hard to play along with a death threat? Not at all, just write back that you double dog dare them to take a shot at you, in fact, make it easier for them by giving them your real name and address: Darl Mc.........
Sadly, what I belatedly learned from this posting is that Silas Warner has passed away. For those of you not sighing sadly at this moment, Silas was the programmer of the original killer PC game, Castle Wolfenstein and you would see his name each time you started yet another round of that all time classic. I would argue that Silas was the very first game designer well known by name, and his passing is sadly noted by all of us whose introduction to gaming was CW and Zork.
Oh, come now. I'm as much an opponent of the Beast of Redmond as any other guy, but this goes a little far. There is a time honored tradition in this country of leaving a man be when he is giving back the money that he stole from the public fair and square. Hell, Carnegie practically built the same American public library system with his contributions, and that was just so folks would forget that he used to like using the pinkertons to club everything that moved in his company slums. I say as long as billy boy is writing checks, big checks, we give him all the huzzahs and attaboys he deserves and stop questioning his motives.
you are quite right, though, in my defense I assumed that anyone who was a) a/.er and b) took the time to post on LOTR on/. most likely had seen the extended edition, and might even have done a frame by frame walk through and composed their own DVD commentary - in costume. Call me crazy but that still seems like a reasonable assumption - know your audience.
Uh, Ugmo, If you hadn't noticed, the Trolls are actually in the first movie - the hobbits take some rest beneath their stoney visages. They don't look like the cave troll, and frankly look more like the soccor-hooligan-sounding trolls that JRRT wrote into the hobbit. The important thing to remember is that the Hobbit was intended as more of a childrens story, there is more comic relief and adventure and less legend and world building. I think one of the trolls names was Bob...
"Obviously I have to remain anonymous" well, It's not really obvious to me as you are not a party to any of these suits, and rambus has shown no tendency to go after its' individual critics like many of the companies we rightfully vilify, but it's your choice. It does call into question the rest of your post however, as every point you make has been made over and over by the likes of Sherry Garber and other tech "reporters" who are now subjects of the Justice Dept. investigation - - - on the other hand maybe I do understand your need to past as an AC.
Suffice to say that the Patent Office is the one who saw the multitude of different inventions in the original 1990 filing and required rambus to file the many divisionals that you seem to think don't exist in the original filing. As opposed to the many patents we kvetch about here because the patent office seemed to be asleep when they issued them, the rambus patents have been supervised to death by the patent examiners.
As for the "submarine" comment, unfortunately this exposes an obvious bias. Now that the memory makers have lost all the specious fraud arguements against rambus their supporters have been trying this one - the problem is that rambus was discussing their technology and their patents with every single memory maker under NDAs beginning even before their intial filing. As the decision (again, by a judge who considered 30 some thousand pages of evidence) points out, no memory maker can reasonably claim that they had anything but full knowledge of the rambus technology and what they were claiming a patentable. Interestingly IBM has never once argued against rambus and has infact taken a sublicense in order the manufacture the memory interface for the cell chip for the Sony PS3. You may think they have prior art, but the worlds most sophisticated patent holder does not seem to.
I will repost the comment below under my name since the AC isn't going to be seen and he makes a very valid point (if not clearly). For those who like to froth at the mouth about rambus, I strongly suggest reading the Judges decision (made after the longest and most fully documented trial in FTC history.) It can be found here. Otherwise you run the risk of sounding like every other know-nothing who spouts off on the subject. Incidently, it is this case the has provided much of the discovery, including specific smoking gun e-mails that is feeding this price fixing investigation.
"The judge determined that the allegations against Rambus were fraudulent [rather, without merit]. Rambus circulated its patent portfolio among the DRAM manufacturers [both BEFORE and during its' JEDEC participation] and made them aware of its intent to enforce it. The DRAM manufacturers then incorporated Rambus technology knowingly and conspired to get it without paying Rambus [ie. they stated, in presentations to each other - this stuff works great, let's find a way to use it without paying rmbs - the judge found this troubling]. They [the Memory Manufacturers] duped us into believing Rambus were the bad guys [you may feel they are bad guys for other reasons, in which case you weren't duped] when in fact Rambus was playing fair [that may overstate it, but certainly they were playing much more fairly then the memory makers] and they were attempting to steal Rambus' IP. If you read the antitrust judgement, it is very inequivocal in saying this.
