Broadband may mean high bandwidth in most marketing contexts, but it also means sending multiple signals over a single line. I doubt that they're sending those digits modulated into the 60hz AC current so they're multiplexing the line in a broadband fashion. Broadband may still apply if each house has its own meter frequency that is sent over a single trunk line coming from the transformer up to the local power station regardless of the bandwidth used.
true, but that would spread the demand out, and there are games that sell for higher prices because of continued demand. I think that once games stop selling, the price drops. For instance, I bought battlefield 2 for the pc for $50 2 years after it came out, not because i was silly, but because i wanted to play and that's what it cost everywhere that week (lan party that weekend). Battlefield 2 continued to sell well enough that they charged $30 right at the point where they released bf2142 which killed both games. Your scenario would boost prices if the game continued to sell briskly (i.e. at a steady rate) over time rather than a sharp decline right after retail.
I personally think that the publisher doesn't really care about all of the arguments for a secondary market, all they're seeing is "Hey, people with lots of disposable income are buying our luxury items, but we're not getting as much money because they're getting full enjoyment out of it then shifting it over to other guys with no cash coming to us! In fact, a whole industry has sprung up around multiple-reuse of our one-time-use products!"
They killed the secondary pc market, its by and large, dead, so they're focusing on the console market. I think they'd have more sales if they lowered prices back down to $50 and made better multi-player or released new levels for free every few months, but the big companies are taking the "easy" way out and attempting to screw the consumer rather than make more compelling reasons to buy and keep new games.
You too, make a flawed assumption. You assume that the publishers are more interested in netting the budget gamers than the middle class 18-35 male demographic with lots of disposable income.
I don't know about you, but the people I know (adult gamers, the core group that most fps and such are amed at, aged 18-35 or so) have the cash to buy new, used, or whatever, they just choose the more economical path. Piracy is not a lost sale, but used ones are. All you have to do is look at any middle class adult gamer's shelf to see a wide assortment of games, some of them used. Those used sales are lost sales, they're not going to rebuy them new, but they would have waited until the new cost was what they paid used for (20 used after a year or 20 new after two, they'll wait). They could also afford the additional 10-15 for new, but why? That's a 12 pack of beer.
The demographic with all three consoles, a large screen tv, and buy a few games a month all have the cash for full price new games, otherwise they'd be spending it on food, gas, beer, or not buying as many games.
While a lot of gamers are on an allowance or only have a certain amount of money, game publishers view games as a luxury item that people spend their disposable income on. This is where the majority of sales come from, which is why games are developed with that core 18-35 male demographic in mind, they're the ones disposing of income.
The guy who bought the game for $60, then sold it back after three days for $15, was able to put that money towards his next game. If the secondary market wasn't available, he wouldn't be able to buy as many new games, and the publishers wouldn't get as much of his money.
true, but from a publisher's standpoint, if I do not have the option to buy a used game, my new purchase + his new purchase = $120 in sales. With me buying his used copy, his purchase + the $15 towards the next game = $60 with an optional $15 that may or may not go towards the next game put out by that publisher. So the result of that secondary game market is only netting a potential $75. That's a $45 dollar loss in their eyes due to gamestop. Whats to say he doesn't lose his job and have to cut back on spending? That $15 goes towards food or rent or gas, not their next game.
Sort of, if I download a game via bittorrent, the publisher gets nothing. If I buy a used game via gamestop, the publisher gets the exact same amount, only gamestop gets more money to operate and sell used console games.
Used console games are where the real heartache is. I'm not aware of a way to play pirated xbox360 games or ps3 games in a way that doesn't void the warranty (very important with the RROD floating around) or online play. That being said, if I have the choice between paying 35 for a new copy, or 20 for a used copy (with cd-inspection, or course), guess which I'm going to pick? Or even better, if I have the choice between the inflated $60 or a discounted (with membership card) 45 for a 3 day old game that someone bought and then sold back after beating, which do you think I'll pic?
Granted I haven't bought a game form eb or gamestop in over a year, but for average joe halo, the choice is just as clear.
