I can't find the reference, but I'm sure I heard about a new virus which caused the modem to dial 911. Now that is evil.
I'm just waiting till one of these things is written to DDOS a specific target. If it's microsoft, maybe we'll actually see some security improvements then. If the imaginations of virus writers keeps growing we could see all kind of weird shit happening. Viruses sending spam, running a seti@home client, mailing documents to random people.
In the meantime, I'll think I'll hold off on the web enabled fridge / oven / phone etc. This winter I'll have enough real viruses to deal with.
Battlecruiser wasn't that bad except for 2 things:
It took about 3 weeks to learn how to play decently. Most people would give up after finding out that their ship won't do anything because they forgot to have any crew members sleep for 2 weeks on end, but I persevered.
Its stability sucked. Not that it crashed a lot, but it took a miracle to get it to run at all. Probably more microsoft's fault, but anyone trying to use DOS mode under win 98 needs a brainscan.
The actual black hole is so small that there's no way they could measure a small enough volume. A if the popular theory is correct, it's pretty much a certainty the black holes exist - large supernovas should leave enough "dead" debris behind to form one.
AFAIK, it's just very difficult to tell the difference between a black hole and a very massive, dark object.
I think Hawking predicted evaporation of black holes through a QM effect, there's still not much evidence for it. If black holes do exist, they will ertainly grow if you drop stuff into them.
If black hole evaporation does happen, they will be the perfect power souce - apart from being a little dangerous, that is.
As for those microwaves - as I recall they relied on some specially prepared gas, which certainly wouldn't exist inside the event horizon. I'd certainly pay to see someone try the experiment though.
As far as I can tell, what they're doing is measuring the speed of rotation at the edge of the galaxy hub, and the speed further in (the "dust trapped around the black hole"). As all the physics students among us will know, the rotational speed depends only on the radius and the mass inside the containing sphere. So they can measure the mass in the hub, compared to the mass inside the center of the hub.
Does this mean there are black holes in the center? Not really - even if they could see through the dust cloud a tiny black hole wouldn't be visible (see the third link in the article). Black holes are just the commonly held idea, this has nothing to do with proving they exist.
This is still very interesting research - to me it seems to mean that the mass density of galaxies has a similar profile across a huge range of sizes.
I know many people like this, but if you sit them down in front of a Linux box and show them how to use it, they pick it up just as quickly as they did with windows. You won't get them using command line tools immediately but they don't generally believe that the windows way is the best - if you show them the neat things they can do they soon start appreciating Linux.
The problem is applications. The "intuitive interface" is all MS marketing hype.
On the extreme end of this, I was reading the latest GNOME summary, where I found this tidbit:
RHAD Labs has shifted focus a bit. For a long time we were doing much of the GNOME user environment work, fixing bugs, making packages, and maintaining code. However Helix and Eazel have stepped up with far greater resources and expertise in this area than we have. So we've shifted our efforts to focus on libraries and development tools.
I found this stunning. Here are three companies that have sprung up from the chaos of open source software developement, but because they are still open to working with other companies, they are litterally able to shift whole projects between them on the fly. This is a radical shift in the evolving landscape of the software business.
----
I'm not trying to disparage RedHat, but you're forgetting that they don't really profit from this work. They're basically funding Gnome so that they have expertise in that area and are seen as good guys.
Why wouldn't they want someone else to work on it? They can't prevent it anyway, and they know that the more people working on Gnome the better they look. Gnome never belonged to RedHat in any sense anyway.
So, although this is great I dont really see any relevance to hardware manufacturers. Sony obviously has to get back the huge amounts of money they've invested.
This would appear to depend upon getting water from Mars's surface (unless they've come up with some otehr way of doing it). IIRC, this means they have to land near the North pole.
Of course, if you want to terraform mars you need a huge amount of water - for producing the atmosphere and supporting life. If you have the water, some kind of GM algae would probably be easier than using a massive machine.
The sad things is that with NASA's budget cuts and other problems I am beginning to doubt I will see a manned mission to mars in my lifetime.
Switch Gnome with KDE and this is almost exactly the same as comments posted to the last story on KDE. Why does every story have to have a comment that "This story shows Slashdot's bias towards XXX"?
If you don't want to hear about Gnome, you can just turn off all stories about it.
I think the size of Australia is more the problem. 20 million people spread over a country roughly equal to the United States slows down competition somewhat!
Does 16 million spread over an area roughly the size of California sound a bit better? What they pay in Perth I've no idea.
