Yes, you should. I'm sorry- I (and most people) think that people should be able to make money from creative works. Sorry if you don't agree, comrade, but that's the way it is...
So you also support software patents I take it, after all a set of game rules is just an algorithm. If you can own a patent on that, you deserve to own a patent on, say, do-while loops.
There has to be sanity in what's owned and not, and lack of ownership of game rules certainly hasn't caused ChessMaster software to sell poorly. Perhaps (actually more than likely) Hasbro's videogame versions of Scrabble sell poorly. If they do, it's not because of sites like e-scrabble, it's because of some of the worst gaming programs written. Hasbro's "official" video games have been totally blown away by one guy writing an implementation in Java/Javascript (I forget which one) for free.
So I feel no pity for Hasbro, they're greedy idiots. If they'd provide a nice clean play by E-mail Scrabble version, even at a fee, I'd jump at the chance to be legit. Until they do I'll find alternatives that work, unlike their crappy video games.
I'm surprised that your wife plays Scrabble only on-line. Has she ever tried it as a board game? It's actually pretty good. My wife and I play it from time to time and it's very social. More so than online gaming certainly.
There are lots of reasons why someone won't/can't play offline. If you're good at Scrabble, no one who's not wants to play you beyond a game or two. I'm not the world's best by any means, but just playing normal (for me) I win by a sizeable margin. No one in my family will even play a game against me any more. (And to be fair it's not much fun to me to play a game like that, a challenge is more fun than a wholesale slaughter.) Most of my friends who can challenge me don't live around here, or are busy as hell with kids and jobs. The e-scrabble site's been a Godsend, I can play against my time-strapped friends as well as find new people to play against online who are really good at the game. It's fun, a hell of a lot of fun, and the most fun I've had playing Scrabble in many, many years. It's also quite social, the e-scrabble site includes a box to leave comments, so you can talk back and forth while playing the game. Just this past week I've been playing someone from Ireland and we've had a great time, both playing and talking. So don't look down on someone who only plays online, they may have to to have any fun, you and your wife are quite fortunate in this respect.
I think Hasbro has done the typical thing here. I also think they've made the same mistake. But most people won't care.
I know I own 4-5 different Scrabble boards, from the basic boardgame one, to the fancy top of the line one with the plastic table on a turntable and indentions to hold ties. I also know I wont buy anything else from Hasbro thanks to this. Defending their trademarks/copyrights are one thing, but the letter was a bit beyond that. The part about "since the domain will be no use to you, you should transfer it to Hasbro immediately" was really rude. Check out the whois on the domain, it was registered in 2002 (so it's taken Hasbro 2.5 years to do anything), and it's paid through 2007. If Hasbro was just acting by the letter of the law, they could easily have offered to reimburse him for the domain registration fees paid already along with him turning it over. Instead they demand it be given to them and even bring up cybersquatting, suggesting he's trying to rip Hasbro off by registering the domain. That is arrogant, rude, crass behaivor on Hasbro's part, so I'll no longer support them financially.
There doesn't seem to be much symbiosis in corporations these days. At least not in American markets.
No there isn't. This example's a good one in fact. Hasbro's attitude is it's our way or the highway, and there's no grey areas, we're 100% right and you and your lawyer can go fuck yourselves. (This is the attitude I got from the letter they sent.) Unfortunately it's all too common, corporations need some serious taming, they're completely out of control in the US (and probably elsewhere). I understand they have rights too, but they're only interested in being part of the community when it serves their interests. The rest of the time, they want things their way only, with no compromise accepted. It reminds me of a spoiled 2yo kid throwing a tantrum in the store because Mom & Dad won't buy him some toy he doesn't need.
I am sure I will get modded down for saying this, but I hope they shut them all down. I don't understand how people think that downloading cracked copies of software isn't stealing.
I agree, but I think what the music industry's doing is wrong. They're quite effective though, look at your own post, you've already assumed all those sites had nothing but warez and illegal stuff on them. We don't know if that's the case or not, as the cases have not gone before a court. It doesn't matter though as MIPI has won the war, even the article thinks so:
However, MIPI has shown that it might win its war on piracy through publicity alone: by doing high profile raids on well known businesses, then making audacious claims to the press about what it has found, it is sending shockwaves throughout the internet community. One user suggested that "Australia's isolation, which has protected it in the past, may no longer be a deterrent to law-enforcement authorities."
This is just wrong, it essentially allows MIPI to be judge, jury and executioner. They don't need to bother to PROVE anything, they just cause everyone to stop using BitTorrent and P2P out of fear, even in cases where they were going to share something legal.
I pay higher prices for software and music because of the rampant theft.
You pay more for your music because the music industry can charge more while waving the piracy flag in your face. You're partially correct, other than sheer greed the main causes for higher prices are outright theft (shoplifting) and large scale piracy operations that duplicate and sell illegal copies. The downloading online has not been shown conclusively to be a major impactor at all. The various studies done come back with opposite results, generally what result you get depends on who's funding the study.
Contrary to what the prevailing attitude seems to be here, the vast majority of the public does pay for their software and music.
You haven't paid much attention have you? We agree, but with a few qualifications, namely:
People won't pay a price they perceive as unfairly high, CD prices are hitting this now as people realize that CD blanks are insanely cheap and CD prices haven't come down much since their introduction
People will go download what they want if the music industry refuses to offer it to them in a format they can buy. The music industry killed off CD singles, and many people refuse to buy whole albums for one or two songs (Online music stores like iTunes are not a complete solution to this, many people want a physical CD so they'll copy a friends instead of buying a digital music download)
People like to know what they're buying is worth buying. When the majority of the songs on a CD haven't been played much, if at all, on the radio and in-store listening kiosks playing snippets of a few choice tracks along with the propensity for CDs to have only a few good tracks and the rest garbage many people will download an album to listen to before they decide to buy
Do note that the music industry brought all the above problems on themselves.
There is however a large minority that feels otherwise and continues their criminal practices. They are the ones driving software companies to add more and more layers of security to our software. They are the ones that are causing the honest amongst us to have to jump through increasingly more difficult hoops to install, register and maintain our software.
Right, and you really think the current actions of the music industry will stop this group of determined pirates? The real pirates, the ones costing the music industry real money, are still out there making thousands and thousands of copies of CDs and selling them on the black market. They don't bother with BitTorrent and P2P because it won't make them any money.
And don't be fooled by the music industry and BSA's ravings,
Re:Google: Fix the top post reply method
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Gmail Goes Public
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Normal/short individual replies (read: most e-mail) top post. The person who sent you the e-mail wrote the letter; don't you think he knows what he wrote already?
OK, first of all, most E-mail for you perhaps, but most of my E-mails are quite a bit longer. Perhaps my friends and I are more long-winded than you and your friends, but this is a really bad assumption to make.
And frankly we don't all have photographic memories. I'm pretty good at remembering what I wrote mostly, but I want the quoting there so I can refer to what I had said if I forget. I get very few E-mails where I don't find this useful at least once, and often more than once. E-mail's not instant messaging or IRC, there is a time delay before you receive a reply so it's easy to forget things.
An additional benefit of this style is it allows you to quote the entire original if necessary without forcing your reply to the next screenful.
Why the hell would you quote the entire original and do a single lump reply? Interleaving makes a hell of a lot more sense, it's the same way conversation flows naturally. You reply to each part and leave a quoted section that's pertinent so the sender can recall what they wrote. You delete all that's unnecessary so that the message isn't cluttered up.
Most of the people I see supporting bottom posting are people who participate on mailing lists and USENET and assume that everybody does, too.
Well frankly people supporting both top and bottom posting are annoying. Give me a normal conversational interleaving or just don't bother to respond. Of the people I correspond with regularly almost none top or bottom post, nearly all use interleaving. I've been writing and receiving E-mail interleaved since I first used E-mail back in 1992 so this isn't something new.
At least it's not as annoying as HTML E-mail. I don't want pictures and fancy formatting, plain text does just fine and renders good in all E-mail clients. Microsoft should be shot for the mangling that Outlook and Outlook Express give to E-mail in the name of prettying it up. Frankly sometimes I simply can't read it in my normal clients (Gmail, The Bat!, Pine) and I just assume it's not important and trash it.
