I think a lot of the discussion around this issue ignores the fundamental fact that most of the activity in the music industry for the past twenty years has been due to the need for the music-consuming public to 'catch up' on the music that has been produced in the last 500 years or so. The industry went out of its way to force us to re-acquire this back catalog first on tape (replacing vinyl) and then cd (replacing tape). The bottom line is that the actual amount of salable new music produced each year is tiny compared to the amount of new material being produced.
I view the late 90s as an enormous aberration in history. The back catalogs of western music were basically thrown open to the public and there was just this frenzy of buying as well as looting (piracy). Now the cat is largely out of the bag, and the industry (in whatever form it survives) will have to get back to reality and balance its expenditures with whatever it actually is producing. Unfortunately for them, without some massive disruption in continuity of digital information, they will never have an opportunity to re-sell that many hundred years of human labor again.
(The previous two paragraphs are based on conjecture, anecdotes, and my own reasoning. I think my conclusions are fairly pedestrian, but if anyone has any statistics or studies as to the revenue generated by back catalog, I'd be interested to see them.)
Somehow the fact that you refer to pirated music as "warez" makes me somewhat skeptical that you have ever actually done so. Warez is the term for cracked software, not music.
Warez refers to pirated goods. I'll grant you that it primarily connotes pirated software (with or without cracks applied or included) but the term is absolutely used to refer to pirated music. I can give you references if you like, but 5 minutes with Google should make it pretty apparent.
If a 15-year-old "analyst" writes one of the most "clearest and most thought-provoking insights" for your publication, that says a lot more about your publication (and the state of American journalism) than the 15-year-old in question.
Why don't we ask him to write about homework ("a near-epidemic in America") early bedtimes ("a gross violation of the constitution") and girls ("icky!") while we're at it?
I'm rather mystified that there's still interest in Yahoo. Although I'm aware that their hand-edited, directory-like coverage is actually popular in countries that use non-ascii character sets, Yahoo's search results haven't seemed competitive to me since '97.
Honestly, I'm not trying to troll; just wondering why a site that's stagnated for over 10 years now needs anything cutting-edge.
Anyone still using them? Have any insights why we ought to care what they're up to?
This is the kind of thinking that gives taxes a bad name...coming out for this tax as if Rhode Island were entitled to it, when it's nothing more than greed.
Basically, if I have a computer that exists in Rhode Island, and someone connects to it and buys something, then Rhode Island is entitled to a portion of that sale. This is not in dispute.
Rhode Island, however, has decided that if you have a computer in Rhode Island that advertises goods sold by someone else, and that other person makes a sale as a result of your referral, then they still get a cut.
Those taxes are there for brick and mortar stores that need policing, fire protection, water, representation in government, and so on. There is no fucking way that that a referral has as much impact as a brick and mortar sale.
Taxes exist as a way to share common expenses, not to get a piece of someone else's business halfway across the country and give them very little in return.
Rathole apartments are $50,000 a year in New York.
That's 4166$ / month. You can get a very, very nice apartment, even in Manhattan, for that price.
Next time you're going to invent facts, don't make them so outrageous that people will go through the trouble of logging in to point out how wrong you are.
I'll try to explain this in a way that makes sense to a non-programmer (at the expense of a little correctness).
Process architecture, very generally, is how programmers deal with the task of getting lots of things to happen at once. It's important to browsers, because you might have a youtube video playing in one tab, and be typing text into a form on another.
Traditionally, browsers like Firefox share threads between tabs. This saves memory because different tabs can share resources better, but if one tab does something funky and crashes, it'll take other tabs down with it. Chrome isolates its tabs; this is kind of wasteful, because the tabs can't share resources as well, but if one crashes, it doesn't take the whole thing down with it.
I hope that gives you a general idea of what's going on.
I'm no carpenter, but I looked at all of the first 20 links and only one of them was a link farm. The rest were either actual vendors of hardwood floor supplies or legitimate lists of suppliers (like the ones magazines often have). In nearly every case there was an actual physical location or an online store where I could purchase wood.
If you're going to troll for Microsoft, go do it somewhere where people are too dumb to verify your claims.
