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*HOT* Tech News And Downloads, I Would Read This Thread And Post Any Good Info
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9. February 2007 @ 08:45 |
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EMI decision to go DRM-free imminent
2/9/2007 9:09:59 AM, by Eric Bangeman
Reports are surfacing that EMI is in negotiations with some of the leading music stores to offer a substantial portion of its music catalog without DRM, with an announcement due as early as today. Under one scenario, music stores like Napster, Real Rhapsody, and others would fork over sizable advance payments in exchange for the right to sell music as unprotected MP3s. Another industry source reports that EMI was also discussing the possibility of selling MP3s on MySpace using SnoCap.
All of the parties reportedly involved are remaining close-mouthed on whatever negotiations may be taking place, but the scuttlebutt is that the negotiations have been going on for months. Needless to say, any decision by one of the big four labels to make a sizable chunk of its music available for download sans DRM would be ground-breaking.
EMI has experimented with DRM-free music in the past. The most recent occurrence was in December 2006 when they gave Yahoo Music the green light to sell a single from Norah Jones and a couple of tracks from Relient K as MP3s. Selling a large portion of its catalog as unprotected MP3s would put it at odds with the RIAA and other major labels, who firmly back the continued use of DRM. "Let me be clear. We advocate the continued use of DRM in the protection of our?and our artists'?intellectual property," said Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman, Jr. during his company's quarterly earnings call.
Steve Jobs has gone on record saying that Apple would gladly sell DRM-free music if the labels agree. If the reports are true, EMI is close to taking Jobs up on his offer, with an EMI spokesperson telling Reuters that the label is pleased with how its MP3 experiments have turned out. "The results have been positive," said the spokesperson. "[The] lack of operability between a proliferating range of devices and hardware and the digital platforms for delivering music is more and more becoming an issue for music consumers and EMI has been engaging with our various partners to find a solution."
Legal music downloads have made up for some of the decline in CD sales, but the labels' decision to insist on DRM wrappers for every track has arguably played a significant role in Apple's ownership of the digital music market. Puncturing the closed DRM ecosystems with unprotected files would likely allow other music services to sell iPod-compatible music for the first time (hacks aside), putting a chink in Apple's armor. More importantly, it would give consumers the same freedom they get with the purchase of an album on CD: the ability to listen to it on the device of their choosing without any restrictions.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070209-8803.html
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9. February 2007 @ 08:54 |
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9. February 2007 @ 09:05 |
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DVDFab 3.0.8.0 is out
Dear all,
DVDFab products 3.0.8.0 is out (02/09/2007):
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9. February 2007 @ 09:51 |
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Oi, boyo, thanks for the TUBEME link. I bookmarked it. The site/user is out of bandwidth for now. Looks cool. I have been wanting to DL some slap bass player lessons. I am psyched to try this one.
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9. February 2007 @ 17:39 |
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Sex Life and Long Life
By Christopher Wanjek
LiveScience's Bad Medicine Columnist
posted: 06 February 2007
09:01 am ET
Men, take note: Your penis might be telling you something.
Two studies published last week reveal such a correlation between erectile dysfunction and chronic diseases that doctors think the diagnosis of poor sexual health should warrant screening for a serious, underlying or emerging illness.
The studies might very well raise the profile of erectile dysfunction, or ED, from a trivial disease of inconvenience treatable with a little blue pill to a warning sign from below that can save your life.
Researchers also confirmed that ED is less about old age and more about poor health, with men as young as age 20 reporting erection problems attributed to obesity or inactivity.
Get up, exercise
One study, led by Elizabeth Selvin of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, published in the American Journal of Medicine, found that nearly 20 percent of the 2,100 men participating in a health and nutrition survey had ED, often as a result of poor physical health or inactivity. That would translate to 18 million American men nationwide.
In this study, over 50 percent of subjects with diabetes and 44 percent of those with high blood pressure had trouble achieving an erection either "sometimes" or "always." Ditto for 22 percent of obese men and 26 percent of subjects who reported such sedentary behavior as watching three or more hours of television per day. It didn't matter if they were ogling The Golden Girls or Desperate Housewives.
Conversely, only 10 percent of physically active men ages 20 and up reported sexual problems. One take-home message from this study is that you have to get off the couch if you want to move into the bedroom. Selvin said that her group's research strongly suggests that lifestyle changes can prevent the onset of ED.
Cause and effect and cause
A second paper, led by Rosemary Basson of the University of British Columbia, published in The Lancet, details how sexual dysfunction can herald a chronic disease. The authors reviewed scores of health studies from the past six years and found cases in which ED predated the diagnosis of coronary heart disease more than half the time.
Similarly, one case they reviewed revealed that otherwise healthy men with erectile dysfunction were twice as likely to develop heart problems at the end of the one-year study.
The take-home message in this study is that any man with ED should be screened regularly for heart disease and diabetes. The authors said that sexual health needed to be part of the doctor-patient dialogue. Men are often too embarrassed to mention the topic with their doctor; or they might associate ED with total impotence and not feel they have a problem if they can occasionally achieve an erection; or they might view ED as a natural part of getting older and thus not see it as a health issue. Doctors need to initiate the discussion if the patient does not.
The Viagra revolution
Viagra and similar prescription medications have revolutionized the treatment of ED. They work, despite a few pesky side effects such as blurred vision and, in rare cases, temporary blindness. Guys don't see to care.
As the Viagra website notes, however, this pill is only one of many treatments for ED. The treatment depends on the cause. Sometimes the cause is mental and can be treated with psychotherapy. Other times the cause is chronic fatigue or from certain medications. This is why a doctor's diagnosis is needed to determine the appropriate remedy.
Treating ED with a pill, however, does nothing prevent or ameliorate a chronic disease. Yes, you're having sex, and that's nice for now; but you have to stay healthy to continue to have sex, even with Viagra. That part only comes with improvements in diet and exercise.
The Hopkins study found that 30 percent of men over age 70 did not have ED. That could be you or your partner someday.
Christopher Wanjek is the author of the books ?Bad Medicine? and ?Food At Work.? Got a question about Bad Medicine? Email Wanjek. If it?s really bad, he just might answer it in a future column. Bad Medicine appears each Tuesday on LIveScience.
http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/070206_bad_ed.html
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10. February 2007 @ 09:29 |
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Copyright tax for Canadian iPods?
p2pnet.net News:- A vested interest group wants all Canadian mp3 players to come pre-loaded ------ with a new copyright tax.
Behind the demand are Warner Music (US), EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France) and Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), the members of the Big 4 Organized Music cartel. They're losing money largely because of bad management, bad business decisions, bad product and and their refusal to remodel outmoded practices to take into account the fact they're now operating in the 21st digital century, catering to a customer base which is in large part, and for the first time in history, consistently and universally well informed, thanks to Net p2p communications.
