It may seem funny but people really live in environments where the fear of retaliation for speaking with the police is so strong that they say nothing.
Let me tell you a story about "snitching", why I will never do it again and why it has zero to do with who I'm snitching on. It's the damn cops themselves! I had a friend of mine who I thought was going to be raped, I called it in, the cop showed up to take my report. I knew where they were going, or had only one idea where they would go but didn't have any address or street names - only how to get there. I was on my bike, so I joined him in his cruiser and proceeded to guide him to where I thought it was. Once we got there, it was in the back woods, I was very surprised to see three other cruisers already there, cops out, lights twirling and weapons drawn - someone else had apparently called something in obviously. In the end nothing happened, he took me back to my bike - but before letting me go, ran me through the system looking for warrants or anything to nail me on! I didn't have anything at the time, and wouldn't be that stupid to try and run from the radio - regardless, I will never, ever "snitch" again.
If you want people to feel safe about snitching, then the cops have to go back to the "protect and serve" not "arrest anyone they can, and LOOK for shit". You don't give an 83 year old lady a speeding ticket for going 2 miles an hour over the speed limit, caught in a speed trap. You don't be a hard ass and intimidate people your supposedly "serving".
If you want people to "snitch" then win the damn trust back! The cops are worse in my book than any thug, the thug will kick your ass, threaten you and move on - the cops will "find something", throw your ass in jail where you will kindly get raped for the rest of your term, or in the very least you'll be fighting for your life a hell of a lot more than you would in the real world.
And for the record, I'm your average blond haired, blue eyed, caucasian dip shit that lives in the nicer areas, or tries to at least - I'm far from any gangbanger and don't dress like it. Although I'm quickly catching on to why minorities complain about this crap.
There's a reason why they advertise quantity instead of quality -- it's what people actually care about.
What planet are you from?!?! Who cares if they deliver 100's of channels if none of them work? Here's a little insight for you - if you deliver 100 products and all of them suck, your delivering 0 useful ones! I'm with Grande now, which is relatively descent compared to Timewarner who's audio and picture would go through lockups, stuttering, etc.. It was literally unwatchable especially in the evenings. The techs would come out and confirm there is a bad connection somewhere limiting the bandwidth - solution? They look at me with a dumbfounded look on their face like, "What do you want me to do about it?" Your screwed, they would have to dig up the street to fix it.... Not to mention their ouright lies regarding "home of the free HD" - I inquired about that and tried to get the free HD channels, assuming it was the local ones - nope, you have to get the HD box (10$) and then the basic HD package (5$ I think) to get the "free HD"...
Excluding customers with pitch forks and torchs on the front lawn, why would they need good PR? It's not like they are elected officials or having viable alternatives (in most places), if you want to know what is going on in the world you more than likely need at least one of their services. Besides - good PR is not going to change their incompetence.
It would be classic, in this particular case, for some hacker out there in the world, to hack into the system (with the provided passwords of course) and do something extremely lame and pointless like getting the trains to run backwards at the top of the hour or something for a few minutes - just something to make the point that security is there for a freak'n reason...
i realize they use a encrypted key along with the password, but still...
First thing that comes to mind, is if the user is that lax on passwords, I would presume to think that the rest of thier system would be just as insecure, and that magic key is not very far away...
IIRC - The point of DRM was essentially like a EULA for music that they can yank at any given time, just as the EULA can be rewritten at any given time - you only bought the license to listen
The only way to avoid this is to get a law passed that requires DRM manufacturers to put DRM unlockers in escrow somewhere and in the event that they close shop, go out of business, their servers burn down, etc, the public is given the keys so they can unlock and strip the DRM from their purchases.
I thought the whole point of DRM'd crap was that the powers that be don't feel you **own** squate, other than the **right** to listen to it?
I don't get renting either, how much goes back to the company which produced the movie? Do they really earn much on a rented copy? Or are you mostly paying to the person renting you the movie?
From what I understand there is actually a pretty good business plan setup, with the likes of NetFlix at least - NetFlix never actually buys any of the movies them selves, they are provided directly from the studio and some given percentage of each rental is given back to them.
