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*HOT* Tech News And Downloads, I Would Read This Thread And Post Any Good Info
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23. December 2006 @ 08:04 |
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Mom's Genuine Holiday Surprise
Joe Wilcox
Joe Wilcox
Miracles do occur during the holidays. My mother no longer is a software pirate.
This week, a Microsoft support technician worked with my 65-year-old mom to figure out why her computer failed Windows Genuine Advantage validation. Mom had started receiving pop-up notices indicating her Windows XP copy was counterfeit. I set up that computer and knew for certain the software was genuine.
Validation failures are a hot-button topic with Windows users, if Microsoft Watch reader comments about WGA are any indication. As a user, I'm no fan of WGA Notifications, either.
My mother's validation failure sheds some insight on other false positives, which is my reason for telling her holiday story.
The support technician explained the problem in an e-mail:
"What I found is that her PC has severe cryptographic issues. The crypto issues were not caused by WGA validation or notifications. The issue could have been caused by spyware, malware, or even some software installation or update. Issues with cryptographics will cause Windows Update (AU) updates not to be able to successfully install, it can cause issues with connecting to web sites, etc."
From the diagnostic of mom's computer came "Validation Status: Cryptographic Errors Detected." The problem did not affect Office, which came back as "Office Status: 100 Genuine."
A later scan of Windows XP using Windows Defender uncovered no spyware on the computer. Assuming Defender worked as it should, spyware was not the cause of the cryptographic failure.
To resolve the issue, the support technician re-registered 10 dlls: Softpub.dll, Wintrust.dll, Initpki.dll, Dssenh.dll, Rsaenh.dll, Gpkcsp.dll, Sccbase.dll, Slbcsp.dll, Mssip32.dll, and Cryptdlg.dll files.
The Microsoft support technician explained that mom's copy of Windows XP was in fact genuine, but that "Crypto issues manifested and caused issues for many of the applications installed (not just MS apps, even not MS apps such as her Verizon suite, etc)."
I'm appreciative of the hours the support technician spent with mom, who really does regard the resolution as a holiday miracle. She is in a wheelchair, which limits how much she gets around. A functioning computer with Internet access is import to her. As the technician explained, the dll issues--a rather poignant example of "dll hell"--negatively affected Windows in other ways.
I got to wondering what other situations cause validation to fail. Here's the list I came up with from Microsoft's support Web site:
* Computer's date and time are incorrectly set
* Proxy server or firewall is present
* ActiveX controls are blocked
* Wpa.dbl file is set as read-only
* WGA folder permissions
* Product ID is inacessible
* Insufficient privileges
This list, which isn't inclusive, only covers reasons for validation to fail to complete. My mom's situation, of receiving a false positive, is a different category, and it's one on which Microsoft's Web site offers scant information.
A July post by Alex Kochis on Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage blog explains that "about 1 in 5 of the 300 million PCs that have run WGA validation fail. That is pretty much in line with industry numbers for software piracy." Kochis then went on to largely dismiss the idea of false positives.
However, he gave an apt definition:
"An actual 'false positive' would occur if WGA identified a specific copy of windows installed on a system as non-genuine or unlicensed when in fact it was genuine and licensed. Of the hundreds of millions of WGA validations to date, only a handful of actual false positives have been seen. Most of these were due to data entry errors that were quickly corrected and only occurred for a short period of time."
So does mom's false positive come on the one hand or has Microsoft moved to two handfuls of false positives now? Based on Kochis' definition, mom got a false positive. Or did she? A narrow interpretation--the one Microsoft's WGA team might take--would be that third-party software had tampered with the dlls on her computer. If not for the tampering, Windows XP would have validated as genuine. I won't even go down the "dll hell" topic path, but commenters please feel free if so inclined.
Microsoft exercises a perceived right to validate because it owns the software and only licenses it to the user. Fine, but ownership also designates responsibility. I'm a renter, and it's the owner's responsibility for repairs and maintenance--say, fixing a leaky roof or keeping good locks on the doors. Similarly, Microsoft as the owner of the software rents or sublets it on a perpetual basis to users. If Microsoft can scan the software for legitimacy because of ownership, then it should also better protect its property from Internet vandals.
WGA isn't going away. Microsoft baked it into Windows Vista. But neither will the controversy abide. The process of validation carries the tacit accusation of guilty until proven innocent. Who wants to be treated as a potential criminal? A search of Microsoft Watch comments to WGA posts reveals some strong animosity toward the guilty-until-proven-innocent approach.
Still, innocence has its rewards. I don't know what to get mom for Christmas now. She's so happy to be genuine, she says it's gift enough.
Posted by Joe Wilcox on December 21, 2006 9:50 PM
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/o...2129TX1K0000535
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24. December 2006 @ 07:20 |
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IE Tab 1.2.0.20061120
Author: Hong Jen Yee & yuoo2k
Date: 2006-12-23
Size: 170 Kb
License: Freeware
Requires: Win All
IE Tab is a Firefox extension that makes possible embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox.
This is a great tool for web developers, since you can easily see how your webpage displayed in IE with just one click and then switch back to Firefox.
go here
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4905.html
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24. December 2006 @ 14:35 |
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Merry Christmas to all!!!!!!!!!!!
Chuck
"Men are slower to recognize blessings than misfortunes." Titus Livius (59BC-17AD)
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26. December 2006 @ 07:32 |
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Ancient pyramids discovered in Bosnia
Natural or man-made?
Page: 1 2 Next >
By Mark Whitehorn → More by this author
Published Tuesday 26th December 2006 10:02 GMT
pix
http://www.bosnianpyramid.com/
The Great Pyramid of Giza is the sole survivor of the Seven Wonders of the World. An Arab proverb says that: "Man fears time, yet time fears the Pyramids", a reference to the fact that the pyramid has survived for about 4,500 years and, in that time, has lost a mere 10 metres off its incredible 145 metre height.
Composed of two million blocks of stone, each weighing more than two tonnes, this was not erected by George Wimpey and Co in a fortnight. For approximately 43 centuries it was the world's tallest man-made structure.
Or so we thought. Reports are emerging from Bosnia-Herzegovina of structures that make the pyramid of Giza look like a scale model (see http://www.bosnianpyramids.org/, http://www.bosnianpyramid.com/, and http://www.bosnian-pyramid.com/).
At 267 metres tall, the Pyramid of the Sun blows the Egyptian opposition into the weeds. If that wasn't enough, it is simply one of a number of pyramids located in the same region - there are also the Pyramids of the Sun, the Dragon and, most recently discovered, Love.
These revelations are not simply about who has the biggest bragging rights for historic civil engineering projects. Structures like these take colossal man power to create ? estimates for a single Egyptian pyramid run into tens of millions of man hours.
Such a workforce means, in turn, huge logistical organisation ? land cultivation, food transport, housing, water, waste disposal etc. The simple existence of these gigantic man-made structures in Europe means the entire history of the development of human civilization will have to be rewritten with Bosnia-Herzegovina at its centre.
All of which appears to be just fine by Semir Osmanagić who is at the centre of these discoveries. He is referred to on bosnianpyramid.com as "Bosnia's Indiana Jones" which is either a reference to the hat and boots that he affects or his extraordinary archaeological discoveries. Not a man who appears to eschew modesty, he is quoted as saying: "My discovery will change human history".