In 2003, the Big 4 introduced a bizarre sue 'em all marketing scheme under which they're trying to force hundreds of millions of their own customers around the world, whom they call file sharing "criminals"and "thieves," into buying over-priced, low quality digital music downloads.
Meanwhile, in 2005, Canada's Federal Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada ruled the tax set by the Canadian Copyright Board on the internal memory of digital audio recorders was illegal and the decision meant makers had to refund $15 and $25 retail surcharges on mp3 players.
The Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC) had been trying to claim the board didn't have the authority to impose a levy on memory permanently embedded in digital audio recorders and since December 12, 2003, had been collecting on non-removable memory, including both flash memory and hard drives, in digital audio recorders.
The CPCC boasts Richard Pfohl, general counsel to the Big 4's CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association of America), as a board member.
"When you go and buy an iPod, the retailer gets paid," says another board member, David Basskin, quoted by the Canadian Press. "So you can't say that the people who make the music should get a free ride."
Now the group wants the copyright board to say mp3 players fall under the category of audio recording media and if it gets it way, the price of portable music systems could rocket to $75 in some instances, depending on players' hard drive capacities.
But, "They're really getting quite existential here," CP has CIPPIC's (Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic) David Fewer saying.
Mp3 players fall into both the categories of "player" and "medium" and the CPCC is, "asking the copyright board to look into the sould of an iPod and determine its true identity," says Fewer and,"That's hard to do."
However, Fewer says the CCPC demand is a step in the right direction because the other legal alternatives are impractical.
"It's a good way to get our government to start thinking about policy in a different way than it has," he says in the story.
"Digital copyright under the past few years has always been dictated by the big labels, which adopt the perspective that fans are thieves and that the lock 'em up and sue em strategy is the only way to go."
http://p2pnet.net/story/11283?PHPSESSID=...a277a1925799ab7
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10. February 2007 @ 09:39 |
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Father of MPEG Replies To Jobs On DRM
Posted by kdawson on Saturday February 10, @01:00PM
from the way-forward dept.
Music Encryption Apple
marco_marcelli writes with a link to the founder and chairman of MPEG, Leonardo Chiariglione, replying to Steve Jobs on DRM and TPM. After laying the groundwork by distinguishing DRM from digital rights protection, Chiariglione suggests we look to GSM as a model of how a fully open and standardized DRM stack enabled rapid worldwide adoption. He gently reminds Jobs (and us) that there exists a reference implementation of such a DRM stack ? Chillout ? that would be suitable for use in the music business.
A simple way to skin the DRM cat
Steve Jobs, the founder and CEO of Apple, the company that more than many others has offered innovative solutions based on digital technologies, deserves an applause for restarting a languishing debate on the ?why and how? of Digital Rights Management (DRM), particularly of his own FairPlay.
He did forget one thing, though. It is true that he is not the only one but he uses the term DRM without defining it. Don?t say that there is no need to be pernickety about it as everybody talks about DRM. It so happens that a good share of the contentions around DRM stems from the fact that there are too many conflicting perceptions of the DRM ?thing?.
So, let?s first clear this one by stating the obvious: ?DRM is a means to manage rights with digital technologies?. The definition is a tautology but when there is confusion the best is to start from the obvious. If I create a file and, before sending it, I digitally sign it, I am using a form of DRM because I digitally manage my right make sure that the recipients of my file are informed if somebody has tampered with it. Ditto if I send an email with PGP.
It is apparently a different story if I release an MP3 file of a song composed and played by me with a Creative Commons (CC) licence. In this case I am managing my author's and performer's rights attaching (or making reference to) a human readable licence. If, however, I express the CC licence in a computer-readable form, I digitally manage my rights, i.e. I apply DRM.
There are, however, people who add to the DRM (management) technologies described above other (protection) technologies in order to physically force people to comply with their expressed rights. It is an abuse of words to call these technologies DRM (even the most oppressive of managers do not make recourse to physical forcing), but I do not object as long as the original ?M as in management? meaning is not forfeited.
Typically protection technologies scramble the bits in such a way that only those who own the descrambling key can actually access the information in an understandable form. Typically you also get the key only if you pay for the thing and you can play or otherwise use the content only if you employ a device specially-tailored to the particular service. The iPod is one such device that plays protected music tracks sold by the iTunes online music service run by Apple. Other music players also exist that can only play music from specific online services, such as Zune and Connect. None of these are capable of playing music purchased from competing services.
The theory has it that a healthy market of competing products and services benefits users. The practice, however, is that a user with 3 different players would need to buy 3 times the same song to be able to listen to it on all three players. Call it benefit...
Since its introduction 5 years ago some 90 million iPods and some 2 billion iTunes tracks have been sold. The numbers look impressive but simple math tells you that for each iPod sold only an average of just 22 tracks have been purchased (and iTunes is by far the most successful service). Probably more important is the fact that the number has been nearly constant over the years and is actually decreasing, and that statistical samplings show that most of the hard-disk or flash-memory space of iPods is full of MP3 that users can freely enjoy.
Still people are complaining that their inability to play legitimately purchased iTunes tracks on the device of their choice is affecting their rights. Here Steve Jobs has to do a bit of tight-rope walking because he wears at least two hats: the ?electronic retailer's? and the "device manufacturer's" hats. Wearing the former Steve Jobs says: the importance of iTunes is marginal (this is what his words amount to) because people use the iPod most of the times to listen to an MP3, so why should people care? The answer is easy: we do care because the law in most countries forces us to be serious about protected music (and other types of content), as you go to jail if you tamper with the underlying protection technology, and you never know what happens to technology because what is marginal and a simple nuisance today can become mainstrean and a major hindrance tomorrow.
Wearing the latter hay Steve Jobs makes a bold proposal: let?s get rid of DRM altogether for digital music. Here is where the DRM management/protection ambiguity affects the message because while it makes sense to claim, based on empirical evidence, that protected music does not sell, it remains to be demonstrated that managed music does not. That would be like saying that the Creative Commons movement is a hollow shell. Indeed there is a whole range of business models that can be based on pure DRM (management) technologies and once you start with management...
Knowing that his proposition may not find all the receptive ears it deserves Steve Jobs does address the message coming from his protesting customers. He recognises that a DRM (protection) system that is transparent to the user would be an advantage to them. After all the DVD?s CSS does exactly that, were it not for the unfortunate ?region code?. Curiously Steve Jobs restricts his analysis to just one option: how can Apple safely license its DRM technology to other manufacturers and be able to keep its obligations vis-à vis the record companies.