It's obvious that security through obscurity is not the ideal, however I'm not so sure that open source programs are more secure.
Consider a program (such as PGP) which is written with open and closed source versions. Both are just as likely to have bugs at first, but both are inspected by other programmers. The closed source program is inspected by a couple of programmers inside the company who are quite knowledgable about security. The open source program is inspected by dozens of programmers, most of which know very little about security. The score so far? I'd say about even.
Now the programs are released and people start using them. Hackers start trying to find exploits in them. If an exploit is found by a "white hat", it is reported and fixed. If it is found by a "black hat" it is used to attack systems for a while before being noticed. For the closed source program it is less likely an exploit will be found outside the company than for the open source porgram. So it's likely more exploits for the open source program will fall into the hands of the "black hats".
Of course, this assumes similar numbers of white and black hats, if there are more white hats then bugs in an open source program will be found quickly. Apparently this has not happened for the programs discussed.
Offset against this is the fact that bug fixes are likely to be much quicker in the open source program.
I'll still use open source programs for another reason. Security flaws can also be intentionally introduced for several reasons. This is one type of bug which is extremely unlikely to occur in an open source program.
I believe all electronic equipment used in space is shielded as much as possible. I think LOE satellites are actually inside the Van Allen belt, but they are still exposed to some radiation.
As for hard disks and computers, a metal case blocks X-rays pretty well. You might get some strange effects if the computer was on. If you really want to destroy the data on a hard disk, try an NMR (or MRI) machine.
It's pretty amusing to see the RIAA, record companies and artists who make ridiculous amounts of money complaining about being screwed over.
Up until a few years ago, it was me who got screwed - by overpriced CDs, by "artists" who create one good song and an album full of crap and by not being able to buy music I like because record stores are full of the top 40s crap pimped by record companies.
I've downloaded a lot of music lately but I still buy CDs from bands I really like. The CDs I haven't bought are ones that turned out not to be so good after actually listening to the a couple of times.
Do I feel bad about this? Not really, the "artists" are probably pissed that their marketing didn't dupe another person into buying their crap. The record company is probably pissed that they "lose" part of their ridiculously high profit margin. And the RIAA have proven themsevles a bunch of dickhead, who cares about their profits.
Better still most of the CDs I do buy are from smaller labels and by bands I may never have heard of if not for the internet.
I'm sure many people are not concerned about the morality of the situation, obviously taking the example of the record comanies and the RIAA.
IIRC, in most cases the cache only mirrors what's in the main memory, so it wouldn't be a problem. However there would be 2 other issues.
Firstly, booting would write over part of the memory - you'd have to tell the OS to recover, unless that's what it did all the time. You could have a reserved area for booting, then the system looks at the main memory and recovers.
The other problems is saving the entire state - you know the memory, but not what was going on in the processor, network, etc. when the thing goes down. So some things will be unrecoverable. And of course if the thing really crashes it won't help without some pretty serious recovery tools.
Great in theory - use robots instead of people, then the people can be doing something more profitable, and society gets richer. The problem is that they are most likely to be waiting for their next dole cheque. Meanwhile the people profiting from the robot are the ones who own the fast food chain.
But then again, this already happened with the manufacturing industry and the overall quality of life continues to increase (at least in "developed" countries). What's needed is more education and opportunities for poor people - then all those teenagers can be programming, or creating web sites, or making TV shows, or something actually worthwhile.
Maybe I don't bear these predjudices because I was never in a war and didn't have my family and friends killed by a fascist regime. I guess I would probably feel different if this were the case.
There are two reasons to uphold freedom of speech for a holocaust denier and similar people.
Firstly, their ideas should be known - not just spouted to a secret cadre of believers, but publicly debated and shown for the lies they are. And if some of their ideas are true, we need to know that too - the history books don't always tell the whole story. Call me an idealist but I think the public should know the truth, especially about things like this.
Secondly, how do you restrict such actions to a particular group. Today it is the neonazis, tomorrow a religious right group may gain power and anti-christian speech will be banned. Then congregations of other religions will be stopped. If the slide into governmental censorship and control continues you end up with another fascist regime. This is an extreme case, but the more restrictive a government is the harder it is to stop.
The problem whith this is that the internet has become as ubiquitous as roads. Think about the banks, telephone networks, etc - France couldn't cut itself off from the internet even if the government wanted to. Someone would get a satellite link or fibre to another country and start selling access anyway.