As might be imagined, this is a very big deal in Bosnia-Herzegovina where it forms the focus of a nightly reality TV show. We strongly recommend that you visit the web sites and that you examine the other evidence that is accumulating daily on the web, such as this video, where you can see, and weigh, for yourself the evidence that this is a man-made structure.
Of course, the cynical sceptics amongst you may feel that claims like these are so fantastic as to be unbelievable, but that is not the case. We believe the reason the claims are unbelievable is more simple; they are wrong.
How can we be so sure? We have been talking to Professor John Parker of Cambridge University, the director of the Botanic Garden and also Professor of Botany at St Catharine's College. He's actually travelled there and seen the evidence first hand.
El Reg: How did you come to visit the site?
Professor Parker: I visited the site in August this year as part of a visit to Sarajevo with one of the professors there. My colleague in Sarajevo invited me to come and see this phenomenon so we made our way to the site and climbed to the top of one of the hills which was being referred to as the Pyramid of the Sun. As we climbed the hill we passed, as you would expect, Nefertiti's café and stalls selling little models of the pyramids. I must admit I began to wonder where we were.
The top of the hill was being cleared and they were digging away the surface to the depth of about a metre, exposing what looked for all the world like concrete spilling down the slopes of the hill. These inclined, flat sheets consisted of aggregate in a matrix and I gathered that these were being put forward as a man-made phenomenon. It was quite impressive: large slabs, some of them up to 50 or 60 metres long. It was explained to me as man-made concrete that had been cast as slabs with shuttering between them. This is exactly the way in which, today, we cover large areas with concrete. We use shuttering to limit the size of the slabs and the spaces left when the shuttering is removed allow for expansion.
So, having seen that, we went across the valley to the Pyramid of the Moon, a slightly lower hill, and again we went through a mass of little stalls selling this time, Mayan step pyramid models.
In contrast to the Pyramid of the Sun, where the slabs of concrete lie parallel to the side of the hill, the material that makes up the Pyramid of the Moon lies in horizontal sheets. The flat sheets of exposed material have a sort of ripple effect on the top and the whole surface broken by regular lines into what looks like crazy paving with most of the fracture lines of the crazy paving roughly parallel to each other. It is broken up into rough rectangular blocks but laid so closely together that they look just as if they have been laid by human hand.
El Reg: But you weren't convinced?
Professor Parker: Well, no, because I'd seen this kind of thing before. It is a perfect example of a fossilised beach, essentially little mud ripples on a beach which then becomes fossilised. What they were doing was cutting into the hillside to expose this beautiful raised beach.
As you looked at the profile that they had cut you saw the layers above it and every time they came to a slightly harder layer that showed that phenomenon, so they exposed it back. They were cutting the side of the hill into a series of steps, each one about a metre and a half or two meters. Hence the Pyramid of the Moon is described a stepped pyramid, as opposed to the Pyramid of the Sun where the sides are flat.
El Reg: So, what about the "concrete" on the Pyramid of the Sun?
Professor Parker: It is a natural material. When you looked at the whole site there was a very turbulent river which came down (and they are really turbulent in Bosnia) which had cut a deep valley through the mainly limestone area in which we found ourselves. However, the river rises in the mountains to the West which are mainly acidic. So the "concrete" is made of the embedded stones that were washed down from the acidic mountains deposited in an alkaline substrate.
El Reg: What about the marks of the shuttering?
Professor Parker: As the conglomerate formed and then subsequently cracked, the cracks were filled in with calcite which would be crystallised from the calcium carbonate and dolomite which makes up the matrix. If you looked at the cracks between the slabs carefully ? and this is what told me straight away that it was natural ? you could see that individual stones that were embedded in the matrix were shattered through.
In other words, you regularly find single stones, embedded in two slabs, cut neatly through by the "shuttering" lines. It seems highly unlikely that human beings would split stones and place the two halves neatly on either side of a piece of shuttering. But natural cracks will run through both the stones and the matrix. So the cracks are clearly a post-construction phenomenon, not a pre-construction one.
El Reg: Ok, that explains the materials found on the two hills, but how did it get there in the first place?
Professor Parker: Remember that turbulent river. You've got the aggregate which came from the acidic mountains and it came down into a calcareous lake where the big stones had settled out with the calcareous substrate to make the aggregate on one side of the valley. That explains the "concrete". On the other side of the valley the mud was left and was depositing out as beaches which were obviously a drying lake surface and I should think alternately wetting and drying. It was quite obvious that it was part of one kind of system, probably a delta type system.
Geologically it was absolutely fascinating. I've never seen a better example of this. At the same time one of my colleagues, Dr Mary Edmunds, found the most perfect fossils in the material they'd excavated on the Pyramid of the Moon. They were simply beautiful ? you broke open every piece of this supposedly man-made material and inside were things like pine seeds perfectly preserved with their wings so you could even identify the species of pine ? Pinus nigra that grows there still ? and also birch leaves: it was full of just wonderful sub-fossil material. That alone told us that it was clearly a post-glacial phenomenon, relatively recent ? less than 12,000 years old.
El Reg: So, if the "concrete" is natural, and formed in a lake, why is it now at such an angle, forming the sloping sides of a hill?
Professor Parker: The way I was thinking about the conglomerate ? why it looked like a triangle ? was that if you think about the river constantly undermining soft substrate with a hard crust it becomes rather like a crème brulée. As soon as you take away the cream from below there's nothing to hold the upper material and it will collapse, and of course it will tend to shatter, if it is a flat plate, into triangular slabs. I think what you'd got is this material shattered into one of these triangular slabs which gives you the triangular shape and when you excavate it of course the conglomerate is now facing down the hill.
El Reg: So, the site is worthless?
Professor Parker: Absolutely not. I spent considerable time looking at the fossils because I've never seen any so good from a post-glacial site. It's very sad because you could have got the most detailed and intimate knowledge of the changes in vegetation patterns from the post-glacial era. It is so clearly a natural phenomenon that it should be investigated as a natural phenomenon rather than being shrouded in all this magic and mystery.
I am worried about it because the Bosnian people deserve better than this. They are a wonderful people who have suffered so much. In this site they have a fabulous natural phenomenon and the danger is that the people and the country could become a laughing stock if the site continues to be interpreted in this way. ®
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/26/bosnian_pyramids/
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26. December 2006 @ 07:55 |
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HD disk format wars are over
Opinion A clear victor emerges
By Charlie Demerjian: Tuesday 26 December 2006, 01:22
THE NEXT GENERATION disk format has been settled once and for all. Thanks to the due diligence, hard work and unprecedented cooperation between the media companies, the hardware vendors and the OS vendor, we finally have a solution. It is quite easy, Piracy, the better choice(TM).
Yes, in a year where Sony rootkitted it's customers, lied to my face about their actions (hi John, still have your number, kisses), and fell flat with anything related to Blu-ray, things couldn't get worse right? Well, the other camp, HD-DVD is only slightly less nasty, but still unacceptable. Standing shoulder to shoulder, they both failed in the market.
MS and the media companies sold you out hoping to reap more and more profits. Let me just say I held out no hope that they would behave in anything less than a socially irresponsible fashion, but the depths of their depravity did end up shocking me.