But defacing the website to publish information about private citizens is in my view worse. There's currently several campaigns going on which aims at terrorizing Pontus Pontén (chief asshat of the APB) by sending hate SMS, e-mail, snailmail. His own kids have gotten several death threats for fucks sake. What kind of message does that send?
Not to take away from your main point (which I agree with) but one of the messages I get from this is "if you play dirty, your opponents will play just as dirty back if not more so." This is the same type of thing that can breed terrorism when people feel helpless and want to strike back at what they perceive to be a great evil/injustice. That's exactly what these hackers have done, they were frustrated at the APB and attacked them the only way they knew how -- by hacking their website.
Note I'm not saying this makes what they're doing right, but I fail to have much/any sympathy for the APB since they started playing dirty first.
claims these lawsuits are being filed to combat online filesharing the reality is that they're doing it to make money. He's not trying to say he shouldn't have gotten in trouble when he was caught. I would say he does have a ligitimate complaint about his lawyer not being able to speak to a lawyer on the RIAA's side. If they're working out a legal settlement both parties need a lawyer to protect everyone. That the RIAA doesn't seem to care enough to even do that speaks volumes about their real intents with these lawsuits.
He was caught with his hand in the cookie jar and doesn't like it. Well, sorry. If he did not want to be sued and pay up he should have not violated the law. He, like everyone else, must face the consequences of their actions.
Precisely, and if the RIAA is indeed filing these lawsuits just to make money (aka extortion through the courts) then THEY need to pay the penalty for that as well. Just because the guy was breaking the law sharing music doesn't mean the RIAA suddenly can ignore any and all laws.
Calling downloading "civil disobedience" is an insult to those, like the civil rights protesters and the protesters in Tiananmen Square, who have used civil disobedience to try to right the wrongs of society.
I disagree. This whole mess is making public how very wrong our legal system has become. Our congressmen pass laws that benefit the corporations while ignoring the citizens. The public domain has been obliterated since copyright keeps getting extended. Our fair use rights are being taken away in the name of fighting piracy. In some ways these are more insidious than previous wrongs, in those cases the wrongs were more noticeable, these current ones get hidden by smoke, mirrors and lots of FUD.
File sharing is stealing to avoid paying the cost, not civil disobedience--it directly benefits the protester. Civil rights protesters did not directly benefit from their protests. The only thing they got was a change in the laws--the whole point of their protest..
Well frankly did you even stop to think about that sentence before you wrote it? It's a huge nonsequitor. Yes the civil rights protestors benefited from their protests. (And I'm talking about the US Civil Rights movement against segregation of blacks and whites.) They got to stop being segregated among other things. Nowadays the whole attitude that blacks are inferior is almost completely gone. I'd say that's a HUGE benefit, it made their lives (and the lives of th children) much better.
No, they did not just get a chage in the laws, they got a change in attitude towards them and their plight. All this filesharing, even if not done for protest reasons, is bringing attention to bear on the out of control copyright laws and the power of corporations. That's a VERY good thing, as it's starting to make even folks who aren't tech savvy mad as well.
If you steal music, then, as a law breaker, what right do you have to complain about the RIAA?
It's this little thing called Freedom of Speech, it's inthe constitution, go read it. You always have the right to complain. You can even complain about the police when you're being arrested, you're free to do so.
By your logic, no one who was falsely arrested/prosecuted would ever be able to speak up about it and end up being punished for a crime they didn't commit. They'd also not be able to complain that the punishment was more severe than the crime warranted. Look what happened in Iraq in Abu Gharib when the prisoners there had no way to complain about their captors' treatment of them. Granted it's not on the same scale but it's the same point. If the RIAA is making you homeless because you can't afford to fight them (even if you're really innocent) then by God you better be complaining.
If no one complains, nothing will ever change, it's as simple as that.
Copyright infringement is against the law, and I have absolutely _no_ sympathy for people who think that because it's just a "little crime" there should be just a "little penalty".
So the penalty of well over $20,000 for sharing a whole 30 songs given to the woman who tried to fight the John Doe suit (this was mentioned in TFA) is reasonable? That's a fine larger than the amount of yearly income that qualifies as poverty. All for sharing 30 whole songs.
So let's assume this person was middle class and otherwise a decent person, has a job, a house, a car etc. How are they going to pay that $20K+? Sell the car? Sell the house? Is this what you would consider justice? If it is you have a very screwed up sense of justice.
Downloading/Sharing music without permission is illegal yes, but the punishment is supposed to fit the crime. We do not pull people over for speeding and fine them $750 for every mile they drove over the speed limit. Would you think that was fair? It's the same thing, the speeder was breaking the law every mile they drove faster than the speed limit, so of course they shouldn't expect a "little penalty" for a "little crime".
That's nothing more than a bunch of handwaving to rationalize the criminal activity in the first place.
Well they've certainly brainwashed you good. How is pointing out that the current punishments are totally out of sync with the seriousness of the crime rationalizing that downloading music illegally is ok? Pretty much no one is saying that, and the ones who are are pretty much anti-establishment so they'd be against any laws, not just this one.
The absolute MINIMUM fine per song is $750. How is that reasonable in any shape, form or fashion? You could go down to the local Wal-mart, steal the CD, get caught for shoplifting and end up with a lighter sentence. (Remember now it's $750 per song, with an average around 10 songs a CD, you'd need to be fined $7500 for stealing that CD).
This isn't about justifying or rationalizing anything, it's about laws the *AAs have bought that declare penalites that are far beyond any reasonable punishment. You also can't argue that this was done because of massive CD pirating either, there are criminal laws on the books for that. These laws are for civil punishment only and they're skewed totally in favor of the RIAA/MPAA with no consideration given to the accused citizen.
The RIAA is also highly unapologetic about the mistakes it's made. Sued a dead grandmother? Yep, done that, didn't care that they had. Sued a 12yo girl? Yep, did it, and refused to even consider a lower settlement because it was a child and the parents were unaware of what she was doing. Sued a grandfather who didn't even know file sharing apps were on his computer? Yep, did that too, didn't give a damn that his grandkids put it on there without telling him. If the RIAA was seriously doing all these suits to stop filesharing they would be willing to listen to circumstances and act accordingly. So far they refuse to do this, essentailly assuming you're guilty and there's no way they could be wrong. (Like they filing a suit against a dead person.)
Frankly I consider much of what the RIAA is doing to be abuse of the justice system. I'd much rather the courts spend time dealing with murdereds, rapists, drug dealers, etc. than processing thousands of subpoenas against would-be file sharers.
The have settled with about 1,500 people for an average settlement of about $5,000. That is about $7.5 million total. Once you subtract attorneys fees and split the proceeds between the record labels, bottom lines are barely affected.
They don't split the proceeds with the record companies, all money recovered frm RIAA/MPAA/BSA actions stay within that organization to pay for -- whatever. Mostly it pays the costs of the lawsuits, and to lobby congress for more bad laws.
You read in a public bulletin board detailed instructions for robbing a bank by typing in an unpublished keycode into an ATM machine and you get arrested??? No F'n WAY!!!!
Let's try putting this in the proper perspective: "You read in a public bulletin board detailed instructions for looking up your current account balance by typing in an unplublished code into an ATM after you've logged into your account and the bank takes away all your funds and closes your account?" No way!
The seriousness of what ocurred is far below robbing a bank. Whether or not it's a huge ethics breech is debatable, but let's keep things in perspective.
Also, why in the hell is everyone so irate about those who checked their accounts and not livid that ApplyNow and the universities using it allowed this security hole to exist in the first place?
Sorry but seems clear you don't grasp the size of the problem and yes it is a problem with security. Most of Microsoft's customers are corporate. They cannot and will not make a change to their operating system that will destroy functionality without providing an alternative. It won't happen, its not realistic to expect so.
I politely suggest you actually read my posts before you reply. As I have already pointed out: "Simply this is not something users are going to notice the lack of. They'll certainly notice it's there if their machines gets hit with a Land attack though." This is NOT something that will break any applications or the OS. It is a fundamental failure in the network stack, it's unable to handle a condition that should never occur. Corporations are NOT going to have a problem with patching this.