"You have to upgrade to Vista Ultimate and then you can do the downgrade," he said--but I'd have to perform the installation myself, and I'd have to buy the software from another source. It ends up costing you more to downgrade,"
Don't get me wrong, the last copy of Windoze I bought was '95 and it would bluescreen after installation on the first update - I officially gave up after that. But this sounds so wrong, that I would fight it if I it if I wanted to use it for anything at all - you legally buy a copy of Vista Home or something besides the decked out version(s), and then turn around and legally buy a copy of XP at some retail store or the very same, and even though I legally bought it, it's against the law for me to use it?!?!?!
If that is legit and right, M$ needs to stick with the 360 and give up on OS's - at least in the console market, the OS is so limiting anyway you can't have the flexibility and functionality that everyone is crying about.
I read through that PDF and the impression I got was that Viacom is on a major full blown witch hunt for EVERYONE that has watched an 'illegal' video, and even wants to go after advertisers advertising while the said video is playing - and calls each one of them (us?) defendants, I can only assume that if your calling someone a defendant (that isn't one) that your planning to be the plantif against them someday...
They even go as far as saying that if the user comments say it's infringing and you watch it, you "KNEW" it was illegal and likewise they deserve the right to the information about you.
That's exactly what I said. Finding the product is the same on Windows and Linux, but at least Linux *has* the index and package manager right there, so it's no worse.
Umm, under Linux the software is 99% OSS and downloadable and fully functional - the most you have to go through is agreeing to a EULA. You search under yum, apt-get, emerge, etc... find the description you want, install and use...
Under Windows, you search and sort through *AT LEAST* 50% commercial/shareware packages that are crippled until you purchase it.
The last time I tried this, I went through 1/2 dozen apps, and dozens of websites to just burn a cd image quickly/easily...
We're lucky that isn't "...like a geek scorned". I would hate to have anyone as stubborn and persistent as these guys who spend 15yrs working on an ever moving target that it - it self wouldn't work right half of the time.
Guess again... Well, at least to see what the download will do..
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Your analogy is very weak, there is not ONE SINGLE pirate/person/leecher who are in anyway dictating who works when, secondly you provide a *SERVICE* not a *PRODUCT* that is by nature reproducible - the service isn't. Although if you that is what your truly meaning - then it's tough luck for you, simply because if your *ONLY* willing to provide your in-demand product at a lower quality and limited supply as to your competitors (yes the pirating is your competition) then that's *your* problem as I see it, simply because your refusing to supply what your customers want and then complain because they find a way to get it.
If your consumers are willing to chance getting caught obtaining *BETTER* quality version of your product by means in which you are out right *DENYING* them, then what in the hell do you expect?
Your customers aren't going to just accept that they are limited to low quality products, or nothing at all simply because you just dont want to provide it - especially when what they want is *VERY EASY* to obtain.
With the right software, obtaining the product you want is literally as complicated as writing a check to pay for the goods in real life. Regardless of the legality, this is at least partly what your competition is, and if you can not or will not provide what the competition does provide, your simply not going to get the business - if your customers are willing the risk the chance (what ever it may be) they *WILL* go to the competition every time.
Back when I started with Linux, I saw OSS as one thing (excluding the free aspect) - and that is forcing the commercial segment to get there act together are start producing valuable products again, otherwise everyone will just opt for the lower quality free product, it only makes common since.
The problem, as I see it at least, is that OSS and pirating is ultimately producing *HIGHER* quality products than what the commercial industry is *STILL* producing, and to top it off the cost of the products have gone up.
Two versions of the same product side by side, one is of higher quality and very easy to obtain - as compared to the one next to it, which is of lower quality and can be frustrating to obtain and keep (ZUNE DRM comes to mind I think). Which one do you think people are going to opt for?
Doesn't it go something like... If you can't stand the heat of the kitchen, get out?
Is there a problem with the handing on of scientific knowledge in the US? Or is this a reflection of American cultural shortcomings? It seems to me that US culture is too shallow to recognize the importance of free & fair education 'for all'.
It's called the new and fangled craze of "Intellectual Property". Why help/encourage today's college students, or anyone for that matter, to be the best they can be and maybe even save the world (from ourselves) sometime in the future when you can force them to make YOU and you alone rich today?
This may be a dumb question - but what's wrong with reading the electric bill for the place? The DC's I've been in or a party too - EVERYTHING connected to the DC or in it, had a purpose solely devoted to keeping the servers up and powered, one way or the other.