Then came the PC makers, the dumb sheep that they are. There seems to be a race to see who can pass the buck quickest in this camp. From my dealing with them last CES where they said 'we have to screw our customers, we were asked nicely to', to the blaming of people up and down the food chain from them, it is a comic scenario. Pathetic.
Then comes the chipmakers, AMD and Intel, and the respective platforms, Live and VIIV. What laughable efforts those are. A year and a half ago, I said that Intel sold you out, and they did. The DRM infested nightmares of consumer rights removal that are the media platforms have one thing in common, the content mafia is quite adamant that they are still too insecure. The strategy from Intel was to start at a middle ground and push to the consumer side of things as time went on.
Instead, they started out as MS's bitch and were beaten into submission like a redheaded stepchild. Now they have the glorious job of jumping at the every whim of the media companies, way to hold your head high Intel! I would say the same for AMD, but to this day, I am not sure what Live does, if it really exists.
Both companies will tout absolutely huge sales figures, and MS will point to incredible Media Center sales, up thousands of percent this year alone. Let me clue you in on something, MCE used to mean that you needed a tuner, you had to meet certain requirements for power, speed and functionality. These boxes flopped so badly it was laughable, selling more restrictions for more money is not a bright marketing strategy.
Now, MCE is sold instead of XP home. The requirements? None really, so basically all sales that were home are now MCE. I defy you to find any retail customer who actually uses it in that fashion, maybe 1% do.
With the proliferation of MCE, both Live and VIIV stickers moved out into mainstream boxes. Damn those things sell like hotcakes, umm, what do they get me besides DRM infections again? No, really, I mean it, WTF do they do? Anyone? So, both Intel and AMD are jumping up and down over the 'successes' of their respective DRM for manufacturer kickback programs. Be still my beating heart.
Basically, what we have is a series of anti-consumer DRM infections masquerading as nothing in particular. They bring only net negatives to anyone dumb enough to pay money for them, and everything is better than these offerings. They sell in spite of the features they tout, not because of them. The manufacturers still have the balls to look you in the eye and say that they are selling because of the programs/features/DRM. Marketers, what a laugh riot.
In the end, every step in this chain of consumer woe that is Blu-ray, HD-DVD, Live, VIIV, HDCP, MCE and Vista is flopping. And that is where the better choice comes in. The consumers have voted with their dollars, and are staying away in droves. All the walls of the walled gardens are being built higher and higher, with the occasional brick landing on the head of someone who pulls out a credit card. Buy now, there is a brick with your name on it whistling down, operators are standing by.
In the mean time, Piracy, the better choice (tm) flourishes. If you take 10 minutes to look around, you will see that every HD movie is now available on P2P networks. I haven't bothered to get one, so I can't comment on the quality, but it sure looks like availability is there. What was an underground clique in the 1980s and 1990s has become mainstream and so vastly much easier to do that it is laughable. Before the technology hits 1% market penetration it is comprehensively cracked and better for the consumer than the legit versions.
The lawsuits, threats, purchased governance and stern speeches could not prevent the children of Warner Music from pirating, the less moneyed masses are a lost cause. (Funny how he wasn't sued though, kind of makes you wonder...) As of right now, anyone can get any music or movie they want, for free, much more easily than they can through legal DRM infected channels. Piracy, the better choice (tm).
If you try and purchase any of this content, you descend into a DRM nightmare of incompatibility and legal mires. Your monitor will not work with your Blu-ray drive because your PC decided that a wobble bit was set wrong. You just pissed away $6K on a player, media center PC and HD TV for nothing, you lose. The Warner CEOs kids have a nice new car to play their pirated CDs in though.
On the other hand, if you downloaded that content, in HD no less, you save the $1000 on the Blu-ray player, $30 on the movie, and it works seamlessly out of the box. The available content is much higher with piracy, and it is quite on-demand. You don't need to sign up, give them your details to be sold to marketers who call during dinner and spam you, you just get the content you want, when you want, how you want. There is no iTunes/Plays for (not) Sure incompatibility, it just works. Piracy, the better choice(tm).
On the down side, the RIAA/MPAA/PATSY/TOOLBOY have sued probably 10,000 people now, and each 'settlement' is, well lets just use $5000 for the sake of round numbers. Now, the conservative estimates of P2P usage was around 30 million people, but I am pretty damn sure that is far lower than the actual usage. Last time I saw anything serious, it was 35M and growing fast. Lets just assume that it is now 50M users.
10,000 * $5,000 = $50,000,000. The net cost to each P2P user, assuming everyone out there settles is $1. To look at it another way, if you look at it in the worst case light, you have a 1 in 5000 chance of getting nailed. A lot of people buy lottery tickets with far far worse odds than that, and spend more than $5000 doing so every few years. To be even more cynical, hands up everyone who personally knows someone who got sued by the RIAA. Now, hands up everyone who knows someone who downloaded music or movies. Any guesses which one is bigger? Piracy, the better choice (tm).
What do we end up with? A year or more where the CE industry pushed, pulled, legislated and litigated their way to obscurity. Along the way, they killed yet another promising consumer technology, well 5 or 6 actually, and made Intel and AMD their bitches. We all were on the verge of losing this format and DRM infection war until a dark horse champion emerged to snatch victory from the jaws of evil. Piracy, the better choice(tm). µ
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36574
Piracy: the clear choice for 2006
p2pnet.net news views:- An unusual meeting of the minds has taken place: Disney co-chair Anne Sweeney and The Inquirer's Charlie Demerjian firmly agree on something.
Ladies first, and Anne sums it up like this: "It exists to serve a need in the market for consumers who want TV content on demand."
And Charlie puts it like this: "Thanks to the due diligence, hard work and unprecedented cooperation between the media companies, the hardware vendors and the OS vendor, we finally have a solution to the disk format wars".
Ann is talking about the moving picture arts. And so is Charlie. But where Ms Sweeney is very product specific Demerjian has a lot more in mind, also lighting into Microsoft, Intel ("they started out as MS's bitch "), Sony (but of course) Blu-ray, and HD-TV.
But they both wind up with the same conclusion.
'Piracy' is where it's at.
Sweeney encapsulated a (the?) "defining moment for the business" to an enthralled audience of Hollywood losers and fakers at Mipcom 2006. .
"We understand now that piracy is a business model," Sweeney told them unequivocally. "It exists to serve a need in the market for consumers who want TV content on demand. Pirates compete the same way we do - through quality, price and availability. We we don?t like the model but we realise it?s competitive enough to make it a major competitor going forward."
Indeed, and in The Inquirer, at the end of an item sub-headed "A clear victor emerges," Demerjian says, "Piracy, the better choice (tm) flourishes," going on:
If you take 10 minutes to look around, you will see that every HD movie is now available on P2P networks. I haven't bothered to get one, so I can't comment on the quality, but it sure looks like availability is there. What was an underground clique in the 1980s and 1990s has become mainstream and so vastly much easier to do that it is laughable. Before the technology hits 1% market penetration it is comprehensively cracked and better for the consumer than the legit versions.
The lawsuits, threats, purchased governance and stern speeches could not prevent the children of Warner Music from pirating, the less moneyed masses are a lost cause. (Funny how he wasn't sued though, kind of makes you wonder...) As of right now, anyone can get any music or movie they want, for free, much more easily than they can through legal DRM infected channels. Piracy, the better choice (tm).