As for reintroducing an old problem, have you ever tried to fix a leaky pipe? Guess what? You're gonna spill some water while you try to fix it. What do you do to minimize this? You shut off the water to reduce the amount of water damage while you are repairing the leaky pipe.
Yes, but you don't walk off and leave the pipe leaking with the water turned off once you're done. If you do you're a damn shitty plumber. If you do it with a network stack you're a damn shitty programmer. Is this hard to understand?
You seem to think that they fixed the exploit 8 years ago rather than patching it. I'll bet that is exactly what happened. They remove a dependency which had a dependency which contained a dependency that fixed the exploit.
Well then, quite frankly, that's MS's own damn problem. They created the mess and now they have to clean it up. Just because they did a half-assed job in the past does NOT excuse them to let it fall apart in the future.
As for having the firewall on by default. I in know suggested that it was a shortcut, I merely stated that it was a temporary fix that they could retain while they fixed the problem. I don't what is wrong with this? Would you rather they keep every machine exposed while they fixed the issue?
A firewall is not impermeable, it can be circumvented. You might be able to trick someone into turning it off, an E-mail worm may find a way to disable it, etc. So if you want to set there with your firewall and think you're safe, even with at least one 8 year old vulnerability, well good luck, you're going to need it.
The problem with your suggestion is they've had EIGHT YEARS to fix this problem. XP was developed in the interim, yet they haven't fixed it. So we've been needing a firewall for eight years to protect our machines while they fix the problem, how many more will it take? Do you think 8+ years is a reasonable time to fix a known vulnerability? I don't.
As for security being a primary focus: What's your point here? You think they go from being network centric to security centric overnight? Seriously, 2 years is nothing in the grand scheme. There are several hundred million installs of Windows around the world so when you fix something its going to take quite a bit of work to make it perfect. I'd even go as far as saying they couldn't make it perfect, by the time they did the world would have moved on.
The point is they've declared a focus on security, and performed a code review 2 years back. The also spent most of a year (if not more) on SP2 for XP, with the goal to make XP secure one of their main goals in SP2. But they screwed up royally, they missed a vulnerabilty that's been know for eight years. What does this say about their dedication to security? Not much, it makes one feel like it's just another marketing ploy.
And quite frankly I don't give a damn about all those machines already out there, that's not the point. The point is that XP, even with SP2, is vulnerable to an eight year old vulnerability. Two years is plenty to test the existing code against known vulnerabilities, something that
hat if person A owns the copyright in country A, and person B owns the copyright in country B? Still okay for B to undercut A?
Sure, that's what capitalism is all about after all. The problem here is that up till the dawn of the Internet, A never had to worry about B since B can only sell to the country it has the copyright in and vice versa.
What if the copyright expires or otherwise doesn't apply for our purposes in country C, and ordinary person C starts making copies there, lawfully. Okay for him to undercut A and B?
Again, yes. It's capitialism after alll, and if you can/want to undercut others that's your right. You may make less profit, or worse none or negative, but sure you can undercut A and B.
It's certainly an issue worth considering carefully, but I don't think the answer is necessarily as clear cut as you'd like.
True, but the thing is we've always had this problem, just on a vastly smaller scale. If I take a trip to Japan and buy up a bunch of DVDs/CDs and bring them home, the USA company with the rights to those DVDs/CDs can't do a thing. I have to declare them, pay customs fees on them if necessary, but I own them and the US company is just SOL.
Add the Internet into the mix and now I don't even have to go to Japan to buy the goodies. I can got to multiple sites, all based in Japan, and order what I want and have it shipped. Again I have to pay any customs fees but I own them and the US company is again SOL.
Actually the _real_ problem is media companies trying to create artificial limits on things. Not only do they not want us to buy DVDs/CDs/etc. from other countries and import them, they want to make sure we can't use them if we do. (Hello region coding.:P) If you think about it like that you can narrow the scope of the real question quite significantly, it boils down to:
"Should Media Companies be allowed to control where I buy my media and where/when I want to play it?"
Now that's pretty clear cut to me, if I buy a CD, I'll play it wherever I want (within reason, no breaking into the neighbor's house to play it). If I want to purchase media from companies in other countries I will. Their being online just makes it more convenient for me, the customer, to get what I want and a price I want.
Frankly this is very much the same as online music and it being shared on P2P networks. The RIAA and the companies it represents don't want to adapt. Their business model is sorely outdated (and out of touch with reality) but they stubbornly cling to it, making threatening noises, suing anyone that moves and basically acting like a 2yo having a tantrum, only with lost more money and lawyers to throw around.
The RIAA and MPAA companies are going to have to change their business model to accomidate the important of DVDs from other countries. Perhaps work out terms so that the price will be close to the same in every country, release movies in other countries sooner to cut down on piracy of them, perhaps, well, I don't know, but they're going to have to find _something_ or they'll go the way of the Dodo.
Sadly given their past and current actions what will really happen is they'll get laws passed making the importation of media illegal, or they'll get a heavy tariff put on it. In the end the consumers will lose until these bloated, out of date and out of touch media companies go under.
I'm not a programmer, so looking through a C file isn't likely to give me any useful information, unless it's in comments at the beginning of the code. What's more, I imagine even programmers would rather just hear a summary than have to sit there and look through a bunch of code to figure out what it does.
You did note you couldn't get it to download but if you had you'd have seen the comments at the beginning of the file explain the Land attack in summary, then the code follows. I didn't even have to look at the code to see what it was Land does in fact, so the land.c file fulfills your requirements.
Because even for Microsoft and the most rabid MS haters this is a real stunner. Reintroducing 8 year old vulnerabilities is the kind of thing you expect to see happen in a 300 level college course, not out in the real world in a major OS from one of, if not the, largest software company in the world.
but the reality is this vulnerability happened after SP2 was released.
Actually no, this vulnerability showed up 8 years ago and was patched in Windows 98 I believe. So this isn't something new that Microsoft is just now learning about and need to fix, it's something quite old. Since the vulnerability came out ME, 2000 and XP all were released.
Perhaps they setup a firewall to allow them to fix things underneath without totally destroying everyone's networks?
If you're trying to say that MS feels that having the firewall on by default in XP SP2 is a shortcut for fixing problems, well, I certainly HOPE they're not taking that attitude. Yes the firewall needs to be on by default for better security, but they should have tested the OS against
known vulnerabilities with the firewall off to be certain they wouldn't work. Failure to do so shows some serious problems in MS land.
When you have as large of an installbase as MS does you can't shift things right away or you will lose customers, you have to make changes slowly and incrimentally so that users don't get confused.
You seem royally confused about what this actually is. Land is a DOS attack that is caused by sending a SYN packet to an open port on a machine with the source and destination addresses the same. This isn't something that is _needed_ by any app, it's a TCP/IP oddity, a packet that would normally never occur. Back 8 years ago it was understandable that MS and others didn't anticipate this attack, but after 8 years there's not any excuse.
Simply this is not something users are going to notice the lack of. They'll certainly notice it's there if their machines gets hit with a Land attack though. It is NOT a case of MS trying to make changes slowly to not confuse customers, it's a big blunder.
MS has been working a lot on connectivity over the last year or so with some protocol enhancements and increased IPv6 support. I imagine things are going to get worse before they get better, but don't kid yourself, they are working on fixing it.
Frankly if their "working on fixing it" involves re-introducing exploits first identified and fixed 8 YEARS ago then I'm certainly not going to hold my breath that they'll ever fix anything.
Ultimately though your defense of MS is unwarranted. They publically declared a while back (1-2 years now I think) that security was going to be a primary focus for them. This was pre-SP2 days. That they re-introduced a vulnerability from eight years ago speaks great volumes about that focus. If MS wants to claim they're security-focused now they deserve the lumps they get for foolish mistakes like this.
I agree that there are some interesting uses of Flash, but Flash sites discourage visiting the same web site many times, because even interesting moving pictures become boring after someone has watched them maybe 3 times.
It's also a usability nightmare, imagine someone who's blind or with bad vision trying to navigate most any flash site, it's pretty much impossible. Even a tradtional website with tons of images can be made usable with ALT tags, but Flash doesn't seem to support that (or flash designers don't think it's important, either way it doesn't happen).