There's obviously some content which is accepted a illegal (child pr0n, evidence of crimes) but making something the government doesn't like illegal to view is ridiculous. They can stop it being hosted in France, they can make it illegal to import stuff but trying to stop it from being available is going to cause huge headaches for everyone.
Take my country (Australia). The government, in their wisdom, made it illegal to host smut. Did they make it illegal to view or to be broadcast to Australia? No, they aren't that stupid. In fact, if you go to www.teenagers.com.au you'll find an "Astralian" pr0n site host in the US.
The problem here is the French government's laws. How do they expect to stop information being available from other countries, when it isn't illegal there? It might work with e-bay but what about an actual neonazi web page hosted in Russia or Barbados? If this catches on there'll be chaos.
Hate-speech is sometimes not less bad than hate-crime.
This is something you will have to explain to me, as it appears totally illogical. Speech itself should not be a crime, and the very term "hate crime" is meaningless to me.
Hate speech: I hate people who drive slow in the fast lane because it slows me down. I hate fat men because they smell bad. I hate jews because they are genetically inferior. Have I hurt anyone? Maybe their feelings. Have I commited a crime? maybe in France or Germany.
Hate crime: I kill a jew because I hate jews. Did I commit a crime? Of course, but it was not hating jews - it was murder.
If "we" are going to debate this with people, please don't compare Napster (or equivalent) to guns. Napster hasn't been used to kill or maim anyone, is currently legal in every country, is not a physical artifact, does not come in different degrees of "badness" and is given away free.
Apart from the fact that it is such a poor analogy, you are just going to incite people's anger and make people adversarial towards Napster (especially outside the US). I know of nothing which cause heated arguments faster (which is why I'm not going to post my opinion here). I'm sure it would be much more productive if gun are left completely out of the discussion.
Does the phrase "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it" mean anything to you.
A couple of years ago a man doing talks denying that the Holocaust happened tryed to enter my country (Australia) and was refused. Many people, myself included, thought he should have been allowed to enter. I thought this not only because he should have a right to free speech (not a constitutional right in my country), but also because his ideas should have been held up to public scrutiny.
In 200 years, after everything about the Nazi's has been erased from french history books (ypothetically speaking), who will stop another right-wing party from gaining power, another dictator? After all a strong leadership has many advantages for a country during hard times, you can always return to a normal government when things get better, right?
Personally, I'm offended by the sale of books on e-bay, after all information wants to be free. They'd better stop it or else.
Agreed, I hope Yahoo tells them to get stuffed, and that this serves an example to overseas sites threatened by stupid US laws.
An "world government" would not fix this - it would just make it worse. The Europeans will want anything related to nazis banned, the US will want anything related to anonymously sharing files and encryption banned, Australia will lobby for everyone to use censorware (god bless my fucked-up country), moslem countries will want anything derogatory about their religion to be banned, China will throw fits everytime someone mentions their government in less than glowing terms. I wouldn't wish that job on my worst enemy!
Why can't people be tolerant of other people's beliefs? Yes, even neonazis - otherwise you are just emulating them. That's right - the French government/legal system is emulating the very group they are trying to condemn - how's that for irony?
P.S. My favourite quote:
Under French law, it is illegal to exhibit or sell objects with racist overtones.
So a swastika badge and a white hood have "racist overtones". What happens when the next cult uses a flower or a tree? - I guess we'll have to ban those as well.
"There are only two things that are infinite - the universe and human stupidity, and I am not sure about the former."
Slashdot was probably paid by ZDNet to link to the story. The whole thing was probably made up as a ploy to get slashdot user to view mind-controlling subliminal ads.
And of course doubleclick will be tracking everyone who goes to the page and sharing data with the FBI so they can correlate with IPs from napster and find out who all the trouble makers are.
And that small lump one the back of your head - it's a tracker planted by aliens co-operating with the NSA.
It's a good thing you and I are around, most people don't notice this stuff because their brains are fried due to willpower-lowering radiation emitted by mobile phones.
The only reason I could think of that I would have bought the album is sheer laziness
Illegal: I download the mp3s, convert them to.wavs, buy a blank CD, put them in my burner, simmer for 30 minutes, pray it works.
Legal: I browse to the online record store, enter the name of the artist, type a few things. A few days later a guy shows up at my door with my CD.
The legal way is easier as well, so the only reason I can think of is to save a few bucks. Money which the artist won't see but the recording industry cartel will, courtesy of their own special tax on blank CDs (at least in my country).