Others have already pointed out some of the weaknesses of his reasoning which, by the way, would not achieve full interoperability as buyers of Zune and Connect players would still be left out in the cold. My intention here is to get inspiration from probably the most successful communication system ever ? GSM ? to find a good way forward. Indeed most people are unaware that this 20-year old communication system is based on a very sophisticated DRM (protection) technology that has been standardised by ETSI which also handles the governance. Do you think that there would be literally billions of people using GSM billions of times a day if the system had been designed to allow incompatible DRM systems? Incidentally I am not aware of any anti-DRM guru protesting the use of DRM (protection) or avoiding it because it uses DRM.
The way to go is to have a standard system like the one used in GSM that anybody can practical implement and anybody can use to enjoy the content that they legitimately purchase. If you do not like the GSM example, do you think that we would have had the MP3 phenomenon without the MP3 standard or the billions of video files taken by cell phones without the MP4 standard?
Let's suppress the enthusiam and avoid an easy criticism: clearly a DRM standard is a different beast than most other standards. The ways people apply DRM for their needs are countless, starting from the management/protection varieties, continuing with the network/broadcast/stand alone varieties, supporting user privacy etc. It would be really hard to define a ?one size fits all? DRM standard. But look no further because there is already a solution. The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) has produced most of the standard DRM technologies that are required by a DRM system. The Digital Media Project (DMP) has added a few more technologies that were missing integrating them with the basic MPEG technologies to provide complete solutions, is now setting up the governance of the system based on established practices and is releasing Chillout, the reference software of its specification, as open source under the Mozilla Public Licence v.1.1.
Should the use of the standard DRM be made compulsory? In spite of the evidence coming from GSM (the fact that in Europe the use of the standard is compulsory is quoted as the main reason for its world-wide success), there is no need to do as much in the age of digital media. Digital Media in Italia (dmin.it). an Italian initiative advocating the use of a freely selected DRM on the part of an entrepreneur if seconded by the use of the standard DRM is building evidence that this is not necessarily a requirement.
Twenty years ago the mobile telephony industry barely existed and 10 years ago it was still serving a small élite community. By cleverly designing a standard ? GSM ? that accounted for users concerns ? DRM ? the mobile telephony industry has become global and multiplied its size by orders of magnitude and is posed to become the first digital technology affecting each of the six billion humans on the Earth. While getting rich that industry has made billions of people happy. In contrast with this the music industry, because of the absence of a standard that accounted for users concerns ? DRM ? has shrunk in size. While punishing its stakeholders that industry has made millions of people unhappy.
Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
About the author
Leonardo has some say in matters realted to digital media
* He chairs the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), the international ISO/IEC standards committee that has ushered in the digital media age
* He chairs the Digital Media Project (DMP), a not-for-profit organisation with the mission to promote continuing successful development, deployment and use of digital media that respect the rights of creators and rights holders to exploit their works, the wish of end users to fully enjoy the benefits of digital media and the interests of various value-chain players to provide products and services
* He coordinates Digital Media in Italia (dmin.it), an interdisciplinary, open, not-for-profit group with the goal to make proposals of action that will enable Italy to acquire a primary role in the exploitation of the global digital media phenomenon.
http://www.chiariglione.org/contrib/060209chiariglione01.htm
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12. February 2007 @ 06:17 |
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FREE,WAVOSAUR.......... Wavosaur is a powerful free audio editor for Windows XP,
ideal for editing audio clips, sound designing, mastering, audio mangling and recording of your digital audio sounds. Wavosaur lets you edit all your samples and audio recording. You can cut, copy, paste parts of your digital recording. Wavosaur provides many tools and shortcuts to make the editing very fast and efficient. The program was designed to give a powerful audio editor but very easy and fast to use. Wavosaur is also a VST host, it means you can use VST effects on your audio recording, listen in real time to the audio processed by effects, and apply the effects of course. You can make a chain of effects, this means endless possibilities with all the VST plugins effects available nowadays. Wavosaur can record from your soundcard inputs, and lets you monitor your audio ports. Inserting loop points and markers to your audio files is very easy. Wavosaur is also MIDI controlable, you can use a MIDI control surface to command the main functions of Wavosaur.....(free).....GO THERE!
http://www.wavosaur.com/
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14. February 2007 @ 08:41 |
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A little bit of luxery. 4 port USB hub with built in hot plate for keeping your coffee warm.
There is no such thing as "U.S English" |
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14. February 2007 @ 09:39 |
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Teenage drinkers face alcohol test
* 14 February 2007
* From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
* Andy Coghlan
Big Brother has arrived at a high school in New Jersey. Determined to stop their students consuming alcohol at weekends, staff at Pequannock Township High School in Morris county are to start using a controversial test that can detect if students have been drinking up to a week earlier.
The test measures urine concentrations of an ethanol breakdown product called ethyl glucuronide (EtG). "We plan to use this new test as part of our comprehensive testing programme to keep our kids safe from the dangers of drugs and alcohol," says Larrie Reynolds, superintendent of Pequannock High School. "About four to eight kids will be tested every day." In New Jersey drinking alcohol is illegal under the age of 21.
Drinking is a growing problem in US schools. "As many as half of our kids are doing this," says Reynolds. An estimated 1700 US high-school students died from alcohol poisoning or related accidents in 2005 alone.
However, the EtG test poses a problem. It is so sensitive that even total abstainers can sometimes test positive. Alcohol absorbed from soaps, mouthwashes or contaminated vinegars or by drinking a sip of communion wine can be enough.
?The EtG test poses a problem. It is so sensitive that even total abstainers can sometimes test positive?
Despite this, the test's popularity is growing, and around a dozen commercial versions are now available. Estimates by the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) suggest that as many as 20,000 tests are being performed each month, mainly among medical staff - including 9000 physicians - pledged to abstinence following the discovery that they have a drink problem. Law firms and the military have started using it on their staff too. Greg Skipper, medical director of the Alabama Physician Health Program, says the test has been invaluable for monitoring doctors in recovery from alcoholism. "It enables them to comply, stay sober and keep their jobs," he says.
Skipper is, however, critical of health boards and agencies in some states that he says have been automatically sacking people who fail the EtG test without using other tests to confirm its findings. In the three to four years that the test has been commercially available in the US, more than 100 nurses in recovery from alcoholism have complained of losing their jobs after testing positive despite, they say, not drinking. Blood tests for a second metabolite such as phosphatidyl ethanol would be far less likely to give a false positive, as this substance appears only after large amounts of alcohol have been consumed, but these tests are more expensive.
In 2006, Skipper helped compile an advisory document for the DHHS which stated that "legal or disciplinary action based solely on a positive EtG test is inappropriate". Since the advisory was published, Skipper says there has been a fall in the number of complaints of unfair dismissal posted on a website he set up (www.ethylglucuronide.com).