And even for us "normal" folks flash sites can be seriously broken. Namco's Xenosaga II site has a contest, with the entry solely in the flash portion. Only one problem, the flash portion forgets you've logged in after a while, and while the HTML header at the top says you're logged in, the flash portion ignores that. Logging out and back in doesn't change anything. Result? You have to go through all the trouble to find the silly hidden Y-Data and sign up again if you want to continue adding future contest entries. (There are codes on ads in magazines so it's an ongoing thing.) Maybe if Namco had bothered to include a sign-in within the flash stuff it might work, as it is they wasted a lot of money paying someone to create that site.
And speaking of flash breaking your site, what do users think of the company who puts up the broken site? They're not going to blame Macromedia, after all Macromedia didn't force the company to use flash. In the case of the Xenosaga II site my opinion of Namco is at rock bottom, and this is after I preordered the game because I like the series so much. I wrote them to alert them of it being broken and never even got a canned response. Now I wonder if I didn't waste my money buying a game made by them. I'll certainly be much less likely to preorder anything they make in the future.
Frankly I've decided that flash == horrible experience ahead. I don't blame that all on Macromedia though, their own sites aren't horribly broken, so it's obvious flash isn't the sole culprit. Apparently companies think you don't need to actually _TEST_ a flash site to make sure it works properly.
Not a bad thing, but I think actual fraud or clear intent should have to be proven. Opportunity and unproven intent should not be weigh beyond a reasonable doubt.
In general I'd agree with you but this is Phishing. They've set up a fake website designed to look exactly like a banks. They've also sent out fake messages designed to look like they're from said bank saying that the customer needs to login to their account for some contrived reason and providing a link to the spoofed site for the login link. How much more clear do you need the intent to be? Everything they did was with the sole purpose of stealing account logins.
an account of where iSearch forced pr0n links on a family computer used by kids.
IANAL of course, but it seems to me this guy has a good case against the company. They can try to squirm out of whether it was installed with permission or not, but they aren't going to be able to squirm out of it being nearly unremovable. The guy found out it was on his computer, it was directing browser sessions to porn, thus potentially harming his children's mental well-being and even after taking far beyond reasonable steps, was unable to stop it. At that point iSearch was willfully forcing the porn on him and his family. I don't think that'd fly in any court, not with a judge or a jury. I'm not going to go to their site to read their EULA (I find avoiding spyware company's web sites to be a wise course of action unless you like your computer being infested...) but I really have to wonder if it spells out that you can't uninstall the program by any normal means.
I'd love to see him sue and win, this is the kind of thing the media would go to town on, iSearch would be shamed out of business even if any financial award didn't do the job. After all, even if you ran a porn site would you want your site associated with a company that forced porn onto kids?
Same here, though I've now got so many disorganized binders I think having a huge wall of CDs would make it possible to at least see the writing on the edge of the case to find what I want.
I've been trying to consolidate them into larger binders myself (just ordered a couple of 240 capacity ones). I try to keep the CDs themselves organized logically by type (OS CDs, Program CDs, etc.) and generally alphabetically, although I make exceptions for multiple versions, even if they're named different (so I'd file the Windows OS CDs in this order: Win95a, Win95b, Win98, WinME, Win2k, WinXP, WinXP-SP1, WinXP-SP2).
I did find that writing the activation codes on a slip of paper and slipping it in with the CD is quite useful, though.
I write mine on the CDs and also keep a spreadsheet with them all stored in it. I've found that most installers don't care if you eject the CD at the code/serial number prompt. I just type it in, put the CD back in and wait for it to spin up then click OK/Continue.
Does reading a diet mainly of science fiction make you one? Possibly. I'd have to distinguish. Are you reading Star Trek books? Or are you reading something like James Morrow, Stanislaw Lem, Phillip K. Dick, and Vernor Vinge? Some bibliophiles are entirely too narrow in their definition of literature. But I absolutely do think that people incapable of reading reasonably complex literary works (whether they be 'classical' literature or not) lack quite a bit in the intelligence department.
I think you're still being unfair here. I can, and have, read complex literary works, mostly ones required for classes in high school and through college. I've even read primary source matierials from the crusades (from both sides -- the crusaders and the "heathen" muslims). I was even inducted into an (maybe the?) International History Honor Society even though I was a Computer Science major. (I took quite a bit of history classes, even past the required ones. Amusingly the history professors were amazed and delighted that a CS major had made it into the society, apparently I was the first at my university.) So I'm quite capable of reading complex literary works.
In general I don't read many complex works on my own. Why not? I don't find most of them entertaining. Fascinating, educational, full of insights into history and people most definitely, but not entertaining. When I read I do so for enjoyment, I don't always want to think deeply about the subject. I've read quite a few Star Trek novels in the past and found most of them quite fun. Plausible? Not very, but fun nonetheless. Personally, while I'm a SciFi fan, I haven't read anything by the authors you mention. Of the ones I have read, and remember the author of, primarily they were Issac Asimov works. In fact I've read quite a few of his non-fiction works as well, they're entertaining as well as informative. I don't, however, consider myself any less intelligent just because I enjoy reading books that many (maybe most?) bibliophiles consider "unworthy". As long as I enjoy it, it was worth reading.
I don't think that people being in capable of reading complex literary works indicates a lack of intelligence. Intelligence is not solely based on reading comprehension. Look at the "idiot savants" who can solve complex math problems faster than many computers but can't read at all. People have different talents, while they may not be able to read complex works like you and I can, they likely can do other things better than us, or even things that we can't. Would you say our failure to do things others can't indicates a lack of intelligence? How about our lack of some amazing 'idiot savant" ability? If you don't think so then you really need to rethink how you feel about those who can't read "reasonably complex literary works".
In my experience, when you've lost the CD case you've also lost the CD that comes inside it.
I disagree, personally I have so many CDs (software, audio, backups, etc.) that I keep everything in CD wallet/notebook binders (whatever they're called). For me it's far easier to find the CD than the case. I'm much more likely to lose the case than the CD. I don't think I'm alone either, most all the people I've helped fix their computers keep their software CDs in binders too, it's really easy to put all the software in one small wallet and keep it by the computer, much more compact as well.
But getting back to your statement, if you've lost the case, you've lost the CD. Or, if you DO backup the CD to another CD, wouldn't you write the code ON the CD...I mean, you're going through all that trouble to back up the media, so why not back up the code?
Well yeah, I do, but what about your average user who got a computer from an OEM and just thought to back up the CDs, not realizing they needed to write the codes down? That's the people this is going to hurt, you and I (and the whole/. crowd) will have our codes on the backups and we'd be fine. Well maybe not fine, we'd likely be ticked at the inconvenience, but we'd not be up the creek without a paddle.
But regardless of all this, MS is shooting themselves in the foot. The only one's they're hurting are the legit owners of their products...as always when it comes to piracy issues. It's like no one really get's it.
My theory is it's all greed. Companies see the predictions of how much money they lose in piracy and the dollar signs flash in their eyes and they begin thinking "if we just stopped piracy all that money would be ours, and our sales would go up!" Of course this ignores the reality of the situation (that most pirates aren't going to bother paying in any case, they'll just find a way around whatever you throw at them), but greed has a way of doing that to people.
One thing I wonder about is the article says the customers (aka victims of unscrupulous computer companies) will have to answer a series of questions to basically prove they at least _thought_ they had paid for a legit copy. What are they going to ask to prove this? "Do you swear allegiance to Microsoft and promise to buy all our future products?":) Seriously though this seems even more moronic as what idiot isn't going to answer the questions in such a way to make it sound like they thought they'd bought a legit copy of Windows on their PC?
I only know two people who have paid for their copies of MS Office - everyone else either pirates it or uses OpenOffice because they aren't at liberty to drop over half a week's pay on it.
Some of the scrupulous buy Word Perfect Suite, it's a lot cheaper. What always amazed me was the difference in educational pricing. MS Office would be well over $100, WP Suite was about $50. I personally prefer Word Perfect (although it's far from perfect, it still handles label printing far, far better than Word) but I know several people who bought WP simply because they couldn't afford Office, and this was in college so they were getting the educational pricing. Microsoft's just a bit too greedy for their own good.
