Did they also tell the employees it was a federal law that they could not refund your money for an opened dvd package? I've heard that exact same line from three different walmarts in two different states. (All cases I was returning a DVD where the package said one thing and the disc did not match what the package said, and I was pretty sure that all of the copies they had would be the same.)
If you've heard it in different Wal-marts in different states then apparently someone has added that to the training. It's something we were never told, but I left Wal-mart over a year ago.
What I suspect is the studios probably sent a memo to Wal-mart (and possibly other retailers) claiming that copyright/DMCA/Etc federal laws prohibit returns and it got passed along. That's pretty much how they handled the move to refusing to credit stores on returned movies, they notified them of the change and the date it would start. Wal-mart and other retailers passed the info along to the stores and implemented it as soon as possible to lower losses.
Exchange the defective movie for the same title. Come back a day later and do the same thing. Repeat until you've depleted the store's stock of that item. Once corporate notices that a particular title's defect rate has gone up, watch corporate investigate.
You'll quickly find that they'll refuse to exchange it any further. At best they'll tell you it's your DVD player (they'll get to the point whre they will check the DVD on an in store player). At worst you'll have a long talk with loss control and perhaps the police because they'll think you're up to something.
It still doesn't fix the underlying problem -- that the studios don't want to allow even legitimate returns in the name of stopping theft and/or piracy.
In 10 years, it's not going to matter, as On-Demand channels will start carying every movie under the sun.
And then the MPAA will be crying foul that no one will buy movies anymore and ty to pass laws requiring a tax per month on everyone to make up for the revenue they've lost to another technology shift.
With each more-complex layer of anti-copy protection, doesn't that make the discs less forgiving of scratches and smudges, given that the player has to use all this overhead to compensate for the enhanced security?
Most likely yes, but once that shrinkwrap has been opened, even an act of God probably won't get your money back. I was working at Wal-mart when they switched to a strict only exchange for same movie policy. Policy is also to remove the shrinkwrap from the new copy on exchanges so there's no getting around it (unless you're lucky).
Wal-mart actually isn't the bad guy on this one, the studios started refusing to credit Wal-mart for the returns unless they followed the above rules. Faced with eating the losses for the studio's moronic rules or implementing them what retailer is going to refuse? That's why you can't take a disc back that won't play in your player and get another movie. (And yes, they did this to all retailers at the same time, not just Wal-mart.)
Basically this new and improved Macrovision will play in all DVD players, because if it doesn't your only option will be to buy a new one that will play it. From the studio's perspective I'm sure they think this is a fair solution.
bviously not posted by a business owner of any sort. 4% loss may sound paltry, but if you choose to look at that 4% as being taken out of your net profit it'll look considerable larger, i.e. 4% out of $27B - expenses, assume a profit margin of 50%, and it's 8% Would you be happy buying a 12-pack at the corner store, but having to sacrifice one can/bottle to some guy at the exit door for no apparent reason?
While I agree from a business owner's standpoint, going with a solution like Macrovision is an absurd way to "fix" the problem. The pirates who are reallly costing the studios money will find a way around this in no time flat and continue to produce and sell illegal copies. In the meantime, the studios will be paying Macrovision a fee to use their new copy protection stuff on every disk.
Basically you'll now leave the corner store with one bottle missing from your 12 pack and 10% of the beer gone from the other 11 to cover the costs of the Macrovision stuff.
Yes, until you get your new bill from your ISP, which includes an extra $50.00 per month so that they can afford to comply with the law.
What I find most ludicrous about the whole thing is the MPAA's apparent presumption that ISPs should be
required to monitor all traffic just in case they can find something illegal. The closest example I can come up with is wiretap law, but even there telcos aren't required to monitor all traffic all the time, just the traffic they get warrants on. The network has to have the ability to be tapped so they can comply with those laws, but they do not have to monitor every call 24x7.
What the MPAA is apparently trying to say here is that stopping piracy of movies is far more important that stopping people from plotting murders on the phone, planning a robbery over the phone, or even planning a terrorist attack on the phone. That's a leap of logic that can only be made by someone who's no longer connected to reality. Sure piracy is bad and it costs companies money, but it's a joke compared to murder and terrorism.
Hey you know what? I can't blame them. If he's taking pictures near locks and he looks like he might be a Muslim, the homeland security people have no choice. I'm not saying that Muslims are bad people in general or anything like that. What I am saying is that the US and MANY other countries are/were attacked by Muslim extremists.
Please explain what a muslim looks like. Please, I'm sure we'd all like to hear it. You see there are muslims of every skin color, of every age, of both genders. They come in various hair styles, girths, heights, etc. There is no such thing as someone who "look like a muslim". There IS such a thing as prejudice and presumption. That is what occurred here, and you are feeding it along. Yes, you are part of the problem. Harrassing long time American citizens who happen to look like what you
presume to be muslim only makes you less safe. The real terrorists will happily make note of what you think looks like a muslim terrorist, and make sure the next attackers don't look like that.
Yeah sure, lots of other extremists are out there that are not Muslims, but you know what? When your country lost 4000 innocent people to some extremists, I don't blame homeland security to be wary around those people. If you don't understand them then I think your the one who has the problems.
The last time I checked, the constitution did not say "We the people, in order to feel slightly safer because 4000+ people were killed, give up all our constitutional rights on demand." If you think it does, please find another country to go to, I'd recommend one with a dictator, they tend to function that way and you'll feel right at home when the secret police arrest you for being you.
I think it's better to be over secure and have a lot of people as a false alarm then to let some real threats through and have another 9/11.
There is so much I could say about this, but I'll let our founding fathers say it for me. Read these and think long and hard, you're part of the problem, not part of the solution. You're perfectly willing to give up the rights your forefathers fought for, and thousands of men and women died to protect over the years, just so you can "feel" safer.