Add ons will ALWAYS be able to install themselves with out notifying you, welcome to open source
The fact that firefox is open-source has absolutely nothing to do with the ability of add-ons to install without a user's knowledge. A process running with superuser permissions (like windows update) could alter the state of any program on the machine, whether it be open-source or not.
As interesting as I found the information you brought to the table about firefox add-on handling, your stream of abuse and specious arguments made your post sound rather juvenile.
Next time, after you finish a post, take two minutes to walk around, cool off, and then come back and edit out all of the abuse and slander. That will make it much easier for the rest of us to read your posts.
Giving any company a window into your day-to-day activities is very dangerous. The possibility of this kind of thing happening must run through the mind of any vaguely security-conscious person who considers their business model. Honestly, it's one of the reasons I never signed up.
That being said, however, there are a couple things to remember, though.
1) You give much more information to Google. If you have done ANYTHING illegal in the last couple years, Google could be used to help convict you.
Think about it. All of your searches, page views, chats and emails can be tied to a single account. You could probably establish where I've been every day with hour resolution just by examining the IP addresses I access email and search from, to say nothing of actually reading the contents.
2) Last.fm's innocence or guilt has no bearing on this issue
The problem is that this accusation plays perfectly to the fears a user might have about sending such detailed information to Last.fm. Whereas there are endless accusations about Google being in bed with the FBI and so forth, I'd imagine nearly every user of Last.fm considers the RIAA a credible threat. It's plausible that the RIAA would ask for the data, and it's plausible that a big company like CBS would be willing to side with the cartels on this one. They're being tried in the court of public opinion, and as far as I can see, they are losing.
Bottom line, if I had a bone to pick with Last.fm, this would be the perfect way to take them down.
3) This is only going to get worse
As the number of online services we use on a daily basis increases, our exposures are only going to multiply. Until we demand *true* anonymous use of internet resources (as distinguished from services that offer the illusion of privacy but are still subject to subpoenas, backroom deals, compromised network admins, etc), the misuse of our private information will only worsen.
Was acting as if the security guards and the cops were on the same team or something. It's pretty clear that the security guards were being paranoid fucks, but I suspect a bit of conversation took place before the cop brought up 9/11 and you spazzed out on her.
Consider things from the perspective of the police. They probably think the security guards are as much of a pain in the ass as you do, but a call has been made, and they HAVE to resolve things one way or another. Rent-a-cops bickering with a customer at REI? Please. If you had sounded like it was all a big misunderstanding and that you just wanted to finish your purchase and leave, I very much doubt the cops would have gone through the trouble of hauling your ass in.
I think any of the following actions would have been advantageous:
1) Inconspicuously email the photo somewhere and then delete it off your phone. Claim that the security guards were mistaken. Of course, releasing the photo would prove that you lied, but you still "won." 2) Walking out of the store on your own. If you ever manage to provoke a rent-a-cop to batter you for doing nothing, on security camera, in front of an entire store, then that's a lawyer's dream. 3) Calling the cops yourself. You have no idea how much being the first one to call will tip the situation in your favor. 4) Sucking up to the cops. You could have portrayed yourself as the victim of aggression, apologized profusely and just stated your desire to make your purchase and leave (or even just leave).
At the end of the day, you can't forget that no matter what you think of "peace officers", they weren't your enemy here - they were a neutral third party that YOU alienated and the rent-a-cops successfully used against you.
That being said, it's pretty clear at this point that your objective should be to get REI to use a different security company. Nobody wants to shop at a store that hires jackbooted thugs that harass the customers, and I think you make some inroads there.
Instructing a device I own not to display content that I find offensive is not censorship, by any stretch of the imagination....and considering that I am a long-haired, Bush-hating, free software-loving, paranoid Slashdot denizen, my definition of censorship is probably on the permissive side.
Even if those changes are forthcoming, it's still ridiculous that an expensive piece of technology used primarily by adults has such puritanical restrictions on it. I realize it does reflect poorly on Apple to have apps that are in very poor taste (e.g. the one where you shake the baby...), but it's pretty obvious that mainstream bands like NIN are an acceptable part of American culture.