Microsoft has every right to verify that people using their software do indeed have a license to use their software. And let's be honest, no matter what they do you're going to hate them and flame them.
Sure they have that right, but they're adding more and more conditions on how you prove it. They're also starting to restrict more and more things that customers require until they can prove they own the software. (Security updates, reinstall activation so far. What's next, will they require you to prove you own the OS before you can install a driver?) What about customers who lost their CD/CD Case but have a legit copy? Is it right to tell them to FOAD because of that? Should I really have to waste 3-5 minutes of my time to
prove I'm not a crook. That's what it boils down to, MS doesn't care so much about their customers, in fact they're beating them to death with the anti-piracy club while the pirates happily install their no-activation copies they downloaded.
You should be thankful they're not giving it away free or you could kiss goodbye to something other than Windows ever being on a computer's desktop.
Actually with all the security problems and the growing concern/upset over it I'm not sure MS could effectively take over the OS market by giving Windows away anymore. You're starting to see your average Joe Users out there worried about using Windows. Steps like they're taking now certainly don't help, would you trust them not to apply onerous demands later on after they gave you Windows for free? I'm not sure anyone would, and I'm not talking just the/. crowd, but average people too.
And it is defined in the laws that criminalize it and by the courts that interpret those laws.
And those laws are so vague that there's been at least one case where someone was charged (and convicted) of posessing child porn because of a video in which all the little girls were fully clothed. The judged ruled that "gratuitous display of genatalia" didn't mean the actual genetalia had to be present, just showing that area of the body, even clothed, was enough.
Building a sophomoric facade of arguments trying to convince me that child abuse/porn doesn't exist because different societies have slightly different definitions of it is neither enlightening or productive or likely to change my mind. The original post I replied to appeared to be using that kind of argument as a defense of child abuse/porn. It's one thing to entertain yourself with pointless "what if" conjecture, but it is entirely another to defends predators and criminals in our society simply because other societies have no criminalized some of that behavior.
And it's quite sophmoric to not listen to alternate viewpoints and/or not respond to them intelligently. You keep repeating the same basic argument -- I believe it to be this way and the facts be damned. Sorry, nearly nothing is ever so clear cut. There are always grey areas to deal with, and the current laws on child porn in the US (and other countries) are very, very far from perfect. They do a much better job of ruining innocent's lives and putting innocents in prison than they do in actually stopping the crime.
Frankly your last point above is really sad. No one has said that we shouldn't criminalize behaivors that aren't criminalized elsewhere. What we have said, REPEATEDLY, is that the laws vary worldwide, and some of them (age of consent) vary from state to state in the US as well. You cannot declare a blanket definition of child porn that fits everywhere.
Despite what you might think, the laws on the books are far too vague, they need to be changed badly. I'm not supporting child porn, child abuse or child sexual abuse, but I am smart enough to realize a broken law does no one any good. Sure they may catch a few real criminals with it, but then how many of them can they convict when the law's so vague? Defense lawyers love vague laws, they can generally find holes big enough to drive their defense through and get their client off, even if they were really were guilty.
So I'll ask you, is that what you support? You claim to want predators and criminals off the streets yet you are unwilling to listen to the problems with the laws designed for that purpose. Apparently you're far too stubborn and/or stupid to see that if you'd actually listen, and help call attention to the situation, we might get better laws that catch the real criminals and stop putting innocents in jail.
What is or is not socially acceptable is the collective decision of a society. That's why the opinion of any single individual "doesn't count".
Well I must congratulate you on the non sequitor there, nice and succint. If the opinion of any single individual doesn't count you can't create a societal consensus. It's the civic duty of every citizen to have an opinion and espouse it. Through that a societal definition occurs.
One other thing you're overlooking is that these laws treat children (including teens) without respect. What should a child think when they can decide to have sex at 16, vote at 18, smoke at 18 and not drink until 21. At which of those ages do they become an adult? What about children who mature faster, should they be punished by having rights withheld? We allow child prodigys to go to college and get degrees early, why shouldn't we do the same for those who mature faster?
In other words, silly debates about defining and quantifying the margins of something have no bearing on its actual existence.
They have everything to do with it. Until you can define exactly what qualifies as child porn, you can't have child porn. Likewise until you decide what qualifies as a child, you can't define child porn. The law, if you've ever bothered to read any of it, defines all this stuff as part of the law. Everything _MUST_ be defined and the margins defined, otherwise the law will end up being unconstitutionally vague.
Basically, since you think such debates are silly, you're supporting the passage of laws that will never be useful because they'll get overturned. That makes you part of the problem, not the solution. If you're really as gung-ho about hating child porn as you claim, then you need to realize the importance of these definitions and contribute to the debate. One hint: calling the debate silly neither makes it go away nor solves the problems being debated.
The real underlying problem is many people, like you, have this over the top reaction and want it to ALL END NOW!!!! Yet you don't want to stop and actually define what's what so that it can effectively be stopped.
Child abuse is whatever a society says it is. Unless an individual can convince his society to go along with him, his opinion is irrelevant.
So if the religious conservatives pass a law that makes photos of any sexual activity outside of marriage, no matter what age, as child porn you'll accept that ehh? What about if the law says child porn is any photos of sexual activity between two people under the age of 30?
And before you say we'd just "convince" them to change it, keep in mind exactly how well that's working to get the DMCA overturned and to stop coypright laws from being extended to infinity. Sorry, maybe it worked that way in the past, but nowadays unless you're a multi-billion dollar corporation the laws get defined with almost no input from you and others like you.
That's why the collective opinion of a society count for everything and the individual opinion of one person count for very little.
Collective opinion's far too hard to define clearly, a law can't work that way. This is why obscenity is such a problem, it's supposed to be definied by the community, but we're not even sure what size the community has to be to define it. Right now TV and Cable networks are running scared because they don't know _what_ the FCC might deem obscene and fine them for. Things are getting censored in really stupid ways and quite frankly your's, mine, and everyone's freedoms have gotten restricted thanks to it.
This is the same thing here, Child Porn's never been properly defined. Even in the US the age of consent varies between 14 and 18 (it may be 16 and 18 nowadays, Hawaii used to be 14). The way the laws are now, photos of sexual activity with a 16yo might be legal in one state and not the next. What if you took them in a state where it was legal and moved a year later? Do the cops in that new state have the right to charge you with child porn over those legally taken photos now? Yeah, they do under current law. Got photos of yourself and your high school girlfriend doing the horizontal tango? Child porn as well, even though at the time you were legally able to have sex since you were both minors.
To make things more confusing if you have a girlfriend of legal age in one state and travel there to have sex with her it's legal. (Only if they're under the age of consent in that state is it a crime.) Yet if you take photos of you having sex with her it IS a crime. So which is it? Is she a child or not? If she's legally able to have sex, what society considers an adult act, why can't she consent to having nude and/or sexual pictures taken too? Is deciding about photos somehow more complicated than actually risking pregnancy and STDs? And what's with the laws saying that if
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There has to be sanity in what's owned and not, and lack of ownership of game rules certainly hasn't caused ChessMaster software to sell poorly. Perhaps (actually more than likely) Hasbro's videogame versions of Scrabble sell poorly. If they do, it's not because of sites like e-scrabble, it's because of some of the worst gaming programs written. Hasbro's "official" video games have been totally blown away by one guy writing an implementation in Java/Javascript (I forget which one) for free.
So I feel no pity for Hasbro, they're greedy idiots. If they'd provide a nice clean play by E-mail Scrabble version, even at a fee, I'd jump at the chance to be legit. Until they do I'll find alternatives that work, unlike their crappy video games.