"Those willing to give up a little liberty for a little security deserve neither security nor liberty." - Benjamin Franklin
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated" - the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." - Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 1791. ME 8:276
"What county can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that its people preserve the spirit of resistance." - Thomas Jefferson
"The true barriers of our liberty in this country are our state governments..." - Thomas Jefferson
"There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation." - President James Madison. 1751-1836
"Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." - Thomas Paine. 1737-1809
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." - James Madison
"Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of government power, not the increase of it." - Woodrow Wilson, in a speech in New York City, September 9, 1912
A sculpture is a much more inherently visual medium as compared to an album; therefore, I suppose one could concieveably say making a copy of the visual representation at a given point of the object would be an infringement.
Even if it was a painting that'd still be a silly argument to make. Ask someone if they'd pay for a photo of the Mona Lisa as opposed to the actual painting. Even beyond collectability, a painting is not a two-dimensional object. Paint strokes have texture, so a painting is a three dimensional image, just not as obviously one as a sculpture is.
I think you're right on with this sculpture though, with the reflective parts it's a three dimensional sculpture that is different from every angle, and at all times. What it reflects at any given instant is what is there to be reflected then -- birds, planes, clouds, rain, people, etc. A picture of it is worthless, since the exact nature of the sculpture is one of constant change.
If I buy a painting from an artist, I have not bought the copyright along with that painting. I cannot make copies of it and distribute it.
Yes, this is true, but where do you stop enforcing this?
I collect cels, particularly from anime series, the original copyright on the characters portrayed in those cels do not belong to me, even if I somehow managed to own every cel for a particular series. Yet I scan them and put up on my site so I can show off my collection, I take pictures of the ones I have framed for the same reason.
But I don't own the copyright, so technically I'm breaking the law everytime I do this. I'm not distributing them to make money, I'm merely showing the world what I own because I'm proud of it. But I'm technically a criminal.
So ignoring the whole public sculpture debate, this alone should show you how absurd our current copyright and other intellectual property laws are. What you own, you cannot show anyone. Quite frankly a case could be made that I if invite a friend over to my house and show them my cel collection that I have "distributed" the images of those cels and therefore violated the copyright of whoever owns it on those characters.
Quite frankly if you think I'm going to just put them away and not show them off because of a moronic law, you can kiss my ass. I paid for them, in several cases I paid a lot of money for them. I indisputably OWN the actual cels, and I _will_ show them where I want. I won't try to make money off them, that's all I promise.
That brings up another point though, if I sell a cel from my collection I have to show the image before a buyer will be interested. While I'm selling the actual physical item (the cel), I have to use a copyrighted image (a scan of the cel) to facilitate the sale. So, is that also illegal? I'll bet a wiley lawyer could find a way to say it was and sue over it.
If the artist who created this sculture is the one behind demanding payment, then I have a fair, and legal suggestion. Let's out them. Let's tell who they are, and what sites/locations they do business under and boycott them. Why should we pay for, or even be willing to allow their work to be displayed publically, if they're going to treat those who view their work like criminals. Sure the law's on their side, but sanity apparently isn't. If they want to be an ass, well let's help them be a very poor ass.
Second, it's difficult to remember passphrases! Phone numbers (In the US, at least) are limited to 10 digits because research shows the average person can only memorize 10 digits, as a result...we tend to write things down, or in the case of data people are likely to store their passphrases in a central location that is still prone to theft/decryption.
In the US is a nice key point there, in other countries they can be longer, but people still manage to remember them. People regularly remember longer sequences of words (the Lord's prayer, the pledge of allegiance, the words to their favorite song) and passphrases can easily be based off of sequences of words, just use the first letter of each. It'll look like absolute gibberish if you don't know the phrase it goes with.
While I may not be average, I manage to memorize things even when I don't try. I memorized my driver's license number many years ago. I've memorized my credit card number and the security code on the back of it along with expiration date. I routinely use passwords of 30+ characters. Granted the passwords are generally phrase-based with character substitution, but they're also not always in English, or even the whole phrase in the same language. I'll admit it's a bit of an unnatural skill, but it's very useful. I can still remember 30 character plus passwords I haven't used in 5 years. I'm one of the few people who really does use a different password at every site and on every machine.
Frankly though almost every "average" person is required to memorize things longer than 10 characters worth all throughout school. If you graduated high school you can handle a passphrase longer than 10 characters you actually _try_. The problem is most "average" users are lazy and/or don't give a shit about security so they don't try. Frankly there isn't a solution to them, even if you go with biometric they'd probably find a way to be lazy enough to hand the keys to the kingdom to an attacker without any trouble.
Of course this is why you should consider the number one threat to your network and systems to be internal, not external. Most cases of hacking do occur from inside, and a large part are disgruntled employees. If you don't have a plan in place to deal with this, you don't have much security to begin with.
As someone else pointed out in their post earlier, the FAQ on the project's page answers this. They are aware of these potential pitfalls and are trying to avoid them, while still investigating something that isn't fully explainable (yet).
I think you do them a disservice in not even checking out what they have to say for themselves before dismissing them totally out of hand.
It's funny that the correlation between the machine reading a certain state at time t and some major world event at t* where t* is greater than t is perceived as the event at t* causing the machine state at t, rather than the other way around. Correlation does not indicate causation, and in this case, it would appear more likely that the machine could somehow cause major events, though how that could occur, I have no idea, but it still seems infinitely more plausible than a case of genuine backwards causation, which is what everyone else seems to think is the case.
Except that doesn't have anything to do with the tests where they asked a random person off the street to concentrate on the machine and try to cause its output to change, and it actually diverged. For those you have the state at time t and the event affecting the state also at time t. Those are far harder to just write off.
It appears they've been very careful in studying this, and they do not say it's definitely predicting the future, only that it's a possibility. I think they're very right to be studying it. Something strange is happening, and it's repeatable, I'd like to know what is the real cause as well. It may turn out to be nothing, but then again, it might not. It's certainly worth a shot to try and find out, isn't that what science is supposed to be about -- explaining the unknown?
"The laws of chance dictate that the generators should churn out equal numbers of ones and zeros - which would be represented by a nearly flat line on the graph."