You're thinking of trademarks. You have to defend trademarks or you lose it. Copyright is yours to enforce at any time unless you give it away.
They're defending thier IP in the eyes of the shareholders. Every public company has an obligation to its shareholders, if the current command structure lets pirated copies leak out from every hole, the shareholders might get new company leaders.
True, but we also like how some external enclosures had e-sata (as with the nexstar docks). Usb transfers at 48mbps burst speed (averages 10-25), esata is capable of 150-300mbps burst speed. If you can get a decent e-sata chipset, take that over USB any day.
we used to use kingwin and you can get trays for them for 14.99 a pop, but the fan gets noisy after a while, little plastic bits break off. I'm not super thrilled with the drive bays, which is why I didn't try to hard to find the ones I used. A trayless triple bay is really nice, but it takes up to 5.25" bays in the case. (I currently can't find the triple bays on cdw that we used).
on top of that, the ignition point of paper is higher than data loss temperatures on a hard drive, so your documents may not burst into flames in some fireproof safes, but your data might go up in smoke. While they may make fireproof safes for hard drives, make sure you know what you're getting if you do buy one.
At work, we would routinely have to deal with 5-10 hard drives a day and probably would order 40-60 a month. We stored them in anti-static bags in a bankers box. While that's not the exact brand we used (we bought them in 100 packs), its similar. During the few years we used those bags, we did not lose a single drive to storage loss. There were drives that were DOA or died during processing, or were dropped, but we never pulled a drive that was working the previous time only to discover that it was dead when we pulled it.
As for hookup, you have a couple of options. If you are going to do casual use, you can get an esata dock. It doesn't have a fan, but for all but the most intense use, it should be sufficient for transfering files and weekly backups. If you're looking for more, go with sata sleds (again not the brand I used, but similar), you can screw your hard drives into those and if your sata controller supports it, hot swap the drives. You can also buy extra sleds so that you can swap out your drives without having to handle the internal drive.
Summary and take-away message. If you own a dominant position in the market and you abuse that position to exclude competition, you open yourself up to a monopoly hearing. It doesn't matter what's possible, what alternatives exist, if you're open source or royalty free, but if you own a dominant position in the market and you abuse that position to exclude competition, you open yourself up to a monopoly hearing. (I'll put this again at the end in case people miss it)
I really wish you were correct. If red hat was the sole provider of support contracts for operating systems and they used their reputation/massive base to exclude 3rd party support, they could be hit. Its all about being dominant and using that dominance to exclude competitors. Simply because something is theoretically possible (users could install netscape and make it default in windows 9x. It wasn't hard, I did it.) isn't enough to prevent that monopoly hearing. The judges don't care about standards, they don't care about royalty-free, they don't care about whether or not there CAN be competition, they only care about what there is. Not all judges are as idealistic as the average slashdot reader.
Other companies COULD have run wires or used ham radio to provide telephone service, but they didn't. There WERE other browsers besides IE. Most of the time, an anti-monopoly suit is brought by competition in the field that the competitor is being forced out of. If Company A didn't have the majority of the install base and a competitor would have been able to survive, then Company A is abusing a monopoly which opens them up for lawsuits. While there's a fine line between the court protecting a companies ability to make money, they will also respect when a company is unable to compete because of monopolistic practices.
if no one cares you obviously aren't abusive enough.
Bingo. There is nothing to prevent you from making a superwidget and owning 100% share of the superwidget market. The second that you start forcing competitors out of the superwidget market with something other than properly applied patents, copyright, or trademark law, then you've just abused your monopoly. If you start forcing competitors out (say by refusing to do business with companies that sell a potential competitor), then you've just opened yourself up to a lawsuit. Also, you're allowed to improve or introduce a new product line to "stop" (capitalists would call it "compete with") a competitors product. If IE had continued to be a stand-alone product or optional at install, there may not have been a case. However, if it was optional at install or stand-alone and Microsoft told HP that they would stop selling windows at OEM prices to HP if they bundled Netscape, that would have been an abuse of the monopoly.