BTW, often seeing an "artist" on a butt ugly billboard is enough to make me boycott both the product and the perpetrator. I'm convinced most of those ad execs are on crack.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't find the reference, but I'm sure I heard about a new virus which caused the modem to dial 911. Now that is evil.
I'm just waiting till one of these things is written to DDOS a specific target. If it's microsoft, maybe we'll actually see some security improvements then. If the imaginations of virus writers keeps growing we could see all kind of weird shit happening. Viruses sending spam, running a seti@home client, mailing documents to random people.
In the meantime, I'll think I'll hold off on the web enabled fridge / oven / phone etc. This winter I'll have enough real viruses to deal with.
Battlecruiser wasn't that bad except for 2 things:
It's a reasonable game, but not worth the pain.
Read this:
Black Holes: One Size Doesn't Fit AllThe actual black hole is so small that there's no way they could measure a small enough volume. A if the popular theory is correct, it's pretty much a certainty the black holes exist - large supernovas should leave enough "dead" debris behind to form one.
AFAIK, it's just very difficult to tell the difference between a black hole and a very massive, dark object.
I think Hawking predicted evaporation of black holes through a QM effect, there's still not much evidence for it. If black holes do exist, they will ertainly grow if you drop stuff into them.
If black hole evaporation does happen, they will be the perfect power souce - apart from being a little dangerous, that is.
As for those microwaves - as I recall they relied on some specially prepared gas, which certainly wouldn't exist inside the event horizon. I'd certainly pay to see someone try the experiment though.
As far as I can tell, what they're doing is measuring the speed of rotation at the edge of the galaxy hub, and the speed further in (the "dust trapped around the black hole"). As all the physics students among us will know, the rotational speed depends only on the radius and the mass inside the containing sphere. So they can measure the mass in the hub, compared to the mass inside the center of the hub.
Does this mean there are black holes in the center? Not really - even if they could see through the dust cloud a tiny black hole wouldn't be visible (see the third link in the article). Black holes are just the commonly held idea, this has nothing to do with proving they exist.
This is still very interesting research - to me it seems to mean that the mass density of galaxies has a similar profile across a huge range of sizes.
I know many people like this, but if you sit them down in front of a Linux box and show them how to use it, they pick it up just as quickly as they did with windows. You won't get them using command line tools immediately but they don't generally believe that the windows way is the best - if you show them the neat things they can do they soon start appreciating Linux.
The problem is applications. The "intuitive interface" is all MS marketing hype.
On the extreme end of this, I was reading the latest GNOME summary, where I found this tidbit:
RHAD Labs has shifted focus a bit. For a long time we were doing much of the GNOME user environment work, fixing bugs, making packages, and maintaining code. However Helix and Eazel have stepped up with far greater resources and expertise in this area than we have. So we've shifted our efforts to focus on libraries and development tools.
I found this stunning. Here are three companies that have sprung up from the chaos of open source software developement, but because they are still open to working with other companies, they are litterally able to shift whole projects between them on the fly. This is a radical shift in the evolving landscape of the software business.
----
I'm not trying to disparage RedHat, but you're forgetting that they don't really profit from this work. They're basically funding Gnome so that they have expertise in that area and are seen as good guys.
Why wouldn't they want someone else to work on it? They can't prevent it anyway, and they know that the more people working on Gnome the better they look. Gnome never belonged to RedHat in any sense anyway.
So, although this is great I dont really see any relevance to hardware manufacturers. Sony obviously has to get back the huge amounts of money they've invested.
This would appear to depend upon getting water from Mars's surface (unless they've come up with some otehr way of doing it). IIRC, this means they have to land near the North pole.
Of course, if you want to terraform mars you need a huge amount of water - for producing the atmosphere and supporting life. If you have the water, some kind of GM algae would probably be easier than using a massive machine.
The sad things is that with NASA's budget cuts and other problems I am beginning to doubt I will see a manned mission to mars in my lifetime.
Switch Gnome with KDE and this is almost exactly the same as comments posted to the last story on KDE. Why does every story have to have a comment that "This story shows Slashdot's bias towards XXX"?
If you don't want to hear about Gnome, you can just turn off all stories about it.
Does 16 million spread over an area roughly the size of California sound a bit better? What they pay in Perth I've no idea.
It's obvious that security through obscurity is not the ideal, however I'm not so sure that open source programs are more secure.