Go on. If you "need" a game, have a look at some of the free (in either sense) games floating around on the internet, or buy some quality second-hand, or older, cheap, but still very good games at your local games store. It's going to be a helluva lot cheaper than paying any settlement, believe me.
You must be - I'll give you a hint, this is *NOT* about some idiot teenager getting caught pirating a game - it's about *HOW* the powers at be are abusing the legal system, and twisting facts and figures to only line the fat cats pockets that much more - and consequently, only because they are too old and stuck in there ways to understand nor know how to use the internet.
In my day to day administration duties of your average admin maintaining your average server, the exploit scripts that attack Linux boxen are either on autopilot or obtaining the search parameters remotely - if searching for exploits from a static/dynamic list is successful, it's not that far of a leap to imagine a list of parameters to search for valuable data.
The stuff I see sometimes in/tmp, will never cease to amaze me.
Someone should have been made the "executor" of the estate or what not, when I had to do something very similar with my Uncle that passed away - for those that had the keys that were needed, a simple explanation of the situation *AND* the executor waiting in the wings to write a letter/etc.. is all it took. The most I had to go was one time actually having to get a letter - most places took my word on it, including a FRY's electronics store that switched the warranty and everything to my name on an expensive laptop that was purchased earlier.
Essentially - someone should have been made legal guardian, if you will, of everything after the fact. This person is who holds the keys to everything - from I understand, IANAL, this person person more or less gets the power of attorney for everything. Probably defaults to parents or something if no one was specifically stated in a will or what not.
"A significant part of this burden, however, stems from a mistaken belief that the University was required to determine who was 'using a given computer a given time'. By requiring plaintiffs to serve an amended subpoena making it clear that they seek only identifying information with respect to the person associated with the IP address at the date and time of the alleged infringing use, the perceived burden should be reduced."
Jeeze... Considering that an IP address is in all practical terms is imaginary and only usable by a the originating computer/network system, it would be interesting (possibly a little to much) to see how this know-it-all idiot uses his.
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It may seem funny but people really live in environments where the fear of retaliation for speaking with the police is so strong that they say nothing.
Let me tell you a story about "snitching", why I will never do it again and why it has zero to do with who I'm snitching on. It's the damn cops themselves! I had a friend of mine who I thought was going to be raped, I called it in, the cop showed up to take my report. I knew where they were going, or had only one idea where they would go but didn't have any address or street names - only how to get there. I was on my bike, so I joined him in his cruiser and proceeded to guide him to where I thought it was. Once we got there, it was in the back woods, I was very surprised to see three other cruisers already there, cops out, lights twirling and weapons drawn - someone else had apparently called something in obviously. In the end nothing happened, he took me back to my bike - but before letting me go, ran me through the system looking for warrants or anything to nail me on! I didn't have anything at the time, and wouldn't be that stupid to try and run from the radio - regardless, I will never, ever "snitch" again.
If you want people to feel safe about snitching, then the cops have to go back to the "protect and serve" not "arrest anyone they can, and LOOK for shit". You don't give an 83 year old lady a speeding ticket for going 2 miles an hour over the speed limit, caught in a speed trap. You don't be a hard ass and intimidate people your supposedly "serving".
If you want people to "snitch" then win the damn trust back! The cops are worse in my book than any thug, the thug will kick your ass, threaten you and move on - the cops will "find something", throw your ass in jail where you will kindly get raped for the rest of your term, or in the very least you'll be fighting for your life a hell of a lot more than you would in the real world.
And for the record, I'm your average blond haired, blue eyed, caucasian dip shit that lives in the nicer areas, or tries to at least - I'm far from any gangbanger and don't dress like it. Although I'm quickly catching on to why minorities complain about this crap.
She didn't happen to mention why they are pushing HD like crazy if they don't have the infrastructure for the required bandwidth did she?
There's a reason why they advertise quantity instead of quality -- it's what people actually care about.
What planet are you from?!?! Who cares if they deliver 100's of channels if none of them work? Here's a little insight for you - if you deliver 100 products and all of them suck, your delivering 0 useful ones! I'm with Grande now, which is relatively descent compared to Timewarner who's audio and picture would go through lockups, stuttering, etc.. It was literally unwatchable especially in the evenings. The techs would come out and confirm there is a bad connection somewhere limiting the bandwidth - solution? They look at me with a dumbfounded look on their face like, "What do you want me to do about it?" Your screwed, they would have to dig up the street to fix it.... Not to mention their ouright lies regarding "home of the free HD" - I inquired about that and tried to get the free HD channels, assuming it was the local ones - nope, you have to get the HD box (10$) and then the basic HD package (5$ I think) to get the "free HD"...