While i know wikipedia is not a legal dictionary, its a good referance on some subjects and doesn't reference open source or most of the things you've mentioned. However, it does mention product bundling which could tie itunes and the ipod together. That could get in the way of ipod users playing zune music or the Zune Store selling ipod DRM'd music. The lack of willingness to license Freeplay to competitors could actually open Apple up to a hearing.
Also, you don't even need a majority in the EU to be a monopoly, the article above says that one company had 39% market share, but if you're dominant, you can still hold a monopoly.
Summary and take-away message. If you own a dominant position in the market and you abuse that position to exclude competition, you open yourself up to a monopoly hearing. It doesn't matter what's possible, what alternatives exist, if you're open source or royalty free, but if you own a dominant position in the market and you abuse that position to exclude competition, you open yourself up to a monopoly hearing.
while I wish that the license used by a company could preclude them from monopolistic policies, there may be an alternate dimension where the GPL is used by a monopoly and is preventing closed source software is unable to compete. Simply being open source or favoring open source does not matter one whit in the eyes of an anti-trust hearing. Its all about what you do with massive market share. AT&T could have open sourced their phones and switches, but they would have still been broken up for preventing competition.
Being a monopoly means that you use the weight of an existing consumer base to prevent competition. Microsoft could say that because apple has such control over the portable mp3 market, their linking of itunes is preventing other stores from accessing that customer base. (like linking IE to windows)
While some of you may say that its apple's product and they can do whatever they want, bundling a browser with the most popular (95%+ market share) OS was once grounds for anti-monopoly proceedings.
Essentially what I'm saying is that Microsoft may be hoping that the government will move the monopoly bar so low that their competitors will have to open up.
Microsoft is a major stockholder in Apple and have routinely paid $750m settlements (to companies like Real) because they were being accused of abusing a monopoly. If they can lower the bar enough, then google may be forced to host MSN ads or route traffic through the MSN search. Apple may have to open up their devices to DRM'd WMA's purchased through the Zune store.
Microsoft is still going to feel the anti-trust wrath, but they are trying to share the anti-trust wealth that they have been "enjoying". I wouldn't be surprised if the biggest Microsoft Zune competitor (Apple's ipod) got some anti-trust charges in addition to IBM and Google. If anything, by subjecting the competitors to a flame that Microsoft has built up years of resistance against, it will help Microsoft.
While yes, the company was perfectly in their rights to fire him for publishing pornographic material, he was authorized to use the computer, he was authorized to access the internet, and he was authorized to send data. If I hop on my neighbor's wifi, no matter how they secure it (or leave it open) it may be a felony, depending on the state you are in. In Florida, its a class II felony. However, if your neighbor lets you on, you are authorized to do anything, including trade in CP, although if caught, your neighbor may be responsible for trafficking charges if he can't point it back to you.
Long story short, this story is a ridiculous use about a ridiculous law, I really really hope that the lawyers and expert witnesses handling the guys case can say that because he was authorized to use the computer, he was responsible for everything that happened under his account. This little snippet is used in civil cases all the time (in under 10 seconds, I can count 14 cases in the past 3 years that I personally have been involved in that have used that argument to tie usage analysis with user accounts), and so, he should enjoy the protection from the hacker laws under that same provision. If you access a file server you shouldn't at work, its not illegal, its just bad practice, your corporation can sue you for whatever you do on your computer that doesn't contribute to work, but it shouldn't be a felony.
I have terrible handwriting. Whenever i forget what someone gets me, I hand write a thank you note and nobody has ever called me out for thanking them for the beautiful hippopotamus they sent me.
I guess that being an alcoholic is a step down from being a drug addict. I posit that an Addict is a term applied to someone who abuses something in a fashion that could get them sent to jail. I.E Sex Addicts and prostitutes, Drug addicts and controlled substances. While some college towns will have you believe that being drunk is a crime, getting sloshed is not provided you don't then do anything stupid (beat people, get into fights, drive, etc).
