...now if we can get our current Prime Minister to hold off on recorded telemarketing calls pimping for votes during an election and it will be an even better step.
Does anyone remember a documentary called "Cyberpunk" from the early 90s which had a computer criminal boasting that he could take down all the banks if he wanted to, and if anything ever happened to him then if certain triggers weren't reset every week things would get very hairy for people?
I was just wondering if that was Kevin Mitnick, and if not, who was it? It has been since then that I saw it.
...is majorly flawed. No-one has argued that the selling of large amounts of items pushes up prices. What has been argued is that people buying larger amounts of gold than they could ever get in causal play gives them a big burning hole in their pocket. Why wander around collecting herbs if you can take a minor dent out of your supply (which you can just spend money to buy more) to get them instantly from the AH?
It is exactly the same reason that the US can't solve its budgetary problems by "printing more money". Increase the supply of money and you push up inflation. The 24-hour high-pressure farmers increase the rate of gold into the server by a lot, and this has the same effect.
If you ask me this article looks like it was written by someone from one of the gold selling companies, giving helpful hints such as when to be one of the farmers customers, in order to legitimise their business. It's a pity they have to ignore and argue against basic economic principles to do so.
In an unrelated case, Ronald Redding, 37, of Linthicum Heights, Md., was charged Tuesday with giving his copy of "Million Dollar Baby" to a friend. Redding faces a misdemeanor charge of willfully infringing a copyright by distributing the film.
Surely there must be more to this case than him giving one copy of a dvd to his mate? If not, how was he caught, did his mate dob him in or something?
But the point is that Lucas and the anti-piracy people have been complaining about the early release damaging profits. I don't think its too surprising that people took it seriously.
Its this sort of reasoning...
Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
Lisa: That's spacious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
[Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money]
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
[Lisa refuses at first, then takes the exchange]
I wonder how long it will be till the MPAA and co go after people selling second-hand CDs and DVDs on Ebay. After all, the main argument against piracy is that it robs artists of their rightfully earned royalty dollars. You could actually argue that a bought second-hand DVD on Ebay is actually more likely to be a lost sale than someone who downloads it for free.
It must be Alanis Morissette ironic... she came clean in an interview and admitted that when she wrote the song she didn't actually know what ironic meant, hence none of the things described as ironic in it actually are. Now THATS ironic.
The thing I don't get is that when someone applies for a patent there is a period of three months where the patent is advertised so people can challenge it. If it gets through this time without being challenged, then it is given to them and if anyone then wants to challenge it, they have an expensive legal case on their hands. I have seen this recently when a client put a patent on part of a system I wrote for him (which I'm not overly pleased with, incidentally), no-one challenged it, now that he has it and is sending out letters people are getting their feathers ruffled.
Now these people are not big corporations so it doesn't surprise me that they missed it when it was advertised. But surely companies as big as Apple or MS have teams of lawyers that watch these applicatons for prior art? They certainly have teams of lawyers applying for and fighting these things.
Riiiight... they are going to stop piracy by providing a paid streaming audio and video service with crap content to a group of people that typically have little money.
The thing is that royalties for music is quite a recent invention. In the past all (and today, still the majority of) musicians get paid on a per-performace basis. Most musicians out there struggling to make a living use CDs as a promotional tool for their live performances more than anything else.
Big money from royalties is reserved for only the super-successful and of all things... mobile phone ring-tones. These are either people that have NO worries when it comes to money, or in the latter case purveyors of the most mind-numbing annoying filth that is decreasing our collective intelligence.
It is a concept invented by these monolithic dinosaur companies that see music as a flashy image they can sell to the masses, not an exercise in creative expression. The real musicians are in pubs and clubs performing music they wrote to express themselves, not posing on TV surrounded by fly booty girls.
This is not to say I believe is right to download music, I don't. I don't download tracks at all, and I buy a hell of a lot of vinyl of the type of music I like. But like the whole Revenge of the Sith thing, the income protection seems to be provided for those that need it least. If you want to support the music industry you should get out there and see some local bands! They are the guys that need your money, not some wanna-be tv-star who exists solely for a company profit-line.
...that a company started by an American supporter of the Nazi party could have had such a detrimental effect on the slippery slope that is civil liberties. Colour me surprised.
Next thing you know they will cynically have copyright laws changed to suit their company assets... oh wait a minute...
