I haven't had a chance to test (due to/. effect) the Python program, but I don't know why it wouldn't work in Windows, providing you had the proper software installed (Python/GTK for Win32, available from python.org). Anybody tried it yet?
The point, I think, would be that Mr. Jon may have been less motivated to create this software if they had supported Linux from the beginning.
Not that I agree. I don't like the whole DRM thing in the first place because it impedes fair use. Burn and re-rip? Pain in the ass waste of a CD that loses quality on re-encode if you ask me. And it's not like the DRM is what's causing Apple to get paid. Apple is selling music, and this program doesn't exactly give you free music. It just lets you use the music how you want after you've paid for it. Doesn't really sound like much of a threat to me.
I hate when one idiot shoots off their mouth, then everyone thinks that everyone in the same group (in this case, people who run Linux) are idiots because of one moron with a big mouth.
Although, threats have been shown to work in the OS market before. I mean, just look at Microsoft... *duck*
I agree that apple is doing a good job now. Hell, I'm actually considering purchasing a mac now, and that never would have happened before.
However... it's not like Jon wrote a program to steal music from the store. It circumvents the DRM AFTER you've already paid for the song. That DRM prevents anyone from using the song on anything except an iPod.
Also, iTunes only runs on Win and Mac. The other program he wrote (which I can't download now because his site is slashdotted:) ) allows access to iTMS from any OS that can run Python (Linux, BSD, etc). As I refuse to run windows and I don't have a Mac yet (and even when i do, it won't be my only box), this could conceivably boost Apple's sales.
There was an article a little while back on/. that talked about this exploit.
Site A can return a 302 HTTP redirect to site B when Googlebot crawls their site. The googlebot will then index site B as site A. Site A could have no affiliation whatsoever with Site B; people could be clicking on SesameStreet.com and get AsianHookers.com, etc.
I do think the figure of millions of pages being hijacked is a little steep, though.
However, if I'm not mistaken, the IP, through which the connection to the recipient's server is made, cannot be forged. This is the target of return mailings.
This is assuming that the IP isn't spoofed, and since SMTP could conceivably be used blindly (without receiving packets back), this isn't out of the question. However, even if they do get the IP of the spammer, my point was that if they're not running a SMTP server on their machine, there won't be anything to deliver to; connections to port 25 will simply be refused.
RSS/RDF is only a dialect of XML. The behaviour is up to the implementation. If you had RSS software that was specifically created to serve in this role, it could cache messages indefinitely (thus eliminating messages dropping off) and have support for authentication so you don't get everyone else's messages (and you really should be encrypting any email you don't want Joe Schmoe reading- if you don't believe me, fire up ethereal and send an e-mail).
As for the problem of having to subscribe to the feed, I only really see this as a problem in a public e-mail address such as site admin or some other such thing. If these were the only addresses that worked, though, spam would likely reduce greatly. Hell, look at Hotmail. By default, it bounces anybody not whitelisted (in your addressbook).
And as for having to give out your new info if you switch ISPs... one, there are ways around that (forwarding and such- which is extremely easy with RSS); two, this is no different from regular old email, or any other contact medium for that matter. If you switch mail servers, you have to give out your new address. If you move, you have to give out your new phone # and address. Either that, or set up forwarding.
I wonder... I mean, it's not like you really need a SMTP server to send mail through. It just makes it easier. You can easily send mail just by looking up the MX record in DNS for the host, then connecting to port 25 on that machine and delivering the mail directly to the recipient's server. And if you're already doing that, it's ridiculously easy to forge headers saying you're gwbush@whitehouse.gov or anything else for that matter.
So if a spammer is using this technique (and from the behaviour of the server I'm running here, it's a good bet this is how around 2/3 of spam is sent, or at least the spam that arrives here), there's not much I can think of that IBM's tactic will do. Maybe I'm wrong; I read TFA, but it didn't say a whole lot about the tech details.
We've got this new product here and if it suceeds it will be completely superflous!
I don't think spam will ever entirely disappear. Measures like this might (or might not) cut spam; however, as long as there is e-mail, there will be spam.