I work in technology (but not a tech-only office) and this fiasco is definitely getting noticed and is clearly reflecting badly on Apple.
I'm not sure whether the concept of a parental-controls setting was the product of a deliberate leak to address this issue or if it was just part of the plan all along, but I seriously doubt that a significant portion of the iPhone userbase is comprised of children who might have not been given the phone if the app store weren't policed. It seems pretty clear to me that Apple is more than happy to piss off their users and snub even Trent (who is considered rather avant-garde in the music biz) if there's any risk to their image.
Allow me to play devil's advocate for a moment here: in the short term, moving to a platform that is perhaps less familiar to the attacker provides considerable relief, but it is essentially less difficult to write exploits for Mac OS/Linux than it is for Windows, given the many anti-exploitation mechanisms Microsoft has embedded in the last years, so in the long run, if the attackers want your data, the entire move is moot.
His point is basically that if he moves to Windows, it's going to confuse the "hackers" temporarily, but without Microsoft security features (I think he's referring to UAC here...I've never heard of something called DAP (except "Download Accelerator Plus") but I'll take your word for it) the "hackers" will get their data eventually.
You seem, like the author, to be of the mistaken impression that security is a battle between exploitative programs that "hackers" write and the security software that Microsoft writes, which does not resemble reality. Security is merely the absence of unauthorized behavior in people (social engineering) and computers (bugs or shortsighted code).
Once a valid exploit is discovered, the implementation, OS security measures and so forth are all just details. Saying you have discovered an exploit but you can't implement it or write it or it's getting blocked is like saying you've discovered a great way to trash a Linux box and all you need is ssh access and sudo.
it is essentially less difficult to write exploits for Mac OS/Linux than it is for Windows
Why would it be more difficult to "write" (aka implement) exploits for one operating system than another? You should be worried about how hard it is to find exploits and how quickly they're fixed.
Assuming for the moment all you care about is the actual security of your software (excluding implementation details, mis-configurations, etc), the real metric you want to be looking at is the frequency of discovery of serious vulnerabilities and the span of time from first (non-public) discovery (which may not be knowable) and the appearance of a patch you could use. Looking merely at "remote root exploits / year" and "mean time to patch remote root exploit" might not be a bad place to start.
Also, you need to think about the actual design of the operating systems in question. Without tipping my hand too much, some might say that the Unix user/superuser distinction is something Microsoft could learn from.
That being said, though, I'll tell you my opinions.
Netbsd has one of the best track records in the industry with regards to server security. The security of *nix, in general, scales directly with the intelligence of the people managing it. You can get decently far with Windows and just doing things 'by the book,' but it's got all the typical problems of monoculture and a well-deserved poor reputation.
A group of very intelligent, very technical network admins are nearly unstoppable given linux and sufficient control. A group of very intelligent people can probably make do with Windows too. Windows configured by average people may in some cases be better than Linux configured by average people.
In any event, just from reading your question, I doubt you are technical enough to undertake this at a nuts-and-bolts level. You kind of came here asking "Is Linux or Windows more secure?" You bet your ass I have an opinion on the matter, but the problem is, so does everyone else. You need to find highly intelligent people, and then use your common sense and analytical thinking to weigh their arguments. In short, stop thinking as if the answer to your question would provide security; find smart people experienced in securing things and then evaluate the tools (operating systems) as they relate to your immediate ends.
Again we see the conflating of 'receiving pirated works' (which is 100% legal) and 'illegal distribution' (which is a civil matter).
Granted, spoiling a multi-million dollar movie made by your employer's owners is a pretty serious faux pas, but I think it's only fair that we remember what rights we have untill the MPAA has the decency to buy a couple senators and cram a couple self-serving laws down our throats.
I consider myself a pretty serious gamer, and I had no idea that UT3 was even out, until all this fuss started up with Steam. I remember playing the game at PAX, thinking it was a pre-release.
I don't mean to malign Steam; it's having a tremendous impact on gaming, and it's mostly for the better. That being said, though, I don't think the turnaround would be this dramatic if Epic hadn't *completely* failed to get the word out.
Slashdot Mirror
Contrary to popular opinion, human beings were able to exist prior to air conditioning.