If you try and purchase any of this content, you descend into a DRM nightmare of incompatibility and legal mires. Your monitor will not work with your Blu-ray drive because your PC decided that a wobble bit was set wrong. You just pissed away $6K on a player, media center PC and HD TV for nothing, you lose. The Warner CEOs kids have a nice new car to play their pirated CDs in though.
On the other hand, if you downloaded that content, in HD no less, you save the $1000 on the Blu-ray player, $30 on the movie, and it works seamlessly out of the box. The available content is much higher with piracy, and it is quite on-demand. You don't need to sign up, give them your details to be sold to marketers who call during dinner and spam you, you just get the content you want, when you want, how you want. There is no iTunes/Plays for (not) Sure incompatibility, it just works. Piracy, the better choice(tm).
On the down side, the RIAA/MPAA/PATSY/TOOLBOY have sued probably 10,000 people now, and each 'settlement' is, well lets just use $5000 for the sake of round numbers. Now, the conservative estimates of P2P usage was around 30 million people, but I am pretty damn sure that is far lower than the actual usage. Last time I saw anything serious, it was 35M and growing fast. Lets just assume that it is now 50M users.
10,000 * $5,000 = $50,000,000. The net cost to each P2P user, assuming everyone out there settles is $1. To look at it another way, if you look at it in the worst case light, you have a 1 in 5000 chance of getting nailed. A lot of people buy lottery tickets with far far worse odds than that, and spend more than $5000 doing so every few years. To be even more cynical, hands up everyone who personally knows someone who got sued by the RIAA. Now, hands up everyone who knows someone who downloaded music or movies. Any guesses which one is bigger? Piracy, the better choice (tm).
What do we end up with? A year or more where the CE industry pushed, pulled, legislated and litigated their way to obscurity. Along the way, they killed yet another promising consumer technology, well 5 or 6 actually, and made Intel and AMD their bitches. We all were on the verge of losing this format and DRM infection war until a dark horse champion emerged to snatch victory from the jaws of evil. Piracy, the better choice(tm).
Stay tuned ;P
http://p2pnet.net/story/10839?PHPSESSID=...1d90c9f6988a861
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 26. December 2006 @ 08:13
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26. December 2006 @ 10:10 |
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happy new 2007.soon
FREE,
30. PARTITION SAVING..........With this program you could save all data on a partition to a file (such as you could save this file on a CD for example). Then if something goes wrong, you can completely restore the partition from the backup file. You no longer have to reinstall every piece of software from scratch. All you have to do is restore the partition from the backup file and then update any software that was modified since the backup was created. Partition Saving is able to compress data (using the gzip compression algorithm) and split it up into several files (e.g. if you need to save a 2 Gb partition onto a CD, this can be done by compressing it and, if necessary, splitting it up into 650 Mb files). Most partition types are supported. In the case of FAT (12, 16 and 32), ext2/3 and NTFS partitions, you can choose between saving all sectors or in-use sectors only.....(free).....GO THERE!
http://www.partition-saving.com/
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26. December 2006 @ 11:24 |
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Senior Member
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26. December 2006 @ 12:47 |
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*subscribed* this thread is amazing, keep up the good work.
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26. December 2006 @ 12:56 |
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Winners and Losers for 2006
p2pnet.net feature:- Who was up and who was down in 2006? Here's MP3NewsWire's Rich Menta on the subject.
1. YouTube
Google purchased them for $1.65 billion. For a company less than two years old, not much more needs to be said. CBS has already credited YouTube for improved ratings on the Letterman show and the site brings US visibility to excellent overseas television programs. That's nice, but they still haven't figured out the best way to make money on all of this success. The site has to develop a stronger business model and do it under continued legal threats from some content holders. That's why the Google acquisition is important as it has the dollars to insulate the company from litigation until it can evolve into a high revenue generator.
2. Apple
Still controlling a hefty percentage of the player and paid download market. SanDisk is making inroads in the portable player arena, but Apple is selling more iPods than ever. iTunes market share is dominant too, though analysts have concerns about the short-term growth of paid music and movie downloads. The big question is where does Apple go from here? As there is early evidence to suggest SanDisk is selling strong among digital savvy consumers, the company will need something more than a minor refresh of the iPod line for 2007. We'll see in the spring what iTV, the present name of Apple's wireless set top box, will offer. Apple's recent deal with the airlines, which will cement the iPod dock (literally and figuratively) into the seats of commercial aircraft, will mean Apple's proprietary standards will dominate in jets for years. Disney arguable deserves to be on this list too. As the only studio that sells movies on iTunes it now dominates the tiny, but burgeoning, movie download market. Disney and Apple expect to generate $40 million in movie sales by year end.
3. MySpace
It is a top five site on the Net and probably the most influential destination for new music. Might it be the most influential for all music?
4. BitTorrent and Azureus
Several million dollars in seed investment followed by preliminary adoption by the movie industry has made Bram Cohen's vision a legitimate member of the content industry clique. For the most utilized protocol on the Net, this means large revenues and no lawsuits for its creator (at least in the immediate future). By cutting a deal with Hollywood Bram Cohen reduced the risk of litigation. This one fact is drawing significant VC activity into the technology. Not only did BitTorrent grab $20 million in latter round funding for itself, torrent client Azureus landed $12 million of its own. Even uTorrent made out as Cohen used some of his new found investment cash to acquire its technology. eDonkey and Morpheus had a commercial dream once. BitTorrent is achieving that dream.
5. Pirate Bay
Started by Swedish anti-copyright organization Piratbyrån, Pirate Bay grew into the world's largest BitTorrent tracker. This drew the content industry's ire and on May 31 they orchestrated a raid on the site with the help Swedish law enforcement. The raid confiscated all of Pirate Bay's servers and the press releases flew, heralding the Pirate Bay's elimination. It turned out the celebration was premature. Three days later Pirate Bay was back and, thanks to the press generated by the closure, became more popular than ever. The Pirate Party did not do so well in Swedish elections later in the year, but it has been influential. That influence carried over here to the states where Brent Allison and Alex English are launching a US Chapter with eyes on the 2008 election.
6. Brittany Chan
Brittany and her mother beat the RIAA in their file sharing lawsuits. That's the good news and enough to place her on this list. The bad news is the family had to endure the misery and expense of this trial in the first place. Didn't hear about the Chan victory? That's because while the original suit made front page news, the decision was mostly ignored by the mainstream press. [And we'd like to add Patti Santangelo to this. She, too, scored against the Big 4 Organized Music cartel, and she's not done yet - Jon]
7. Creative
Took Apple for $100 million in its patent dispute and will now make iPod peripherals, where the company will probably make more money. Their own players are selling better this holiday season, so over all thing have improved for a company that has showed losses on the balance sheet recently. Will future Creative players adopt the iPod dock connector? Silly rabbit.....
8. DJ Danger Mouse
DJ Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) became the scourge of the industry back in 2004 when he released the Grey Album, a limited edition remix of Jay-Z's Black Album and The Beatles' White Album. EMI attempted to stop its release resulting in Grey Day, one of the most successful Internet protests. That got DJ Danger Mouse on our 2004 winners list. This year Mouse is here as one half of the duo Gnarls Barkley, whose first single 'Crazy' is the first song to top the UK charts on download sales alone. It reached number 2 on the US chart. To date, Danger Mouse the most successful artist to ever to leverage the Internet to promote their career. It helped that Crazy was a great song.