Since you can't get sent to jail for sending normal email, it gets the -aholic, I guess that spammers could be deemed spam addicts, but nobody has latched onto that.
I feel as though a dozen voices have cried out and were silenced. In the back of my mind, I knew that things were OK because DNF was in development. Somewhere, some programmer or mapper was toiling away on a game that would never be released, hoping that his piece would make it into an E3 video, or better, be leaked!
In all seriousness, I really hope they leak the game as it stood in 2001. There is very little about that IP that would be of value to a potential debtor. The new gameplay looks like it would stand up to modern games if given a 6-8 months finishing rush cycle under good management. Granted button events are lame, but everything else looks like it'd be a fun romp. Maybe it wouldn't be top 5 titles of the year, but I'd pay 50 bucks for it. That being said, the video didn't have enough time to demonstrate what made duke 3d great, the personality of the game. I mean in multiplayer, you could drop a pipe bomb, if somebody collected it, you could detonate it on their body, no matter where they were! I mean you just don't get dynamics like that nowadays. That kind of mechanic doesn't show up well in 2 minute demo vids.
The tags are in the file, so it would change the content. The forensic software doesn't read those tags, so changing them would only change the md5 and sha1 hashes, not the fact that they're MP3 files. IIRC, Itunes stores a lot of stuff in a central database, but it will populate the internal metadata for ripped cd's (changing the hashes).
I doubt that they'd use the fuzzy hashing, all they'd do would be to produce all MP3 files for the defense to mark as privileged or not. The privilage processes is a fun one, the forensics expert would send all music files, file sharing data, and relevant raw data culled from the hard drives to the defense attorneys. They would then feed the files into review software and determine what is privileged or not and return the manifest of files back. The expert would produce another manifest and set of files for approval which they would then provide to the RIAA lawyers. If the defense lawyers try to mark everything as privileged, they could face sanctions or lose privilege for abusing it.
Keep in mind that having mp3 files is not illegal, downloading mp3 files is not illegal, but sharing them is. The number of MP3 files that were not purchased or ripped from cd's (it would be up to the defendant to account for as many songs as possible) only adds to circumstantial evidence. However, what they are being charged with is uploading files, and that's all in the file sharing and registry. Remember the sharing ratio in bittorrent? That'd be just as important as music being there. Also, the location of the music is just as important as it being there. If its in a shared folder or a file sharing folder, they can assert that the defendant "made available" and we all know how well that works...
I guess my big point is that the md5 method is for lazy forensics experts, but they will also probably run a key term search that will identify plain text in mp3 files (mostly in the tags) and there are tons of ways to perform the analysis of the drives in a way that would reveal as much music as possible. For every forensic method there is a way of defeating it, and there's a way of defeating that, and so on.
very good, but if you can do that, why weren't you running peer guardian or sharing on private trackers? (essentially, if you're smart enough to do that, why did you let yourself get caught in the first place?)
Besides, that's the reason the expert will also perform analysis on files identified as audio files. If you flip a bit in the header to thwart that, some forensics software will still be able to identify it as media, but your software won't be able to tell that you're feeding it a perfectly valid MP3.
The expert can run an md5 hash list containing the signatures of all the copyrighted music that the RIAA has collected over the years and compare the results against the contents of the hard drive. You can name a file anything you want and its content based md5 will stay the same. Also, you can rename a jpeg to a.doc and the first 4 bits of the file will still reveal it as a jpeg. Every piece of modern forensics software is capable of doing the above, and most do them automatically.
If you take an MP3 file and rename it personal.doc, it will still show up in the media bucket and be declared as an audio file in the forensic software I am professionally experienced with.
What can someone do in a Ferrari that you can't do in a stock minivan?
Theoretically, if you were Denzel Washington, you could still pick up chicks, so pick up chicks is not the answer.
You can still get from A to B, you can still drive around and use the minivan to get every place that a Ferrari will take you, (and more, speed bumps are hell on the bumpers). You can do engine work and maintenance.
The correct answer, and, the ultimate reply to your post, is "Go Fast".
