You know, I heard in some countries, they can tap the phones if they get a court order, even though the privacy policy of the people talking says otherwise.
Surely it's the privacy policy of the telecom that's the issue in the example of a phonetap.
If this order were allowed to stand, it would mean that Web sites can be required by discovery judges to track what their users do even if their privacy policy says otherwise.
Also, if TorrentSpy are forced to monitor users, what's to prevent them from changing their privacy policy to reflect this, and placing it at the top of every page in big red writing?
"we have copyright laws on the books and content producers rely on those laws to protect their livelihood"
While this may not apply to the MPAA to the same extent, the RIAA are most certainly not a content producer, nor are any of the members they represent. ARTISTS are content producers, not record companies.
If you live in a sensible country, that ought not be an issue either. Having an indexing site and tracker that WORK, however, and that you can rely on to continue working for a while yet... those are important details.
Yet another reason to use the Pirate Bay - being based in Sweden, it's incredibly unlikely that much action will be taken against it, especially in the current political climate there (as a direct result of the raid). Now they just need a way to clearly mark torrents that are tracked only by them...
Nevermind that by doing so you're filling all the RAM you need for the transcoding process by doing so (if you even have enought RAM).
This, of course, assuming that the user doesn't have a swap partition (which they likely don't if they're running a LiveCD). There's also the problem of where to put ripped VOBs before you start the transcoding process - assuming a Windows PC with NTFS (by far most likely) you're not going to be able to to write it to disk...
Problem being that most people won't be able to eject the CD tray to insert that DVD they want to back up when they have an OS running off a disc in that very same drive...
'round these parts, things like washers and driers have to be wired directly into one of the phases in the house - you can't just plug them in. That'd be a pretty good reason not to include a cable - Joe Blow wouldn't know what the hell to do with it, and could kill his new piece of machinery by hooking it up wrong (Joe Decent Blow could probably figure it out with a quick call to an electrician to get the colour codes right (there's at least 12 to choose from here) but not your regular Joe Blow).
Now that pesky teenage kid the neighbours can't keep control of runs away with your wife's diamonds and your priceless coin collection when you head off to visit some friends for the weekend. No proof of break-in, no valid insurance claim. Why? Because now that kid knows just how easy it is. He's not determined, just an opportunist, and now he has the knowledge of a hell of a lot of opportunities, right next door.
Insurance companies generally only honour your claim if there are signs of breaking and entering... A bumped lock will make it look like you left the door unlocked, and could lead to your insurance company not parting with the pennies... Scary.
George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic? Are you off your rocker?
Parliament and Funkadelic are two seperate bands, both of whom George Clinton was frontman for. George Clinton's current band is called "George Clinton and the P-Funk Allstars". "George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic" is every bit as wrong as saying "Jack White and the White Striped Raconteurs".
The problem with GPS and speeding is that it detects when you go above a speed limit (whether it be the one defined by traffic law, or in this case by your parents) but it cannot tell why. What if it's because you're overtaking? In that situation you want to go quite fast (above the limit almost certainly) in order to get back into the correct lane (and in many cases out of the way of oncoming traffic). But with a GPS device like this (and many many others like it that try to counteract speeding) you end up on the shitter for it - even if you were overtaking someone going 20 under the limit so that you could cruise along, unobstructed, at 10 below the limit.
Seriously, GPS for the whole speeding thing? Not an ideal solution...
For musicians, it's another way to resell their entire catalogs to fans who want the songs in multiple formats, he said.
Oh dear. I thought we paid for the content, not the physical media we bought them on - surely this should entitle us to rip to mp3 ourselves?
Or are we paying for the physical medium? In that case, we could do whatever the heck we liked with our mp3 once we've bought it off of iTMS - inlcuding burn CDs for our friends.
(Ignore the obvious hyperbole of the last paragraph, where copying the mp3 invalidates my point)
Then again, sometimes piracy is a bad thing. Especially for the movie industry. Millions (if not billions) of dollars go into the making of a movie. While, yes, theater sales bring in tons of cash, DVD releases are also a huge factor in a movie's income. Downloading a movie hurts people a lot more than downloading music.
If movie studios are going bankrupt, perhaps they should stop paying idiot celebrities increasingly obscene amounts of money to act badly in their films? 75 million dollars is not unusual anymore, for a single film. Ridiculous. They DESERVE to go bankrupt, with spending that reckless.
It should be noted that the records they hand over are of what you enter when you sign up - not anything that is at all necessarily true. Consider:
SWEDISH POLICE: Relakks! Hand over information on the user with IP x! Here are documents that prove we will imprison him for a year when we find out who he is!
RELAKKS: Here you are: a certain Mr Joseph Bloggs, number 1, 1st Street, Anytown, USA.
SWEDISH POLICE: Crap.
(I know this is actually complicated by little things like paying by credit card where they either need your real name, or your bank needs to believe a fake one...)
Considering that FireFox started life as a light version of Mozilla, I find that outrageously funny - just look how far they've drifted from their original goal!
The one thing that would make this a useful replacement for iTunes for my use, is the ability to access iTunes shares, and share in a manner that allows iTunes users to connect. Living in halls of residence at uni, I have access to several terrabytes of music to stream over the iTunes shares. That is the only reason I use iTunes.
Can songBird do this?
Finally! A browser with native support for BitTorrent downloading. This is certainly a positive thing, especially given the superb functioning of Opera's download system, at least compared to other browsers.
