After reading this story, I decided to go to Toyota's website, get their contact address, and write a letter (snail mail) stating, briefly, that:
It has come time for me to purchase a new family vehicle. I was considering a toyota vehicle for our new family vehicle until I saw a story about Toyota sending a DMCA takedown notice to a website that holds desktop wallpapers, some of which show Toyota vehicles in them...."
Screw Toyota. I'll take my twenty grand to some other car company that doesn't pick on petty crap like desktop wallpaper.
I first got a classmates account about nine or ten years ago. Back then, it was cheap (no more than twenty for a year) and they typically had promos that were even cheaper. Now a days, I wouldn't dare pay the price they charge. I always get promo deal emails from them for being a previous gold member which typically offer 20% off, but even then it's too much.
I recently got duped into buying an account from reunion.com! I wasn't happy about that one but knew if I tried to get a refund, they'd just laugh at me. All these types of websites have turned evil.
They are being investigated over a variety of possible offenses, including defying insurance regulations, driving without a license and violating registration requirements.
I do find the list of charges very interesting. I'm guessing the insurance regulations may have something to do with a seatbelt maybe and the violating reg req has something to do with horsepower in use on the vehicle? This will be interesting to see how this plays out. I hope/. keeps up on the story.
OH. Common! You must have just made up that site yourself. There can't possibly be people out there that would believe such a thing, unless they're from one of those tribes deep in a jungle in South America somewhere that have never developed any further than rock knives and blowguns. Even in that case, where'd they get access to the net and knowledge enough to create a webpage?;)
I've always wondered about Steve and his piece of fruit. He's done well and while he was away, the fruit started to spoil. He came back and it ripened right up again. But, it is really all attributed to him? Really?
When I see Steve Jobs on the front of magazine like Time or whatever standing there with a big smile on his face holding onto an IGadget of some kind with a big shred of text that says something to the tone of 'Look What Steve Made For Us!'. Seeing shit like that just angers me because it's not him creating it; it's the engineers! They (the media) seem to show him just pulling these things right out of his head and, poof, there it is for all to buy and enjoy, all thanks to Steve and, apparently, no one else. How much does Steve, more a business expert AFAIK, really have in the success of a cool new gadget other than marketing his face along side of it? In the end, the cool things that these devices do are the brilliant thinking of all the very hard, over worked technical experts behind the scenes that are Never mentioned or cited in any of the major magazines or news stories. It would seem that Steve sits in his office all day with a hammer, thumbtacks and a small razer blade and makes IGadget after IGadget, all the while smiling and possibly eating apples.
So, if Steve left, what would really change? As long as the same brilliant engineers remain, it's really a question of "hey boss (the current Steve or some new boss taking his place someday), does this look better in white or tan and should this corner of the new IGadget be more rounded or more of some kind of octagon shape?". I'm sure someone else other than Steve can figure out answers to questions such as those.
Now, I know it takes a lot more to do what Steve has done. He is a genius in his own right, evident by Apples success under his emperor-ship. But I really don't think there's no one else out there that can be as good as he is at business tactics, marketing decisions, and 'design for the sake of appearances' ideas.
I guess I just wish they'd give more credit where it's more due; the engineers and designers who really build these cool new toys we all love instead of the media just referring to Steve doing it all.
This last dec I bought a gamecube (brand new at Target, which was the last one they had)! I'm always a few consoles behind. It saves me money that way. Also, by the time I do buy a console that's been around for several years, I have a huge selection of titles to buy at discount prices. I'm thinking I'll get my WII around 2011 or so.:) Next, I'm buying a PS2! Oh, and I finally got myself a gameboy advance about a month ago!
For example, a small company I worked for a number of years ago used Greek and Roman mythology. Zeus and Hera were the PDC and BDC, respectively. Apollo was the mail server. For our small environment, that made sense.
That's funny. That's exactly the convention we used at the last company I worked for as well. Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, and many others were used. I enjoyed using colorful names. Now I'm working at an ISP and everything all the computer names are boring letter/number combos. Of course, it's probably a better plan considering we have upwards of forty servers.
It's like that here in AZ as well. A co-worker of mine hadn't smoked pot in nearly two months. He was trying to quit. He got pulled over by highway patrol and although he wasn't under the influence of anything, the officer saw that he was shaking so he arrested him and had him pee into a cup. Although his metabolites number was very low (Parts per million), it was enough to convict him. 'Driving under the influence' is no longer necessary to get convicted of DUI, apparently.