Using the EtG test alone, the risk of false positives remains, particularly in hospital wards, where nurses and doctors routinely use soaps containing ethanol. "In intensive care units, nurses and doctors apply it every 5 minutes," Skipper says. He has shown that the test could give a positive result in ward staff who have simply breathed vapour in. Even bystanders can test positive.
Both Skipper and the test's creator, Friedrich Wurst of the psychiatric clinic at the University of Basel, Switzerland, say that there is not yet an agreed threshold concentration that can be used to separate people who have been drinking from those exposed to alcohol from other sources. Below 1000 nanograms of EtG per millilitre of urine is probably "innocent", and above 5000 booze is almost certainly to blame. In between there is a "question zone", Skipper says.
Skipper backs use of the tests by schools if they accept its limitations. "Schools must have a system for dealing with positives, managed by a medical review officer, and not automatically expel the child," he says.
From issue 2591 of New Scientist magazine, 14 February 2007, page 14
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14. February 2007 @ 11:22 |
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FastStone Image Viewer 2.9 Freeware 2007-01-18
[Rated 5 Stars at Download.com]
A fast, stable, user-friendly image browser, converter and editor. It has a nice array of features that include image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping and color adjustments. Its innovative but intuitive full-screen mode provides quick access to EXIF information, thumbnail browser and major functionalities via hidden toolbars that pop up when your mouse touches the four edges of the screen. Other features include a high quality magnifier and a musical slideshow with 150+ transitional effects, as well as lossless JPEG transitions, drop shadow effects, image annotation, scanner support, histogram and much more.
FastStone Capture 5.3 Freeware 2007-02-12
[Rated 5 Stars at SnapFiles]
A powerful, flexible and intuitive screen-capture utility. It allows you to capture anything on the screen including windows, objects, full screen, rectangle / freehand-selected regions and scrolling windows/web pages.
FastStone MaxView 2.0 Freeware 2006-12-08
A tiny, very fast and innovative image viewer that supports all major graphic formats. Its intuitive layout and commands allow everyone, from beginners to professionals, to view and manipulate images quickly and efficiently.
FastStone Photo Resizer 2.4 Freeware 2007-01-08
An image converter / resizer intended to enable users to convert, rename, resize, crop, rotate, change color depth, add text and watermark to images in a quick and easy BATCH mode.
DOWNLOAD HERE
http://www.faststone.org/download.htm
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14. February 2007 @ 19:18 |
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Firefox hands out cookies from strangers
Be careful, kids
By Dan Goodin in San Francisco → More by this author
Published Thursday 15th February 2007 02:08 GMT
Firefox suffers from a flaw that allows attackers to manipulate the authentication cookies of virtually any website, a vulnerability Bugzilla has deemed severe. It's the second major security lapse for the open-source browser in as many days.
The defect, which stems from the way Firefox writes to the "location.hostname" property of the document object model, can be exploited by a specially doctored script that sets variables that normally wouldn't be accepted when parsing a regular URL, according to researcher Michal Zalewski, who uncovered Monday's vulnerability as well.
By injecting text string that includes "\x00," normal safeguards can be bypassed, allowing the browser to be fooled about the origin of a domain trying to set or modify a cookie. The sleight of hand makes a victim's browser appear to be talking to trustedbank.com when in fact it is receiving data from evilhackers.com.
The attacker would also be able to change the document.domain accordingly. A demonstration of the vulnerability, which has been tested on version 2.0.0.1, is available here.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/15/firefox_vuln/
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14. February 2007 @ 19:29 |
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Belarc Advisor 7.2.10.2
Author: Belarc, Inc.
Date: 2007-02-14
Size: 1.03 Mb
License: Freeware
Requires: Win All
Downloaded: 190484 Times
The Belarc Advisor builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware and displays the results in your Web browser. All of your PC profile information is kept private on your PC and is not sent to any web server.
Limitations: Free for personal use.
download here
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download1385.html
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14. February 2007 @ 19:54 |
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The end of anonymity on the Internet?
www As the joke goes, on the Internet nobody knows you're a dog. But although anonymity has been part of Internet culture since the first browser, it's also a major obstacle to making the Web a safe place to conduct business: Internet fraud and identity theft cost consumers and merchants several billion dollars last year. And many of the other more troubling aspects of the Internet, from spam emails to sexual predators, also have their roots in the ease of masking one?s identity in the online world.
Change, however, is on the way. Already over 20 million PCs worldwide are equipped with a tiny security chip called the Trusted Platform Module, although it is as yet rarely activated. But once merchants and other online services begin to use it, the TPM will do something never before seen on the Internet: provide virtually fool-proof verification that you are who you say you are. Practical Futurist: The end of online anonymity - The Practical Futurist - MSNBC.com Linked by shanmuga Wednesday, 14th February 2007 9:24PM
Let?s see some ID, please
The end of anonymity on the Internet?
By Michael Rogers
Columnist
Special to MSNBC
Updated: 4:53 a.m. PT Dec 13, 2005
As the joke goes, on the Internet nobody knows you?re a dog. But although anonymity has been part of Internet culture since the first browser, it?s also a major obstacle to making the Web a safe place to conduct business: Internet fraud and identity theft cost consumers and merchants several billion dollars last year. And many of the other more troubling aspects of the Internet, from spam emails to sexual predators, also have their roots in the ease of masking one?s identity in the online world.
Change, however, is on the way. Already over 20 million PCs worldwide are equipped with a tiny security chip called the Trusted Platform Module, although it is as yet rarely activated. But once merchants and other online services begin to use it, the TPM will do something never before seen on the Internet: provide virtually fool-proof verification that you are who you say you are.
Story continues below ↓ advertisement
Some critics say that the chip will change the free-wheeling Web into a police state, while others argue that it?s needed to create a safe public space. But the train has already left the station: by the end of this decade, a TPM will almost certainly be part of your desktop, laptop and even cell phone.
The TPM chip was created by a coalition of over one hundred hardware and software companies, led by AMD, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft and Sun. The chip permanently assigns a unique and permanent identifier to every computer before it leaves the factory and that identifier can?t subsequently be changed.
It also checks the software running on the computer to make sure it hasn?t been altered to act malevolently when it connects to other machines: that it can, in short, be trusted. For now, TPM-equipped computers are primarily sold to big corporations for securing their networks, but starting next year TPMs will be installed in many consumer models as well.
With a TPM onboard, each time your computer starts, you prove your identity to the machine using something as simple as a PIN number or, preferably, a more secure system such as a fingerprint reader. Then if your bank has TPM software, when you log into their Web site, the bank?s site also ?reads? the TPM chip in your computer to determine that it?s really you. Thus, even if someone steals your username and password, they won?t be able to get into your account unless they also use your computer and log in with your fingerprint. (In fact, with TPM, your bank wouldn?t even need to ask for your username and password ? it would know you simply by the identification on your machine.)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10441443/
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14. February 2007 @ 20:12 |
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Keeping secrets from web spies
keys "Hackers today will often use a dictionary style attack. This means they can very quickly use all of the words in the dictionary as well as common celebrity or sports names," explained McAfee security analyst Greg Day.