No, the laws of chance do not say any such thing. In fact, the laws of chance say exactly the opposite. If you have two choices chosen at random over a series (a 1 and a 0; or heads and tails on a coin), there is a high probability that one of the choices will be chosen a significantly higher number of times than the other. Over time, the percentage disparity will decrease to near zero, but the total numerical disparity is likely to increase.
Except that statistics does show that over enough time the series will converge into equal numbers. It may take a million times, or ten million, but eventually you'll end up with almost exactly equal number of ones and zeros.
That aside, you didn't read far enough, shame on you for commenting without reading the whole article. Apparently the REGs (also called EGGs) do produce straight lines normally, or nearly straight lines. They've seen it deviate only in controlled experiments (repeatedly), and before major world events (again repeatedly). We're also not talking just one REG here, the project curently has dozens of them located worldwide, and they are seeing these spikes occur before major events in tandem -- on every device.
Besides all the scientists they spoke to in the article all said basically the same thing -- they couldn't believe it when they saw these things occur, and kept repeating the experiments and getting the same results, over and over and over. It's more than just the REG boxes, it talks about studies that have examined the brain's responses of people shown a sequence of provacative cartoons, and they'll start seeing the brain react the same before the cartoon's ever shown to them. Again, they repeated the experiments multiple times, with different people, same results.
The article also points out a true oddity, nothing in the laws of physics say it's impossible to predict the future. In fact time may not be a constant, studies have shown it can flow backwards as well as forwards. So all this could be a weird sort of subconscious tapping into that, we're remembering things that haven't happened yet. Since we understand almost nothing about the brain (in terms of how it does what it does, we're not even sure _where_ or _how_ it really stores memories) I don't see this as anything that's impossible. Frankly it may be happening, we don't know enough yet to know either way what's really going on.
But if we don't read the full article and write things off by a few paragraphs, I can guarantee you we'll never know. You know this has happened multiple times in history, how many people thought it was impossible to make an airplane to fly in they sky? How many people thought the earth was the center of the universe? If we're unwilling to read, listen and be open minded about things one day we will end up proved wrong and made to look stupid in the process. Frankly I'm willing to give this the benefit of the doubt, since I read the whole article I can tell they're being very careful to say that they don't know what's causing this, only that something is happening. They also said it's not terribly useful for predictions as it is, they can tell you something will happen when they see these spikes, but they don't know what, when or where.
Re:Parent is flamebait and trollish. Mod down.
on
LokiTorrent Shut Down
·
· Score: 1
If he didn't have a 'standard policy' of having the logs auto-purged every few minutes....he should have. Nothing requires you to keep them....no reason he should have had anything to turn over...
This is a concept many Usenet providers understand keenly. (I'm talking about ones you have to pay a fee to use.) For instance, Usenetserver.com has this in the FAQ about their logging practices:
We keep a log of up-loaders for a period of 48 hours. Our only reason for doing this is to track spammers. We also do not monitor what you download. We only monitor how much you download in accordance to your chosen account. Please understand that we only see byte data and nothing else. This ensures that you are free to download what you want.
They do the bare minimum necessary logging they have to do to find and act on abuse, and nothing else. Even if someone shows up with a warrant, they're likely only going to be able to get logs of future activity. Some of the providers don't get this, Airnews (at least used to, I don't know if it's changed) logged everything their users did and then would burn the logs off to CD as they rotated them off the actual servers to store for possible future use. Needless to say a large number of folks avoid Airnews like the plague because of this.
Truly, whether or not your servers sees possible illegal activity, in this day and age of litigation happy lawyers and almost anything likely to get (mis)construed as libel/copyright infringement/etc. it's probably a good idea to log as little as possible. There's no point in keeping stuff around for sue-happy lawyers to have a fishing expedition on, something Lokitorrent's users are going to be very unhappy about.
On a related note, I wonder how much good those logs will do them. By the time they can get warrants the ISPs involved may have already purged their logs on what users were assigned what IPs for the time-frame in the logs. If they can't place an IP with a person all they have is evidence that someone infringed copyright but no one to sue. I'm sure the costs involved in analyzing the logs will be included in future losses to piracy figures no matter what though, so perhaps that's the real use of them -- another way to inflate those figures.
Anyway, one final thing. Everyone likes to argue that downloading stuff from p2p isn't theft, because the original still exists. Lots of folks then rationalize that since it's not theft (by their definition), it's not bad. But what about all of these software licenses that people on Slashdot are so high and mighty about? If someone grabbed some open source code, didn't bother to follow the license instructions, told the original writers to fuck off, and argued that they (the original writers) were no worse off, Slashdotters would be screaming bloody murder.
I think you're really missing the actual argument made. The argument that it's not theft does not mean it's not
bad. The point is that the RIAA/MPAA/BSA/DemonSpawn are trying to call it theft to make it an emotional issue instead of the legal one it is. Also theft is worse, as the owner no longer has the ability to make money of the item stolen. A copyright holder can still make barrel loads of money from a work that's been downloaded online because they still have it available to sell.
That doesn't make it right, but it really makes the discrepancies in the punishment even more obviously ludicrous. There was a post yesterday where someone compared the penalties for downloading a file vs. going to a store and shoplifting it. The results were very telling, if you stole it you faced a maximum of 1 year in jail and a $100,000 fine. If you downloaded it you faced a maximum of 1 year in jail, a $100,000 fine, $3,300,000 in damages + the legal fees of the owner of the copyright. The article can be found here.
So while neither is morally right, a lot of people are so shocked and pissed about the HUGE discrepancy in punishments that they stop seeing downloading as evil. It's a way to stick it to "the man" who's gotten these ludicrous laws put on the books.
Personally I have no ambiguity about it, if I download something that's copyrighted and I don't own a copy already it's not legal. I'm also well aware than the fansubs in the anime community aren't legal either, but at the same time I really feel that the punishments handed down for downloading an item shouldn't be legal either. Frankly I could probably go rob a Blockbuster, kill every employee and customer in the store while I was at it and receive less punishment than if I downloaded a copy of a movie. There's something very wrong there.