BPL has been running to thousands of homes in Virginia for a year now. Have there been the dire consequences that the Ham folks here are predicting? Can Argentina still use HF? Are the many military bases in the area left without their wireless equipment? Has northern Virginia become a big Ham black hole? Inquiring minds want to know.
If not, let's try to encourage competition and innovation and stop crying about the falling sky until we actually have some real world evidence that it's falling - and yes I know about the dozen papers and studies cited above - that's why I'm asking if ANY of them hold water given the fact that the tecnology now exists in the real world.
I get 5mb down and 768 or so up from RCN (starpower) for $30 a month - it's their "megamodem" service - all in all the best ISP I have every had. On the other hand, I expect them to be devoured and dismembered any time now, so I better hope they hurry up and bring this powerline networking to DC.
Before some of the judges defenders chime in, let me say in response to BillyZ that Federal Judges are not elected officials and are not representing constituents. That being said, they are responsible to the people and therefore are well within range of approbium and censure.
The majority of federal judges to not fill their lifetime appointments - after as little as 5 or 10 years they move to high end law firms (like the one representing the DMA) and live a fairly cushy existance. This Judge is getting long in the tooth and likely is thinking about his retirement - all the more reason for the people to hold his feet to the fire.
assuming that a federal judge is working in the public interest is unfortunately as quaint a notion house calls by doctors and punch card computers.
You are mistaken - and you should realize that before you discourage everyone here from addressing grievances to their public officials.
While it is specifically illegal to threaten a judicial official (ie. higher penalties then for threatening an average citizen) calling a judge at any available number and registering your opinion about their work is entirely legal - though judges might wish it weren't. DO NOT harass this misguided individual - and if you don't know the difference between harassment and simply making a call DON'T do anything, but don't believe that judges are somehow above the law when it comes to public suasion.
Funny, but also so very true. While after 20 years Blade Runner is still the ultimate cyberpunk film (not that someone couldn't make a better one, they just don't seem to be trying.) Minority Report - whose riffs on justice and government power were desperately needed at the exact moment the movie was released, was exactly that steaming pile of crap. By failing to address those themes in the way that Dick had at such a crucial moment in time, Spielberg committed more then the artistic sin of being a hack, (and a hack who manipulates the same three themes of children, family, and fear of the unknown over and over and over again without ever saying anything original or anything old in a new way), he also failed utterly in the responsibility of the artist to provide a mirror for society and prompt discussion and/or change.
Between Dick and Vonnegut we've got 20 or so themes that could be turned into spectacular films, and money making ones at that. Hell, even Total Recall (Dick short story) in its' better moments touched on some themes that raised it above the levels of crap scifi like "The Sixth Day".
What's really sad is that even Gibson's Johnny M. could have made an incredible movie if they had just played it straight. A friend (actually makes a living as a writer) once mapped out the short story in script form and showed that you could have filmed it without alteration and come up with an under two hour Hollywood film. You had novel chases, character development, the introduction of a world and characters that would support many sequels, some great fight scenes, and an ultra-stylish cyberpunk environment, and those fuckers still screwed it up.
Yeah, it seems like everything in hip scifi these days is borrowed from KV or PKD, even the not so hip (see my sig). Not a bad thing, but I'm always worried about these kids I loan their books to accusing Dick or Vonnegut of ripping off some idea they saw in a movie or video game.
These are both good examples of what happens when each individual must be checked in detail. Frankly I wouldn't be suprised if State sat on an application - the mantra lately is don't let our agency be the one the approved the next terrorist, and because of that all applications are moving s l o w. The fact is that the level of checking necessary for someone on student status is frankly beyond what the bureaucrats can handle, so letting anyone a college accepts in, and then tracking them, is the far superior solution. Of course, should one of these students move from student status to American citizenship, their records should be immediately and permanenetly purged - this is not going to be another excuse to track Americans of foreign birth.
Thanks for the reply, as it happens, Brazil (Gilliam's real version) is my all time favorite film (well, top five, it's always hard to call a single one your favorite.)
We're working to elminate the TIA program and the rest, but when we do want to do something (this student tracking system was in place prior to 9/11 - despite what the article says) it would be nice if the software actually worked.
GM is able to write an inventory tracking system tracking millions of parts over thousands of locations and have it working in a matter of months (one example) there is no reason why the government shouldn't expect the same.