Slashdot Mirror
Broadband may mean high bandwidth in most marketing contexts, but it also means sending multiple signals over a single line. I doubt that they're sending those digits modulated into the 60hz AC current so they're multiplexing the line in a broadband fashion. Broadband may still apply if each house has its own meter frequency that is sent over a single trunk line coming from the transformer up to the local power station regardless of the bandwidth used.
true, but that would spread the demand out, and there are games that sell for higher prices because of continued demand. I think that once games stop selling, the price drops. For instance, I bought battlefield 2 for the pc for $50 2 years after it came out, not because i was silly, but because i wanted to play and that's what it cost everywhere that week (lan party that weekend). Battlefield 2 continued to sell well enough that they charged $30 right at the point where they released bf2142 which killed both games. Your scenario would boost prices if the game continued to sell briskly (i.e. at a steady rate) over time rather than a sharp decline right after retail.
I personally think that the publisher doesn't really care about all of the arguments for a secondary market, all they're seeing is "Hey, people with lots of disposable income are buying our luxury items, but we're not getting as much money because they're getting full enjoyment out of it then shifting it over to other guys with no cash coming to us! In fact, a whole industry has sprung up around multiple-reuse of our one-time-use products!"
They killed the secondary pc market, its by and large, dead, so they're focusing on the console market. I think they'd have more sales if they lowered prices back down to $50 and made better multi-player or released new levels for free every few months, but the big companies are taking the "easy" way out and attempting to screw the consumer rather than make more compelling reasons to buy and keep new games.
You too, make a flawed assumption. You assume that the publishers are more interested in netting the budget gamers than the middle class 18-35 male demographic with lots of disposable income.
I don't know about you, but the people I know (adult gamers, the core group that most fps and such are amed at, aged 18-35 or so) have the cash to buy new, used, or whatever, they just choose the more economical path. Piracy is not a lost sale, but used ones are. All you have to do is look at any middle class adult gamer's shelf to see a wide assortment of games, some of them used. Those used sales are lost sales, they're not going to rebuy them new, but they would have waited until the new cost was what they paid used for (20 used after a year or 20 new after two, they'll wait). They could also afford the additional 10-15 for new, but why? That's a 12 pack of beer.
The demographic with all three consoles, a large screen tv, and buy a few games a month all have the cash for full price new games, otherwise they'd be spending it on food, gas, beer, or not buying as many games.
While a lot of gamers are on an allowance or only have a certain amount of money, game publishers view games as a luxury item that people spend their disposable income on. This is where the majority of sales come from, which is why games are developed with that core 18-35 male demographic in mind, they're the ones disposing of income.
Also you'd get more K out of a stick of broccoli than an entire cow.
But the cow tastes better!
The entire cow?
Well, just the tongue, since that's where the taste buds are.
The guy who bought the game for $60, then sold it back after three days for $15, was able to put that money towards his next game. If the secondary market wasn't available, he wouldn't be able to buy as many new games, and the publishers wouldn't get as much of his money.
true, but from a publisher's standpoint, if I do not have the option to buy a used game, my new purchase + his new purchase = $120 in sales. With me buying his used copy, his purchase + the $15 towards the next game = $60 with an optional $15 that may or may not go towards the next game put out by that publisher. So the result of that secondary game market is only netting a potential $75. That's a $45 dollar loss in their eyes due to gamestop. Whats to say he doesn't lose his job and have to cut back on spending? That $15 goes towards food or rent or gas, not their next game.
Sort of, if I download a game via bittorrent, the publisher gets nothing. If I buy a used game via gamestop, the publisher gets the exact same amount, only gamestop gets more money to operate and sell used console games.
Used console games are where the real heartache is. I'm not aware of a way to play pirated xbox360 games or ps3 games in a way that doesn't void the warranty (very important with the RROD floating around) or online play. That being said, if I have the choice between paying 35 for a new copy, or 20 for a used copy (with cd-inspection, or course), guess which I'm going to pick? Or even better, if I have the choice between the inflated $60 or a discounted (with membership card) 45 for a 3 day old game that someone bought and then sold back after beating, which do you think I'll pic?