Consider a program (such as PGP) which is written with open and closed source versions. Both are just as likely to have bugs at first, but both are inspected by other programmers. The closed source program is inspected by a couple of programmers inside the company who are quite knowledgable about security. The open source program is inspected by dozens of programmers, most of which know very little about security. The score so far? I'd say about even.
Now the programs are released and people start using them. Hackers start trying to find exploits in them. If an exploit is found by a "white hat", it is reported and fixed. If it is found by a "black hat" it is used to attack systems for a while before being noticed. For the closed source program it is less likely an exploit will be found outside the company than for the open source porgram. So it's likely more exploits for the open source program will fall into the hands of the "black hats".
Of course, this assumes similar numbers of white and black hats, if there are more white hats then bugs in an open source program will be found quickly. Apparently this has not happened for the programs discussed.
Offset against this is the fact that bug fixes are likely to be much quicker in the open source program.
I'll still use open source programs for another reason. Security flaws can also be intentionally introduced for several reasons. This is one type of bug which is extremely unlikely to occur in an open source program.
I believe all electronic equipment used in space is shielded as much as possible. I think LOE satellites are actually inside the Van Allen belt, but they are still exposed to some radiation.
As for hard disks and computers, a metal case blocks X-rays pretty well. You might get some strange effects if the computer was on. If you really want to destroy the data on a hard disk, try an NMR (or MRI) machine.
It's pretty amusing to see the RIAA, record companies and artists who make ridiculous amounts of money complaining about being screwed over.
Up until a few years ago, it was me who got screwed - by overpriced CDs, by "artists" who create one good song and an album full of crap and by not being able to buy music I like because record stores are full of the top 40s crap pimped by record companies.
I've downloaded a lot of music lately but I still buy CDs from bands I really like. The CDs I haven't bought are ones that turned out not to be so good after actually listening to the a couple of times.
Do I feel bad about this? Not really, the "artists" are probably pissed that their marketing didn't dupe another person into buying their crap. The record company is probably pissed that they "lose" part of their ridiculously high profit margin. And the RIAA have proven themsevles a bunch of dickhead, who cares about their profits.
Better still most of the CDs I do buy are from smaller labels and by bands I may never have heard of if not for the internet.
I'm sure many people are not concerned about the morality of the situation, obviously taking the example of the record comanies and the RIAA.
What if you can prove that there's no proof for whether it is decideable or not?
IIRC, in most cases the cache only mirrors what's in the main memory, so it wouldn't be a problem. However there would be 2 other issues.
Firstly, booting would write over part of the memory - you'd have to tell the OS to recover, unless that's what it did all the time. You could have a reserved area for booting, then the system looks at the main memory and recovers.
The other problems is saving the entire state - you know the memory, but not what was going on in the processor, network, etc. when the thing goes down. So some things will be unrecoverable. And of course if the thing really crashes it won't help without some pretty serious recovery tools.
Great in theory - use robots instead of people, then the people can be doing something more profitable, and society gets richer. The problem is that they are most likely to be waiting for their next dole cheque. Meanwhile the people profiting from the robot are the ones who own the fast food chain.
But then again, this already happened with the manufacturing industry and the overall quality of life continues to increase (at least in "developed" countries). What's needed is more education and opportunities for poor people - then all those teenagers can be programming, or creating web sites, or making TV shows, or something actually worthwhile.
To be fair they should have tested on an Alpha as well.
Maybe I don't bear these predjudices because I was never in a war and didn't have my family and friends killed by a fascist regime. I guess I would probably feel different if this were the case.
There are two reasons to uphold freedom of speech for a holocaust denier and similar people.
Firstly, their ideas should be known - not just spouted to a secret cadre of believers, but publicly debated and shown for the lies they are. And if some of their ideas are true, we need to know that too - the history books don't always tell the whole story. Call me an idealist but I think the public should know the truth, especially about things like this.
Secondly, how do you restrict such actions to a particular group. Today it is the neonazis, tomorrow a religious right group may gain power and anti-christian speech will be banned. Then congregations of other religions will be stopped. If the slide into governmental censorship and control continues you end up with another fascist regime. This is an extreme case, but the more restrictive a government is the harder it is to stop.
The problem whith this is that the internet has become as ubiquitous as roads. Think about the banks, telephone networks, etc - France couldn't cut itself off from the internet even if the government wanted to. Someone would get a satellite link or fibre to another country and start selling access anyway.