BTW - the reason for tracking foreign students (the pre-9/11 reason) is that it's better then not admitting them in the first place. 18-25 year olds are the greatest security risk for terrorist acts - they are old enough to have motive and will, young enough to be easily motivated and most often with no history that would point a danger. It is often difficult to find a motivated and able fighter over the mid-20s whose life history does not contain a few red flags that makes it easier to exclude them from a visa. Given this, for basic domestic security we either examine every student visa applicant in detail (and delay their studies for at least a year) or we keep track of them while they're here. Even the xenophobes around here don't want to restrict access by foreign students to our Universities, so this system was developed several years ago. 9/11 simply gave an boost the the implementation (though apparently not to the programmers.)
Gee, get casual in your terminology and the IANAL crowd jumps all over. I guess they're forgetting TANAL.
Yes, it is "balance of probability", not "proof" but they are the same things legally separated by degree (proof is a higher burden) not factual requirements. Interestingly, this is precisely the kind of argument slick plaintiffs attorney's use to scare defendants (particularly SLAPP defendants) into settling and/or giving up. "We don't need to prove anything, and they'll believe my client, the responsible corporation, before you, you insignificant person"
The request I made for technical documentation was the ease in which one could spoof IPs and file locations over a P2P network. It's not a question that the RIAA is trumping up evidence, it's a question of whether the evidence they are presenting is reliable given that I could just as easily have been faked by the actual file sharer. There isn't a jury in the country that would rule for a company against an individual if evidence like that was put in doubt.
The idea that the fact that a "responsible" corporation enjoys the balance of probability just because they are bringing the case and therefore are investing money that they wouldn't spend if they didn't know they are right is laughable.
Oh, and "We'll get a few cases of mistaken identity"??? That is precisely what the system is designed to prevent, both civil and criminal - if, as you admit, there is the likelihood of mistaken identity cases, it is certain that anyone who contests the charges will be able to beat the RIAA for that reason alone.
The number of RIAA shills on here is truly stunning. Interesting how they all have member #s above 600,000 or post as ACs. Actually defending yourself in suits is NEVER against your interests. There is still a presumption that the plaintiff must overcome and even if they present a winning case, it's not that the court rules that the defense was "lying" but that the weight of the evidence is on the side of the plaintiff. If they are trying to extort money from you with impeachable technical evidence, no fair minded judge (and no jury which you'd be advised to demand) is going to convict you based solely on log files generated by the party that has a financial interest in convicting you. Trust me, they don't have the resourses to go to trial on thousands of these things, and when they do, they are going to lose many of them - though it would be much easier with the kind of joint technical info mentioned above.
There is a very specific thing that needs to be done by the tech community here. The parent poster is right - the courts can be very lazy and will begin to take any evidence offered by the RIAA as gospel as the cases pile up. Computer records of the sort they are going to be using as evidence are remarkably unreliable and easy to falsify - in other words they are easily impeachable as evidence. Given that the burden of proof is on the RIAA, and presenting experts to attest to the accuracy of each complaint will get extremely expensive in a hurry, this is how you would discourage their effort.
So what we need are some technically competent/.ers to lay out the myriad ways in which a kazaa (for example) session can spoof ips and file names, how with mult download sources it's possible that the person in suit is not the person the download actually came from, and the many other ways in which a few kazaa logs and isp logs (which they may not even have for these cases) can be unreliable enough not to serve as sufficient proof in these prosecutions. So - who's up for it?
Starpower (RCN) they offer a full package of cable, phone, and cable modem. If you take the shop-around price of each of those components, they offer the phone service for 20% less then Verizon in this area (Washington, DC)
They have provided exceptional service so far. I have had one phone outage which they fixed as quickly as verizon/bell atlantic ever had, and they were better able to diagnose their network (ie. didn't need to come into my home and make me wait there for several hours while they mucked around) to fix the problem.
Cablewise, with this package they give you "megamodem" service, I have seen sustained downloads over 400Kbps - not all the time, but occasionally - still can't rec. them entirely as some ports are blocked and you need to work around them. On the other hand, they don't try to cut you off for making use of those workarounds - they seem interested only in inhibiting the casual user.
now offering hdtv service with the phone package at no additional charge, we'll see how they do.
Yeah, I have heard from others on that as well. I think my space setting idea works better in this context - If you can't make a jump to a particular system or land on a particular planet,(servers) there can be an explanation (jump point flux, refused landing permission, storms), and as long as some minimum server standards are set it could work. Maybe not yesterday, not quite today, but tommorow I got to think that this is the way to have a true multiverse/Snow Crash type virtual world - distribute the serving needs around the world and you can build a truly new world.