Arizona's Law: 28-1381 Section A Paragraph 3.
You are also required to submit to a drug test. If you do not, you forfeit your license automatically (28-1321 Section D Paragraph 2-C)!
Although the whole idea of having to go down to the store and buy a card is a bit lame, one cool thing is that you could buy several cards as 'gift cards' for whomever which would then allow them to download an album of their choice without ever having to leave home. That's the only positive thing I can think of, thus far. Oh, and if it does help the brick and mortar stores stay open a while longer, that's not entirely bad either, assuming the products they offer are quality, DRM free CDs. I still like to browse a CD store every now and then, although I'm typically looking for cheaper used CDs than anything else. A used CD rips just as good as a new one.
Why the hell should you be disenfranchised from soceity for the rest of your life if the crime wasn't harsh enough to warrant a life sentence?
I'm guessing that having these 'extra' punishments long after one has served their time is just more incentive not to commit the crime in the first place. Of course, I still don't believe on putting people on the 'list' for having sex with someone just a few years different from their own age. That's just crazy! An 18 year old having sex with his 17 year old girlfriend, the parents finding out about it and pressing charges because they never liked the boyfriend anyway (or for whatever reason). Wow.
I would love to have my library ripped into ogg but, as we all know, finding any portable hardware (Small Portable Audio Players (SPAPs)) that will play ogg is very difficult. I bought an MP3 player for my wife some years ago which takes an SD card. So, we transfer MP3s off our computer onto the card to play on the mp3 player. I did rip a few of my CDs into ogg but realized there was no point as all I'd be doing is taking up unnecessary space on my hard drive (I was dual ripping for a while into MP3 and OGG).
So, in the end, although I'd love to have my library in ogg, for now, it would be pointless, since our SPAP doesn't support ogg. I'm hoping that the various SPAP manufacturers being providing support for ogg on all devices made in the near future. Sadly, I don't see it happening though.
This is a battle we should all be chipping into. Does anyone know of a website somewhere or other such ways we can use to donate cash to this fight?
The RIAA has nearly unlimited funds (so it would seem). So, if we're ever to stop this enemy of the people, we're going to have to fight back in kind. In a lawsuit like this, we all need to help it through before it becomes just another RIAA victory due to lack of funds on the victim's (in every case, the RIAA is never the victim) side.
If no such website exists, who could we trust to set it up and make sure 98% of the funds are distributed back to the attornies fighting this cause?
Public places? Hmmm. Ok, so, they put up a camera on a high pole overlooking a residential street. Well, the wide angle camera also happens to be able to look into back yards. So much for the security/privacy fences you put up so you could swim naked in your own swimming pool. And, if you do decided to do that, or have sex in your back yard, who's to say the police aren't recording such events and taking such recordings home or showing them to all their cop friends.
Cameras like this are a bad thing and the beginning of much, much worse things. As everyone else is saying, it will not end here. Wait and see how things are ten years from now. I can only begin to imagine.
So please, go ahead and explain how a womans body, or a human life, is worth less than some software.
Because some organization (riaa, mpaa, ms, etc.) with a lot of money and not a care for anyone but themselves says so. Oh, and they happen to be paying large amounts of cash into various political campaigns, right?
[guy in black suit in court room] Your honor, don't forget who helped put you on that high pedestal!
[judge] Oh yea. Court finds for wealthy, powerful organzation. Penalty for the software pirate is life at hard labor!
[judge] Next case?
[prosecutor] Murder of family of five, husband, wife, three little girls.
[judge] {looks around for any black suited gentlemen and sees none, but does see 'poor' family members of victim} Very well, 8 years in prison with parol possibility in 6 months. However, the murderer did stub his toe while dodging an attempt to stop him by one of the victims at the residence where he shot the family, so, due to murderers pain and suffering, case dismissed.
My boss (I.S. Director with a clincial degree) uses windows exclusively. He paid for encryption software that encrypts a device (hard drives in our case) that works with a single button click. Just put in your password twice and click the 'encrypt' button and that was it. We found out later that the software didn't complety encrypt the drive. We could still retrieve/restore information and in the healthcare industry, that's unacceptable (HIPPA law).