Finally to address you argument about if someone violated the GPL or other open source license. Yes/. and myself would be royally pissed, but I wouldn't say they were stealing. I'd say they were breaking the GPL/etc. and violating a contract and/or copyright. I'm fair with my values, it's still not theft even if it's my personal copyright being violated, it's copyright infringement, a very different thing.
I saw somewhere that Pfizer said that part of the reason they're doing this is that people think that it's Pfizer sending out the spam...
Huh?
I think that not only is that bullshit, that they're actually doing it to try to prevent reimportation (as well as the stopping of non-Pfizer sildenafil citrate).
It's probably true. Think about the kind of person who'd bother to read spam, much less buy from it. They're definitely stupid enough to think it's actually Pfizer sending them. They're also the ones who fall for each Phishing attack that comes their way. Hell they're probably well on their way to Nigeria to take part in that great deal to make millions illegally as well.
I don't know if WaMu is especially phish-easy, but they seem to be a strong target.
I think they don't care or at least react on them as quickly as other banks is why. I forward all phishing attacks to the companies involved so they can at least do damage control, and of them WaMu has no auto response, and when I do get a response it's 3-4 days later, well past the point of time where they could have done anything. (And it's a canned thank you for letting us know response, not even a "yes this was not from us, if you clicked on the link and entered information let us know ASAP" response I get from most banks.)
Personally the lesson I've learned is to be damned glad WaMu's not my bank. YMMV of course, but they don't seem to take these phishing attacks very seriously unlike other banks do.
I feel very sad for you that you consider MS 'Your enemy'. I don't like them either, but I don't attribute them that much power. They aren't an enemy; they are a company out to make money. By calling them the enemy you ascribe malice to them that is unwarranted. You also give them power over you by the same act.
Exactly what would it take for you to consider their actions with malice? Perhaps an upheld conviction of abusing their OS monopoly to move into other areas and take out other companies illegally? How about their secret agreements with OEMs in the past that required one copy of Windows sold per CPU, whether the OS left the building on the PC or not? I could go on listing more, but at this point in time it's pointless to just say it's business as usual and without malice. The courts have found MS to have broken anti-trust law, and it was upheld on appeal. Companies don't go around breaking laws, then pulling the type of defense strategies MS did without malice. They do that when they did it intentionally.
But frankly your argument's silly anyway. I consider MS my enemy. I consider the RIAA and MPAA member companies my enemy. I consider most of the BSA companies my enemy, and I consider the OPEC members to be enemies. Why? Their goal, even if they aren't breaking laws, is to make money at all costs. If that cost is my freedoms (RIAA/MPAA and the congresscritters they own), my quality of life, or what else, so be it, they don't care as long as they make money. They're in business to make money from me even if I fully wish to not pay them a damned cent. I don't willingly, but my tax dollars keep going to them (at the least to pay the damn congresscritters they've bought who represent the companies first and the real people last). I consider that enemy worthy, and worth fighting.
Power over me? They already have power over you, me and all of us. Hell just look at the litany of bills presented, along with the ones that made it into law. You can't tell me things like the DMCA haven't already given them enormous power over each and every one of us. Companies keep proving they're willing to abuse it any way they see fit. Want to stifle research into security flaws? Already been done, will happen again. Want to try and make sure no one can sell generic parts for your equipment? Already being done, look at the printer manufacturers.
Sorry, but I don't have to do a damned thing for them to have power over me. They already do, and that's another part of why I consider them my enemies. If you don/t, well congrats on enjoying all those laws and restrictions they've placed on you. I'll be fighting them tooth and nail for the existing ones and future ones while you enjoy having your rights and freedoms removed. Personally I want mine back.
Oh, quit it. Debating for hair-splitting's sake can be a fun mental exercise, but come on. The majority of the P2P/IRC/Usenet community is not using these file sharing capabilities to trade Grandma's recipe for Alaskan upside-down cake. Quit hanging on to a technicality of decency. Sure, I'll get modded down by the screw-the-man idealists, but you know that's how this sharing system plays out in the end. Movies, music, computer games, and porn.
While I can't speak for others, I use this argument because it's true. If we'd just rolled over and said "oh sure, VCRs are generally used to record stuff illegally" we wouldn't have VCRs nowadays. We'd probably not have CD burners, or DVD burners, or tape recorders, and so on. The principle here is very important, just because hoards of people are using P2P illegally does NOT mean we should just shrug and let the battle be lost. Besides, the supreme court upheld this principle back in the Betamax case, and hopefully will do so again with the current Grokster one.
It's not a "morass of legal rhetoric and artistic dogma" hiding greed and/or refusal to pay for stuff. It's quite simply the right to innovate vs. stifling innovation in the name of stopping piracy. I don't support illegal downloads, but I damn well support the right to create new technology, even if that technology may end up used illegally. There are vast numbers of things that are used illegally daily that have many legitimate uses, things we wouldn't want to do without (knives, cars (used in getaways from crime scenes, sometimes used to run people down), explosives (used in construction), etc.)
I don't think it's splitting hairs to be defending this principle, I find it very important for our future.
People demonize the RIAA in order to remove the guilt they feel and paint someone else as the bad guy doing wrong in order to justify their actions.
Wow, what a totally baseless assumption. Personally I demonize the RIAA because they deserve it. I gain nothing from it at all, as I don't even listen to US music, much less download it. To me the RIAA represents all that is bad with corporations trying to run society. They want to stop all technological advancements (see the INDUCE act). They want to continue their current business model in the face of obvious customer discontent with it (killing off the CD single market, fighting tooth and nail to prevent legal online alternatives for digital music for many years, continuing to insist of vastly inflated prices even when they do give in, and shoveling out albums with 1-3 good tunes and the rest crap knowingly for instance). In their eyes, there is no legal uses for P2P technology (guess those Linux ISOs I grab are illegal ehh?). They continue to use payola to control what's on the radios, etc, etc.