There's obviously some content which is accepted a illegal (child pr0n, evidence of crimes) but making something the government doesn't like illegal to view is ridiculous. They can stop it being hosted in France, they can make it illegal to import stuff but trying to stop it from being available is going to cause huge headaches for everyone.
Take my country (Australia). The government, in their wisdom, made it illegal to host smut. Did they make it illegal to view or to be broadcast to Australia? No, they aren't that stupid. In fact, if you go to www.teenagers.com.au you'll find an "Astralian" pr0n site host in the US.
The problem here is the French government's laws. How do they expect to stop information being available from other countries, when it isn't illegal there? It might work with e-bay but what about an actual neonazi web page hosted in Russia or Barbados? If this catches on there'll be chaos.
This is something you will have to explain to me, as it appears totally illogical. Speech itself should not be a crime, and the very term "hate crime" is meaningless to me.
Hate speech: I hate people who drive slow in the fast lane because it slows me down. I hate fat men because they smell bad. I hate jews because they are genetically inferior. Have I hurt anyone? Maybe their feelings. Have I commited a crime? maybe in France or Germany.
Hate crime: I kill a jew because I hate jews. Did I commit a crime? Of course, but it was not hating jews - it was murder.
If "we" are going to debate this with people, please don't compare Napster (or equivalent) to guns. Napster hasn't been used to kill or maim anyone, is currently legal in every country, is not a physical artifact, does not come in different degrees of "badness" and is given away free.
Apart from the fact that it is such a poor analogy, you are just going to incite people's anger and make people adversarial towards Napster (especially outside the US). I know of nothing which cause heated arguments faster (which is why I'm not going to post my opinion here). I'm sure it would be much more productive if gun are left completely out of the discussion.
Does the phrase "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it" mean anything to you.
A couple of years ago a man doing talks denying that the Holocaust happened tryed to enter my country (Australia) and was refused. Many people, myself included, thought he should have been allowed to enter. I thought this not only because he should have a right to free speech (not a constitutional right in my country), but also because his ideas should have been held up to public scrutiny.
In 200 years, after everything about the Nazi's has been erased from french history books (ypothetically speaking), who will stop another right-wing party from gaining power, another dictator? After all a strong leadership has many advantages for a country during hard times, you can always return to a normal government when things get better, right?
Personally, I'm offended by the sale of books on e-bay, after all information wants to be free. They'd better stop it or else.
Agreed, I hope Yahoo tells them to get stuffed, and that this serves an example to overseas sites threatened by stupid US laws.
An "world government" would not fix this - it would just make it worse. The Europeans will want anything related to nazis banned, the US will want anything related to anonymously sharing files and encryption banned, Australia will lobby for everyone to use censorware (god bless my fucked-up country), moslem countries will want anything derogatory about their religion to be banned, China will throw fits everytime someone mentions their government in less than glowing terms. I wouldn't wish that job on my worst enemy!
Why can't people be tolerant of other people's beliefs? Yes, even neonazis - otherwise you are just emulating them. That's right - the French government/legal system is emulating the very group they are trying to condemn - how's that for irony?
P.S. My favourite quote:
So a swastika badge and a white hood have "racist overtones". What happens when the next cult uses a flower or a tree? - I guess we'll have to ban those as well.
"There are only two things that are infinite - the universe and human stupidity, and I am not sure about the former."
Slashdot was probably paid by ZDNet to link to the story. The whole thing was probably made up as a ploy to get slashdot user to view mind-controlling subliminal ads.
And of course doubleclick will be tracking everyone who goes to the page and sharing data with the FBI so they can correlate with IPs from napster and find out who all the trouble makers are.
And that small lump one the back of your head - it's a tracker planted by aliens co-operating with the NSA.
It's a good thing you and I are around, most people don't notice this stuff because their brains are fried due to willpower-lowering radiation emitted by mobile phones.
Illegal: I download the mp3s, convert them to .wavs, buy a blank CD, put them in my burner, simmer for 30 minutes, pray it works.
Legal: I browse to the online record store, enter the name of the artist, type a few things. A few days later a guy shows up at my door with my CD.
The legal way is easier as well, so the only reason I can think of is to save a few bucks. Money which the artist won't see but the recording industry cartel will, courtesy of their own special tax on blank CDs (at least in my country).
BTW, often seeing an "artist" on a butt ugly billboard is enough to make me boycott both the product and the perpetrator. I'm convinced most of those ad execs are on crack.