So, after that, he now uses an open source program that I've been using for some time now, thanks to seeing someone post about it on/. (truecrypt.org). Though that software works excellently (I love it!), my boss has had troubles working with it. It's very complicated to him. I had tried to get him to use it before but he wouldn't touch it. He's slowly grasping the concepts of it but not without a lot of head scratching along the way.
The point is, most people want to be able to do things with as little thought as possible (the click one button method). I think the masses just don't care to think too hard. Linux (and most open source that I know of) is a long ways from that. It's still the 'smart person's' computer in comarison to *ows.
1.5 Million? What? That doesn't do anything... ANYTHING at all as far as making up for what they did. Sony should be paying out a hundred million or more to each suing state and some execs should go to prison. This will only promote further, even more horrible acts of computer crimes by large companies.
I did a search for a single, common statement and found that I can use it to learn better (hopefully) coding techniques. I'm an ameteur, somewhat newbie so seeing many other ways of doing the same code is a big thing for me. In a matter of moments I've already seen a few better ways I could implement past and current coding projects.
"What eBay needs is a 'killfile' feature. When you've had your fill of page after page of mousepads and t-shirts in the "Sun Hardware" area, you should be able to bump the spammer right off your search/browses."
Ebay would never go for it. The spamming t-shirt/mousepad listers are paying ebay to list. Why would ebay want to give customers a way to put a stop to viewing the paying listers? This would eventually stop those listers from listing as much causing ebay to lose money.
Sounds like the state DA is just trying to put his name up in lights a bit before the end of his seat is over.
So, a single incident or two among 60 million people is reason to put strict guidelines on the business (myspace) and users themselves? I don't think the owner of a large arcade is forced to do age checks at the door and only allow adults into his store. I could go on and on with examples like this.
Slashdot Mirror
After reading this story, I decided to go to Toyota's website, get their contact address, and write a letter (snail mail) stating, briefly, that: It has come time for me to purchase a new family vehicle. I was considering a toyota vehicle for our new family vehicle until I saw a story about Toyota sending a DMCA takedown notice to a website that holds desktop wallpapers, some of which show Toyota vehicles in them ...."
Screw Toyota. I'll take my twenty grand to some other car company that doesn't pick on petty crap like desktop wallpaper.
I first got a classmates account about nine or ten years ago. Back then, it was cheap (no more than twenty for a year) and they typically had promos that were even cheaper. Now a days, I wouldn't dare pay the price they charge. I always get promo deal emails from them for being a previous gold member which typically offer 20% off, but even then it's too much. I recently got duped into buying an account from reunion.com! I wasn't happy about that one but knew if I tried to get a refund, they'd just laugh at me. All these types of websites have turned evil.
They are being investigated over a variety of possible offenses, including defying insurance regulations, driving without a license and violating registration requirements.
/. keeps up on the story.
I do find the list of charges very interesting. I'm guessing the insurance regulations may have something to do with a seatbelt maybe and the violating reg req has something to do with horsepower in use on the vehicle? This will be interesting to see how this plays out. I hope
OH. Common! You must have just made up that site yourself. There can't possibly be people out there that would believe such a thing, unless they're from one of those tribes deep in a jungle in South America somewhere that have never developed any further than rock knives and blowguns. Even in that case, where'd they get access to the net and knowledge enough to create a webpage? ;)
I've always wondered about Steve and his piece of fruit. He's done well and while he was away, the fruit started to spoil. He came back and it ripened right up again. But, it is really all attributed to him? Really?
When I see Steve Jobs on the front of magazine like Time or whatever standing there with a big smile on his face holding onto an IGadget of some kind with a big shred of text that says something to the tone of 'Look What Steve Made For Us!'. Seeing shit like that just angers me because it's not him creating it; it's the engineers! They (the media) seem to show him just pulling these things right out of his head and, poof, there it is for all to buy and enjoy, all thanks to Steve and, apparently, no one else. How much does Steve, more a business expert AFAIK, really have in the success of a cool new gadget other than marketing his face along side of it? In the end, the cool things that these devices do are the brilliant thinking of all the very hard, over worked technical experts behind the scenes that are Never mentioned or cited in any of the major magazines or news stories. It would seem that Steve sits in his office all day with a hammer, thumbtacks and a small razer blade and makes IGadget after IGadget, all the while smiling and possibly eating apples.