- There are lots of reasons why someone won't/can't play offline. If you're good at Scrabble, no one who's not wants to play you beyond a game or two. I'm not the world's best by any means, but just playing normal (for me) I win by a sizeable margin. No one in my family will even play a game against me any more. (And to be fair it's not much fun to me to play a game like that, a challenge is more fun than a wholesale slaughter.) Most of my friends who can challenge me don't live around here, or are busy as hell with kids and jobs. The e-scrabble site's been a Godsend, I can play against my time-strapped friends as well as find new people to play against online who are really good at the game. It's fun, a hell of a lot of fun, and the most fun I've had playing Scrabble in many, many years. It's also quite social, the e-scrabble site includes a box to leave comments, so you can talk back and forth while playing the game. Just this past week I've been playing someone from Ireland and we've had a great time, both playing and talking. So don't look down on someone who only plays online, they may have to to have any fun, you and your wife are quite fortunate in this respect.
I think Hasbro has done the typical thing here. I also think they've made the same mistake. But most people won't care.- I know I own 4-5 different Scrabble boards, from the basic boardgame one, to the fancy top of the line one with the plastic table on a turntable and indentions to hold ties. I also know I wont buy anything else from Hasbro thanks to this. Defending their trademarks/copyrights are one thing, but the letter was a bit beyond that. The part about "since the domain will be no use to you, you should transfer it to Hasbro immediately" was really rude. Check out the whois on the domain, it was registered in 2002 (so it's taken Hasbro 2.5 years to do anything), and it's paid through 2007. If Hasbro was just acting by the letter of the law, they could easily have offered to reimburse him for the domain registration fees paid already along with him turning it over. Instead they demand it be given to them and even bring up cybersquatting, suggesting he's trying to rip Hasbro off by registering the domain. That is arrogant, rude, crass behaivor on Hasbro's part, so I'll no longer support them financially.
There doesn't seem to be much symbiosis in corporations these days. At least not in American markets.This is just wrong, it essentially allows MIPI to be judge, jury and executioner. They don't need to bother to PROVE anything, they just cause everyone to stop using BitTorrent and P2P out of fear, even in cases where they were going to share something legal.
I pay higher prices for software and music because of the rampant theft.
Contrary to what the prevailing attitude seems to be here, the vast majority of the public does pay for their software and music.
There is however a large minority that feels otherwise and continues their criminal practices. They are the ones driving software companies to add more and more layers of security to our software. They are the ones that are causing the honest amongst us to have to jump through increasingly more difficult hoops to install, register and maintain our software.
And don't be fooled by the music industry and BSA's ravings,
- OK, first of all, most E-mail for you perhaps, but most of my E-mails are quite a bit longer. Perhaps my friends and I are more long-winded than you and your friends, but this is a really bad assumption to make.
An additional benefit of this style is it allows you to quote the entire original if necessary without forcing your reply to the next screenful.And frankly we don't all have photographic memories. I'm pretty good at remembering what I wrote mostly, but I want the quoting there so I can refer to what I had said if I forget. I get very few E-mails where I don't find this useful at least once, and often more than once. E-mail's not instant messaging or IRC, there is a time delay before you receive a reply so it's easy to forget things.
- Why the hell would you quote the entire original and do a single lump reply? Interleaving makes a hell of a lot more sense, it's the same way conversation flows naturally. You reply to each part and leave a quoted section that's pertinent so the sender can recall what they wrote. You delete all that's unnecessary so that the message isn't cluttered up.
Most of the people I see supporting bottom posting are people who participate on mailing lists and USENET and assume that everybody does, too.At least it's not as annoying as HTML E-mail. I don't want pictures and fancy formatting, plain text does just fine and renders good in all E-mail clients. Microsoft should be shot for the mangling that Outlook and Outlook Express give to E-mail in the name of prettying it up. Frankly sometimes I simply can't read it in my normal clients (Gmail, The Bat!, Pine) and I just assume it's not important and trash it.
Note I'm not saying this makes what they're doing right, but I fail to have much/any sympathy for the APB since they started playing dirty first.
- His complaint is that while the RIAA
- claims these lawsuits are being filed to combat online filesharing the reality is that they're doing it to make money. He's not trying to say he shouldn't have gotten in trouble when he was caught. I would say he does have a ligitimate complaint about his lawyer not being able to speak to a lawyer on the RIAA's side. If they're working out a legal settlement both parties need a lawyer to protect everyone. That the RIAA doesn't seem to care enough to even do that speaks volumes about their real intents with these lawsuits.
He was caught with his hand in the cookie jar and doesn't like it. Well, sorry. If he did not want to be sued and pay up he should have not violated the law. He, like everyone else, must face the consequences of their actions.- Precisely, and if the RIAA is indeed filing these lawsuits just to make money (aka extortion through the courts) then THEY need to pay the penalty for that as well. Just because the guy was breaking the law sharing music doesn't mean the RIAA suddenly can ignore any and all laws.
Calling downloading "civil disobedience" is an insult to those, like the civil rights protesters and the protesters in Tiananmen Square, who have used civil disobedience to try to right the wrongs of society.- I disagree. This whole mess is making public how very wrong our legal system has become. Our congressmen pass laws that benefit the corporations while ignoring the citizens. The public domain has been obliterated since copyright keeps getting extended. Our fair use rights are being taken away in the name of fighting piracy. In some ways these are more insidious than previous wrongs, in those cases the wrongs were more noticeable, these current ones get hidden by smoke, mirrors and lots of FUD.
File sharing is stealing to avoid paying the cost, not civil disobedience--it directly benefits the protester. Civil rights protesters did not directly benefit from their protests. The only thing they got was a change in the laws--the whole point of their protest..- Well frankly did you even stop to think about that sentence before you wrote it? It's a huge nonsequitor. Yes the civil rights protestors benefited from their protests. (And I'm talking about the US Civil Rights movement against segregation of blacks and whites.) They got to stop being segregated among other things. Nowadays the whole attitude that blacks are inferior is almost completely gone. I'd say that's a HUGE benefit, it made their lives (and the lives of th children) much better.
If you steal music, then, as a law breaker, what right do you have to complain about the RIAA?No, they did not just get a chage in the laws, they got a change in attitude towards them and their plight. All this filesharing, even if not done for protest reasons, is bringing attention to bear on the out of control copyright laws and the power of corporations. That's a VERY good thing, as it's starting to make even folks who aren't tech savvy mad as well.
By your logic, no one who was falsely arrested/prosecuted would ever be able to speak up about it and end up being punished for a crime they didn't commit. They'd also not be able to complain that the punishment was more severe than the crime warranted. Look what happened in Iraq in Abu Gharib when the prisoners there had no way to complain about their captors' treatment of them. Granted it's not on the same scale but it's the same point. If the RIAA is making you homeless because you can't afford to fight them (even if you're really innocent) then by God you better be complaining.
If no one complains, nothing will ever change, it's as simple as that.
- So the penalty of well over $20,000 for sharing a whole 30 songs given to the woman who tried to fight the John Doe suit (this was mentioned in TFA) is reasonable? That's a fine larger than the amount of yearly income that qualifies as poverty. All for sharing 30 whole songs.
That's nothing more than a bunch of handwaving to rationalize the criminal activity in the first place.So let's assume this person was middle class and otherwise a decent person, has a job, a house, a car etc. How are they going to pay that $20K+? Sell the car? Sell the house? Is this what you would consider justice? If it is you have a very screwed up sense of justice.
Downloading/Sharing music without permission is illegal yes, but the punishment is supposed to fit the crime. We do not pull people over for speeding and fine them $750 for every mile they drove over the speed limit. Would you think that was fair? It's the same thing, the speeder was breaking the law every mile they drove faster than the speed limit, so of course they shouldn't expect a "little penalty" for a "little crime".
The absolute MINIMUM fine per song is $750. How is that reasonable in any shape, form or fashion? You could go down to the local Wal-mart, steal the CD, get caught for shoplifting and end up with a lighter sentence. (Remember now it's $750 per song, with an average around 10 songs a CD, you'd need to be fined $7500 for stealing that CD).
This isn't about justifying or rationalizing anything, it's about laws the *AAs have bought that declare penalites that are far beyond any reasonable punishment. You also can't argue that this was done because of massive CD pirating either, there are criminal laws on the books for that. These laws are for civil punishment only and they're skewed totally in favor of the RIAA/MPAA with no consideration given to the accused citizen.