Good move, Opera.
"The US has, all around, the best freedom of speech laws"
Ever been to Scandinavia? We tend to be pretty liberal, up here... even with respect to nipples.
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You know, I heard in some countries, they can tap the phones if they get a court order, even though the privacy policy of the people talking says otherwise.
Surely it's the privacy policy of the telecom that's the issue in the example of a phonetap. If this order were allowed to stand, it would mean that Web sites can be required by discovery judges to track what their users do even if their privacy policy says otherwise.
Also, if TorrentSpy are forced to monitor users, what's to prevent them from changing their privacy policy to reflect this, and placing it at the top of every page in big red writing?
"we have copyright laws on the books and content producers rely on those laws to protect their livelihood" While this may not apply to the MPAA to the same extent, the RIAA are most certainly not a content producer, nor are any of the members they represent. ARTISTS are content producers, not record companies.
If you live in a sensible country, that ought not be an issue either. Having an indexing site and tracker that WORK, however, and that you can rely on to continue working for a while yet... those are important details.
Yet another reason to use the Pirate Bay - being based in Sweden, it's incredibly unlikely that much action will be taken against it, especially in the current political climate there (as a direct result of the raid). Now they just need a way to clearly mark torrents that are tracked only by them...
Autechre do occasional sets with nothing but a pair of laptops. And are very good.
"Gee, I hate to break it to you but..." You blatantly don't - you revel in it.
Half a gig of RAM as a minimum requirement? Well, that counts out any laptops *I* have from six years ago...
10 Gig HDD that came with an IBM PII (I think) is still spinning Windows for my Athlon64. Geek cred +1
And apparently you haven't realized that the EU is not subject to US legislation.
Dude, imagine an orange screen of death - your computer crashes: "OH SOD!" Kickarse!
Nevermind that by doing so you're filling all the RAM you need for the transcoding process by doing so (if you even have enought RAM). This, of course, assuming that the user doesn't have a swap partition (which they likely don't if they're running a LiveCD). There's also the problem of where to put ripped VOBs before you start the transcoding process - assuming a Windows PC with NTFS (by far most likely) you're not going to be able to to write it to disk...
Problem being that most people won't be able to eject the CD tray to insert that DVD they want to back up when they have an OS running off a disc in that very same drive...
'round these parts, things like washers and driers have to be wired directly into one of the phases in the house - you can't just plug them in. That'd be a pretty good reason not to include a cable - Joe Blow wouldn't know what the hell to do with it, and could kill his new piece of machinery by hooking it up wrong (Joe Decent Blow could probably figure it out with a quick call to an electrician to get the colour codes right (there's at least 12 to choose from here) but not your regular Joe Blow).
Now that pesky teenage kid the neighbours can't keep control of runs away with your wife's diamonds and your priceless coin collection when you head off to visit some friends for the weekend. No proof of break-in, no valid insurance claim. Why? Because now that kid knows just how easy it is. He's not determined, just an opportunist, and now he has the knowledge of a hell of a lot of opportunities, right next door.
The fact that we now KNOW how unsafe the locks are - and how to break the security they offer, easily and quickly. Security by obscurity no longer...
Insurance companies generally only honour your claim if there are signs of breaking and entering... A bumped lock will make it look like you left the door unlocked, and could lead to your insurance company not parting with the pennies... Scary.
George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic? Are you off your rocker? Parliament and Funkadelic are two seperate bands, both of whom George Clinton was frontman for. George Clinton's current band is called "George Clinton and the P-Funk Allstars". "George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic" is every bit as wrong as saying "Jack White and the White Striped Raconteurs".
The problem with GPS and speeding is that it detects when you go above a speed limit (whether it be the one defined by traffic law, or in this case by your parents) but it cannot tell why. What if it's because you're overtaking? In that situation you want to go quite fast (above the limit almost certainly) in order to get back into the correct lane (and in many cases out of the way of oncoming traffic). But with a GPS device like this (and many many others like it that try to counteract speeding) you end up on the shitter for it - even if you were overtaking someone going 20 under the limit so that you could cruise along, unobstructed, at 10 below the limit. Seriously, GPS for the whole speeding thing? Not an ideal solution...
It should be noted that the records they hand over are of what you enter when you sign up - not anything that is at all necessarily true. Consider:
SWEDISH POLICE: Relakks! Hand over information on the user with IP x! Here are documents that prove we will imprison him for a year when we find out who he is!
RELAKKS: Here you are: a certain Mr Joseph Bloggs, number 1, 1st Street, Anytown, USA.
SWEDISH POLICE: Crap.
(I know this is actually complicated by little things like paying by credit card where they either need your real name, or your bank needs to believe a fake one...)
Considering that FireFox started life as a light version of Mozilla, I find that outrageously funny - just look how far they've drifted from their original goal!
The one thing that would make this a useful replacement for iTunes for my use, is the ability to access iTunes shares, and share in a manner that allows iTunes users to connect. Living in halls of residence at uni, I have access to several terrabytes of music to stream over the iTunes shares. That is the only reason I use iTunes. Can songBird do this?
Finally! A browser with native support for BitTorrent downloading. This is certainly a positive thing, especially given the superb functioning of Opera's download system, at least compared to other browsers. Good move, Opera.
"The US has, all around, the best freedom of speech laws" Ever been to Scandinavia? We tend to be pretty liberal, up here... even with respect to nipples.