Frankly, you tell me why I shouldn't demonize the RIAA, I'll listen, but don't try and lump me in with people doing things wrong. I account for a grand total of nothing for the RIAA's profits, or their loses due to piracy. I even refuse to listen to the radio willingly. (I get subjected to it against my will at stores occasionally.) Hell, I couldn't even tell you what songs are currently popular, nor do I want to know. I made my choice years ago to boycott the RIAA and I'm sticking with it.
But 99% of the time, it's not.
So? VCRs are probably used more for illegal purposes than legal ones, do you want to ban them too? CD burners are used far more for illegal purposes than legal ones, shall we ban them as well? You know it's illegal to perform a copyrighted work in public without prior permission so shall we ban anyone humming or singing their favorite tunes in public? Just because something is used illegally a lot does
not mean it's a bad thing. It just means a lot of people like to break certain laws. Go after the criminals, not the tools they use.
Why would someone on a P2P network worry about downloads being logged by the servers if they weren't trading anything illegal? Come on, we're not stupid. I wouldn't give a crap if some Kazaa server recorded that I shared Slackware 10.1. Did you know--gasp--Slashdot is logging your actions on its site right now? Horrors!
It's the principle of the thing. If Kazaa was upfront and told me they were logging everything I did I'd be OK with it. I'd likely chose not to use them, but at least they were honest. I know/. logs what IP I post from, etc. because it's the way the web works. I know that and chose to post with the full knowledge of it, there's no dishonesty about what's going on. There are some Usenet providers that log everything their customers do and burn logs to CD to keep permanently (*cough*Airnews*cough*), and I chose not to use them. I don't like having everything I do logged, not because I do things that are illegal, but because I tend to like to have some privacy. If you feel differently, what say you give me the keys to your house so I can rummage around and see what I find out about you? Additionally, as I've pointed out, Kazaa maintained publically that they were not logging this stuff. So they lied as well as logged. It's a big deal to me when a company lies about what data it collects.
Besides, if this was someone like say Amazon, eBay, Paypal or Microsoft and we'd just found out they were logging stuff they said they weren't, you'd probably be livid about it.
The biggest anoyance is that it's not using a standard format for those files. If it were, not only would you have compatability within the product family; but with other families (Adobe, F/OSS, etc) as well.
That's the ideal yes, but at a minimum it should be able to handle it's own proprietary format proprely, something MS Word fails to do. Even if it tried to use open formats, it'd probably screw them up so badly it couldn't open them up properly itself, much less anything else handle them.
Frankly I believe Open Office handles older versions of.doc formats better than the current MS Word does.
Note: I'm not just MS bashing, I use Word a lot myself, and this is a very frustrating bug to deal with. It gets old having to upgrade every time a new version comes out (gotta make sure I can read all the Word documents that come my way), and having to keep older versions around on a backup machine for when the current version opens an older version.doc and it's unreadable without a few hours of formatting.
The Gnome pics, now this? filler for nerds, stuff that doesn't happen?
You must be new here, that's normal.
Give the thread a few more minutes and the "In Soviet Russia" and "Step 5: Profit" jokes will show up. The GNAA trolls have probably already shown up but got modded into oblivion already.
I hate to be the one to defend software patents, because I really despise them, but in this case, as in most others, it's the infringing company that's getting hurt, and not "the people".
p.s. Of course, the people are getting hurt indirectly, as they are thus deprived of a choice in the marketplace.
So ultimately software patents screw over the public no matter what. While Matsushita may be in the right here, software patents are what created the mess and the public still loses. Just even more proof that software patents are bad ideas.
If only someone would sue Microsoft for Clippy, we could finally be rid of the biggest annoyance in Microsoft Office.
Personally I think the biggest annoyance by far in Microsoft Office is it's inability to open older versions of it's own.doc format properly, and the fact that Microsoft seems to make sure the current version of the.doc format won't work in older versions nearly every release. Meanwhile you have Wordperfect's.wpd format that hasn't changed since version 6 and works just fine.
It's pretty sad when software can't even handle it's own proprietary format properly.
This won't work. If the bank with which you are working places holds on checks, then it won't matter how you use the check. If you deposit it, the bank simply waits to credit your account. If you cash it, the bank will give you the money right away, but it will place a hold for the funds you are taking on the account against which you are cashing the check. Your available balance will be reduced by the ammout of the check, and the fund holds will be lifted gradually according to the bank's check hold policy.
The bank which employs me is particularily stringent about it's hold policy, and for most customers, non-local personal checks get five to seven business day holds placed on them (almost half the month!) As you may imagine, this does cause customer service issues. As a lowly teller, however, all I can really do is is shrug, sympathise, and direct the customer to the brochure explaining our hold policy, which he received when he opened his account.
Wow, and here I thought my bank was the most vile out there. I'm not sure this policy would work if they're trying to claim NSF charges. If the hold turns out to be unneeded (e.g. the check clears just fine), then the bank would be opening itself up to lawsuits if they didn't return those charges. Realistically they're probably opening themselves up to a lawsuit if they apply NSF charges to the account because of one of these holds before before they know if the check cleared or not. Now I'm pretty sure they'd be in the right applying the NSF charges retroactively to the point where the hold was placed if they check fails to clear.
In any case I certainly hope people are leaving your bank in droves. That type of customer antagonistic policy is something that should not happen. While banks are in business to make money, that does not give them the right to treat their customers, without which they'd make no money, like they're all criminals. Hell, it's arguable that the worst customer for banks are the best in terms of making money since they tend to bounce more checks and generate lots more juicy NSF charges for the bank. Don't think they don't know this either, but they certainly shouldn't be treating legit customers like shit.
I feel sorry for you, I imagine their inane policies make your life hell at work.
