I don't know, but it has survived many tests and it's the best theory so far. Does it contradict the Bible? No, it merely fills in the (possible) details as to how God went about creating our universe.
Intelligent Design doesn't do any of that, it's just a disguise tossed over the story of genesis and masqueraded as science.
The whole thing is royally silly because we know what's going to happen next. After a year or two of continuous ridicule the ID folks will lose their seats in elections and the standards will be reverted back. Unforunately they'll probably repeat the cycle and keep going back and forth between the two. If they do I really feel sorry for kids in 1st or 2nd grade, they'll potentially see ID inserted and removed from the curriculum 4 times or more before they graduate!
As for learning something, well yes I did, and I did it by going through the template's PHP and CSS files and methodically figuring out what sections affected the site's look. Mostly this was done with the CSS file since the PHP file was short and sweet. I picked a template with the basic layout we wanted for the site to start with, that saved some time. After I was done I had a far better understanding of CSS and PHP (I've not had cause to use PHP before either). I probably _could_ design a new site from scratch now, but not before.
Frankly I learn much faster using a real working example and modifying it. Not only does the template fit our needs I learned quite a lot. It also prepared me for the task of making the ExtCalendar component and Mini-Cal module match the site. Those use seperate style sheets of their own and had minimal documentation (or meaningful element names) for what styles modified what. It took me 6 hours of trial and error on each one simply to find out what each element modified and then change it. I also commented up the style sheet as I went and will be contributing it back to the project since it's open source. (It's also still a beta which is likely why the style sheets aren't easy to modify yet. In fact the Mini-Cal used an inline style sheet originally, now it uses an external one.)
So there you go, a case where using a template was not only necessary, using it lead to my learning quite a bit and even a contribution to an open source project. I had to modify the PHP code for the mini-cal a bit as well and more needs to be done. I'll be taking some time at work over the next few weeks to make some more substantial mods (basically allowing finer control over the appearance of the mini-cal, this will help make modifying its appearance far easier in the future) and contributing that as well.
But yeah, Website templates are bad right?
Now all the individual contributors likely have copies of their templates and many people may have at least a handful they downloaded but it would still take a while to rebuild that way.
If people cared enough, a replacement would pop up. That was my point. It probably will, but at this time no one but the guy holding OSWD in stasis has access to any of the files. It'll take a while to recreate the site from scratch so a replacement can't just "pop up" in this case. I'm sure the rest of the OSWD community will build a new site but it won't have as many templates as the old site for quite some time.
Like you I'm barely old enough to remember the days of Ma Bell before the breakup but I distinctly remember my parents and many others complaining about the customer service. Perhaps it just sucked here where I'm at but I somehow doubt it. I don't think customer service is much, if any, worse than before the breakup. I'm sure your Mom's viewing the past through rose-colored lenses as many people (of all ages) tend to do. :)
I am happy I'm not in SBC land at the moment though, sounds like they just went for gold in the title of "most customer antagonistic telco in the US".
I know this is /. and RTFA is not common but I'll ask anyway. Did you RTFA? I suspect not as there's something pertinent at the end of it:
The California Institute of Technology has launched its own investigation into Van Parijs' research, including work with Cal Tech President David Baltimore "on problems in immunology," said school spokeswoman Jill Perry.
Van Parijs, who earned a doctorate in immunology from Harvard in 1997, was a postdoctural student at Cal Tech from 1998 to 2000.
From this it appears this guy has done this before but never been caught. He had a clean record, and apparently had squeaked through peer reviews many times in the past already. On the other hand this may be just a red herring and it will turn out the guy was squeaky-clean before he was hired by MIT. In either case you can't blame MIT's hiring process.
If the guy had been fabricating data in the past and gotten through peer review then he simply appeared to be an honest scientist. If he didn't fabricate data in the past but started after MIT hired him this also isn't the fault of the hiring process. The fault lays squarely at this guy's feet. He tried to cheat the system and he was finally caught. Until a fraudster is caught there's no way to know he's a fraudster so how exactly did you expect MIT's hiring process to magically figure out he was something other than he appeared to be based on his history?
This incident doesn't make me think any less of MIT or their hiring process at all. In fact their handling of this bests most universities. He was put on immediate leave, locked out of his lab and given no opportunity to hide his misdeeds. They spent a YEAR investigating the charges thoroughly and are even turning the results over to the Feds for further action. While they can't magically figure out someone has committed undetected crimes/fabrications they can, and did, make sure that any allegations of such are taken VERY seriously.
Except he's not sued (yet), he's just filed a complaint with the police and tried to get Gabe & Tycho arrested. That's a pretty big difference there.
While I'm not a lawyer I have to wonder how he can legally get away with some of the things he states as fact in the complaint. Others have noted this as well, in particular the bit about their "extorting" him. In my opinion it looks like the only laws broken so far have all been by Mr. Thompson, those being libel of Gabe & Tycho and filing a false police report.
I somehow doubt justice will be served and he end up in trouble for those acts (if indeed I am correct) but it would be nice to see. Overlooking his attacks on gamers and free speech the man still comes across as a real jerk, one that you'd just love to see karma come back and bite.
Say it with me, you and all the other people who posted the exact same claim below: no money went to SCO from MySQL
We've already been saying it with you, you're just apparently not reading things correctly.
The concerns the Grandparent post raised are that SCO will try to pull the same type of stunt with MySQL that they have with IBM, not that they paid SCO money. Even overlooking that SCO is paying money to MySQL as part of this deal, the sheer fact there is a partnership of sorts is potentially dangerous. Would you want to partner with SCO given the tactics they've used in the lawsuit against IBM? I know I wouldn't, given their past actions that's like begging to sued. Even if a case has no merit it takes money to defend against. I hope MySQL factored that risk in when they did this deal.
I do think the outrage is a bit much but I can understand it. Most people would like to see SCO die, the sooner the better, and even deals like this that draw money from SCO's coffers may help prolong that death by giving the company the appearance of more legitimancy.