The RIAA is also highly unapologetic about the mistakes it's made. Sued a dead grandmother? Yep, done that, didn't care that they had. Sued a 12yo girl? Yep, did it, and refused to even consider a lower settlement because it was a child and the parents were unaware of what she was doing. Sued a grandfather who didn't even know file sharing apps were on his computer? Yep, did that too, didn't give a damn that his grandkids put it on there without telling him. If the RIAA was seriously doing all these suits to stop filesharing they would be willing to listen to circumstances and act accordingly. So far they refuse to do this, essentailly assuming you're guilty and there's no way they could be wrong. (Like they filing a suit against a dead person.)
Frankly I consider much of what the RIAA is doing to be abuse of the justice system. I'd much rather the courts spend time dealing with murdereds, rapists, drug dealers, etc. than processing thousands of subpoenas against would-be file sharers.
The seriousness of what ocurred is far below robbing a bank. Whether or not it's a huge ethics breech is debatable, but let's keep things in perspective.
Also, why in the hell is everyone so irate about those who checked their accounts and not livid that ApplyNow and the universities using it allowed this security hole to exist in the first place?
As for reintroducing an old problem, have you ever tried to fix a leaky pipe? Guess what? You're gonna spill some water while you try to fix it. What do you do to minimize this? You shut off the water to reduce the amount of water damage while you are repairing the leaky pipe.
You seem to think that they fixed the exploit 8 years ago rather than patching it. I'll bet that is exactly what happened. They remove a dependency which had a dependency which contained a dependency that fixed the exploit.
As for having the firewall on by default. I in know suggested that it was a shortcut, I merely stated that it was a temporary fix that they could retain while they fixed the problem. I don't what is wrong with this? Would you rather they keep every machine exposed while they fixed the issue?
The problem with your suggestion is they've had EIGHT YEARS to fix this problem. XP was developed in the interim, yet they haven't fixed it. So we've been needing a firewall for eight years to protect our machines while they fix the problem, how many more will it take? Do you think 8+ years is a reasonable time to fix a known vulnerability? I don't.
As for security being a primary focus: What's your point here? You think they go from being network centric to security centric overnight? Seriously, 2 years is nothing in the grand scheme. There are several hundred million installs of Windows around the world so when you fix something its going to take quite a bit of work to make it perfect. I'd even go as far as saying they couldn't make it perfect, by the time they did the world would have moved on.
And quite frankly I don't give a damn about all those machines already out there, that's not the point. The point is that XP, even with SP2, is vulnerable to an eight year old vulnerability. Two years is plenty to test the existing code against known vulnerabilities, something that
- Sure, that's what capitalism is all about after all. The problem here is that up till the dawn of the Internet, A never had to worry about B since B can only sell to the country it has the copyright in and vice versa.
What if the copyright expires or otherwise doesn't apply for our purposes in country C, and ordinary person C starts making copies there, lawfully. Okay for him to undercut A and B?- Again, yes. It's capitialism after alll, and if you can/want to undercut others that's your right. You may make less profit, or worse none or negative, but sure you can undercut A and B.
It's certainly an issue worth considering carefully, but I don't think the answer is necessarily as clear cut as you'd like.Add the Internet into the mix and now I don't even have to go to Japan to buy the goodies. I can got to multiple sites, all based in Japan, and order what I want and have it shipped. Again I have to pay any customs fees but I own them and the US company is again SOL.
Actually the _real_ problem is media companies trying to create artificial limits on things. Not only do they not want us to buy DVDs/CDs/etc. from other countries and import them, they want to make sure we can't use them if we do. (Hello region coding. :P) If you think about it like that you can narrow the scope of the real question quite significantly, it boils down to:
Now that's pretty clear cut to me, if I buy a CD, I'll play it wherever I want (within reason, no breaking into the neighbor's house to play it). If I want to purchase media from companies in other countries I will. Their being online just makes it more convenient for me, the customer, to get what I want and a price I want.
Frankly this is very much the same as online music and it being shared on P2P networks. The RIAA and the companies it represents don't want to adapt. Their business model is sorely outdated (and out of touch with reality) but they stubbornly cling to it, making threatening noises, suing anyone that moves and basically acting like a 2yo having a tantrum, only with lost more money and lawyers to throw around.
The RIAA and MPAA companies are going to have to change their business model to accomidate the important of DVDs from other countries. Perhaps work out terms so that the price will be close to the same in every country, release movies in other countries sooner to cut down on piracy of them, perhaps, well, I don't know, but they're going to have to find _something_ or they'll go the way of the Dodo.
Sadly given their past and current actions what will really happen is they'll get laws passed making the importation of media illegal, or they'll get a heavy tariff put on it. In the end the consumers will lose until these bloated, out of date and out of touch media companies go under.
- Actually no, this vulnerability showed up 8 years ago and was patched in Windows 98 I believe. So this isn't something new that Microsoft is just now learning about and need to fix, it's something quite old. Since the vulnerability came out ME, 2000 and XP all were released.
Perhaps they setup a firewall to allow them to fix things underneath without totally destroying everyone's networks?- If you're trying to say that MS feels that having the firewall on by default in XP SP2 is a shortcut for fixing problems, well, I certainly HOPE they're not taking that attitude. Yes the firewall needs to be on by default for better security, but they should have tested the OS against
- known vulnerabilities with the firewall off to be certain they wouldn't work. Failure to do so shows some serious problems in MS land.
When you have as large of an installbase as MS does you can't shift things right away or you will lose customers, you have to make changes slowly and incrimentally so that users don't get confused.- You seem royally confused about what this actually is. Land is a DOS attack that is caused by sending a SYN packet to an open port on a machine with the source and destination addresses the same. This isn't something that is _needed_ by any app, it's a TCP/IP oddity, a packet that would normally never occur. Back 8 years ago it was understandable that MS and others didn't anticipate this attack, but after 8 years there's not any excuse.
MS has been working a lot on connectivity over the last year or so with some protocol enhancements and increased IPv6 support. I imagine things are going to get worse before they get better, but don't kid yourself, they are working on fixing it.Simply this is not something users are going to notice the lack of. They'll certainly notice it's there if their machines gets hit with a Land attack though. It is NOT a case of MS trying to make changes slowly to not confuse customers, it's a big blunder.
Ultimately though your defense of MS is unwarranted. They publically declared a while back (1-2 years now I think) that security was going to be a primary focus for them. This was pre-SP2 days. That they re-introduced a vulnerability from eight years ago speaks great volumes about that focus. If MS wants to claim they're security-focused now they deserve the lumps they get for foolish mistakes like this.
And even for us "normal" folks flash sites can be seriously broken. Namco's Xenosaga II site has a contest, with the entry solely in the flash portion. Only one problem, the flash portion forgets you've logged in after a while, and while the HTML header at the top says you're logged in, the flash portion ignores that. Logging out and back in doesn't change anything. Result? You have to go through all the trouble to find the silly hidden Y-Data and sign up again if you want to continue adding future contest entries. (There are codes on ads in magazines so it's an ongoing thing.) Maybe if Namco had bothered to include a sign-in within the flash stuff it might work, as it is they wasted a lot of money paying someone to create that site.
And speaking of flash breaking your site, what do users think of the company who puts up the broken site? They're not going to blame Macromedia, after all Macromedia didn't force the company to use flash. In the case of the Xenosaga II site my opinion of Namco is at rock bottom, and this is after I preordered the game because I like the series so much. I wrote them to alert them of it being broken and never even got a canned response. Now I wonder if I didn't waste my money buying a game made by them. I'll certainly be much less likely to preorder anything they make in the future.
Frankly I've decided that flash == horrible experience ahead. I don't blame that all on Macromedia though, their own sites aren't horribly broken, so it's obvious flash isn't the sole culprit. Apparently companies think you don't need to actually _TEST_ a flash site to make sure it works properly.
I'd love to see him sue and win, this is the kind of thing the media would go to town on, iSearch would be shamed out of business even if any financial award didn't do the job. After all, even if you ran a porn site would you want your site associated with a company that forced porn onto kids?
- I've been trying to consolidate them into larger binders myself (just ordered a couple of 240 capacity ones). I try to keep the CDs themselves organized logically by type (OS CDs, Program CDs, etc.) and generally alphabetically, although I make exceptions for multiple versions, even if they're named different (so I'd file the Windows OS CDs in this order: Win95a, Win95b, Win98, WinME, Win2k, WinXP, WinXP-SP1, WinXP-SP2).