One comment on cashing the check and deposting the cash. I recently had to do this, as I was borrowing money to keep anything from bouncing while I waited for an erronous charge to be credited back. I knew my bank would probably tell me hell no, so I cheated a bit. I cashed it at one brank, drove to the next city and deposited the cash. No one was the wiser and it got same day credit. What turned out to be really annoying was it was my bank's fault the credit wasn't there yet. Turned out the place that had made the extra charge mistakenly uses the same bank for their credit card processing. It took them three weeks to get them to finally credit me, and in the end they had to call them up and authorize an EFT between their account and mine. The bank was never able to explain to either of us why they sat on a properly processed credit for weeks without doing anything. Incidentally they've officially never processed it, I got my money back through the EFT, but the actual credit back to my card never has shown up. The business has officially asked me to just pay by check from now on and flagged my account for no late charges thanks to this. Talk about quality customer service froma bank! (As far as the company concerned, I give them great credit for going the extra mile to make sure my money was returned, they even paid the few NSF charges that they caused.)
Slashdot Mirror
What I suspect is the studios probably sent a memo to Wal-mart (and possibly other retailers) claiming that copyright/DMCA/Etc federal laws prohibit returns and it got passed along. That's pretty much how they handled the move to refusing to credit stores on returned movies, they notified them of the change and the date it would start. Wal-mart and other retailers passed the info along to the stores and implemented it as soon as possible to lower losses.
It still doesn't fix the underlying problem -- that the studios don't want to allow even legitimate returns in the name of stopping theft and/or piracy.
Wal-mart actually isn't the bad guy on this one, the studios started refusing to credit Wal-mart for the returns unless they followed the above rules. Faced with eating the losses for the studio's moronic rules or implementing them what retailer is going to refuse? That's why you can't take a disc back that won't play in your player and get another movie. (And yes, they did this to all retailers at the same time, not just Wal-mart.)
Basically this new and improved Macrovision will play in all DVD players, because if it doesn't your only option will be to buy a new one that will play it. From the studio's perspective I'm sure they think this is a fair solution.
Basically you'll now leave the corner store with one bottle missing from your 12 pack and 10% of the beer gone from the other 11 to cover the costs of the Macrovision stuff.
What the MPAA is apparently trying to say here is that stopping piracy of movies is far more important that stopping people from plotting murders on the phone, planning a robbery over the phone, or even planning a terrorist attack on the phone. That's a leap of logic that can only be made by someone who's no longer connected to reality. Sure piracy is bad and it costs companies money, but it's a joke compared to murder and terrorism.
Yeah sure, lots of other extremists are out there that are not Muslims, but you know what? When your country lost 4000 innocent people to some extremists, I don't blame homeland security to be wary around those people. If you don't understand them then I think your the one who has the problems.
I think it's better to be over secure and have a lot of people as a false alarm then to let some real threats through and have another 9/11.
I think you're right on with this sculpture though, with the reflective parts it's a three dimensional sculpture that is different from every angle, and at all times. What it reflects at any given instant is what is there to be reflected then -- birds, planes, clouds, rain, people, etc. A picture of it is worthless, since the exact nature of the sculpture is one of constant change.
I collect cels, particularly from anime series, the original copyright on the characters portrayed in those cels do not belong to me, even if I somehow managed to own every cel for a particular series. Yet I scan them and put up on my site so I can show off my collection, I take pictures of the ones I have framed for the same reason.
But I don't own the copyright, so technically I'm breaking the law everytime I do this. I'm not distributing them to make money, I'm merely showing the world what I own because I'm proud of it. But I'm technically a criminal.
So ignoring the whole public sculpture debate, this alone should show you how absurd our current copyright and other intellectual property laws are. What you own, you cannot show anyone. Quite frankly a case could be made that I if invite a friend over to my house and show them my cel collection that I have "distributed" the images of those cels and therefore violated the copyright of whoever owns it on those characters.
Quite frankly if you think I'm going to just put them away and not show them off because of a moronic law, you can kiss my ass. I paid for them, in several cases I paid a lot of money for them. I indisputably OWN the actual cels, and I _will_ show them where I want. I won't try to make money off them, that's all I promise.
That brings up another point though, if I sell a cel from my collection I have to show the image before a buyer will be interested. While I'm selling the actual physical item (the cel), I have to use a copyrighted image (a scan of the cel) to facilitate the sale. So, is that also illegal? I'll bet a wiley lawyer could find a way to say it was and sue over it.
If the artist who created this sculture is the one behind demanding payment, then I have a fair, and legal suggestion. Let's out them. Let's tell who they are, and what sites/locations they do business under and boycott them. Why should we pay for, or even be willing to allow their work to be displayed publically, if they're going to treat those who view their work like criminals. Sure the law's on their side, but sanity apparently isn't. If they want to be an ass, well let's help them be a very poor ass.
While I may not be average, I manage to memorize things even when I don't try. I memorized my driver's license number many years ago. I've memorized my credit card number and the security code on the back of it along with expiration date. I routinely use passwords of 30+ characters. Granted the passwords are generally phrase-based with character substitution, but they're also not always in English, or even the whole phrase in the same language. I'll admit it's a bit of an unnatural skill, but it's very useful. I can still remember 30 character plus passwords I haven't used in 5 years. I'm one of the few people who really does use a different password at every site and on every machine.
Frankly though almost every "average" person is required to memorize things longer than 10 characters worth all throughout school. If you graduated high school you can handle a passphrase longer than 10 characters you actually _try_. The problem is most "average" users are lazy and/or don't give a shit about security so they don't try. Frankly there isn't a solution to them, even if you go with biometric they'd probably find a way to be lazy enough to hand the keys to the kingdom to an attacker without any trouble.
Of course this is why you should consider the number one threat to your network and systems to be internal, not external. Most cases of hacking do occur from inside, and a large part are disgruntled employees. If you don't have a plan in place to deal with this, you don't have much security to begin with.
I think you do them a disservice in not even checking out what they have to say for themselves before dismissing them totally out of hand.
It appears they've been very careful in studying this, and they do not say it's definitely predicting the future, only that it's a possibility. I think they're very right to be studying it. Something strange is happening, and it's repeatable, I'd like to know what is the real cause as well. It may turn out to be nothing, but then again, it might not. It's certainly worth a shot to try and find out, isn't that what science is supposed to be about -- explaining the unknown?