I was going to mod this up, but instead, I just want to reply to say this is one of the coolest/slickest concepts for a fps I have heard in a while.
To refine: Every server has a home "world" map which, if run by a clan they can customize at will, or use an off-the-shelf world. The SG1 idea is good for a concept, but no need to stick to that world. Moving from server to server is not through some fourth wall busting menu system, but a fully immersive stargate system. A clan can kick back on their own world or go maruding through the cosmos. Ronin players can infiltrate other servers or join in another clans attack. It is possible that the level of exploring this would engender would encourage other uses for the world than just shoot-em-ups.
Think of a mmorpg that truly was a massive world, with hundreds of thousands of players on the same "world" (the great fiction of MM is that there are more then a few 1000 players on the same world, there are just many worlds) Each section of this world (or galaxy in the sg1 concept) is hosted on a different server, allowing someone to hunt (or be hunted) or quest, over truly epic distances.
Hell, space based game (galaxies) every solar system by ship is a single server, landing on a planet, moon, or station takes you to another server(s) covering that world, warping to another system takes you to another server. Harness the power of the gaming community to provide a seemless truly massive, million players at a time, gaming experience, using the lastest 3d engine rather then the compromised mmporpg engines.
While a non-US resident can not legally contribute to the Senator's campaign fund (apparently he does not believe in Senators having their own seperate federal PACs/Slushfunds), anyone who does want to support him can contribute to "Wyden for Senate" by calling a creditcard contribution into (503) 230-7115, or mailing it to P.O. Box 3498, Portland OR 97208.
I contacted his campaign, their website is being redesigned and is down (wyden.net) so no net contributions for now.
I have gotten friends to contribute to pro-technology consumer members before - just think - If 4000/.ers contributed $50 to this Senator, he would have received as much from us as the "Senator from MPAA" gets from Hollywood. That's how we put the fear of god into some of these hacks. Heck, for the price of MOO3 we can really make a statement.
I have version 5 of this little box ($100) used it to turn an old 17incher into the bedroom tv. Performs very well with number of nice features (sleep timer, allows the hook-up of a game system.)
I really have to wonder what makes this new model so much more expensive. Are there licensing fees? I know you need better chips for hdtv decoding, but $300 worth of additional silicon in otherwise the same box??? doesn't seem likely. Of course if they did charge $150-$200 they'd be undercutting everyone else with their $500 hdtv decoder boxes.
Slashdot Mirror
hard to play along with a death threat? Not at all, just write back that you double dog dare them to take a shot at you, in fact, make it easier for them by giving them your real name and address: Darl Mc.........
Sadly, what I belatedly learned from this posting is that Silas Warner has passed away. For those of you not sighing sadly at this moment, Silas was the programmer of the original killer PC game, Castle Wolfenstein and you would see his name each time you started yet another round of that all time classic. I would argue that Silas was the very first game designer well known by name, and his passing is sadly noted by all of us whose introduction to gaming was CW and Zork.
unless you have actual evidence of this conspiracy, which if you acutally read the evidence presented by the FTC, they seem to have.
Oh, come now. I'm as much an opponent of the Beast of Redmond as any other guy, but this goes a little far. There is a time honored tradition in this country of leaving a man be when he is giving back the money that he stole from the public fair and square. Hell, Carnegie practically built the same American public library system with his contributions, and that was just so folks would forget that he used to like using the pinkertons to club everything that moved in his company slums. I say as long as billy boy is writing checks, big checks, we give him all the huzzahs and attaboys he deserves and stop questioning his motives.
you are quite right, though, in my defense I assumed that anyone who was a) a /.er and b) took the time to post on LOTR on /. most likely had seen the extended edition, and might even have done a frame by frame walk through and composed their own DVD commentary - in costume. Call me crazy but that still seems like a reasonable assumption - know your audience.
Uh, Ugmo, If you hadn't noticed, the Trolls are actually in the first movie - the hobbits take some rest beneath their stoney visages. They don't look like the cave troll, and frankly look more like the soccor-hooligan-sounding trolls that JRRT wrote into the hobbit. The important thing to remember is that the Hobbit was intended as more of a childrens story, there is more comic relief and adventure and less legend and world building. I think one of the trolls names was Bob...