I think the real solution is to educate those zombie owners. Tell them they need to run firewalling/antispyware/antivirus software. Create software that Joe Moron can use, preferably with sane defaults.
That, or some sort of cryptographic signature on e-mails; the keys would have to be signed by some sort of an authority, though, to keep spammers from just generating their own keys. This way, keys could be revoked if abused. However, it'd be tough to find/create an organization to regulate this that would actually be fair to all parties. There would also have to be some sort of identity verification.
Or, plan C, release a worm that installs firewalling software and removes other worms (been done before- it was on/., not sure how long ago).:) Just kidding.
English does not have a third-person, gender-neutral pronoun for referring to a person (although "hir" has been proposed). So, as a matter of convention, when gender is ambiguous, the masculine is typically used by default.
I learned this from reading various military tech manuals that will, on occasion, put something to this effect in their preface.
Quick side note (which will likely get modded OT:) )... the D&D manuals (3rd edition... not sure about others) use the female pronouns. They even put a little blurb in the intro in the player's guide about their decision to do so. IIRC, Magic: The Gathering does the same thing (which would make sense since again IIRC they're made by the same company now).
As for the ancestor post... I don't really see that as being sexist. From TFA:
"We're doing it to shut this guy down," Stuart McIrvine, IBM's director of corporate security strategy, told the paper. "Every time he tries to send, he gets slammed again."
It sounds like they're targetting an individual ("this guy"). Thus, they're not making a broad generalization that all spammers are male, or that females are too stupid to spam, or any other such nonsense. This particular spammer is male, that's all.
Doesn't our world have enough problems with different kinds of discrimination without people making shit up? Oi vey.
Whatever discomfort you experience during an airline flight is small retribution for the choking, gagging, and wretching you and your fellow smokers inflicted on your non-addict fellow passengers before the airline smoking law was imposed.
Well, I smoke, and I agree, it does suck. However, I never made anybody choke or gag on an airplane before any law was passed; hell, I've never even been on an airplane. If I was, though, I'd like very much to be able to have a cigarette, or smoke my pipe even.
The plane is already pressurized; if they created a separate chamber, couldn't that make it so the non-smoking section has different air than the smoking section? You could charge the smokers more money to defray the cost of the construction, much like they're charging people $30 a pop for net access to pay for the satellite equipment and such. And there are cigarettes that don't produce much smell or smoke at all; Eclipse http://www.eclipse.rjrt.com/, for instance.
Eh, screw it. I'll just pop the window open and hang my head out. It'll be fine.
But would you show up for a flight, wanting/needing a connection inflight, and expecting some total stranger to ad-hoc to everyone? Or would you pay for your own, and know that you will have a connection.
However, what if you buy the $30 connection, then offer it to others with laptops for $5-10 a pop? Some might find the $30 too expensive but go for it at a lower price, and you could recoup your loss with 6 people at $5 a pop.
That might work between friends, but I wouldn't rely on some random stranger's kindness to a) make it available, and b) not to log all my traffic.
So you know all the people whose machines route your packets now? Don't use ssl or gpg? I don't even trust the people I KNOW with my data... so I encrypt it when it's in transit if it's sensitive. I don't see much reason to trust a stranger at an ISP any more than a stranger on a flight.
Outgoing port 80 could still be a big problem. Web browsers (Mostly IE, but occasionally the others, too) can be prone to security problems, and Windows's baffling permissions allow a bug being exploited by a malicious web page to do whatever it wants with the system, rather than being stopped from altering stuff owned by other users (root, bin, etc..)
a 3rd party client will only allow you to encrypt the traffic... i'm sure this is what you meant but a lot of comments seem to think that just by using a third party client they are immune to this.. you are not.. you agreed to the TOS when you created the account, as such, no matter what client you use you agreed to them when creating the account.
Exactly. And if you somehow didn't agree to the ToS, then there are no terms. Essentially, they can do anything they want with your data in that case, because you're simply sending cleartext to a black hole in the internet. No contract has been established with you protecting the privacy of your communications. They could air your IM session on the evening news and it would be perfectly kosher.