No, the laws of chance do not say any such thing. In fact, the laws of chance say exactly the opposite. If you have two choices chosen at random over a series (a 1 and a 0; or heads and tails on a coin), there is a high probability that one of the choices will be chosen a significantly higher number of times than the other. Over time, the percentage disparity will decrease to near zero, but the total numerical disparity is likely to increase.
That aside, you didn't read far enough, shame on you for commenting without reading the whole article. Apparently the REGs (also called EGGs) do produce straight lines normally, or nearly straight lines. They've seen it deviate only in controlled experiments (repeatedly), and before major world events (again repeatedly). We're also not talking just one REG here, the project curently has dozens of them located worldwide, and they are seeing these spikes occur before major events in tandem -- on every device.
Besides all the scientists they spoke to in the article all said basically the same thing -- they couldn't believe it when they saw these things occur, and kept repeating the experiments and getting the same results, over and over and over. It's more than just the REG boxes, it talks about studies that have examined the brain's responses of people shown a sequence of provacative cartoons, and they'll start seeing the brain react the same before the cartoon's ever shown to them. Again, they repeated the experiments multiple times, with different people, same results.
The article also points out a true oddity, nothing in the laws of physics say it's impossible to predict the future. In fact time may not be a constant, studies have shown it can flow backwards as well as forwards. So all this could be a weird sort of subconscious tapping into that, we're remembering things that haven't happened yet. Since we understand almost nothing about the brain (in terms of how it does what it does, we're not even sure _where_ or _how_ it really stores memories) I don't see this as anything that's impossible. Frankly it may be happening, we don't know enough yet to know either way what's really going on.
But if we don't read the full article and write things off by a few paragraphs, I can guarantee you we'll never know. You know this has happened multiple times in history, how many people thought it was impossible to make an airplane to fly in they sky? How many people thought the earth was the center of the universe? If we're unwilling to read, listen and be open minded about things one day we will end up proved wrong and made to look stupid in the process. Frankly I'm willing to give this the benefit of the doubt, since I read the whole article I can tell they're being very careful to say that they don't know what's causing this, only that something is happening. They also said it's not terribly useful for predictions as it is, they can tell you something will happen when they see these spikes, but they don't know what, when or where.
We keep a log of up-loaders for a period of 48 hours. Our only reason for doing this is to track spammers. We also do not monitor what you download. We only monitor how much you download in accordance to your chosen account. Please understand that we only see byte data and nothing else. This ensures that you are free to download what you want.
They do the bare minimum necessary logging they have to do to find and act on abuse, and nothing else. Even if someone shows up with a warrant, they're likely only going to be able to get logs of future activity. Some of the providers don't get this, Airnews (at least used to, I don't know if it's changed) logged everything their users did and then would burn the logs off to CD as they rotated them off the actual servers to store for possible future use. Needless to say a large number of folks avoid Airnews like the plague because of this.
Truly, whether or not your servers sees possible illegal activity, in this day and age of litigation happy lawyers and almost anything likely to get (mis)construed as libel/copyright infringement/etc. it's probably a good idea to log as little as possible. There's no point in keeping stuff around for sue-happy lawyers to have a fishing expedition on, something Lokitorrent's users are going to be very unhappy about.
On a related note, I wonder how much good those logs will do them. By the time they can get warrants the ISPs involved may have already purged their logs on what users were assigned what IPs for the time-frame in the logs. If they can't place an IP with a person all they have is evidence that someone infringed copyright but no one to sue. I'm sure the costs involved in analyzing the logs will be included in future losses to piracy figures no matter what though, so perhaps that's the real use of them -- another way to inflate those figures.
That doesn't make it right, but it really makes the discrepancies in the punishment even more obviously ludicrous. There was a post yesterday where someone compared the penalties for downloading a file vs. going to a store and shoplifting it. The results were very telling, if you stole it you faced a maximum of 1 year in jail and a $100,000 fine. If you downloaded it you faced a maximum of 1 year in jail, a $100,000 fine, $3,300,000 in damages + the legal fees of the owner of the copyright. The article can be found here.
So while neither is morally right, a lot of people are so shocked and pissed about the HUGE discrepancy in punishments that they stop seeing downloading as evil. It's a way to stick it to "the man" who's gotten these ludicrous laws put on the books.
Personally I have no ambiguity about it, if I download something that's copyrighted and I don't own a copy already it's not legal. I'm also well aware than the fansubs in the anime community aren't legal either, but at the same time I really feel that the punishments handed down for downloading an item shouldn't be legal either. Frankly I could probably go rob a Blockbuster, kill every employee and customer in the store while I was at it and receive less punishment than if I downloaded a copy of a movie. There's something very wrong there.
Finally to address you argument about if someone violated the GPL or other open source license. Yes /. and myself would be royally pissed, but I wouldn't say they were stealing. I'd say they were breaking the GPL/etc. and violating a contract and/or copyright. I'm fair with my values, it's still not theft even if it's my personal copyright being violated, it's copyright infringement, a very different thing.
Huh?
I think that not only is that bullshit, that they're actually doing it to try to prevent reimportation (as well as the stopping of non-Pfizer sildenafil citrate).
Personally the lesson I've learned is to be damned glad WaMu's not my bank. YMMV of course, but they don't seem to take these phishing attacks very seriously unlike other banks do.
But frankly your argument's silly anyway. I consider MS my enemy. I consider the RIAA and MPAA member companies my enemy. I consider most of the BSA companies my enemy, and I consider the OPEC members to be enemies. Why? Their goal, even if they aren't breaking laws, is to make money at all costs. If that cost is my freedoms (RIAA/MPAA and the congresscritters they own), my quality of life, or what else, so be it, they don't care as long as they make money. They're in business to make money from me even if I fully wish to not pay them a damned cent. I don't willingly, but my tax dollars keep going to them (at the least to pay the damn congresscritters they've bought who represent the companies first and the real people last). I consider that enemy worthy, and worth fighting.