Granted I haven't bought a game form eb or gamestop in over a year, but for average joe halo, the choice is just as clear.
You're thinking of trademarks. You have to defend trademarks or you lose it. Copyright is yours to enforce at any time unless you give it away.
They're defending thier IP in the eyes of the shareholders. Every public company has an obligation to its shareholders, if the current command structure lets pirated copies leak out from every hole, the shareholders might get new company leaders.
True, but we also like how some external enclosures had e-sata (as with the nexstar docks). Usb transfers at 48mbps burst speed (averages 10-25), esata is capable of 150-300mbps burst speed. If you can get a decent e-sata chipset, take that over USB any day.
we used to use kingwin and you can get trays for them for 14.99 a pop, but the fan gets noisy after a while, little plastic bits break off. I'm not super thrilled with the drive bays, which is why I didn't try to hard to find the ones I used. A trayless triple bay is really nice, but it takes up to 5.25" bays in the case. (I currently can't find the triple bays on cdw that we used).
on top of that, the ignition point of paper is higher than data loss temperatures on a hard drive, so your documents may not burst into flames in some fireproof safes, but your data might go up in smoke. While they may make fireproof safes for hard drives, make sure you know what you're getting if you do buy one.
At work, we would routinely have to deal with 5-10 hard drives a day and probably would order 40-60 a month. We stored them in anti-static bags in a bankers box. While that's not the exact brand we used (we bought them in 100 packs), its similar. During the few years we used those bags, we did not lose a single drive to storage loss. There were drives that were DOA or died during processing, or were dropped, but we never pulled a drive that was working the previous time only to discover that it was dead when we pulled it.
As for hookup, you have a couple of options. If you are going to do casual use, you can get an esata dock. It doesn't have a fan, but for all but the most intense use, it should be sufficient for transfering files and weekly backups. If you're looking for more, go with sata sleds (again not the brand I used, but similar), you can screw your hard drives into those and if your sata controller supports it, hot swap the drives. You can also buy extra sleds so that you can swap out your drives without having to handle the internal drive.
I really wish you were correct. If red hat was the sole provider of support contracts for operating systems and they used their reputation/massive base to exclude 3rd party support, they could be hit. Its all about being dominant and using that dominance to exclude competitors. Simply because something is theoretically possible (users could install netscape and make it default in windows 9x. It wasn't hard, I did it.) isn't enough to prevent that monopoly hearing. The judges don't care about standards, they don't care about royalty-free, they don't care about whether or not there CAN be competition, they only care about what there is. Not all judges are as idealistic as the average slashdot reader.
Other companies COULD have run wires or used ham radio to provide telephone service, but they didn't. There WERE other browsers besides IE. Most of the time, an anti-monopoly suit is brought by competition in the field that the competitor is being forced out of. If Company A didn't have the majority of the install base and a competitor would have been able to survive, then Company A is abusing a monopoly which opens them up for lawsuits. While there's a fine line between the court protecting a companies ability to make money, they will also respect when a company is unable to compete because of monopolistic practices.
if no one cares you obviously aren't abusive enough.
Bingo. There is nothing to prevent you from making a superwidget and owning 100% share of the superwidget market. The second that you start forcing competitors out of the superwidget market with something other than properly applied patents, copyright, or trademark law, then you've just abused your monopoly. If you start forcing competitors out (say by refusing to do business with companies that sell a potential competitor), then you've just opened yourself up to a lawsuit. Also, you're allowed to improve or introduce a new product line to "stop" (capitalists would call it "compete with") a competitors product. If IE had continued to be a stand-alone product or optional at install, there may not have been a case. However, if it was optional at install or stand-alone and Microsoft told HP that they would stop selling windows at OEM prices to HP if they bundled Netscape, that would have been an abuse of the monopoly.