Excluding customers with pitch forks and torchs on the front lawn, why would they need good PR? It's not like they are elected officials or having viable alternatives (in most places), if you want to know what is going on in the world you more than likely need at least one of their services. Besides - good PR is not going to change their incompetence.
It would be classic, in this particular case, for some hacker out there in the world, to hack into the system (with the provided passwords of course) and do something extremely lame and pointless like getting the trains to run backwards at the top of the hour or something for a few minutes - just something to make the point that security is there for a freak'n reason...
i realize they use a encrypted key along with the password, but still...
First thing that comes to mind, is if the user is that lax on passwords, I would presume to think that the rest of thier system would be just as insecure, and that magic key is not very far away...
Public interest lawsuits => lawyers
seat belts => government
vaccines => pharmaceutical corps
I don't think you gave very good examples to back up your side of the argument here...
IIRC - The point of DRM was essentially like a EULA for music that they can yank at any given time, just as the EULA can be rewritten at any given time - you only bought the license to listen
The only way to avoid this is to get a law passed that requires DRM manufacturers to put DRM unlockers in escrow somewhere and in the event that they close shop, go out of business, their servers burn down, etc, the public is given the keys so they can unlock and strip the DRM from their purchases.
I thought the whole point of DRM'd crap was that the powers that be don't feel you **own** squate, other than the **right** to listen to it?
I don't get renting either, how much goes back to the company which produced the movie? Do they really earn much on a rented copy? Or are you mostly paying to the person renting you the movie?
From what I understand there is actually a pretty good business plan setup, with the likes of NetFlix at least - NetFlix never actually buys any of the movies them selves, they are provided directly from the studio and some given percentage of each rental is given back to them.
Or email ... and print to PDF...
FTFA...
"You have to upgrade to Vista Ultimate and then you can do the downgrade," he said--but I'd have to perform the installation myself, and I'd have to buy the software from another source. It ends up costing you more to downgrade,"
Don't get me wrong, the last copy of Windoze I bought was '95 and it would bluescreen after installation on the first update - I officially gave up after that. But this sounds so wrong, that I would fight it if I it if I wanted to use it for anything at all - you legally buy a copy of Vista Home or something besides the decked out version(s), and then turn around and legally buy a copy of XP at some retail store or the very same, and even though I legally bought it, it's against the law for me to use it?!?!?!
If that is legit and right, M$ needs to stick with the 360 and give up on OS's - at least in the console market, the OS is so limiting anyway you can't have the flexibility and functionality that everyone is crying about.
I read through that PDF and the impression I got was that Viacom is on a major full blown witch hunt for EVERYONE that has watched an 'illegal' video, and even wants to go after advertisers advertising while the said video is playing - and calls each one of them (us?) defendants, I can only assume that if your calling someone a defendant (that isn't one) that your planning to be the plantif against them someday...
They even go as far as saying that if the user comments say it's infringing and you watch it, you "KNEW" it was illegal and likewise they deserve the right to the information about you.
I wonder how far we could get saying that the **AA claims are merely speculative and expect anything besides a "So? And your point?"
Nothing like a living in a nation, ran by a government of it's people - for it's corporations...
That's exactly what I said. Finding the product is the same on Windows and Linux, but at least Linux *has* the index and package manager right there, so it's no worse.
Umm, under Linux the software is 99% OSS and downloadable and fully functional - the most you have to go through is agreeing to a EULA. You search under yum, apt-get, emerge, etc... find the description you want, install and use...
Under Windows, you search and sort through *AT LEAST* 50% commercial/shareware packages that are crippled until you purchase it.
The last time I tried this, I went through 1/2 dozen apps, and dozens of websites to just burn a cd image quickly/easily...
We're lucky that isn't "...like a geek scorned". I would hate to have anyone as stubborn and persistent as these guys who spend 15yrs working on an ever moving target that it - it self wouldn't work right half of the time.
:-)
Cheers and Kudo's to them all
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They are politicians, what do you expect?
Well, tough to your tough...