This is why encryption is a good thing, and why we also need a good decentralized IM network. I'm tired of people being naive until something like this happens, then claiming outrage. Bloody do something about it.
Here's hoping the software can recognize when there is a piece of duct tape over your mouth
Actually, this was my one thought when I first saw the article: what if you're in an emergency and you need to use your phone, and there's bad lighting or your face is dirty or something like that, and the thing won't let you call for help? You could look pretty bad after a car accident or something like it.
(1) For Microsoft to change the WinAPI in such a way that Firefox will not work under Longhorn while ensuring that the vast majority of other programs continue to work under Longhorn would require a phenomenal amount of time and effort, and therefore money.
(2) It would be overcome in the next version of Firefox, which would come out within a week or so of Longhorn.
Ummm... what about the DR-DOS/Windows 3.x "incompatibility"? The lack of automated updates for Office users using Wine? (Yes, I know the web site updates work.) My point is simply that they could do something as silly as refusing to create windows for anything called Firefox.exe (or that uses xyz DLL file, etc, etc...) and encrypt the code that does the dirty deed, and we would never know because it's not open source.
thing is.cx domains are basically free and they don't really habe a nice ring to them (cx sorta resemles sex but its not that close.
Basically free? From http://nic.cx/registrars.jsp:
Each registrar collects the following fees on behalf of Christmas Island Internet Administration Limited and Indian Ocean Registry Services, these fees are automatically incorporated into your registration fees.
* AU $6 per domain/year is contributed to the Christmas Island Information Economy Development Trust
* AU $17 per domain/year goes to support CX TLD registry operations
So that's at least $23 per domain registration. Compare that with the $5.99/yr for.com,.net, and.org (at least at aplus.net and (I think) godaddy and a few others.)
For that matter, why doesn't IE (without a fix/hack/whatever) support PNG alpha transparency?
PNGs support compression, an entire channel (rather than just one color out of 256) of transparency, and are not patent-encumbered. It pisses me off to have to load a stupid javascript file whenever an IE user goes to one of my sites that tells the retarded browser to turn on the transparency. And the nature of the problem tells me that the code is in there to draw the transparency... it's just not _activated_. Meh.
Didn't they do something like this with the Trillian protocol on MSN Messenger? They hate third parties.
MS isn't the only one to do this with their messenger software. Yahoo! IM and AIM both have changed the protocols numerous times, forcing upgrades for the users of their software and breaking non-official clients like Trillian, Everybuddy, GAIM and others.
Granted, it is their network that you're accessing. But people can't communicate from one network to another (save for some tricks with gateway programs I've seen), and the main reason most users choose an IM network is because the people they want to talk to already use it. The official clients released generally either don't support Linux or support it with a client that is several versions behind and crippled. Even the windows and mac versions tend toward the feature-barren and unstable.
It amazes me how little effort is put into the official clients backed by real dollars when I see the work done by the Everybuddy and GAIM teams (Trillian, which has a free and a commercial version, is an exception: wonderful software that's not open source). One program, all major IM protocols, plugin support, aliasing support, transparency, etc.
If the IM networks were linked together so that for instance a Yahoo! user could talk to an AIM user without running multiple connections to different networks, and decent clients were released for all major operating systems, maybe more people would use the official clients. Then they wouldn't have to keep changing the protocols to keep everyone else out. After all, who wants to run 3-4 different IM programs, all of which are bloated, slow, and inefficient? Not me. I'll stick with Trillian and GAIM, thanks.
Well, capitolist economy business is anyway... no one who has the IQ to spell...
If I remember correctly, it's spelled "capitalist"... capital is money, and capitols are where governments meet. Not that I normally mention spelling/grammar problems, but in this case it seems a bit ironic.
Why people pay what they do for CD's nowadays just amazes me - its just NOT worth $15 bucks a CD!
Agreed. Very little of the music that actually retails for that much I do find palatable, let alone actually something worth paying for. I could probably count the must-have artists that retail for that much (for me anyway) on a single hand. The rest is all classical, jazz, punk, and older stuff... which usually doesn't go for more than $8 a CD. And I listen to the radio (both online and in my car, mostly NPR and college radio in the latter).