I think a lot of the discussion around this issue ignores the fundamental fact that most of the activity in the music industry for the past twenty years has been due to the need for the music-consuming public to 'catch up' on the music that has been produced in the last 500 years or so. The industry went out of its way to force us to re-acquire this back catalog first on tape (replacing vinyl) and then cd (replacing tape). The bottom line is that the actual amount of salable new music produced each year is tiny compared to the amount of new material being produced.
I view the late 90s as an enormous aberration in history. The back catalogs of western music were basically thrown open to the public and there was just this frenzy of buying as well as looting (piracy). Now the cat is largely out of the bag, and the industry (in whatever form it survives) will have to get back to reality and balance its expenditures with whatever it actually is producing. Unfortunately for them, without some massive disruption in continuity of digital information, they will never have an opportunity to re-sell that many hundred years of human labor again.
(The previous two paragraphs are based on conjecture, anecdotes, and my own reasoning. I think my conclusions are fairly pedestrian, but if anyone has any statistics or studies as to the revenue generated by back catalog, I'd be interested to see them.)
...at least be correct.
Warez refers to pirated goods. I'll grant you that it primarily connotes pirated software (with or without cracks applied or included) but the term is absolutely used to refer to pirated music. I can give you references if you like, but 5 minutes with Google should make it pretty apparent.
Listen AC, I have been literally awake for 30 minutes this morning. During that time, I had two raw eggs and wrote a +5 insightful post.
I'm gonna go "piss some excellence"; in the meantime, why don't you register an account so I can foe you and get going to my high-paying job.
If a 15-year-old "analyst" writes one of the most "clearest and most thought-provoking insights" for your publication, that says a lot more about your publication (and the state of American journalism) than the 15-year-old in question.
Why don't we ask him to write about homework ("a near-epidemic in America") early bedtimes ("a gross violation of the constitution") and girls ("icky!") while we're at it?
Fucking embarrassing.
I'm rather mystified that there's still interest in Yahoo. Although I'm aware that their hand-edited, directory-like coverage is actually popular in countries that use non-ascii character sets, Yahoo's search results haven't seemed competitive to me since '97.
Honestly, I'm not trying to troll; just wondering why a site that's stagnated for over 10 years now needs anything cutting-edge.
Anyone still using them? Have any insights why we ought to care what they're up to?
This is the kind of thinking that gives taxes a bad name...coming out for this tax as if Rhode Island were entitled to it, when it's nothing more than greed.
Basically, if I have a computer that exists in Rhode Island, and someone connects to it and buys something, then Rhode Island is entitled to a portion of that sale. This is not in dispute.
Rhode Island, however, has decided that if you have a computer in Rhode Island that advertises goods sold by someone else, and that other person makes a sale as a result of your referral, then they still get a cut.
Those taxes are there for brick and mortar stores that need policing, fire protection, water, representation in government, and so on. There is no fucking way that that a referral has as much impact as a brick and mortar sale.
Taxes exist as a way to share common expenses, not to get a piece of someone else's business halfway across the country and give them very little in return.
That's 4166$ / month. You can get a very, very nice apartment, even in Manhattan, for that price.
Next time you're going to invent facts, don't make them so outrageous that people will go through the trouble of logging in to point out how wrong you are.
I'll try to explain this in a way that makes sense to a non-programmer (at the expense of a little correctness).
Process architecture, very generally, is how programmers deal with the task of getting lots of things to happen at once. It's important to browsers, because you might have a youtube video playing in one tab, and be typing text into a form on another.
Traditionally, browsers like Firefox share threads between tabs. This saves memory because different tabs can share resources better, but if one tab does something funky and crashes, it'll take other tabs down with it. Chrome isolates its tabs; this is kind of wasteful, because the tabs can't share resources as well, but if one crashes, it doesn't take the whole thing down with it.
I hope that gives you a general idea of what's going on.
Parent got rated "+5, insightful"...really? More like "-1, full of shit".
See for yourself. http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=hardwood+suppliers&btnG=Google+Search
I'm no carpenter, but I looked at all of the first 20 links and only one of them was a link farm. The rest were either actual vendors of hardwood floor supplies or legitimate lists of suppliers (like the ones magazines often have). In nearly every case there was an actual physical location or an online store where I could purchase wood.