9. SanDisk
Released a 6GB player in the spring that sold well. Then at the end of the summer, before Apple could answer with a like capacity iPod, Sandisk released an 8GB version. NPD Group is reporting that SanDisk is drawing 18.4% of Christmas DAP sales. Meanwhile, early MP3 Newswire player data suggests that percentage is even higher among the digital savvy shoppers
10. EMusic
Emusic is the official number two paid download service (the real number two may be the very unofficial AllofMP3.com) and the service has sold 100 million downloads since new management took the company over in 2003. Furthermore, it sold those tracks on the musical virtues of independent artists, not major label artists like Napster and Rhapsody pay for. But there real reason EMusic is here is...well...it's here. Launched as Goodnoise in early 1998, the service is a survivor of the dot com era.
11.Tivo
Tivo won a big patent settlement against EchoStar. There were concerns the company wouldn't make it. Now it has some stability in the market.
Honorable Mention: Sling Media
Deals with mobile providers has this company and its technology on the upswing. Hollywood is rattling its sabres as usual, but its more because it wants to steal the "place shifting" TV market for itself. If Sling Media continues to grow it may become an acquisition target, possibly from one of the telcos like AT&T or Verizon who are investing heavily in IPTV.
2006 Losers
1. StreamCast
The last holdout from the MGM v Grokster case, that case created the new test of "Active Infringement". The Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower court to define and apply the new test, which the folks at Streamcast were confident they never violated. The lower court ruled they clearly did.
2. EchoStar Communications
Parent company of the Dish Network lost a huge $90 million patent lawsuit to Tivo.
3. Sharman Networks
Crushed in Australian court. Has settled with the record industry for $100 million, but to date no commercial P2P app that has come to an agreement with the music industry is showing any ability to gain traction in the pay-per-song market. The fact that KaZaa has not been updated since its acquisition by Sharman proves the glory days are long gone.
4. AllofMP3.com
In September the major credit card companies blacklisted the Russian paid download service. Then AllofMP3.com became a pawn in US/Russian trade negotiations where it was used as a bargaining chip in discussions over Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization. The Russians aggreed to shut down illegal sites, but AllofMP3.com is still online - with site traffic up according to Alexa. The RIAA has now announced it will sue AllofMP3.com for damages and its domain. Odd why such a suit is necessary if that site is supposed to disappear soon? Maybe, just maybe, there is more here. We originally wrote off AllofMP3.com, but now wonder if it could become... the comeback kid of 2007?
5. Captain Copyright
And his sidekick Lieutenant Lame ...
6. OLGA - Online Guitar Tablature Archive
Shut down again. As far as the music publisers are concerned, if you can figure out the chord progressions of your favorite song - of which 95% of rock songs consist of nothing more than three common chords - you must pay them. If you put them online to save others the trouble you are a thief.
7. Blu-ray and HD-DVD
Mass consumer adoption will not occur until the dust clears - which may take years. Beta and VHS all over again.
8. Amazon Unbox
Troubled functionality and dubious terms created a backlash in the press. Overall, many questioned the value it offered to consumers.
9. Sony BMG
Shelled out $1.4 million in settlement to the states of Texas and California for last winter's rootkit scandal. A few days before Christmas it spent several more million dollars to settle with 39 additional states. Worse for the company is that these lawsuits kept the scandal in the press for over a year, a scandal that taught users to fear the CD format.
10. Digital Rights Management
DRM is not going away soon, but to date it has not succeeded at doing what it was designed to do - stop file sharing. It has succeeded in annoying the consumer, though. Whether that might lead to mass consumer rejection is unclear at this point.
Rich Menta - MP3NewsWire
http://p2pnet.net/story/10833?PHPSESSID=...daf555fe56fcae7
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26. December 2006 @ 13:03 |
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People Swapping PS3s for Wiis?
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday December 25, @10:39PM
from the hardware-horse-trading dept.
Wii (Games) Games
An anonymous reader writes "To add to Sony's problems with the PS3 launch, it now appears that some Playstation 3 owners are trying to trade their PS3s for Wiis. The author writes: 'There's also speculation that people want the Wii because the PS3s best game is Resistance: Fall of Man. This, of course, forget that there are plenty of cool PS3 games on the way, and the PS3 has its own motion sensing technology, which, while not as good as the Wii, is still pretty cool and opens up Sony to emulate some of the Wii's successes.'"
People swapping PS3s for Wiis?
Posted on December 25th, 2006 by Alex Zaharov-Reutt
An online report is suggesting that some PS3 owners are trying to trade their PS3s with Nintendo Wiis. Interesting stuff!
A report at GigaGamez investigates the new phenomenon of PS3 owners trying to trade their Sony games consoles for Nintendo Wiis. The report writer looked up cragslist.com and did indeed find a number of attempts at the trade, something that is a little unusual because there were many more Wiis available to purchase than PS3s, and new stocks of Wiis are on the way.
Apparently, the price of PS3s have also been dropping on eBay, leading the report writer to conclude that perhaps some PS3 owners who managed to purchase more than one PS3 are trying to do a relatively fair swap for a Wii - some are asking for a Wii plus extra cash, others just want to do the swap.
There?s also speculation that people want the Wii because the PS3s best game is Resistance: Fall of Man. This, of course, forget that there are plenty of cool PS3 games on the way, and the PS3 has its own motion sensing technology, which, while not as good as the Wii, is still pretty cool and opens up Sony to emulate some of the Wii?s successes.
Time will only tell who the ultimate winner of the console race will be. But it is definitely interesting to read these reports. Me? I was lucky enough to get a review Wii for Christmas from Nintendo, as well as play it a couple of months ago, well before the official launch. I?ve also been able to play the PS3. Both are stunningly good consoles, as is the Xbox 360. I love all three for different reasons, so even I can?t firmly say which one will win.
But whichever console you go for, whether its one, two or all three - you?re sure to have a great time playing some very cool console games. Game on! And oh yes - Merry Christmas!
# Recent stories on TECH.BLORGE.com: Naked people on Google Earth!
# Elpida's 70 nanometer technology means smaller, faster DRAM
# Wii wins the battle for Christmas 2006
# Opera mobile browser for Samsung mobile phones
# People swapping PS3s for Wiis?
# BBC embraces Internet file-sharing network; it may get swallowed whole
# Wikipedia founder takes on Google/Yahoo with Wikiasari
# Coalition for space exploration's new web site
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/200...-ps3s-for-wiis/
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26. December 2006 @ 13:14 |
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Windows Vista Activation Cracked Yet Again
Brandon Hill (Blog) - December 26, 2006 11:28 AM
Print article Email article 45 comment(s) - last comment JonnyBlaze.. on Dec 26, 2006 at 5:44 PM
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Another day, another Vista activation crack
It was just a week ago that Microsoft's Jim Allchin was talking about Windows Vista security and how the operating system would fend off attacks from malicious code and hackers. Allchin made no mention, however, of the recent successful attempts at cracking Windows Vista's activation scheme.
Earlier this month, pirates found a way to spoof Microsoft's Key Management Service (KMS) server using a VMware image. The software hack allowed pirates to run copies of Windows Vista Business and Enterprise for up to 180 days.