I just don't have a taste for the mainstream crap. It costs too much, and, quite frankly, the quality actually tends to be lower. It *is* a bit like FOSS vs. commercial software.
The wealth distribution in this country sucks. It makes the case all the more complicated, since it highlights the enormous number of people who simply don't have $15 to shell out for a CD or a DVD, but are still bombarded constantly with ads that are designed to make them want them badly. Personally, I avoid TV and most mass media altogether, so I'm largely unaffected by this. As a result, about all I use P2P for is free software (like snagging Slackware 10.1 when it came out a bit ago), TV shows (at least the ones which haven't come out on DVD), and pr0n. When something comes out on DVD, what I saved on cable/satellite bills allows me to buy the DVD.
I guess my point is that you can violate the law all you want if you think it's immoral, but you still risk paying the legal price. I smoke pot, and I risk that if a cop finds out that I have this plant on my person, I will go to jail or incur a fine. I don't think it's right, but I do have choices: move somewhere it's legal, or quit. Filesharing is a bit like that: move somewhere (like Canada) it's legal, quit, or risk getting caught. In the meantime, do what you can to get the laws changed, but don't expect the courts to decide in your favor when you've broken the law as it stands. And there are steps you can take to avoid even wanting to consume those commerical works in the first place. Avoid TV and especially commercials; this will cultivate your taste to things that are actually pleasant, rather than the things that trigger quick, strong neurochemical responses that say, "BUY! BUY! BUY!"
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't had a chance to test (due to /. effect) the Python program, but I don't know why it wouldn't work in Windows, providing you had the proper software installed (Python/GTK for Win32, available from python.org). Anybody tried it yet?
Huh? Threats? Who threatened anybody?
The point, I think, would be that Mr. Jon may have been less motivated to create this software if they had supported Linux from the beginning.
Not that I agree. I don't like the whole DRM thing in the first place because it impedes fair use. Burn and re-rip? Pain in the ass waste of a CD that loses quality on re-encode if you ask me. And it's not like the DRM is what's causing Apple to get paid. Apple is selling music, and this program doesn't exactly give you free music. It just lets you use the music how you want after you've paid for it. Doesn't really sound like much of a threat to me.
I hate when one idiot shoots off their mouth, then everyone thinks that everyone in the same group (in this case, people who run Linux) are idiots because of one moron with a big mouth.
Although, threats have been shown to work in the OS market before. I mean, just look at Microsoft... *duck*
I agree that apple is doing a good job now. Hell, I'm actually considering purchasing a mac now, and that never would have happened before.
:) ) allows access to iTMS from any OS that can run Python (Linux, BSD, etc). As I refuse to run windows and I don't have a Mac yet (and even when i do, it won't be my only box), this could conceivably boost Apple's sales.
However... it's not like Jon wrote a program to steal music from the store. It circumvents the DRM AFTER you've already paid for the song. That DRM prevents anyone from using the song on anything except an iPod.
Also, iTunes only runs on Win and Mac. The other program he wrote (which I can't download now because his site is slashdotted
There was an article a little while back on /. that talked about this exploit.
Site A can return a 302 HTTP redirect to site B when Googlebot crawls their site. The googlebot will then index site B as site A. Site A could have no affiliation whatsoever with Site B; people could be clicking on SesameStreet.com and get AsianHookers.com, etc.
I do think the figure of millions of pages being hijacked is a little steep, though.
However, if I'm not mistaken, the IP, through which the connection to the recipient's server is made, cannot be forged. This is the target of return mailings.
This is assuming that the IP isn't spoofed, and since SMTP could conceivably be used blindly (without receiving packets back), this isn't out of the question. However, even if they do get the IP of the spammer, my point was that if they're not running a SMTP server on their machine, there won't be anything to deliver to; connections to port 25 will simply be refused.