...but sometimes I get a feeling that Linux is used by some people to feel like a smug elitist nerd. You know, install it and then you can sit back and laugh at the poor windows fools who probably know just as little about security as the person who is feeling all 1337 by using linux. I'm not saying all Linux users are like this, but I'm sure there is a good percentage.
I mean any OS can have gaping security holes, depending on the implementation. When I was at uni a friend of mine managed to get pwd logging software on a persons account because it was easy for a non-savvy user to think they had logged out when they hadn't. Being the joker that he was, he thought it would be incredibly funny if that logging software would mail to pwd to my account, off to the sysadmins office I went for an account suspension. I got my revenge though, by sending nulls to a file that stored his login info (I don't remember the details, it was a LONG time ago) to forcably log him out while he was working. Pretty lame-brained idea considering they were watching my account, back to the sysadmins office I went.
Lets not also forget the first internet worm I can recall was the one that would use a gaping sendmail exploit to send spoofed mail messages from server to server. It really was as easy as telnetting to port 21 on a unix mail server and writing the email header in a text editor.
So you can laugh all you like about the chequered history of Windows, but unless you recognise that Unix had just as shaky beginnings, you are only looking at half the story.
There is also a board game called Scotland Yard where one player plays an escaping crim and the others play detectives trying to track him around the city.
So where is the FBI and the DHS when you need them? I would have thought that outright fraud would be considered more of a crime than downloading a crappy quality avi of a movie. Obviously the money of rich people like George Lucas is more of a priority than that of normal citizens.
We are quickly becoming a society where the most heinous act you can commit is to put a dent into company profits.
Its lucky for Jesus that the FLAA (Fish and Loaf Association of America) weren't around in his day, they would have prosecuted him for illegal duplication of food during the Sermon on the Mount that put countless hard-working bakers and fishermen out of business.
Slashdot Mirror
We also need one for Evil Sony.
...now if we can get our current Prime Minister to hold off on recorded telemarketing calls pimping for votes during an election and it will be an even better step.
Does anyone remember a documentary called "Cyberpunk" from the early 90s which had a computer criminal boasting that he could take down all the banks if he wanted to, and if anything ever happened to him then if certain triggers weren't reset every week things would get very hairy for people?
I was just wondering if that was Kevin Mitnick, and if not, who was it? It has been since then that I saw it.
...is majorly flawed. No-one has argued that the selling of large amounts of items pushes up prices. What has been argued is that people buying larger amounts of gold than they could ever get in causal play gives them a big burning hole in their pocket. Why wander around collecting herbs if you can take a minor dent out of your supply (which you can just spend money to buy more) to get them instantly from the AH?
It is exactly the same reason that the US can't solve its budgetary problems by "printing more money". Increase the supply of money and you push up inflation. The 24-hour high-pressure farmers increase the rate of gold into the server by a lot, and this has the same effect.
If you ask me this article looks like it was written by someone from one of the gold selling companies, giving helpful hints such as when to be one of the farmers customers, in order to legitimise their business. It's a pity they have to ignore and argue against basic economic principles to do so.
In an unrelated case, Ronald Redding, 37, of Linthicum Heights, Md., was charged Tuesday with giving his copy of "Million Dollar Baby" to a friend. Redding faces a misdemeanor charge of willfully infringing a copyright by distributing the film.
Surely there must be more to this case than him giving one copy of a dvd to his mate? If not, how was he caught, did his mate dob him in or something?
But the point is that Lucas and the anti-piracy people have been complaining about the early release damaging profits. I don't think its too surprising that people took it seriously.
Its this sort of reasoning... Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm. Lisa: That's spacious reasoning, Dad. Homer: Thank you, dear. Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away. Homer: Oh, how does it work? Lisa: It doesn't work. Homer: Uh-huh. Lisa: It's just a stupid rock. Homer: Uh-huh. Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you? [Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money] Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock. [Lisa refuses at first, then takes the exchange]
I wonder how long it will be till the MPAA and co go after people selling second-hand CDs and DVDs on Ebay. After all, the main argument against piracy is that it robs artists of their rightfully earned royalty dollars. You could actually argue that a bought second-hand DVD on Ebay is actually more likely to be a lost sale than someone who downloads it for free.
Currently there is no Internet worms for the C64, therefore it is a more secure and hence better platform than Windows.
They should do a CGI movie of the Infinity Gauntlet series, that would be awesome. Silver Surfer ftw!!