"For example, many people still use what they think is a smart technique of switching out some of those characters for numbers, for example changing an A into a 4. But that's a very commonly known technique." BBC NEWS | Programmes | Click | Keeping secrets from web spies Linked by shanmuga Wednesday, 14th February 2007 8:52PM
Keeping secrets from web spies
BBC Click's Dan Simmons
By Dan Simmons
Reporter, BBC Click Online
Picking a password is a tricky business. And the temptation is to go for something that is easy to remember like our partner's birthday, a pet's name, or a film star.
Online bank login screen, BBC
Passwords: Your comments
The trouble is, given just a few attempts it also makes it pretty easy to crack.
"Hackers today will often use a dictionary style attack. This means they can very quickly use all of the words in the dictionary as well as common celebrity or sports names," explained McAfee security analyst Greg Day.
"For example, many people still use what they think is a smart technique of switching out some of those characters for numbers, for example changing an A into a 4. But that's a very commonly known technique."
"I think what worries us more these days is we use online communities, like MySpace or Bebo, to meet and chat with other people, and people are so willing to hand over this information - favourite film star, etc. As a password stealer I only need to chat to you for a few minutes and I can probably commonly guess your password."
The ideal password is used for one site only, it uses letters in both upper and lower case, numbers, and other characters. Something like this: EAJst9s74*$D!2 - but the problem is that it is just not easy to remember.
Password storage
In fact, with the average number of passwords estimated to be around 20 per person, and that number growing at 20% each year, it is no wonder that many of us cannot keep track of the one we might need.
So if we are not to lapse into using the same password for all our accounts - we need a safe place to store them - somewhere we can access wherever we are.
You can go and use internet search tools like Google and you'll find lots of free tools that allow you to listen in to someone else's PC
Greg Day, McAfee
One answer is to lock them up online. There are many choices available but a new service from BoxKnox is specifically designed to store passwords, offering encrypted storage, at no cost, while protecting anonymity.
You do not need to leave any personal details - just set a username and password. Of course this is a password you really do not want to forget.
But complicated passwords, securely stored, do not mean you are safe.
Gloved hand taking cash from safe, BBC
Identity theft can mean your bank accounts gets rifled
To fully protect yourself you need to be aware of how hackers might try to gain access to your accounts.
"Nowadays it's become incredibly easy for anybody to set up and use something like a keylogger," said Mr Day.
"You can go and use internet search tools like Google and you'll find lots of free tools that allow you to listen in to someone else's PC."
Keyloggers record every keystroke we make and send it on to the hacker. And although they can be used for legitimate tracking - like checking what your children do online - they can be used to spy on anyone.
It took me five minutes to find and download one such program. I then got our security expert to see if he could find out what I'd been up to.
He very quickly established that I'd been to Hotmail, and could easily identify my username and password, date of birth, postcode.
"You'd be amazed," he said, "at what an attacker could do with that."
Criminal activity
Many keyloggers and spyware programs take screenshots of the sites you visit and can copy files from your PC.
These may include any passwords you have asked your computer to remember for you to speed up logging in. These are held as cookies on your machine.
Keyloggers are not illegal to own. It is how they are used which can be criminal.
Computer keyboard, Eyewire
Keylogging has been around almost as long as computer keyboards
Last month keylogging software found its way onto hundreds of PCs belonging to account holders at Sweden's largest Bank, Nordea.
In the biggest heist of customer accounts on record more than $1m (£513,000) was stolen.
The Metropolitan Police say thousands of customers in the UK have also been hit by this software.
So what can we do to protect ourselves: firstly - a well configured and up-to-date anti-virus programme should pick most of this type of spyware - especially if it is trying to use our internet connection to send out information.
There are many to choose from, some of which are free. We were using McAfee's Security Suite 2006 but it failed to pick up the keylogger while we were offline.
It is not clear why, but its labs say the software would normally warn users they are being tracked.
Of course one way to beat keyloggers is to not touch the keyboard at all when logging in.
There are several USB devices you can use to automatically log on. We used the Codemeter USB device which holds all my login names and passwords.
Codemeter USB device
It automatically detects when I need them and fills in the necessary boxes for me. I do not have to remember all my passwords which are encrypted on the key.
I just need to remember one master password to make it work - and I must make sure I do not leave the USB device behind.
And the security industry is starting to look at more pre-emptive ways to protect us - before any spyware can get in.
"The security industry has turned to a proactive approach," explained Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer at security firm Finjan.
"We no longer need to wait for anti-virus updates in order to find out if something is bad. You can actually analyse it as you run the program, see what it is about to do, and make a decision based on that."
Finjan's internet-browser tool auditions or dry-runs the pagelinks before we click on them to check for any nasty surprises.
It claims this live testing of links has never been beaten by hackers. It is making this software available to the public to download at no cost from next month.
Ditching passwords
But let us face it, most of us are simply too lazy to go the extra mile to protect ourselves, which is why some of the biggest names in banking want to ditch the traditional password altogether.
All of HSBCs customers in Hong Kong are already using a token or fob system - which offers up a constantly changing number that forms part of their online password access.
It is being trialled by some banks in the UK, but may prove too expensive to roll out millions of customers, some of whom may not want to use them.
An alternative being considered by HSBC and the Alliance and Leicester bank in the UK would have us run an application on our mobile phones generating a second pass code - again changing each time we log in.
If, we can be persuaded to use them - the ever-changing password may be the key to keeping our secrets - secret.
Have you had your password stolen or hacked? Can there ever be a system which is convenient but cannot be compromised?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/6345629.stm
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14. February 2007 @ 20:43 |
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THIS IS VERY HOT IF USING A ROUTER
Drive-by Web attack could hit home routers
Posted by l33tdawg on Thursday, February 15, 2007 - 04:34 AM (Reads: 12)
Source: Computer World (Australia)
If you haven't changed the default password on your home router, do so now. That's what researchers at Symantec and Indiana University are saying, after publishing the results of tests that show how attackers could take over your home router using malicious JavaScript code. For the attack to work, the bad guys would need a couple of things to go their way. First, the victim would have to visit a malicious Web site that served up the JavaScript. Second, the victim's router would have to still use the default password that it's pre-configured with it out of the box. In tests, the researchers were able to do things like change firmware and redirect a D-Link Systems Inc. DI-524 wireless router to look up Web sites from a DNS (Domain Name System) server of their choosing. They describe these attacks in a paper, authored by Sid Stamm and Markus Jakobsson of Indiana University, and Symantec's Zulfikar Ramzan.