Your analogy is very weak, there is not ONE SINGLE pirate/person/leecher who are in anyway dictating who works when, secondly you provide a *SERVICE* not a *PRODUCT* that is by nature reproducible - the service isn't. Although if you that is what your truly meaning - then it's tough luck for you, simply because if your *ONLY* willing to provide your in-demand product at a lower quality and limited supply as to your competitors (yes the pirating is your competition) then that's *your* problem as I see it, simply because your refusing to supply what your customers want and then complain because they find a way to get it.
If your consumers are willing to chance getting caught obtaining *BETTER* quality version of your product by means in which you are out right *DENYING* them, then what in the hell do you expect?
Your customers aren't going to just accept that they are limited to low quality products, or nothing at all simply because you just dont want to provide it - especially when what they want is *VERY EASY* to obtain.
With the right software, obtaining the product you want is literally as complicated as writing a check to pay for the goods in real life. Regardless of the legality, this is at least partly what your competition is, and if you can not or will not provide what the competition does provide, your simply not going to get the business - if your customers are willing the risk the chance (what ever it may be) they *WILL* go to the competition every time.
Back when I started with Linux, I saw OSS as one thing (excluding the free aspect) - and that is forcing the commercial segment to get there act together are start producing valuable products again, otherwise everyone will just opt for the lower quality free product, it only makes common since.
The problem, as I see it at least, is that OSS and pirating is ultimately producing *HIGHER* quality products than what the commercial industry is *STILL* producing, and to top it off the cost of the products have gone up.
Two versions of the same product side by side, one is of higher quality and very easy to obtain - as compared to the one next to it, which is of lower quality and can be frustrating to obtain and keep (ZUNE DRM comes to mind I think). Which one do you think people are going to opt for?
Doesn't it go something like... If you can't stand the heat of the kitchen, get out?
Is there a problem with the handing on of scientific knowledge in the US? Or is this a reflection of American cultural shortcomings? It seems to me that US culture is too shallow to recognize the importance of free & fair education 'for all'.
It's called the new and fangled craze of "Intellectual Property". Why help/encourage today's college students, or anyone for that matter, to be the best they can be and maybe even save the world (from ourselves) sometime in the future when you can force them to make YOU and you alone rich today?This may be a dumb question - but what's wrong with reading the electric bill for the place? The DC's I've been in or a party too - EVERYTHING connected to the DC or in it, had a purpose solely devoted to keeping the servers up and powered, one way or the other.
Go on. If you "need" a game, have a look at some of the free (in either sense) games floating around on the internet, or buy some quality second-hand, or older, cheap, but still very good games at your local games store. It's going to be a helluva lot cheaper than paying any settlement, believe me.
You must be - I'll give you a hint, this is *NOT* about some idiot teenager getting caught pirating a game - it's about *HOW* the powers at be are abusing the legal system, and twisting facts and figures to only line the fat cats pockets that much more - and consequently, only because they are too old and stuck in there ways to understand nor know how to use the internet.
In my day to day administration duties of your average admin maintaining your average server, the exploit scripts that attack Linux boxen are either on autopilot or obtaining the search parameters remotely - if searching for exploits from a static/dynamic list is successful, it's not that far of a leap to imagine a list of parameters to search for valuable data.
/tmp, will never cease to amaze me.
The stuff I see sometimes in
Someone should have been made the "executor" of the estate or what not, when I had to do something very similar with my Uncle that passed away - for those that had the keys that were needed, a simple explanation of the situation *AND* the executor waiting in the wings to write a letter/etc.. is all it took. The most I had to go was one time actually having to get a letter - most places took my word on it, including a FRY's electronics store that switched the warranty and everything to my name on an expensive laptop that was purchased earlier.
Essentially - someone should have been made legal guardian, if you will, of everything after the fact. This person is who holds the keys to everything - from I understand, IANAL, this person person more or less gets the power of attorney for everything. Probably defaults to parents or something if no one was specifically stated in a will or what not.
From the linked PDF...
"A significant part of this burden, however, stems from a mistaken belief that the University was required to determine who was 'using a given computer a given time'. By requiring plaintiffs to serve an amended subpoena making it clear that they seek only identifying information with respect to the person associated with the IP address at the date and time of the alleged infringing use, the perceived burden should be reduced."
Jeeze... Considering that an IP address is in all practical terms is imaginary and only usable by a the originating computer/network system, it would be interesting (possibly a little to much) to see how this know-it-all idiot uses his.