While i know wikipedia is not a legal dictionary, its a good referance on some subjects and doesn't reference open source or most of the things you've mentioned. However, it does mention product bundling which could tie itunes and the ipod together. That could get in the way of ipod users playing zune music or the Zune Store selling ipod DRM'd music. The lack of willingness to license Freeplay to competitors could actually open Apple up to a hearing.
Also, you don't even need a majority in the EU to be a monopoly, the article above says that one company had 39% market share, but if you're dominant, you can still hold a monopoly.
Summary and take-away message. If you own a dominant position in the market and you abuse that position to exclude competition, you open yourself up to a monopoly hearing. It doesn't matter what's possible, what alternatives exist, if you're open source or royalty free, but if you own a dominant position in the market and you abuse that position to exclude competition, you open yourself up to a monopoly hearing.
while I wish that the license used by a company could preclude them from monopolistic policies, there may be an alternate dimension where the GPL is used by a monopoly and is preventing closed source software is unable to compete. Simply being open source or favoring open source does not matter one whit in the eyes of an anti-trust hearing. Its all about what you do with massive market share. AT&T could have open sourced their phones and switches, but they would have still been broken up for preventing competition.
Being a monopoly means that you use the weight of an existing consumer base to prevent competition. Microsoft could say that because apple has such control over the portable mp3 market, their linking of itunes is preventing other stores from accessing that customer base. (like linking IE to windows)
While some of you may say that its apple's product and they can do whatever they want, bundling a browser with the most popular (95%+ market share) OS was once grounds for anti-monopoly proceedings.
Essentially what I'm saying is that Microsoft may be hoping that the government will move the monopoly bar so low that their competitors will have to open up.
Microsoft is a major stockholder in Apple and have routinely paid $750m settlements (to companies like Real) because they were being accused of abusing a monopoly. If they can lower the bar enough, then google may be forced to host MSN ads or route traffic through the MSN search. Apple may have to open up their devices to DRM'd WMA's purchased through the Zune store.
Microsoft is still going to feel the anti-trust wrath, but they are trying to share the anti-trust wealth that they have been "enjoying". I wouldn't be surprised if the biggest Microsoft Zune competitor (Apple's ipod) got some anti-trust charges in addition to IBM and Google. If anything, by subjecting the competitors to a flame that Microsoft has built up years of resistance against, it will help Microsoft.
While yes, the company was perfectly in their rights to fire him for publishing pornographic material, he was authorized to use the computer, he was authorized to access the internet, and he was authorized to send data. If I hop on my neighbor's wifi, no matter how they secure it (or leave it open) it may be a felony, depending on the state you are in. In Florida, its a class II felony. However, if your neighbor lets you on, you are authorized to do anything, including trade in CP, although if caught, your neighbor may be responsible for trafficking charges if he can't point it back to you.
Long story short, this story is a ridiculous use about a ridiculous law, I really really hope that the lawyers and expert witnesses handling the guys case can say that because he was authorized to use the computer, he was responsible for everything that happened under his account. This little snippet is used in civil cases all the time (in under 10 seconds, I can count 14 cases in the past 3 years that I personally have been involved in that have used that argument to tie usage analysis with user accounts), and so, he should enjoy the protection from the hacker laws under that same provision. If you access a file server you shouldn't at work, its not illegal, its just bad practice, your corporation can sue you for whatever you do on your computer that doesn't contribute to work, but it shouldn't be a felony.
I have terrible handwriting. Whenever i forget what someone gets me, I hand write a thank you note and nobody has ever called me out for thanking them for the beautiful hippopotamus they sent me.
I guess that being an alcoholic is a step down from being a drug addict. I posit that an Addict is a term applied to someone who abuses something in a fashion that could get them sent to jail. I.E Sex Addicts and prostitutes, Drug addicts and controlled substances. While some college towns will have you believe that being drunk is a crime, getting sloshed is not provided you don't then do anything stupid (beat people, get into fights, drive, etc).
Since you can't get sent to jail for sending normal email, it gets the -aholic, I guess that spammers could be deemed spam addicts, but nobody has latched onto that.