Drive-by Web attack could hit home routers
Researchers say it is possible to take over many consumer routers using malicious JavaScript code
Robert McMillan (IDG News Service) 15/02/2007 14:05:25
If you haven't changed the default password on your home router, do so now.
That's what researchers at Symantec and Indiana University are saying, after publishing the results of tests that show how attackers could take over your home router using malicious JavaScript code.
For the attack to work, the bad guys would need a couple of things to go their way. First, the victim would have to visit a malicious Web site that served up the JavaScript. Second, the victim's router would have to still use the default password that it's pre-configured with it out of the box.
In tests, the researchers were able to do things like change firmware and redirect a D-Link Systems Inc. DI-524 wireless router to look up Web sites from a DNS (Domain Name System) server of their choosing. They describe these attacks in a paper, authored by Sid Stamm and Markus Jakobsson of Indiana University, and Symantec's Zulfikar Ramzan.
"By visiting a malicious Web page, a person can inadvertently open up his router for attack," the researchers write. "A Web site can attack home routers from the inside and mount sophisticated... attacks that may result in denial of service, malware infection, or identity theft."
Once the router has been compromised, victims can be redirected to fraudulent Web sites, the researchers say. So instead of downloading legitimate Microsoft software updates, for example, they could be tricked into downloading malware. Instead of online banking, they could be giving up sensitive information to phishers.
At the heart of the problem is the fact that consumer routers ship with simple, well-known default passwords, like "admin," which could be exploited by attackers.
"Owners of home routers who set a moderately secure password -- one that is non-default and non-trivial to guess -- are immune to router manipulation via JavaScript," the paper states.
The researchers blame router makers for shipping products with "poorly secure default settings."
Vendors like D-Link and Cisco Systems Inc. are aware of the problem. "It's a concern to us," said Karen Sohl, a spokeswoman with Cisco's Linksys group. "We've shipped about 30 million routers and we want those 30 million customers to understand why it's so important to change [the default password]."
Both Cisco and D-Link said they've taken steps to avoid this type of security problem. Over the past few years they've introduced step-by-step "wizard" software to configure their routers, and these products always suggest that the user come up with a unique password.
The problem is that the routers still work if the password is left as default. And that's not likely to change anytime soon, according to Michael Scott, D-Link's technical media manager.
Users wouldn't buy routers that forced them to enter unique passwords, he said. "That would only result in returned products, and then they would buy one of our competitors products," he said.
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.ph...63;fp;16;fpid;1
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16. February 2007 @ 05:59 |
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FREE....VIDEO TO MPEG..........Freesky video to MPEG is designed to meet all your needs of convert video file to MPEG Format. It is a powerful batch Video converter supporting nearly all video format, including AVI, MPEG, ASF/WMV, DivX. With it, you can easily convert AVI, DivX, XviD, MPEG I/II, VCD, SVCD, DVD, VOB, DAT, ASF/WMV to MPEG format. The very user-firenldy and easy-to-use interface lets you easily preview video files and batch convert .....(free).....GO THERE!
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19. February 2007 @ 06:41 |
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Microsoft IntelliPoint Mouse Software 6.1
Author: Microsoft Corp.
Date: 2007-02-19
Size: 6.45 Mb
License: Freeware
Requires: Win XP/2K
64 bit version also available
IntelliPoint software enables you to customize the unique features of your Microsoft® mouse. You can reassign mouse buttons to perform commands, shortcuts, and application-specific functions. You can also modify mouse settings, such as pointer speed and updated horizontal scrolling.
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19. February 2007 @ 06:43 |
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FREE,HIDDEN UTILITIES XP.......... Hidden Utilities XP allows access to nearly 100 hidden utilities that are not normally accessible to the average user. System information, diagnostics, repair tools and more in both Windows and Command Line utilities are now easily opened. Hidden Utilities XP includes easy access to 53 Windows tools and 43 Command Line utilities.....(free).....GO THERE!
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19. February 2007 @ 06:45 |
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FREE,EIGHT KILLER THUNDERBIRD EXTENSIONS..........Like its sibling Firefox, the beauty of the open source Thunderbird email client is its extensibility. File messages in a flash, customize keyboard shortcuts, weed out duplicate messages automatically, supercharge the search field and more with these 8 must-have enhancements for Thunderbird .....(free).....GO THERE!
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19. February 2007 @ 06:47 |
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FREE,FILE HAMSTER..........Automatically create incremental backups whenever a file is modified. FileHamster provides real-time backup and archiving of your files while you work. It enables you to monitor specific files on your hard drive and automatically create incremental backups whenever those files are modified. It also enables you to store notes about the changes that have been made, allowing you to quickly locate a specific revision or provide a detailed account of the work you've done on a project.....(free).....GO THERE!
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19. February 2007 @ 06:54 |
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Girl Scout cookies on MySpace
p2pnet.net news:- Here's something new for MySpace: Girl Scout entrepreneurs using it to promote cookies : )
"Welcome to the official MySpace page for Girl Scout Cookies!" - it says, going on:
Girl Scout Cookies are an icon of American culture. They're also the backbone of the Girl Scout Cookie Program, the leading entrepreneurial program for girls. Proceeds from your purchase support Girl Scouts in your community.
To find cookies in your area go to GirlScoutCookies.org
Who I'd like to meet:
Leaders, council staff, parents, and anyone who enjoys delicious Girl Scout Cookies and wants to support Girl Scouts in their community. The purpose of the Girl Scout Cookie Program's MySpace page is to help Girl Scouts throughout the United States and its territories by raising interest in the cookie program among adult online social networkers who support Girl Scout programs and share the values of the Girl Scouts' mission - to build girls of courage, confidence and character, who make the world a better place! Girl Scouts of the USA thoroughly reviews each friend request and comment to make sure the author shares our values, however linking from this page does not constitute or imply the endorsement, recommendation or favor of the Girl Scouts of the USA.
It's a whole lot better than being shangahai-ed by Hollywood copyright cops.
http://p2pnet.net/story/11367
Also See:
shangahai-ed - MPAA corrupts US Scouts, October 31, 2006
MPAA corrupts US Scouts
p2pnet.net News Special:- "Funny thing," said Rafael Venegas in a comment post to a p2pnet.net story highlighting the fact Hollywood has conned its way into the Boy Scout movement.
"You put two USA lawyers in opposing sides of any infringement lawsuit and they can't agree on how to interpret the law and its frequently contradictory jurisprudence. They can't even agree on what infringement is.
"And someone expects some kids in China to have knowledge of IP law'?"
Under discussion was the fact that in Hong Kong, Boy Scouts now have to toe the Hollywood line by 'earning' Intellectual Property merit badges.