So, if Steve left, what would really change? As long as the same brilliant engineers remain, it's really a question of "hey boss (the current Steve or some new boss taking his place someday), does this look better in white or tan and should this corner of the new IGadget be more rounded or more of some kind of octagon shape?". I'm sure someone else other than Steve can figure out answers to questions such as those.
Now, I know it takes a lot more to do what Steve has done. He is a genius in his own right, evident by Apples success under his emperor-ship. But I really don't think there's no one else out there that can be as good as he is at business tactics, marketing decisions, and 'design for the sake of appearances' ideas.
I guess I just wish they'd give more credit where it's more due; the engineers and designers who really build these cool new toys we all love instead of the media just referring to Steve doing it all.
This last dec I bought a gamecube (brand new at Target, which was the last one they had)! I'm always a few consoles behind. It saves me money that way. Also, by the time I do buy a console that's been around for several years, I have a huge selection of titles to buy at discount prices. I'm thinking I'll get my WII around 2011 or so. :) Next, I'm buying a PS2! Oh, and I finally got myself a gameboy advance about a month ago!
For example, a small company I worked for a number of years ago used Greek and Roman mythology. Zeus and Hera were the PDC and BDC, respectively. Apollo was the mail server. For our small environment, that made sense.
That's funny. That's exactly the convention we used at the last company I worked for as well. Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, and many others were used. I enjoyed using colorful names. Now I'm working at an ISP and everything all the computer names are boring letter/number combos. Of course, it's probably a better plan considering we have upwards of forty servers.
It's like that here in AZ as well. A co-worker of mine hadn't smoked pot in nearly two months. He was trying to quit. He got pulled over by highway patrol and although he wasn't under the influence of anything, the officer saw that he was shaking so he arrested him and had him pee into a cup. Although his metabolites number was very low (Parts per million), it was enough to convict him. 'Driving under the influence' is no longer necessary to get convicted of DUI, apparently. Arizona's Law: 28-1381 Section A Paragraph 3. You are also required to submit to a drug test. If you do not, you forfeit your license automatically (28-1321 Section D Paragraph 2-C)!
I really enjoyed that 'Right to Read' story. It was fun and a scary insight into the future. We're all screwed!
Tigers don't have a purr box. Instead, they chuff.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061016165818AAljxN1.
Although the whole idea of having to go down to the store and buy a card is a bit lame, one cool thing is that you could buy several cards as 'gift cards' for whomever which would then allow them to download an album of their choice without ever having to leave home. That's the only positive thing I can think of, thus far. Oh, and if it does help the brick and mortar stores stay open a while longer, that's not entirely bad either, assuming the products they offer are quality, DRM free CDs. I still like to browse a CD store every now and then, although I'm typically looking for cheaper used CDs than anything else. A used CD rips just as good as a new one.
I'm guessing that having these 'extra' punishments long after one has served their time is just more incentive not to commit the crime in the first place. Of course, I still don't believe on putting people on the 'list' for having sex with someone just a few years different from their own age. That's just crazy! An 18 year old having sex with his 17 year old girlfriend, the parents finding out about it and pressing charges because they never liked the boyfriend anyway (or for whatever reason). Wow.
I would love to have my library ripped into ogg but, as we all know, finding any portable hardware (Small Portable Audio Players (SPAPs)) that will play ogg is very difficult. I bought an MP3 player for my wife some years ago which takes an SD card. So, we transfer MP3s off our computer onto the card to play on the mp3 player. I did rip a few of my CDs into ogg but realized there was no point as all I'd be doing is taking up unnecessary space on my hard drive (I was dual ripping for a while into MP3 and OGG). So, in the end, although I'd love to have my library in ogg, for now, it would be pointless, since our SPAP doesn't support ogg. I'm hoping that the various SPAP manufacturers being providing support for ogg on all devices made in the near future. Sadly, I don't see it happening though.
This is a battle we should all be chipping into. Does anyone know of a website somewhere or other such ways we can use to donate cash to this fight? The RIAA has nearly unlimited funds (so it would seem). So, if we're ever to stop this enemy of the people, we're going to have to fight back in kind. In a lawsuit like this, we all need to help it through before it becomes just another RIAA victory due to lack of funds on the victim's (in every case, the RIAA is never the victim) side. If no such website exists, who could we trust to set it up and make sure 98% of the funds are distributed back to the attornies fighting this cause?