The folks over at Engadget have come across another exploit that allows users to permanently activate Windows Vista using crack files and some registry trickery. The TimeStop Vista cracks only works on 32-bit versions of Windows Vista, so those looking to crack 64-bit versions of the operating system may be out of luck.
The crack effectively stops the countdown times to mandatory Vista activation and freezes the countdown timer at 43,200 minutes (30 days). The countdown timer will not reduce any lower than 30 days.
The makers of the crack note at the bottom of their "instruction manual" that "This article is for educational and informational purpose only." Microsoft likely isn't taking too kindly to this latest activation breach and likely already has a team working to patch up the exploit.
Despite Microsoft?s best efforts to shut down this latest exploit, it does leave us wondering just how secure this new operating system if it can be poked at and prodded this early after release.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5470
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26. December 2006 @ 13:15 |
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AVG ANTI-ROOTKIT.......... The first beta version of the AVG Anti-Rootkit, an advanced utility designed to detect and remove hidden objects known as Rootkits, from your system, is now available for beta testing. Thanks to Major Geeks for the download.....(free).....GO THERE!
http://www.majorgeeks.com/AVG_Anti-Rootkit_d5249.html
AVG Anti-Rootkit 1.0.0.13 Beta
Author: Grisoft
Date: 2006-08-26
Size: 1 Mb
License: Freeware
Requires: Win XP/2K/2003
The first beta version of the AVG Anti-Rootkit, an advanced utility designed to detect and remove hidden objects known as Rootkits, from your system, is now available for beta testing.
AVG Anti-Rootkit can even remove Trojans and Rootkits that are hiding inside NTFS Alternate Data Streams.
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26. December 2006 @ 13:16 |
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FREE BSD LIVE CD..........Live CD featuring the legendary BSD operating system (upon which OSX is based. Can be run straight from CD, no matter what OS you have installed on your hard drive.....(free).....GO THERE!
http://sourceforge.net/projects/livecd/
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26. December 2006 @ 17:02 |
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Do you AOL-Yahoo? Maybe you will, if they merge
12/26/2006 6:08:00 PM, by Ken Fisher
AOL and Yahoo are destined to merge, or so said Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Cohen in a note entitled "Is 2007 the year AOL and Yahoo are in play?" that was sent to investors shortly before the Christmas holiday. Both companies have itches in need of much scratching. Yahoo's problems have been quite visible as of late, as noted in the now infamous Peanut Butter Manifesto. To boil it down to an oversimplification that's still technically true, Yahoo is feeling the heat from Google.
AOL, on the other hand, is feeling the heat from, well, the Internet. The marriage of Time Warner and AOL has always been tough to understand (unless you're Steve Case), and Time Warner has flirted with the idea of selling AOL more than once (they're reportedly thinking about it again, after deciding "no" last year). As of late, the company has been plagued by declining revenues from its search program, which makes sense given that the number of users heading to that portal appears to be dropping off. In the wild world of mergers and acquisitions, this means that AOL needs to toughen up or jump ship, and toughening up is often done with a few reps on the Acquisition Trainer 3000.
Why would either AOL or Yahoo consider a merger? AOL's move away from its subscription business (which miraculously is not already dead) has resulted in the company putting far more emphasis on Internet advertising. And what better way to boost advertising than to add a giant cache of eyeballs to your portfolio? On most days, Yahoo is the top destination online, with eyeballs aplenty. And if Yahoo is in trouble (which I don't think it is, yet), AOL may be on the other end of the phone: "You've got salvation!" Or it could swing the other way, with Yahoo taking AOL off Time Warner's hands. Only one thing is really clear: both companies are encountering doubtful investors, and both companies overlap enough in technology and operating costs that a merger should potentially mean more profit. The note suggests that a Yahoo purchase of AOL could bring a positive upswing for Yahoo in as few as two years, even if the acquisition price was $18 billion and only covered AOL's advertising business.
For its part, the Merrill Lynch note only concludes that this is a strong possibility for 2007, not a foregone conclusion. I bet that's good news for Microsoft. The company's attempt to ramp up its search to compete with either Yahoo or Google looks to have stalled. A Microsoft-Yahoo merger isn't totally out of the realm of possibility, and the Merrill Lynch note even acknowledges this. Microsoft could make another pass at AOL, but that strikes me as a fantastically bad idea, given the "Power of Greyskull" effect of combining the two company's troubled public images (I can see the headlines now: Match made in h ell: Microsoft buys AOL).
The full list of "possible" suitors for AOL includes eBay (considered "not likely" according to the note), Google, Interactive, Microsoft, Comcast (not likely), News Corp. (not likely), Mr. Magoo (just kidding), and NBCU (not likely). Most curious thing about the research note? In running down a list of "cons" relating to the possible merger, "AOL Stigma" is listed for almost all possible suitors except for notably Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061226-8498.html
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J_Bone
Suspended permanently
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26. December 2006 @ 18:24 |
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dude i waaaaaaaas goin throjugh withdrawl and ijust smoked tfr lans of my sstad=hg
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 27. December 2006 @ 05:56
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AfterDawn Addict
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26. December 2006 @ 18:42 |
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Quote:
quote J_Bone
dude i waaaaaaaas goin throjugh withdrawl and ijust smoked tfr lans of my sstad=hg
trying to read what ye posted put me through withdrawl
did ddp tell you to use plain english when you post?
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J_Bone
Suspended permanently
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26. December 2006 @ 18:46 |
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ji mwan the black kettle sigs
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 27. December 2006 @ 05:55
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26. December 2006 @ 20:00 |
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its free, A really Powerful & Free Registry Editor
Dec 26, 2006 - 4:04 PM - by Digital Dave
Not for everyone but, if you play around with the registry as much as I do this really will come in handy.
Registrar Lite is a powerful & immensely flexible registry editor for WinXP/2000/NT/ME/9x that offers a horde of necessary features that are totally lacking in the standard registry editor (RegEdit) packaged with Windows. It?s brought to you by Resplendence Software.
Chaos.com Post and Download
http://www.chaos-laboratory.com/2006/12/...egistry-editor/
Registrar Lite is a powerful & immensely flexible registry editor for WinXP/2000/NT/ME/9x that offers a horde of necessary features that are totally lacking in the standard registry editor (RegEdit) packaged with Windows. It?s brought to you by Resplendence Software.
Registrar Lite sports a Windows Explorer like two-pane interface with a handy navigation toolbar. The features include?
* Background Search and Replace - which, unlike RegEdit doesn?t stop you from browsing the registry while a search is taking place.
* Clipboard support (which means Cut/Copy/Paste) with drag & drop for registry values and keys.
* A cool Bookmark Editor which allows you to add custom descriptions to the bookmarked keys. This is really useful in organising all those cool registry hacks you learnt from the net.
* An Address Bar similar to Explorer which allows you to type in and access any desired key really quick.
* An advanced registry Key/Value Editor that support all existing registry data types.
* Registry key Import & Export functionality with support for all native registry file types.
* Security Editor (only available in Windows XP/2000/NT) thats allow you to set registry key permissions, auditing and ownership.
Registrar Lite Screenshot
The software is really quick-loading and has a pretty small disk footprint of approx. 3.5MB.
It?s a must have for anyone who dabbles in registry tweaking from time to time. It?s FREE. Grab it from the Resplendence Site.