RSS/RDF is only a dialect of XML. The behaviour is up to the implementation. If you had RSS software that was specifically created to serve in this role, it could cache messages indefinitely (thus eliminating messages dropping off) and have support for authentication so you don't get everyone else's messages (and you really should be encrypting any email you don't want Joe Schmoe reading- if you don't believe me, fire up ethereal and send an e-mail).
As for the problem of having to subscribe to the feed, I only really see this as a problem in a public e-mail address such as site admin or some other such thing. If these were the only addresses that worked, though, spam would likely reduce greatly. Hell, look at Hotmail. By default, it bounces anybody not whitelisted (in your addressbook).
And as for having to give out your new info if you switch ISPs... one, there are ways around that (forwarding and such- which is extremely easy with RSS); two, this is no different from regular old email, or any other contact medium for that matter. If you switch mail servers, you have to give out your new address. If you move, you have to give out your new phone # and address. Either that, or set up forwarding.
I wonder... I mean, it's not like you really need a SMTP server to send mail through. It just makes it easier. You can easily send mail just by looking up the MX record in DNS for the host, then connecting to port 25 on that machine and delivering the mail directly to the recipient's server. And if you're already doing that, it's ridiculously easy to forge headers saying you're gwbush@whitehouse.gov or anything else for that matter.
So if a spammer is using this technique (and from the behaviour of the server I'm running here, it's a good bet this is how around 2/3 of spam is sent, or at least the spam that arrives here), there's not much I can think of that IBM's tactic will do. Maybe I'm wrong; I read TFA, but it didn't say a whole lot about the tech details.
We've got this new product here and if it suceeds it will be completely superflous!
/., not sure how long ago). :) Just kidding.
I don't think spam will ever entirely disappear. Measures like this might (or might not) cut spam; however, as long as there is e-mail, there will be spam.
I think the real solution is to educate those zombie owners. Tell them they need to run firewalling/antispyware/antivirus software. Create software that Joe Moron can use, preferably with sane defaults.
That, or some sort of cryptographic signature on e-mails; the keys would have to be signed by some sort of an authority, though, to keep spammers from just generating their own keys. This way, keys could be revoked if abused. However, it'd be tough to find/create an organization to regulate this that would actually be fair to all parties. There would also have to be some sort of identity verification.
Or, plan C, release a worm that installs firewalling software and removes other worms (been done before- it was on
English does not have a third-person, gender-neutral pronoun for referring to a person (although "hir" has been proposed). So, as a matter of convention, when gender is ambiguous, the masculine is typically used by default.
:) )... the D&D manuals (3rd edition... not sure about others) use the female pronouns. They even put a little blurb in the intro in the player's guide about their decision to do so. IIRC, Magic: The Gathering does the same thing (which would make sense since again IIRC they're made by the same company now).
I learned this from reading various military tech manuals that will, on occasion, put something to this effect in their preface.
Quick side note (which will likely get modded OT
As for the ancestor post... I don't really see that as being sexist. From TFA:
"We're doing it to shut this guy down," Stuart McIrvine, IBM's director of corporate security strategy, told the paper. "Every time he tries to send, he gets slammed again."
It sounds like they're targetting an individual ("this guy"). Thus, they're not making a broad generalization that all spammers are male, or that females are too stupid to spam, or any other such nonsense. This particular spammer is male, that's all.
Doesn't our world have enough problems with different kinds of discrimination without people making shit up? Oi vey.
Whatever discomfort you experience during an airline flight is small retribution for the choking, gagging, and wretching you and your fellow smokers inflicted on your non-addict fellow passengers before the airline smoking law was imposed.
Well, I smoke, and I agree, it does suck. However, I never made anybody choke or gag on an airplane before any law was passed; hell, I've never even been on an airplane. If I was, though, I'd like very much to be able to have a cigarette, or smoke my pipe even.
The plane is already pressurized; if they created a separate chamber, couldn't that make it so the non-smoking section has different air than the smoking section? You could charge the smokers more money to defray the cost of the construction, much like they're charging people $30 a pop for net access to pay for the satellite equipment and such. And there are cigarettes that don't produce much smell or smoke at all; Eclipse http://www.eclipse.rjrt.com/, for instance.