Reads like a spoof, doesn't it? But sadly, it isn't because a new crime has come into being, and it's sweeping the world.
It's mind-rape, corporate child molestation of the worst kind, and perpetrating it with not only impunity, but implicit encouragement from parents, are the entertainment and software cartels who are invading schools and other institutions to teach our children right from wrong, good from bad and what's fair and what isn't.
Hollywood, traditionally one of the most corrupt places on earth, and the equally tainted music and software companies prating to our kids about right and wrong? It's like Jack the Ripper branching into cosmetic surgery.
In Hong Kong, kids are also copyright spies, and behind this terrible reality is Hollywood's MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) in its MPA guise.
And now it's come to America.
The MPAA proudly announces it's scammed the Los Angeles Area Boy Scouts of America into a, "new education program".
The Big Six studios, Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney, want to, "help raise awareness about the value of copyrights among the over 52,000 young people involved in Boy Scout programs in the greater Los Angeles area," they say.
"The curriculum is part of an ongoing effort to educate kids about copyright protection and change attitudes towards intellectual property theft.
Troops will, "choose from a number of activities" to qualify for a "Respect Copyrights" patch.
"Activities include creating a public service announcement that demonstrates the importance of copyright protection or visiting a movie studio to learn about the people, time and costs required to make a movie and others," says the MPAA.
And the studios actually managed to get Victor Zuniga, Los Angeles Area Council Public Relations Director for the Boy Scouts of America, to issue a statement endorsing the debacle without the slightest trace of shame.
"We are excited to work with the MPAA to provide this new educational opportunity to our more than 52,000 young people who participate in our programs including: Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, Venturing and Learning for Life, and are working to expand the program to include all Boy Scout councils within the Southern California area," the MPAA hacksters have him saying.
There are all kinds of examples of cartel invasions of our classrooms as they pollute the minds of our children with their disgusting, self-serving corporate junk, imposing standards designed to do only one thing: turn them into mindless consumers.
"The Respect Copyrights patch is a fun way for young kids to learn more about the what goes into making movies while garnering a deep appreciation."
There's no reason whatsoever for a child to know the slightest thing about intellectual property law, and to claim they need IP instruction is not merely farcical, it's obscene.
The right and proper action for LA parents who love their kids to take is to make a huge fuss. Write to their local newspaper, call the local radio and TV stations, organize a concerned parents' group.
Want to go camping? Camp on Victor Zuniga's front lawn.
And they'd be doing it not ony for their own child, but for every child in America and everywhere else in the world because one thing is for sure: the people who run the Hollywood and other cartels won't stop with LA, and nor will they stop with the Scouts.
"I can't help but think back (way too long ago) to the alternate version of the Boy Scout Oath we sometimes joked around with," says Bill Evans dryly:
On my honor I will do my best,
To take what they give me,
And steal the rest.
Next it'll be the Girl Guides and Sparks. Then the Sea cadets, Navy cadets, Air cadets, and ..........
Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it. All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children.
~ George Orwell, 1984
===============
UPDATE:
I'm a former girl scout who enjoyed learning archery, survival skills, and self-defense, while my male peers mastered cooking and sewing, and I well remember the mania I had for collecting merit badges," says a post on sivacracy.net, from whence the pic came. "According to the article, there are no plans to develop a similar program in the United States, but I designed some nifty badges just in case the American scouting leadership has a change of heart.
(Thanks for the above, Masha)
http://p2pnet.net/story/10183
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AfterDawn Addict
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19. February 2007 @ 09:59 |
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RIAA: the same tired song
p2pnet.net news:- The Big 4 Organized Music cartel's RIAA and the Georgia police recently stormed the Aphilliates Music Group studios and arrested DJ Drama and DJ Cannon.
AllHipHop.com said the raid ended in the arrests of 28-year-old Tyree 'DJ Drama' Simmons and 27-year-old Donald Cannon, also known as DJ Don Cannon.
"The Fulton County Swat Team, with assistance from Clayton County Police, entered the label's offices and studios at 147 Walker Street in the early evening hours," said the story.
"DJ Drama and DJ Don Cannon were charged with racketeering and are being held at the Fulton County jail without bond."
Behind the raid was Warner Music (US), EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France) and Sony BMG's (Japan and Germany) RIAA and according to RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy, the raid was undertaken, "only at the behest of Atlanta law enforcement," says the The New York Times.
However, Lamy's statement notwithstanding, the chances of the Atlanta police acting independently in this would be close to zero. Meanwhile, the NYT says:
Late in the afternoon of Jan. 16, a SWAT team from the Fulton County Sheriff's Office, backed up by officers from the Clayton County Sheriff's Office and the local police department, along with a few drug-sniffing dogs, burst into a unmarked recording studio on a short, quiet street in an industrial neighborhood near the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. The officers entered with their guns drawn; the local police chief said later that they were 'prepared for the worst.' They had come to serve a warrant for the arrest of the studio's owners on the grounds that they had violated the state's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, or RICO, a charge often used to lock up people who make a business of selling drugs or breaking people's arms to extort money. The officers confiscated recording equipment, cars, computers and bank statements along with more than 25,000 music CDs. Two of the three owners of the studio, Tyree Simmons, who is 28, and Donald Cannon, who is 27, were arrested and held overnight in the Fulton County jail. Eight employees, mostly interns from local colleges, were briefly detained as well.
Later that night, a reporter for the local Fox TV station, Stacey Elgin, delivered a report on the raid from the darkened street in front of the studio. She announced that the owners of the studio, known professionally as DJ Drama and DJ Don Cannon, were arrested for making 'illegal CDs.' The report cut to an interview with Matthew Kilgo, an official with the Recording Industry Association of America, who was involved in the raid. The R.I.A.A., a trade and lobbying group that represents the major American record labels, works closely with the Department of Justice and local police departments to crack down on illegal downloading and music piracy, which most record-company executives see as a dire threat to their business.
Kilgo works in the R.I.A.A.'s Atlanta office, and in the weeks before the raid, the local police chief said, R.I.A.A. investigators helped the police collect evidence and conduct surveillance at the studio. Kilgo consulted with the R.I.A.A.'s national headquarters in advance of the raid, and after the raid, a team of men wearing R.I.A.A. jackets was responsible for boxing the CDs and carting them to a warehouse for examination.
NYT reporter Samantha M. Shapiro is clearly shocked by this horrific incident.
She goes on:
But Drama and Cannon's studio was not a bootlegging plant; it was a place where successful new hip-hop CDs were regularly produced and distributed. Drama and Cannon are part of a well-regarded D.J. collective called the Aphilliates. Although their business almost certainly violated federal copyright law, as well as a Georgia state law that requires CDs to be labeled with the name and address of the producers, they were not simply stealing from the major labels; they were part of an alternative distribution system that the mainstream record industry uses to promote and market hip-hop artists. Drama and Cannon have in recent years been paid by the same companies that paid Kilgo to help arrest them.