Suffice to say that the Patent Office is the one who saw the multitude of different inventions in the original 1990 filing and required rambus to file the many divisionals that you seem to think don't exist in the original filing. As opposed to the many patents we kvetch about here because the patent office seemed to be asleep when they issued them, the rambus patents have been supervised to death by the patent examiners.
As for the "submarine" comment, unfortunately this exposes an obvious bias. Now that the memory makers have lost all the specious fraud arguements against rambus their supporters have been trying this one - the problem is that rambus was discussing their technology and their patents with every single memory maker under NDAs beginning even before their intial filing. As the decision (again, by a judge who considered 30 some thousand pages of evidence) points out, no memory maker can reasonably claim that they had anything but full knowledge of the rambus technology and what they were claiming a patentable. Interestingly IBM has never once argued against rambus and has infact taken a sublicense in order the manufacture the memory interface for the cell chip for the Sony PS3. You may think they have prior art, but the worlds most sophisticated patent holder does not seem to.
"The judge determined that the allegations against Rambus were fraudulent [rather, without merit]. Rambus circulated its patent portfolio among the DRAM manufacturers [both BEFORE and during its' JEDEC participation] and made them aware of its intent to enforce it. The DRAM manufacturers then incorporated Rambus technology knowingly and conspired to get it without paying Rambus [ie. they stated, in presentations to each other - this stuff works great, let's find a way to use it without paying rmbs - the judge found this troubling]. They [the Memory Manufacturers] duped us into believing Rambus were the bad guys [you may feel they are bad guys for other reasons, in which case you weren't duped] when in fact Rambus was playing fair [that may overstate it, but certainly they were playing much more fairly then the memory makers] and they were attempting to steal Rambus' IP. If you read the antitrust judgement, it is very inequivocal in saying this.
BPL has been running to thousands of homes in Virginia for a year now. Have there been the dire consequences that the Ham folks here are predicting? Can Argentina still use HF? Are the many military bases in the area left without their wireless equipment? Has northern Virginia become a big Ham black hole? Inquiring minds want to know.
If not, let's try to encourage competition and innovation and stop crying about the falling sky until we actually have some real world evidence that it's falling - and yes I know about the dozen papers and studies cited above - that's why I'm asking if ANY of them hold water given the fact that the tecnology now exists in the real world.
I get 5mb down and 768 or so up from RCN (starpower) for $30 a month - it's their "megamodem" service - all in all the best ISP I have every had. On the other hand, I expect them to be devoured and dismembered any time now, so I better hope they hurry up and bring this powerline networking to DC.
Before some of the judges defenders chime in, let me say in response to BillyZ that Federal Judges are not elected officials and are not representing constituents. That being said, they are responsible to the people and therefore are well within range of approbium and censure.
The majority of federal judges to not fill their lifetime appointments - after as little as 5 or 10 years they move to high end law firms (like the one representing the DMA) and live a fairly cushy existance. This Judge is getting long in the tooth and likely is thinking about his retirement - all the more reason for the people to hold his feet to the fire.
assuming that a federal judge is working in the public interest is unfortunately as quaint a notion house calls by doctors and punch card computers.
You are mistaken - and you should realize that before you discourage everyone here from addressing grievances to their public officials.
While it is specifically illegal to threaten a judicial official (ie. higher penalties then for threatening an average citizen) calling a judge at any available number and registering your opinion about their work is entirely legal - though judges might wish it weren't. DO NOT harass this misguided individual - and if you don't know the difference between harassment and simply making a call DON'T do anything, but don't believe that judges are somehow above the law when it comes to public suasion.
Trust him, his sig is a Rush song, he must be very very old.
Don't know why, but I trust older coder more when it comes to these things.
Funny, but also so very true. While after 20 years Blade Runner is still the ultimate cyberpunk film (not that someone couldn't make a better one, they just don't seem to be trying.) Minority Report - whose riffs on justice and government power were desperately needed at the exact moment the movie was released, was exactly that steaming pile of crap. By failing to address those themes in the way that Dick had at such a crucial moment in time, Spielberg committed more then the artistic sin of being a hack, (and a hack who manipulates the same three themes of children, family, and fear of the unknown over and over and over again without ever saying anything original or anything old in a new way), he also failed utterly in the responsibility of the artist to provide a mirror for society and prompt discussion and/or change.
Between Dick and Vonnegut we've got 20 or so themes that could be turned into spectacular films, and money making ones at that. Hell, even Total Recall (Dick short story) in its' better moments touched on some themes that raised it above the levels of crap scifi like "The Sixth Day".