At least you could have a slim chance of avoiding Armageddon by clicking "I'm feeling lucky" ;)
It must be Alanis Morissette ironic... she came clean in an interview and admitted that when she wrote the song she didn't actually know what ironic meant, hence none of the things described as ironic in it actually are. Now THATS ironic.
The thing I don't get is that when someone applies for a patent there is a period of three months where the patent is advertised so people can challenge it. If it gets through this time without being challenged, then it is given to them and if anyone then wants to challenge it, they have an expensive legal case on their hands. I have seen this recently when a client put a patent on part of a system I wrote for him (which I'm not overly pleased with, incidentally), no-one challenged it, now that he has it and is sending out letters people are getting their feathers ruffled.
Now these people are not big corporations so it doesn't surprise me that they missed it when it was advertised. But surely companies as big as Apple or MS have teams of lawyers that watch these applicatons for prior art? They certainly have teams of lawyers applying for and fighting these things.
I hate it when someone pulls adds while we are in the middle of an instance, it usually ends up in a party wipe.
They hate us because of our freedom... so if we remove our freedoms they won't hate us anymore!
IMO they should have had Pavarotti Loves Elephants as well :)
My guess is this post will be modded down for being off-topic ;)
Riiiight... they are going to stop piracy by providing a paid streaming audio and video service with crap content to a group of people that typically have little money.
The thing is that royalties for music is quite a recent invention. In the past all (and today, still the majority of) musicians get paid on a per-performace basis. Most musicians out there struggling to make a living use CDs as a promotional tool for their live performances more than anything else.
Big money from royalties is reserved for only the super-successful and of all things... mobile phone ring-tones. These are either people that have NO worries when it comes to money, or in the latter case purveyors of the most mind-numbing annoying filth that is decreasing our collective intelligence.
It is a concept invented by these monolithic dinosaur companies that see music as a flashy image they can sell to the masses, not an exercise in creative expression. The real musicians are in pubs and clubs performing music they wrote to express themselves, not posing on TV surrounded by fly booty girls.
This is not to say I believe is right to download music, I don't. I don't download tracks at all, and I buy a hell of a lot of vinyl of the type of music I like. But like the whole Revenge of the Sith thing, the income protection seems to be provided for those that need it least. If you want to support the music industry you should get out there and see some local bands! They are the guys that need your money, not some wanna-be tv-star who exists solely for a company profit-line.
...that a company started by an American supporter of the Nazi party could have had such a detrimental effect on the slippery slope that is civil liberties. Colour me surprised.
Next thing you know they will cynically have copyright laws changed to suit their company assets... oh wait a minute...
...but sometimes I get a feeling that Linux is used by some people to feel like a smug elitist nerd. You know, install it and then you can sit back and laugh at the poor windows fools who probably know just as little about security as the person who is feeling all 1337 by using linux. I'm not saying all Linux users are like this, but I'm sure there is a good percentage. I mean any OS can have gaping security holes, depending on the implementation. When I was at uni a friend of mine managed to get pwd logging software on a persons account because it was easy for a non-savvy user to think they had logged out when they hadn't. Being the joker that he was, he thought it would be incredibly funny if that logging software would mail to pwd to my account, off to the sysadmins office I went for an account suspension. I got my revenge though, by sending nulls to a file that stored his login info (I don't remember the details, it was a LONG time ago) to forcably log him out while he was working. Pretty lame-brained idea considering they were watching my account, back to the sysadmins office I went. Lets not also forget the first internet worm I can recall was the one that would use a gaping sendmail exploit to send spoofed mail messages from server to server. It really was as easy as telnetting to port 21 on a unix mail server and writing the email header in a text editor. So you can laugh all you like about the chequered history of Windows, but unless you recognise that Unix had just as shaky beginnings, you are only looking at half the story.
There is also a board game called Scotland Yard where one player plays an escaping crim and the others play detectives trying to track him around the city.
And yet both of them have time to chase down Torrenters...
So where is the FBI and the DHS when you need them? I would have thought that outright fraud would be considered more of a crime than downloading a crappy quality avi of a movie. Obviously the money of rich people like George Lucas is more of a priority than that of normal citizens. We are quickly becoming a society where the most heinous act you can commit is to put a dent into company profits.
Its lucky for Jesus that the FLAA (Fish and Loaf Association of America) weren't around in his day, they would have prosecuted him for illegal duplication of food during the Sermon on the Mount that put countless hard-working bakers and fishermen out of business.