Eh, screw it. I'll just pop the window open and hang my head out. It'll be fine.
But would you show up for a flight, wanting/needing a connection inflight, and expecting some total stranger to ad-hoc to everyone? Or would you pay for your own, and know that you will have a connection.
However, what if you buy the $30 connection, then offer it to others with laptops for $5-10 a pop? Some might find the $30 too expensive but go for it at a lower price, and you could recoup your loss with 6 people at $5 a pop.
That might work between friends, but I wouldn't rely on some random stranger's kindness to a) make it available, and b) not to log all my traffic.
So you know all the people whose machines route your packets now? Don't use ssl or gpg? I don't even trust the people I KNOW with my data... so I encrypt it when it's in transit if it's sensitive. I don't see much reason to trust a stranger at an ISP any more than a stranger on a flight.
Outgoing port 80 could still be a big problem. Web browsers (Mostly IE, but occasionally the others, too) can be prone to security problems, and Windows's baffling permissions allow a bug being exploited by a malicious web page to do whatever it wants with the system, rather than being stopped from altering stuff owned by other users (root, bin, etc..)
a 3rd party client will only allow you to encrypt the traffic... i'm sure this is what you meant but a lot of comments seem to think that just by using a third party client they are immune to this.. you are not.. you agreed to the TOS when you created the account, as such, no matter what client you use you agreed to them when creating the account.
Exactly. And if you somehow didn't agree to the ToS, then there are no terms. Essentially, they can do anything they want with your data in that case, because you're simply sending cleartext to a black hole in the internet. No contract has been established with you protecting the privacy of your communications. They could air your IM session on the evening news and it would be perfectly kosher.
This is why encryption is a good thing, and why we also need a good decentralized IM network. I'm tired of people being naive until something like this happens, then claiming outrage. Bloody do something about it.
I think ohio has seen a big fat cash cow and has decided to get down to milk it at gunpoint.
Wow. You have no idea the image that just flashed in my head. Mooooooo.....
Here's hoping the software can recognize when there is a piece of duct tape over your mouth
Actually, this was my one thought when I first saw the article: what if you're in an emergency and you need to use your phone, and there's bad lighting or your face is dirty or something like that, and the thing won't let you call for help? You could look pretty bad after a car accident or something like it.
Sweet, only a matter of time before I can see fake rolexes in the sky...
Other than some games, what exactly can you actually do on Windows that you cannot do on other systems ? I would be interested to know.
Hate to say it, as I am a Linux junkie, but the printing support could be MUCH better.
Apperantly nerds are techno-emotional creatures that like to be stirred by paranoid conspiracy theories against perceived big-brother-like nemeses.
:)
Hey! How do you know I'm like that? Have you been watching me again? Sniffing my packets? You're working with the government, aren't you? Damn it!
(1) For Microsoft to change the WinAPI in such a way that Firefox will not work under Longhorn while ensuring that the vast majority of other programs continue to work under Longhorn would require a phenomenal amount of time and effort, and therefore money.
(2) It would be overcome in the next version of Firefox, which would come out within a week or so of Longhorn.
Ummm... what about the DR-DOS/Windows 3.x "incompatibility"? The lack of automated updates for Office users using Wine? (Yes, I know the web site updates work.) My point is simply that they could do something as silly as refusing to create windows for anything called Firefox.exe (or that uses xyz DLL file, etc, etc...) and encrypt the code that does the dirty deed, and we would never know because it's not open source.
thing is .cx domains are basically free and they don't really habe a nice ring to them (cx sorta resemles sex but its not that close.
.com, .net, and .org (at least at aplus.net and (I think) godaddy and a few others.)
Basically free? From http://nic.cx/registrars.jsp:
Each registrar collects the following fees on behalf of Christmas Island Internet Administration Limited and Indian Ocean Registry Services, these fees are automatically incorporated into your registration fees.