I did find that writing the activation codes on a slip of paper and slipping it in with the CD is quite useful, though.In general I don't read many complex works on my own. Why not? I don't find most of them entertaining. Fascinating, educational, full of insights into history and people most definitely, but not entertaining. When I read I do so for enjoyment, I don't always want to think deeply about the subject. I've read quite a few Star Trek novels in the past and found most of them quite fun. Plausible? Not very, but fun nonetheless. Personally, while I'm a SciFi fan, I haven't read anything by the authors you mention. Of the ones I have read, and remember the author of, primarily they were Issac Asimov works. In fact I've read quite a few of his non-fiction works as well, they're entertaining as well as informative. I don't, however, consider myself any less intelligent just because I enjoy reading books that many (maybe most?) bibliophiles consider "unworthy". As long as I enjoy it, it was worth reading.
I don't think that people being in capable of reading complex literary works indicates a lack of intelligence. Intelligence is not solely based on reading comprehension. Look at the "idiot savants" who can solve complex math problems faster than many computers but can't read at all. People have different talents, while they may not be able to read complex works like you and I can, they likely can do other things better than us, or even things that we can't. Would you say our failure to do things others can't indicates a lack of intelligence? How about our lack of some amazing 'idiot savant" ability? If you don't think so then you really need to rethink how you feel about those who can't read "reasonably complex literary works".
- I disagree, personally I have so many CDs (software, audio, backups, etc.) that I keep everything in CD wallet/notebook binders (whatever they're called). For me it's far easier to find the CD than the case. I'm much more likely to lose the case than the CD. I don't think I'm alone either, most all the people I've helped fix their computers keep their software CDs in binders too, it's really easy to put all the software in one small wallet and keep it by the computer, much more compact as well.
But getting back to your statement, if you've lost the case, you've lost the CD. Or, if you DO backup the CD to another CD, wouldn't you write the code ON the CD...I mean, you're going through all that trouble to back up the media, so why not back up the code?- Well yeah, I do, but what about your average user who got a computer from an OEM and just thought to back up the CDs, not realizing they needed to write the codes down? That's the people this is going to hurt, you and I (and the whole
/. crowd) will have our codes on the backups and we'd be fine. Well maybe not fine, we'd likely be ticked at the inconvenience, but we'd not be up the creek without a paddle.
But regardless of all this, MS is shooting themselves in the foot. The only one's they're hurting are the legit owners of their products...as always when it comes to piracy issues. It's like no one really get's it.One thing I wonder about is the article says the customers (aka victims of unscrupulous computer companies) will have to answer a series of questions to basically prove they at least _thought_ they had paid for a legit copy. What are they going to ask to prove this? "Do you swear allegiance to Microsoft and promise to buy all our future products?" :) Seriously though this seems even more moronic as what idiot isn't going to answer the questions in such a way to make it sound like they thought they'd bought a legit copy of Windows on their PC?
- Sure they have that right, but they're adding more and more conditions on how you prove it. They're also starting to restrict more and more things that customers require until they can prove they own the software. (Security updates, reinstall activation so far. What's next, will they require you to prove you own the OS before you can install a driver?) What about customers who lost their CD/CD Case but have a legit copy? Is it right to tell them to FOAD because of that? Should I really have to waste 3-5 minutes of my time to
- prove I'm not a crook. That's what it boils down to, MS doesn't care so much about their customers, in fact they're beating them to death with the anti-piracy club while the pirates happily install their no-activation copies they downloaded.
You should be thankful they're not giving it away free or you could kiss goodbye to something other than Windows ever being on a computer's desktop.- And those laws are so vague that there's been at least one case where someone was charged (and convicted) of posessing child porn because of a video in which all the little girls were fully clothed. The judged ruled that "gratuitous display of genatalia" didn't mean the actual genetalia had to be present, just showing that area of the body, even clothed, was enough.
Building a sophomoric facade of arguments trying to convince me that child abuse/porn doesn't exist because different societies have slightly different definitions of it is neither enlightening or productive or likely to change my mind. The original post I replied to appeared to be using that kind of argument as a defense of child abuse/porn. It's one thing to entertain yourself with pointless "what if" conjecture, but it is entirely another to defends predators and criminals in our society simply because other societies have no criminalized some of that behavior.- And it's quite sophmoric to not listen to alternate viewpoints and/or not respond to them intelligently. You keep repeating the same basic argument -- I believe it to be this way and the facts be damned. Sorry, nearly nothing is ever so clear cut. There are always grey areas to deal with, and the current laws on child porn in the US (and other countries) are very, very far from perfect. They do a much better job of ruining innocent's lives and putting innocents in prison than they do in actually stopping the crime.
What is or is not socially acceptable is the collective decision of a society. That's why the opinion of any single individual "doesn't count".Frankly your last point above is really sad. No one has said that we shouldn't criminalize behaivors that aren't criminalized elsewhere. What we have said, REPEATEDLY, is that the laws vary worldwide, and some of them (age of consent) vary from state to state in the US as well. You cannot declare a blanket definition of child porn that fits everywhere.
Despite what you might think, the laws on the books are far too vague, they need to be changed badly. I'm not supporting child porn, child abuse or child sexual abuse, but I am smart enough to realize a broken law does no one any good. Sure they may catch a few real criminals with it, but then how many of them can they convict when the law's so vague? Defense lawyers love vague laws, they can generally find holes big enough to drive their defense through and get their client off, even if they were really were guilty.
So I'll ask you, is that what you support? You claim to want predators and criminals off the streets yet you are unwilling to listen to the problems with the laws designed for that purpose. Apparently you're far too stubborn and/or stupid to see that if you'd actually listen, and help call attention to the situation, we might get better laws that catch the real criminals and stop putting innocents in jail.
One other thing you're overlooking is that these laws treat children (including teens) without respect. What should a child think when they can decide to have sex at 16, vote at 18, smoke at 18 and not drink until 21. At which of those ages do they become an adult? What about children who mature faster, should they be punished by having rights withheld? We allow child prodigys to go to college and get degrees early, why shouldn't we do the same for those who mature faster?
Basically, since you think such debates are silly, you're supporting the passage of laws that will never be useful because they'll get overturned. That makes you part of the problem, not the solution. If you're really as gung-ho about hating child porn as you claim, then you need to realize the importance of these definitions and contribute to the debate. One hint: calling the debate silly neither makes it go away nor solves the problems being debated.
The real underlying problem is many people, like you, have this over the top reaction and want it to ALL END NOW!!!! Yet you don't want to stop and actually define what's what so that it can effectively be stopped.
Child abuse is whatever a society says it is. Unless an individual can convince his society to go along with him, his opinion is irrelevant.
And before you say we'd just "convince" them to change it, keep in mind exactly how well that's working to get the DMCA overturned and to stop coypright laws from being extended to infinity. Sorry, maybe it worked that way in the past, but nowadays unless you're a multi-billion dollar corporation the laws get defined with almost no input from you and others like you.
That's why the collective opinion of a society count for everything and the individual opinion of one person count for very little.
This is the same thing here, Child Porn's never been properly defined. Even in the US the age of consent varies between 14 and 18 (it may be 16 and 18 nowadays, Hawaii used to be 14). The way the laws are now, photos of sexual activity with a 16yo might be legal in one state and not the next. What if you took them in a state where it was legal and moved a year later? Do the cops in that new state have the right to charge you with child porn over those legally taken photos now? Yeah, they do under current law. Got photos of yourself and your high school girlfriend doing the horizontal tango? Child porn as well, even though at the time you were legally able to have sex since you were both minors.
To make things more confusing if you have a girlfriend of legal age in one state and travel there to have sex with her it's legal. (Only if they're under the age of consent in that state is it a crime.) Yet if you take photos of you having sex with her it IS a crime. So which is it? Is she a child or not? If she's legally able to have sex, what society considers an adult act, why can't she consent to having nude and/or sexual pictures taken too? Is deciding about photos somehow more complicated than actually risking pregnancy and STDs? And what's with the laws saying that if