If you're going to troll for Microsoft, go do it somewhere where people are too dumb to verify your claims.
Don't tease me like that unless you really mean it.
The fact that firefox is open-source has absolutely nothing to do with the ability of add-ons to install without a user's knowledge. A process running with superuser permissions (like windows update) could alter the state of any program on the machine, whether it be open-source or not.
As interesting as I found the information you brought to the table about firefox add-on handling, your stream of abuse and specious arguments made your post sound rather juvenile.
Next time, after you finish a post, take two minutes to walk around, cool off, and then come back and edit out all of the abuse and slander. That will make it much easier for the rest of us to read your posts.
or six.
*rimshot*
Giving any company a window into your day-to-day activities is very dangerous. The possibility of this kind of thing happening must run through the mind of any vaguely security-conscious person who considers their business model. Honestly, it's one of the reasons I never signed up.
That being said, however, there are a couple things to remember, though.
1) You give much more information to Google. If you have done ANYTHING illegal in the last couple years, Google could be used to help convict you.
Think about it. All of your searches, page views, chats and emails can be tied to a single account. You could probably establish where I've been every day with hour resolution just by examining the IP addresses I access email and search from, to say nothing of actually reading the contents.
2) Last.fm's innocence or guilt has no bearing on this issue
The problem is that this accusation plays perfectly to the fears a user might have about sending such detailed information to Last.fm. Whereas there are endless accusations about Google being in bed with the FBI and so forth, I'd imagine nearly every user of Last.fm considers the RIAA a credible threat. It's plausible that the RIAA would ask for the data, and it's plausible that a big company like CBS would be willing to side with the cartels on this one. They're being tried in the court of public opinion, and as far as I can see, they are losing.
Bottom line, if I had a bone to pick with Last.fm, this would be the perfect way to take them down.
3) This is only going to get worse
As the number of online services we use on a daily basis increases, our exposures are only going to multiply. Until we demand *true* anonymous use of internet resources (as distinguished from services that offer the illusion of privacy but are still subject to subpoenas, backroom deals, compromised network admins, etc), the misuse of our private information will only worsen.
words mean different things depending on context?
Fascinating.
Was acting as if the security guards and the cops were on the same team or something. It's pretty clear that the security guards were being paranoid fucks, but I suspect a bit of conversation took place before the cop brought up 9/11 and you spazzed out on her.
Consider things from the perspective of the police. They probably think the security guards are as much of a pain in the ass as you do, but a call has been made, and they HAVE to resolve things one way or another. Rent-a-cops bickering with a customer at REI? Please. If you had sounded like it was all a big misunderstanding and that you just wanted to finish your purchase and leave, I very much doubt the cops would have gone through the trouble of hauling your ass in.
I think any of the following actions would have been advantageous:
1) Inconspicuously email the photo somewhere and then delete it off your phone. Claim that the security guards were mistaken. Of course, releasing the photo would prove that you lied, but you still "won."
2) Walking out of the store on your own. If you ever manage to provoke a rent-a-cop to batter you for doing nothing, on security camera, in front of an entire store, then that's a lawyer's dream.
3) Calling the cops yourself. You have no idea how much being the first one to call will tip the situation in your favor.
4) Sucking up to the cops. You could have portrayed yourself as the victim of aggression, apologized profusely and just stated your desire to make your purchase and leave (or even just leave).
At the end of the day, you can't forget that no matter what you think of "peace officers", they weren't your enemy here - they were a neutral third party that YOU alienated and the rent-a-cops successfully used against you.
That being said, it's pretty clear at this point that your objective should be to get REI to use a different security company. Nobody wants to shop at a store that hires jackbooted thugs that harass the customers, and I think you make some inroads there.
Instructing a device I own not to display content that I find offensive is not censorship, by any stretch of the imagination. ...and considering that I am a long-haired, Bush-hating, free software-loving, paranoid Slashdot denizen, my definition of censorship is probably on the permissive side.