* AU $6 per domain/year is contributed to the Christmas Island Information Economy Development Trust
* AU $17 per domain/year goes to support CX TLD registry operations
So that's at least $23 per domain registration. Compare that with the $5.99/yr for
For that matter, why doesn't IE (without a fix/hack/whatever) support PNG alpha transparency?
PNGs support compression, an entire channel (rather than just one color out of 256) of transparency, and are not patent-encumbered. It pisses me off to have to load a stupid javascript file whenever an IE user goes to one of my sites that tells the retarded browser to turn on the transparency. And the nature of the problem tells me that the code is in there to draw the transparency... it's just not _activated_. Meh.
Didn't they do something like this with the Trillian protocol on MSN Messenger? They hate third parties.
MS isn't the only one to do this with their messenger software. Yahoo! IM and AIM both have changed the protocols numerous times, forcing upgrades for the users of their software and breaking non-official clients like Trillian, Everybuddy, GAIM and others.
Granted, it is their network that you're accessing. But people can't communicate from one network to another (save for some tricks with gateway programs I've seen), and the main reason most users choose an IM network is because the people they want to talk to already use it. The official clients released generally either don't support Linux or support it with a client that is several versions behind and crippled. Even the windows and mac versions tend toward the feature-barren and unstable.
It amazes me how little effort is put into the official clients backed by real dollars when I see the work done by the Everybuddy and GAIM teams (Trillian, which has a free and a commercial version, is an exception: wonderful software that's not open source). One program, all major IM protocols, plugin support, aliasing support, transparency, etc.
If the IM networks were linked together so that for instance a Yahoo! user could talk to an AIM user without running multiple connections to different networks, and decent clients were released for all major operating systems, maybe more people would use the official clients. Then they wouldn't have to keep changing the protocols to keep everyone else out. After all, who wants to run 3-4 different IM programs, all of which are bloated, slow, and inefficient? Not me. I'll stick with Trillian and GAIM, thanks.
Well, capitolist economy business is anyway... no one who has the IQ to spell...
If I remember correctly, it's spelled "capitalist"... capital is money, and capitols are where governments meet. Not that I normally mention spelling/grammar problems, but in this case it seems a bit ironic.
some assemblers use $ as the prefix for a hexadecimal literal.
Pascal does, too.
Why people pay what they do for CD's nowadays just amazes me - its just NOT worth $15 bucks a CD!
Agreed. Very little of the music that actually retails for that much I do find palatable, let alone actually something worth paying for. I could probably count the must-have artists that retail for that much (for me anyway) on a single hand. The rest is all classical, jazz, punk, and older stuff... which usually doesn't go for more than $8 a CD. And I listen to the radio (both online and in my car, mostly NPR and college radio in the latter).
I just don't have a taste for the mainstream crap. It costs too much, and, quite frankly, the quality actually tends to be lower. It *is* a bit like FOSS vs. commercial software.
The wealth distribution in this country sucks. It makes the case all the more complicated, since it highlights the enormous number of people who simply don't have $15 to shell out for a CD or a DVD, but are still bombarded constantly with ads that are designed to make them want them badly. Personally, I avoid TV and most mass media altogether, so I'm largely unaffected by this. As a result, about all I use P2P for is free software (like snagging Slackware 10.1 when it came out a bit ago), TV shows (at least the ones which haven't come out on DVD), and pr0n. When something comes out on DVD, what I saved on cable/satellite bills allows me to buy the DVD.
I guess my point is that you can violate the law all you want if you think it's immoral, but you still risk paying the legal price. I smoke pot, and I risk that if a cop finds out that I have this plant on my person, I will go to jail or incur a fine. I don't think it's right, but I do have choices: move somewhere it's legal, or quit. Filesharing is a bit like that: move somewhere (like Canada) it's legal, quit, or risk getting caught. In the meantime, do what you can to get the laws changed, but don't expect the courts to decide in your favor when you've broken the law as it stands. And there are steps you can take to avoid even wanting to consume those commerical works in the first place. Avoid TV and especially commercials; this will cultivate your taste to things that are actually pleasant, rather than the things that trigger quick, strong neurochemical responses that say, "BUY! BUY! BUY!"