What's really sad is that even Gibson's Johnny M. could have made an incredible movie if they had just played it straight. A friend (actually makes a living as a writer) once mapped out the short story in script form and showed that you could have filmed it without alteration and come up with an under two hour Hollywood film. You had novel chases, character development, the introduction of a world and characters that would support many sequels, some great fight scenes, and an ultra-stylish cyberpunk environment, and those fuckers still screwed it up.
Bah, why do I care.
Yeah, it seems like everything in hip scifi these days is borrowed from KV or PKD, even the not so hip (see my sig). Not a bad thing, but I'm always worried about these kids I loan their books to accusing Dick or Vonnegut of ripping off some idea they saw in a movie or video game.
These are both good examples of what happens when each individual must be checked in detail. Frankly I wouldn't be suprised if State sat on an application - the mantra lately is don't let our agency be the one the approved the next terrorist, and because of that all applications are moving s l o w. The fact is that the level of checking necessary for someone on student status is frankly beyond what the bureaucrats can handle, so letting anyone a college accepts in, and then tracking them, is the far superior solution. Of course, should one of these students move from student status to American citizenship, their records should be immediately and permanenetly purged - this is not going to be another excuse to track Americans of foreign birth.
By admitting students expiditiously
Thanks for the reply, as it happens, Brazil (Gilliam's real version) is my all time favorite film (well, top five, it's always hard to call a single one your favorite.)
We're working to elminate the TIA program and the rest, but when we do want to do something (this student tracking system was in place prior to 9/11 - despite what the article says) it would be nice if the software actually worked.
GM is able to write an inventory tracking system tracking millions of parts over thousands of locations and have it working in a matter of months (one example) there is no reason why the government shouldn't expect the same.
BTW - the reason for tracking foreign students (the pre-9/11 reason) is that it's better then not admitting them in the first place. 18-25 year olds are the greatest security risk for terrorist acts - they are old enough to have motive and will, young enough to be easily motivated and most often with no history that would point a danger. It is often difficult to find a motivated and able fighter over the mid-20s whose life history does not contain a few red flags that makes it easier to exclude them from a visa. Given this, for basic domestic security we either examine every student visa applicant in detail (and delay their studies for at least a year) or we keep track of them while they're here. Even the xenophobes around here don't want to restrict access by foreign students to our Universities, so this system was developed several years ago. 9/11 simply gave an boost the the implementation (though apparently not to the programmers.)
Gee, get casual in your terminology and the IANAL crowd jumps all over. I guess they're forgetting TANAL.
Yes, it is "balance of probability", not "proof" but they are the same things legally separated by degree (proof is a higher burden) not factual requirements. Interestingly, this is precisely the kind of argument slick plaintiffs attorney's use to scare defendants (particularly SLAPP defendants) into settling and/or giving up. "We don't need to prove anything, and they'll believe my client, the responsible corporation, before you, you insignificant person"
The request I made for technical documentation was the ease in which one could spoof IPs and file locations over a P2P network. It's not a question that the RIAA is trumping up evidence, it's a question of whether the evidence they are presenting is reliable given that I could just as easily have been faked by the actual file sharer. There isn't a jury in the country that would rule for a company against an individual if evidence like that was put in doubt.
The idea that the fact that a "responsible" corporation enjoys the balance of probability just because they are bringing the case and therefore are investing money that they wouldn't spend if they didn't know they are right is laughable.
Oh, and "We'll get a few cases of mistaken identity"??? That is precisely what the system is designed to prevent, both civil and criminal - if, as you admit, there is the likelihood of mistaken identity cases, it is certain that anyone who contests the charges will be able to beat the RIAA for that reason alone.
The number of RIAA shills on here is truly stunning. Interesting how they all have member #s above 600,000 or post as ACs. Actually defending yourself in suits is NEVER against your interests. There is still a presumption that the plaintiff must overcome and even if they present a winning case, it's not that the court rules that the defense was "lying" but that the weight of the evidence is on the side of the plaintiff. If they are trying to extort money from you with impeachable technical evidence, no fair minded judge (and no jury which you'd be advised to demand) is going to convict you based solely on log files generated by the party that has a financial interest in convicting you. Trust me, they don't have the resourses to go to trial on thousands of these things, and when they do, they are going to lose many of them - though it would be much easier with the kind of joint technical info mentioned above.