I feel as though a dozen voices have cried out and were silenced. In the back of my mind, I knew that things were OK because DNF was in development. Somewhere, some programmer or mapper was toiling away on a game that would never be released, hoping that his piece would make it into an E3 video, or better, be leaked!
In all seriousness, I really hope they leak the game as it stood in 2001. There is very little about that IP that would be of value to a potential debtor. The new gameplay looks like it would stand up to modern games if given a 6-8 months finishing rush cycle under good management. Granted button events are lame, but everything else looks like it'd be a fun romp. Maybe it wouldn't be top 5 titles of the year, but I'd pay 50 bucks for it. That being said, the video didn't have enough time to demonstrate what made duke 3d great, the personality of the game. I mean in multiplayer, you could drop a pipe bomb, if somebody collected it, you could detonate it on their body, no matter where they were! I mean you just don't get dynamics like that nowadays. That kind of mechanic doesn't show up well in 2 minute demo vids.
Some mods always mod the first post redundant right away, hoping that your post will float to oblivion and the NEXT post will be the first post.
The tags are in the file, so it would change the content. The forensic software doesn't read those tags, so changing them would only change the md5 and sha1 hashes, not the fact that they're MP3 files. IIRC, Itunes stores a lot of stuff in a central database, but it will populate the internal metadata for ripped cd's (changing the hashes).
I doubt that they'd use the fuzzy hashing, all they'd do would be to produce all MP3 files for the defense to mark as privileged or not. The privilage processes is a fun one, the forensics expert would send all music files, file sharing data, and relevant raw data culled from the hard drives to the defense attorneys. They would then feed the files into review software and determine what is privileged or not and return the manifest of files back. The expert would produce another manifest and set of files for approval which they would then provide to the RIAA lawyers. If the defense lawyers try to mark everything as privileged, they could face sanctions or lose privilege for abusing it.
Keep in mind that having mp3 files is not illegal, downloading mp3 files is not illegal, but sharing them is. The number of MP3 files that were not purchased or ripped from cd's (it would be up to the defendant to account for as many songs as possible) only adds to circumstantial evidence. However, what they are being charged with is uploading files, and that's all in the file sharing and registry. Remember the sharing ratio in bittorrent? That'd be just as important as music being there. Also, the location of the music is just as important as it being there. If its in a shared folder or a file sharing folder, they can assert that the defendant "made available" and we all know how well that works...
I guess my big point is that the md5 method is for lazy forensics experts, but they will also probably run a key term search that will identify plain text in mp3 files (mostly in the tags) and there are tons of ways to perform the analysis of the drives in a way that would reveal as much music as possible. For every forensic method there is a way of defeating it, and there's a way of defeating that, and so on.
very good, but if you can do that, why weren't you running peer guardian or sharing on private trackers? (essentially, if you're smart enough to do that, why did you let yourself get caught in the first place?)
Besides, that's the reason the expert will also perform analysis on files identified as audio files. If you flip a bit in the header to thwart that, some forensics software will still be able to identify it as media, but your software won't be able to tell that you're feeding it a perfectly valid MP3.
Post more often. Simple enough.
The expert can run an md5 hash list containing the signatures of all the copyrighted music that the RIAA has collected over the years and compare the results against the contents of the hard drive. You can name a file anything you want and its content based md5 will stay the same. Also, you can rename a jpeg to a .doc and the first 4 bits of the file will still reveal it as a jpeg. Every piece of modern forensics software is capable of doing the above, and most do them automatically.
If you take an MP3 file and rename it personal.doc, it will still show up in the media bucket and be declared as an audio file in the forensic software I am professionally experienced with.
Car analogy time!
What can someone do in a Ferrari that you can't do in a stock minivan?
Theoretically, if you were Denzel Washington, you could still pick up chicks, so pick up chicks is not the answer.
You can still get from A to B, you can still drive around and use the minivan to get every place that a Ferrari will take you, (and more, speed bumps are hell on the bumpers). You can do engine work and maintenance.
The correct answer, and, the ultimate reply to your post, is "Go Fast".