Public places? Hmmm. Ok, so, they put up a camera on a high pole overlooking a residential street. Well, the wide angle camera also happens to be able to look into back yards. So much for the security/privacy fences you put up so you could swim naked in your own swimming pool. And, if you do decided to do that, or have sex in your back yard, who's to say the police aren't recording such events and taking such recordings home or showing them to all their cop friends.
Cameras like this are a bad thing and the beginning of much, much worse things. As everyone else is saying, it will not end here. Wait and see how things are ten years from now. I can only begin to imagine.
So please, go ahead and explain how a womans body, or a human life, is worth less than some software.
Because some organization (riaa, mpaa, ms, etc.) with a lot of money and not a care for anyone but themselves says so. Oh, and they happen to be paying large amounts of cash into various political campaigns, right?
[guy in black suit in court room] Your honor, don't forget who helped put you on that high pedestal!
[judge] Oh yea. Court finds for wealthy, powerful organzation. Penalty for the software pirate is life at hard labor!
[judge] Next case?
[prosecutor] Murder of family of five, husband, wife, three little girls.
[judge] {looks around for any black suited gentlemen and sees none, but does see 'poor' family members of victim} Very well, 8 years in prison with parol possibility in 6 months. However, the murderer did stub his toe while dodging an attempt to stop him by one of the victims at the residence where he shot the family, so, due to murderers pain and suffering, case dismissed.
It'll only be a matter of time now before they start inventing gods.
You're all right on this.
/. (truecrypt.org). Though that software works excellently (I love it!), my boss has had troubles working with it. It's very complicated to him. I had tried to get him to use it before but he wouldn't touch it. He's slowly grasping the concepts of it but not without a lot of head scratching along the way.
My boss (I.S. Director with a clincial degree) uses windows exclusively. He paid for encryption software that encrypts a device (hard drives in our case) that works with a single button click. Just put in your password twice and click the 'encrypt' button and that was it. We found out later that the software didn't complety encrypt the drive. We could still retrieve/restore information and in the healthcare industry, that's unacceptable (HIPPA law).
So, after that, he now uses an open source program that I've been using for some time now, thanks to seeing someone post about it on
The point is, most people want to be able to do things with as little thought as possible (the click one button method). I think the masses just don't care to think too hard. Linux (and most open source that I know of) is a long ways from that. It's still the 'smart person's' computer in comarison to *ows.
"flaming skulls, scrolling marquees, and rainbow divider lines"
;)
That's funny! I think I used all three of those at some point back in the mid 90's. It brought back some fond memories.
Of course, I couldn't imagine using anything like that today, but it was all fun back in the days of 'Ribbit', 'Uh Oh!' and 'Incoming Chat Request'.
I need to see my display to use it. How is a transparent display going to work?
Didn't you see the Zion Control Room scene from Matrix Reloaded?
1.5 Million? What? That doesn't do anything ... ANYTHING at all as far as making up for what they did. Sony should be paying out a hundred million or more to each suing state and some execs should go to prison. This will only promote further, even more horrible acts of computer crimes by large companies.
Holy Shit! I'm moving to another planet.
I did a search for a single, common statement and found that I can use it to learn better (hopefully) coding techniques. I'm an ameteur, somewhat newbie so seeing many other ways of doing the same code is a big thing for me. In a matter of moments I've already seen a few better ways I could implement past and current coding projects.
"What eBay needs is a 'killfile' feature. When you've had your fill of page after page of mousepads and t-shirts in the "Sun Hardware" area, you should be able to bump the spammer right off your search/browses."
Ebay would never go for it. The spamming t-shirt/mousepad listers are paying ebay to list. Why would ebay want to give customers a way to put a stop to viewing the paying listers? This would eventually stop those listers from listing as much causing ebay to lose money.
Sounds like the state DA is just trying to put his name up in lights a bit before the end of his seat is over.
So, a single incident or two among 60 million people is reason to put strict guidelines on the business (myspace) and users themselves? I don't think the owner of a large arcade is forced to do age checks at the door and only allow adults into his store. I could go on and on with examples like this.