There is a very specific thing that needs to be done by the tech community here. The parent poster is right - the courts can be very lazy and will begin to take any evidence offered by the RIAA as gospel as the cases pile up. Computer records of the sort they are going to be using as evidence are remarkably unreliable and easy to falsify - in other words they are easily impeachable as evidence. Given that the burden of proof is on the RIAA, and presenting experts to attest to the accuracy of each complaint will get extremely expensive in a hurry, this is how you would discourage their effort.
/.ers to lay out the myriad ways in which a kazaa (for example) session can spoof ips and file names, how with mult download sources it's possible that the person in suit is not the person the download actually came from, and the many other ways in which a few kazaa logs and isp logs (which they may not even have for these cases) can be unreliable enough not to serve as sufficient proof in these prosecutions. So - who's up for it?
So what we need are some technically competent
Starpower (RCN) they offer a full package of cable, phone, and cable modem. If you take the shop-around price of each of those components, they offer the phone service for 20% less then Verizon in this area (Washington, DC)
They have provided exceptional service so far. I have had one phone outage which they fixed as quickly as verizon/bell atlantic ever had, and they were better able to diagnose their network (ie. didn't need to come into my home and make me wait there for several hours while they mucked around) to fix the problem.
Cablewise, with this package they give you "megamodem" service, I have seen sustained downloads over 400Kbps - not all the time, but occasionally - still can't rec. them entirely as some ports are blocked and you need to work around them. On the other hand, they don't try to cut you off for making use of those workarounds - they seem interested only in inhibiting the casual user.
now offering hdtv service with the phone package at no additional charge, we'll see how they do.
Yeah, I have heard from others on that as well. I think my space setting idea works better in this context - If you can't make a jump to a particular system or land on a particular planet,(servers) there can be an explanation (jump point flux, refused landing permission, storms), and as long as some minimum server standards are set it could work. Maybe not yesterday, not quite today, but tommorow I got to think that this is the way to have a true multiverse/Snow Crash type virtual world - distribute the serving needs around the world and you can build a truly new world.
I was going to mod this up, but instead, I just want to reply to say this is one of the coolest/slickest concepts for a fps I have heard in a while.
To refine: Every server has a home "world" map which, if run by a clan they can customize at will, or use an off-the-shelf world. The SG1 idea is good for a concept, but no need to stick to that world. Moving from server to server is not through some fourth wall busting menu system, but a fully immersive stargate system. A clan can kick back on their own world or go maruding through the cosmos. Ronin players can infiltrate other servers or join in another clans attack. It is possible that the level of exploring this would engender would encourage other uses for the world than just shoot-em-ups.
Think of a mmorpg that truly was a massive world, with hundreds of thousands of players on the same "world" (the great fiction of MM is that there are more then a few 1000 players on the same world, there are just many worlds) Each section of this world (or galaxy in the sg1 concept) is hosted on a different server, allowing someone to hunt (or be hunted) or quest, over truly epic distances.
Hell, space based game (galaxies) every solar system by ship is a single server, landing on a planet, moon, or station takes you to another server(s) covering that world, warping to another system takes you to another server. Harness the power of the gaming community to provide a seemless truly massive, million players at a time, gaming experience, using the lastest 3d engine rather then the compromised mmporpg engines.
Then you're cooking with grease.
While a non-US resident can not legally contribute to the Senator's campaign fund (apparently he does not believe in Senators having their own seperate federal PACs/Slushfunds), anyone who does want to support him can contribute to "Wyden for Senate" by calling a creditcard contribution into (503) 230-7115, or mailing it to P.O. Box 3498, Portland OR 97208.
/.ers contributed $50 to this Senator, he would have received as much from us as the "Senator from MPAA" gets from Hollywood. That's how we put the fear of god into some of these hacks. Heck, for the price of MOO3 we can really make a statement.
I contacted his campaign, their website is being redesigned and is down (wyden.net) so no net contributions for now.
I have gotten friends to contribute to pro-technology consumer members before - just think - If 4000
I have version 5 of this little box ($100) used it to turn an old 17incher into the bedroom tv. Performs very well with number of nice features (sleep timer, allows the hook-up of a game system.)
I really have to wonder what makes this new model so much more expensive. Are there licensing fees? I know you need better chips for hdtv decoding, but $300 worth of additional silicon in otherwise the same box??? doesn't seem likely. Of course if they did charge $150-$200 they'd be undercutting everyone else with their $500 hdtv decoder boxes.