Even if those changes are forthcoming, it's still ridiculous that an expensive piece of technology used primarily by adults has such puritanical restrictions on it. I realize it does reflect poorly on Apple to have apps that are in very poor taste (e.g. the one where you shake the baby...), but it's pretty obvious that mainstream bands like NIN are an acceptable part of American culture.
I work in technology (but not a tech-only office) and this fiasco is definitely getting noticed and is clearly reflecting badly on Apple.
I'm not sure whether the concept of a parental-controls setting was the product of a deliberate leak to address this issue or if it was just part of the plan all along, but I seriously doubt that a significant portion of the iPhone userbase is comprised of children who might have not been given the phone if the app store weren't policed. It seems pretty clear to me that Apple is more than happy to piss off their users and snub even Trent (who is considered rather avant-garde in the music biz) if there's any risk to their image.
I'll tell everyone I know!
Woosh, yourself.
Read the entire quote again:
His point is basically that if he moves to Windows, it's going to confuse the "hackers" temporarily, but without Microsoft security features (I think he's referring to UAC here...I've never heard of something called DAP (except "Download Accelerator Plus") but I'll take your word for it) the "hackers" will get their data eventually.
You seem, like the author, to be of the mistaken impression that security is a battle between exploitative programs that "hackers" write and the security software that Microsoft writes, which does not resemble reality. Security is merely the absence of unauthorized behavior in people (social engineering) and computers (bugs or shortsighted code).
Once a valid exploit is discovered, the implementation, OS security measures and so forth are all just details. Saying you have discovered an exploit but you can't implement it or write it or it's getting blocked is like saying you've discovered a great way to trash a Linux box and all you need is ssh access and sudo.
Why would it be more difficult to "write" (aka implement) exploits for one operating system than another? You should be worried about how hard it is to find exploits and how quickly they're fixed.
Assuming for the moment all you care about is the actual security of your software (excluding implementation details, mis-configurations, etc), the real metric you want to be looking at is the frequency of discovery of serious vulnerabilities and the span of time from first (non-public) discovery (which may not be knowable) and the appearance of a patch you could use. Looking merely at "remote root exploits / year" and "mean time to patch remote root exploit" might not be a bad place to start.
Also, you need to think about the actual design of the operating systems in question. Without tipping my hand too much, some might say that the Unix user/superuser distinction is something Microsoft could learn from.
That being said, though, I'll tell you my opinions.
Netbsd has one of the best track records in the industry with regards to server security. The security of *nix, in general, scales directly with the intelligence of the people managing it. You can get decently far with Windows and just doing things 'by the book,' but it's got all the typical problems of monoculture and a well-deserved poor reputation.
A group of very intelligent, very technical network admins are nearly unstoppable given linux and sufficient control. A group of very intelligent people can probably make do with Windows too. Windows configured by average people may in some cases be better than Linux configured by average people.
In any event, just from reading your question, I doubt you are technical enough to undertake this at a nuts-and-bolts level. You kind of came here asking "Is Linux or Windows more secure?" You bet your ass I have an opinion on the matter, but the problem is, so does everyone else. You need to find highly intelligent people, and then use your common sense and analytical thinking to weigh their arguments. In short, stop thinking as if the answer to your question would provide security; find smart people experienced in securing things and then evaluate the tools (operating systems) as they relate to your immediate ends.
Again we see the conflating of 'receiving pirated works' (which is 100% legal) and 'illegal distribution' (which is a civil matter).
Granted, spoiling a multi-million dollar movie made by your employer's owners is a pretty serious faux pas, but I think it's only fair that we remember what rights we have untill the MPAA has the decency to buy a couple senators and cram a couple self-serving laws down our throats.
Is this actually real?
I consider myself a pretty serious gamer, and I had no idea that UT3 was even out, until all this fuss started up with Steam. I remember playing the game at PAX, thinking it was a pre-release.
I don't mean to malign Steam; it's having a tremendous impact on gaming, and it's mostly for the better. That being said, though, I don't think the turnaround would be this dramatic if Epic hadn't *completely* failed to get the word out.
*struggles against the duct tape*
URMMMM! HRMMMMM! NNNNNNNG!
*rocks chair*