Power over me? They already have power over you, me and all of us. Hell just look at the litany of bills presented, along with the ones that made it into law. You can't tell me things like the DMCA haven't already given them enormous power over each and every one of us. Companies keep proving they're willing to abuse it any way they see fit. Want to stifle research into security flaws? Already been done, will happen again. Want to try and make sure no one can sell generic parts for your equipment? Already being done, look at the printer manufacturers.
Sorry, but I don't have to do a damned thing for them to have power over me. They already do, and that's another part of why I consider them my enemies. If you don/t, well congrats on enjoying all those laws and restrictions they've placed on you. I'll be fighting them tooth and nail for the existing ones and future ones while you enjoy having your rights and freedoms removed. Personally I want mine back.
It's not a "morass of legal rhetoric and artistic dogma" hiding greed and/or refusal to pay for stuff. It's quite simply the right to innovate vs. stifling innovation in the name of stopping piracy. I don't support illegal downloads, but I damn well support the right to create new technology, even if that technology may end up used illegally. There are vast numbers of things that are used illegally daily that have many legitimate uses, things we wouldn't want to do without (knives, cars (used in getaways from crime scenes, sometimes used to run people down), explosives (used in construction), etc.)
I don't think it's splitting hairs to be defending this principle, I find it very important for our future.
- Wow, what a totally baseless assumption. Personally I demonize the RIAA because they deserve it. I gain nothing from it at all, as I don't even listen to US music, much less download it. To me the RIAA represents all that is bad with corporations trying to run society. They want to stop all technological advancements (see the INDUCE act). They want to continue their current business model in the face of obvious customer discontent with it (killing off the CD single market, fighting tooth and nail to prevent legal online alternatives for digital music for many years, continuing to insist of vastly inflated prices even when they do give in, and shoveling out albums with 1-3 good tunes and the rest crap knowingly for instance). In their eyes, there is no legal uses for P2P technology (guess those Linux ISOs I grab are illegal ehh?). They continue to use payola to control what's on the radios, etc, etc.
But 99% of the time, it's not.Frankly, you tell me why I shouldn't demonize the RIAA, I'll listen, but don't try and lump me in with people doing things wrong. I account for a grand total of nothing for the RIAA's profits, or their loses due to piracy. I even refuse to listen to the radio willingly. (I get subjected to it against my will at stores occasionally.) Hell, I couldn't even tell you what songs are currently popular, nor do I want to know. I made my choice years ago to boycott the RIAA and I'm sticking with it.
- So? VCRs are probably used more for illegal purposes than legal ones, do you want to ban them too? CD burners are used far more for illegal purposes than legal ones, shall we ban them as well? You know it's illegal to perform a copyrighted work in public without prior permission so shall we ban anyone humming or singing their favorite tunes in public? Just because something is used illegally a lot does
- not mean it's a bad thing. It just means a lot of people like to break certain laws. Go after the criminals, not the tools they use.
Why would someone on a P2P network worry about downloads being logged by the servers if they weren't trading anything illegal? Come on, we're not stupid. I wouldn't give a crap if some Kazaa server recorded that I shared Slackware 10.1. Did you know--gasp--Slashdot is logging your actions on its site right now? Horrors!Besides, if this was someone like say Amazon, eBay, Paypal or Microsoft and we'd just found out they were logging stuff they said they weren't, you'd probably be livid about it.
Frankly I believe Open Office handles older versions of .doc formats better than the current MS Word does.
Note: I'm not just MS bashing, I use Word a lot myself, and this is a very frustrating bug to deal with. It gets old having to upgrade every time a new version comes out (gotta make sure I can read all the Word documents that come my way), and having to keep older versions around on a backup machine for when the current version opens an older version .doc and it's unreadable without a few hours of formatting.
Give the thread a few more minutes and the "In Soviet Russia" and "Step 5: Profit" jokes will show up. The GNAA trolls have probably already shown up but got modded into oblivion already.
Just /. as usual. :)
p.s. Of course, the people are getting hurt indirectly, as they are thus deprived of a choice in the marketplace.
It's pretty sad when software can't even handle it's own proprietary format properly.
The bank which employs me is particularily stringent about it's hold policy, and for most customers, non-local personal checks get five to seven business day holds placed on them (almost half the month!) As you may imagine, this does cause customer service issues. As a lowly teller, however, all I can really do is is shrug, sympathise, and direct the customer to the brochure explaining our hold policy, which he received when he opened his account.
In any case I certainly hope people are leaving your bank in droves. That type of customer antagonistic policy is something that should not happen. While banks are in business to make money, that does not give them the right to treat their customers, without which they'd make no money, like they're all criminals. Hell, it's arguable that the worst customer for banks are the best in terms of making money since they tend to bounce more checks and generate lots more juicy NSF charges for the bank. Don't think they don't know this either, but they certainly shouldn't be treating legit customers like shit.
I feel sorry for you, I imagine their inane policies make your life hell at work.
One comment on cashing the check and deposting the cash. I recently had to do this, as I was borrowing money to keep anything from bouncing while I waited for an erronous charge to be credited back. I knew my bank would probably tell me hell no, so I cheated a bit. I cashed it at one brank, drove to the next city and deposited the cash. No one was the wiser and it got same day credit. What turned out to be really annoying was it was my bank's fault the credit wasn't there yet. Turned out the place that had made the extra charge mistakenly uses the same bank for their credit card processing. It took them three weeks to get them to finally credit me, and in the end they had to call them up and authorize an EFT between their account and mine. The bank was never able to explain to either of us why they sat on a properly processed credit for weeks without doing anything. Incidentally they've officially never processed it, I got my money back through the EFT, but the actual credit back to my card never has shown up. The business has officially asked me to just pay by check from now on and flagged my account for no late charges thanks to this. Talk about quality customer service froma bank! (As far as the company concerned, I give them great credit for going the extra mile to make sure my money was returned, they even paid the few NSF charges that they caused.)