NOTE: Those who do not want to leave the comfort zone of RegEdit and start using a new software, there?s always RegEdit Extensions - which enhances the standard Windows Registry Editor by adding on a subset of the features mentioned above.
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26. December 2006 @ 20:05 |
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XP's No-Reformat, Nondestructive Total-Rebuild Option
Dec 26, 2006 - 11:59 AM - by Digital Dave
"The Langa" has a step-by-step for those who are seeking the knowledge of how to do this.
Fred Langa shows you how to completely rebuild, repair, or refresh an existing XP installation without losing data, and without having to reinstall user software, reformat, or otherwise destructively alter the setup.
Langa Letter: XP's No-Reformat, Nondestructive Total-Rebuild Option
Fred Langa shows you how to completely rebuild, repair, or refresh an existing XP installation without losing data, and without having to reinstall user software, reformat, or otherwise destructively alter the setup.
By Fred Langa
InformationWeek
Jun 19, 2006 12:00 AM (From the June 19, 2006 issue)
Fred LangaIt's one of those software design decisions that makes you scratch your head and wonder, "What were they thinking?"
The "it" in this case is XP's most powerful rebuild/repair option, and yet Microsoft chose to hide it behind seeming dead ends, red herrings, and a recycled interface that makes it hard to find and (at first) somewhat confusing to use.
But it's worth exploring because this option lets you completely and nondestructively rebuild, repair, or refresh an existing XP installation while leaving already-installed software alone (no reinstallation needed!). It also leaves user accounts, names, and passwords untouched and takes only a fraction of the time a full, from-scratch reinstall does. And unlike a traditional full reinstall, this option doesn't leave you with two copies of XP on your hard drive. Instead, you end up with just the original installation, but repaired, refreshed, and ready to go.
We've saved this technique for last in our discussion of the various XP repair/rebuild options because the fixes we've previously discussed are like first aid--the things you try first. For instance, see this discussion on removing limitations on XP's Recovery Console, turning it into a more complete repair tool; or this discussion on the Recovery Console's little-known "Rebuild" command that can cure many boot-related problems. (There's also lots more on the Recovery Console here.
But when the Recovery Console techniques don't work, and you're facing the prospects of a total reformat/reinstall, stop! Try the no-reformat reinstall technique we're about to illustrate, and you just may get your XP setup running again in a fraction of the time and with a fraction of the hassle of a grand mal wipe-and-restore.
The First Fork In The Road
The no-reformat reinstall operation starts with a normal boot from an XP setup CD. Ideally, to save time, use a setup CD that's been "slipstreamed" to include the SP1 and SP2 patches and upgrades. (Need info on slipstreaming? See "How To Save An Hour (Or More) On XP Installs" and also this third-party site.
Start your PC with the setup CD in a drive, and hit a key when you see the following screen:
If instead of booting to the CD your PC boots from the hard drive, you may need to modify your PC's "boot order." It's easy and only takes a minute to make the change so that the PC will check for a bootable CD before trying to boot from the hard drive. See this for more information.
Once your PC starts to boot from the CD, you'll see something like what's shown in Screen 2:
Information Week.com Post
now go here to read the rest
http://www.informationweek.com/news/189400897
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27. December 2006 @ 03:30 |
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Good morning all hope you had happy holidays. Now that I feel among the living again after a day of recuperation from the family gathering I am catching up on my reading. As ever Ireland lots of good informational stuff. Thanks for the thread :)
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Senior Member
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27. December 2006 @ 04:26 |
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Afternoon all :)
Ireland, thanks for the update on AVG Anti-rootkit, I was still running an inferior version. Since BlackLight by F-Secure turned shareware; this will have to do, it does a good job.
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27. December 2006 @ 08:02 |
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RIAA dredges up old/new 'expert'
p2pnet.net News:- Demanding access to RIAA victims' computers is now routine, but the Big 4 Organized Music cartel members have, "escalated their demands to include, 'production of '[a]ny and all computers and/or music listening devices including iPods and MP3 players'," p2pnet posted, writing about the latest Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG attack on the Lindor family in New York.
Now they've added a 'doctor' with a 26-page CV to their arsenal as they attempt to both gain control of online distribution and terrorize their customers around the world into buying Big 4 product and only Big 4 product.
New York home health aide Marie Lindor is helping to ruin the multi-billion-dollar corporate music industry, they profess through their RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America). She's distributing Big 4 'product' online, they say, even though she's a complete computer illiterate.
"Having wrung the cloth dry with Lindor herself," the RIAA came up with, "a refinement to another old ploy - trying to access victims' hard drives, a trick they'd tried on Lindor," p2pnet said, going on, "It's SOP to initially target parents such as Lindor, who's expertise in the areas of computing and computers is zero, knowing full well the cases have absolutely no merit."
Another New York mother, Patti Santangelo knows all about that. Warner, et al, tried, and failed, to target her as a "massive online distributor". They knew it would never swing, but part of the exercise was to enable them to generate spurious mainstream media reports, as well as to force her into 'settling' out of court.
Patti flatly refused and just before Christmas, the RIAA gave up on her, turning on two of her children, who were the real targets.
Marie Lindor's son, Woody, is in the same boat and somehow, some way, the RIAA must prove he's an online distributor of copyrighted music.
Doug Jacobson is doctor the RIAA has hired, "in further support of its motion to compel Ms. Lindor's son to turn over his personal computer and listening devices in UMG v. Lindor," says Recording Industry vs The People.
The implication is that Jacobson is an impartial, independent consultant. But his 26-page CV notwithstanding, he can hardly be said to be that. In fact, his company and Audible Magic, an anti-p2p firm with a long history with the RIAA, are partners.
Jacobson runs Palisade Systems, a company which, like others, is trying to use the Big 4's sue 'em all terror campaign against innocent men, women and children to swell its bank balance, and which also uses the RIAA attack on schools to similarly enrich itself with its PacketHound application,outlined in the RIAA - Educause Request for Information, Palisade Systems, Inc, here.
He also gave testimony for a 2003 US Senate Committee on the Judiciary hearing when he supported the RIAA's specious 'p2p file sharing is responsible for Net pornography' stand.
"Companies like Palisade Systems in conjunction with research universities like Iowa State University will continue to develop new technologies to combat the evolution of peer-to-peer networks," he declared.
Palisade is, "the first network equipment vendor to license Audible Magic?s CopySense technology, adding content sensing capabilities to their products. Audible Magic and Palisade have cross-licensed technologies and have jointly developed the first network appliances that identify copyrighted works 'on the fly' combined with the ability to block individual P2P file trades," boasts Audible Magic.
Way back, when Audible Magic was still trying to hard to prove it was a viable defender of The Truth according to Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, RIAA boss Mitch Bainwol personally touted it around the US congress, trying to sell it as The Answer.
"During early 2004, RIAA executives helped guide Audible Magic CEO Vance Ikezoye around federal government offices, advocating the song-blocking technology as a tool for stopping copyright infringement on file-swapping networks," said CNET News.
Palisade's version of the Audible Magic technology, "sits inside a network, rather than inside a file-swapping program," said CNET. "If installed in a university, for example, it could look inside students' e-mails, instant messages and peer-to-peer transfers, seeking audio 'fingerprints' that could be compared with information in Audible Magic's database."
Meanwhile, Recording Industry vs The People's Ray Bckerman, who's defending Mrs Lindor, says Jacobson has been raised by the RIAA, "despite the facts that the papers were due last week, that Ms. Lindor's son's attorney has objected to the use of expert testimony at all, and that the RIAA has never turned over a hard drive report to Ms. Lindor's attorneys."
Stay tuned.
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you're Chinese and you're looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
Also See:
gain control - Us, Them, p2p and file sharing, December 9, 2006
helping to ruin - RIAA victim wants case dismissed, October 25, 2006
wrung the cloth dry - RIAA attacks Marie Lindor's son, November 22, 2006
flatly refused - Xmas letter from Patti Santangelo, December 24, 2006
the real targets - RIAA goes after Santangelo kids, November 2, 2006
in the same boat - RIAA attacks Marie Lindor's son, November 22, 2006
Recording Industry vs The People - RIAA Submits 26-Page Curriculum Vitae for Its "Expert", December 26, 2006
like others - RIAA: trying it on with MediaSentry, December 17, 2006
defender of The Truth - Vaunted RIAA p2p 'filter' software, June 2, 2004
CNET News - New tool designed to block song swaps, April 21, 2004
(Wednesday 27th December 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/10845?PHPSESSID=...3178f60099990d8
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27. December 2006 @ 08:07 |
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27. December 2006 @ 08:15 |
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GIMPSHOP.......... GIMPShop is a free graphics editor for Mac, Linux, and Windows. It's easy to pick up and learn, especially if you already know Photoshop.....(free).....GO THERE!
Welcome to GIMPShop dot Net
Welcome to GIMPShop dot Net. Your one-stop-shop for all the news, downloads, and tips for GIMPShop. GIMPShop is a free graphics editor for Mac, Linux, and Windows. It's easy to pick up and learn, especially if you already know Photoshop. Check back often for the latest!
GIMPShop is a free Open Source image editor that is similar to the popular Adobe Photoshop. Specifically GIMPShop is a version of the GIMP that has been edited to be more user-friendly for Photoshop users.
GIMPShop was created by Attack of the Show's Scott Moschella. The menu structure and terminology are adapted to to look and feel more like Photoshop, and other adjustments were made to make the GIMP more usable. In the Windows version, the Deweirdifyer Plugin has been used to place all of the various windows into one nesting window, so it will act more like a single program that multiple little programs.. Also the menu structure and terminology are adapted to to look and feel more like Photoshop.
GIMPShop was orginally developed for Mac OS X, but has been ported to Windows, Linux, and Solaris.
QUOTE
Hi! Thanks for stopping by! This site is dedicated to one of the coolest apps on the web, GIMPShop. My little site is a gateway to tons of information about GIMPShop, The GIMP, and other open source programs. I want to make clear, I am not Scott Moschella, creator of GIMPShop, nor have I done anything related to the making of GIMPShop. I'm just a fan. I don't know how many "fan sites" there are to programs out there, but this is one of them. I hope this site will be useful in your quest for more knowledge about GIMPShop.
- Enjoy!
GO HERE
http://www.gimpshop.net/
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27. December 2006 @ 08:19 |
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Why piracy is still more common than legal video downloads
12/27/2006 9:27:38 AM, by Ryan Paul
A recent study conducted by consumer and retail analysis group NPD claims that peer-to-peer (P2P) video downloads (which in the study are synonymous with illegal downloads) are outpacing purchases from legitimate video download services five to one. The study, which was performed with NPD's VideoWatch tracking software on "the home computers of more than 12,500 U.S. households," states that 8 percent of Internet-using households downloaded video content from P2P services, whereas 2 percent paid to download video content from legitimate providers. The study also indicates that nearly 60 percent of video files downloaded from P2P sites were adult-film content, while 20 percent was TV show content and 5 percent was mainstream movie content.
Avast, matey! Opt-in!
The opt-in methodology used by NPD could lead to significant under-reporting of P2P downloading since those who are voluntarily tracked by NPD's software are probably going to be less inclined to violate copyright law. Chances are that the ratio of "legal" to "illegal" downloading is further tipped in piracy's favor than NPD's study indicates. Nevertheless, assuming that NPD's study approximates reality, one could attribute the strength of piracy and the limited adoption of commercial and P2P-based video downloading to several factors.
First, legal movie download services are still relatively new, and the movie industry's trepidation has prevented a diverse body of content from becoming commercially available. I still don't know of any legal video download service that offers my favorite episodes of Babylon 5, for instance. If the new digital economy is all about the so-called "Long Tail," then online video stores are missing a major opportunity by not playing their cards and rapidly expanding their selection. This is doubly true since the "selection" of content available on the P2P networks is truly impressive. P2P wins the the selection category hands down. This is doubly true when you consider that NPD found that 60 percent of P2P downloads were pornographic in nature.
Another obvious factor is Content Restriction Annulment and Protection (CRAP) technologies, more commonly known as DRM. Consumers who pay for digital video downloads want to be able to play those videos with the software of their choice, without a lot of trouble or the imposition of additional limitations. Consumers also want to be able to convert legitimately downloaded content to other formats so that it can be played on mobile devices. Pervasive DRM and high prices make legal video downloading much less appealing to the average consumer.
Consider this one seemingly small molehill that is truly a mountain: burning to DVD. I have my TV connected to my main desktop computer, so getting content onto DVD isn't a big deal for me. Yet that's the exception, not the rule. If you want to be able to burn content to a disc, the P2P networks will serve you better because you can do anything you want with that content since it has no DRM. This means that if you want to burn a DVD or transform a video for use on a mobile device, legit options will leave you disappointed. P2P wins the freedom of use category.
Let's not forget about quality. Maybe Joe Public doesn't lust after HD content or high-bitrate audio, but the P2P world does. Experienced P2P users can find movies and audio whose quality blows away that which is offered online. P2P isn't a panacea in this regard, but when you're trying to convert people away from piracy, charging $11.99 for a low-quality DRM-laden movie when an HD version is a P2P network away, and free... well, are the statistics really that surprising? P2P wins in the quality category, because experienced users can almost always find what they want. There are some real duds out there on P2P, of course, but not enough that it seems to be driving people away from P2P.
Last but not least, there's the pricing. It's hard to compete with "free," but the rise of legitimate services show that people are willing to pay. P2P clearly gives you more bang for your buck, but of course, your usage might also be illegal. More important for this story is the fact that pricing is a moving target. Matters related to increased selection, quality, and the removal of DRM should all affect pricing. What's clear is that current offerings aren't exactly putting the P2P networks on the endangered species list. The download services need to take note, adjust features, and start experimenting with pricing.
STBs to the rescue?
Right now, the current leader in the video download market is Apple, which boasts nine out of every ten digital movies sold in the NPD study. I'm inclined to believe that the market for commercial video downloads will be pushed into the mainstream by set-top devices that provide integrated downloading services that go beyond current "on demand" services by carrying more selection and offering "download-to-own" videos. Such products insulate users from some of the frustrations of DRM while solving the problem of getting the content to a television screen. Apple's upcoming iTV product is a good example of set-top box (STB) hardware with an integrated video download service. Microsoft's increasingly popular Xbox Live Video service is also a great example. I'd like to see NPD perform a similar study in a year or two comparing adoption of set-top-based video downloads with computer-based video downloads so we can see how products like the Xbox 360 and the iTV impact the market.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061227-8500.html
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