But thuggish practices are an essential part and parcel of the Big 4's copyright protection inventory. And nor do RIAA "investigators" necessarily wait for support from legitimate police officers. In fact, RIAA pseudo-cops are quite capable of doing their own thing.
Fom a distance it, "looked like classic LAPD, DEA or FBI work, right down to the black 'raid' vests the unit members wore," said Ben Sullivan in an LA Weekly story. He went on:
The fact that their yellow stenciled lettering read "RIAA" instead of something from an official law-enforcement agency was lost on 55-year-old parking-lot attendant Ceasar Borrayo.
The Recording Industry Association of America is taking it to the streets.
Even as it suffers setbacks in the courtroom, the RIAA has over the last 18 months built up a national staff of ex-cops to crack down on people making and selling illegal CDs in the hood.
The result has been a growing number of scenes like the one played out in Silver Lake just before Christmas, during an industry blitz to combat music piracy.
Borrayo attends to a parking lot next to the landmark El 7 Mares fish-taco stand on Sunset Boulevard. To supplement his buck-a-car income, he began, in 2003, selling records and videos from a makeshift stand in front of the lot.
In a good week, Borrayo said, he might unload five or 10 albums and a couple DVDs at $5 apiece. Paying a distributor about half that up-front, he thought he'd lucked into a nice side business.
The RIAA saw it differently. Figuring the discs were bootlegs, a four-man RIAA squad descended on his stand a few days before Christmas and persuaded the 4-foot-11 Borrayo to hand over voluntarily a total of 78 discs. It wasn't a tough sell.
"They said they were police from the recording industry or something, and next time they'd take me away in handcuffs," he said through an interpreter. Borrayo says he has no way of knowing if the records, with titles like Como Te Extraño Vol. IV ? Musica de los 70's y 80's, are illegal, but he thought better of arguing the point.
The RIAA acknowledges it all - except the notion that its staff presents itself as police. Yes, they may all be ex-P.D. Yes, they wear cop-style clothes and carry official-looking IDs. But if they leave people like Borrayo with the impression that they're actual law enforcement, that's a mistake.
It might also be said that Drama and Cannon were lucky.. Because the entertainment catrtels have succeeded in having the act of counterfeiting music or movies CDs or DVDs, events which have only a commercial effect, to the level of major crime on a par with robbery or murder. And people have been seriously wounded and literally killed for it.
In Malaya, a 20-year-old man who'd been selling VCDs was shot and critically wounded by police.
Shot for trying to sell a CD, even if it was probably counterfeit? But at least he survived, unlike Ousmane Zango who was killed by New York city police when they raided a warehouse trying to "crack down on pirated CDs".
Corporate music cartel use of police and other agencies funded by tax-payers is now routine around the world.
Drama and Cannon and counterfeiters are, however, far from being the only ones persecuted by the Big 4. Some 20,000 American families, and a significant number of young children, are being villified as "thieves" guilty of the "crime" of sharing music with each other online.
The same thing is happening in virtually every developed country around the world as part of the labels' massive, carefully orchestrated scheme to gain control of how, and by whom, music is distributed online.
Warner et al claim files shared equal sales lost, something they've never been able to back up with solid evidence. In fact, to the contrary, The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis, an authoritative US study by Felix Oberholzer and Koleman Strumpf, flatly states:
"Downloads have an effect on sales that is statistically indistinguishable from zero."
Moreover, "Our estimates are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the decline in music sales during our study period."
And as Sharon Thompson, a lawyer working with the Santagelos, a New York family being victimized by the labels, states equally bluntly:
The problem the RIAA now faces is of its own making: it helped to create the Genie and let it out of the bottle. It appears that the RIAA was focused on making its own mp3s available for free downloading in order to promote the music and artists it wanted to promote, in the hopes it would entice people to go out and spend $15 or $20 per CD. Well, the only hit the RIAA cares about is the one it's taking in its own pockets, so now it's ruthlessly going after the people who, so it claims in its often baseless allegations, are doing the very thing the industry in effect trained them to do.
Meanwhile, has the raid done anythihg to stop mixtapes being made?
"Drama's arrest shook up mixtape D.J.'s and promoters across the country. But even in the days immediately following the raid, D.J.'s continued to release tapes - some with hastily added tracks on which rappers cursed the R.I.A.A. - and major labels continued to e-mail them new tracks," says the NYT.
"Some in the industry speculated that things would have to change, that mixtapes would either move further underground or become legitimate licensed products. But no one I spoke with thought the arrest would permanently damage Drama's career. In fact, Julia Beverly, the editor of Ozone, a Southern hip-hop magazine, suggested that it was more likely to improve his image and album sales. 'Really, this takes him to a gangsta level,' she said. 'It gives him a little something extra. It's messed up, but if someone goes to jail or dies, it elevates his status and just makes him more of a star than he was before. That?s the way the entertainment industry works in general. So, having cops at your door with M-16's at your head, and MTV News reporting on the raid, calling you the biggest D.J. in the world? You can't pay for that type of look'."
The effect is similar to that achieved by the RIAA sue 'em all campaign in the first place. It's served to heavily publicize the p2p networks file sharing which until the RIAA came along, wasn't widely known.
And have the RIAA attacks on its own customers resulted in any kind of reduction in file sharing? Not in the least. In fact, it's continuing to rise.
Slashdot Slashdot it! s
Also See:
recently stormed - Blogs vs Mainstream Media, January 30, 2007
AllHipHop.com - DJ Drama's Aphilliates Music Group Raided, 50,000 CD's Confiscated, January 16, 2007
The New York Times- Hip-Hop Outlaw (Industry Version), Februaryy 18, 2007
shot and critically wounded - Shot Penang 'pirate CD' victim, January 15, 2005
Ousmane Zango - Shot Penang 'pirate CD' victim, January 16, 2005
to the contrary - File sharing: zero effect on downloads, February 12, 2007
LA Weekly - Music Industry Puts Troops in the Streets, January 8, 2004
equally bluntly - 'It chills my soul', February 14, 2007
continuing to rise - P2p file sharing contained: RIAA, June 13, 2006
http://p2pnet.net/story/11369
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AfterDawn Addict
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19. February 2007 @ 11:50 |
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Fedora and Ubuntu to incorporate Kernel-based virtualization
2/19/2007 1:59:18 PM, by Ryan Paul
The latest release of the Linux kernel, 2.6.20, includes integrated virtualization capabilities with the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM). The KVM kernel module, the development of which was largely sponsored by start-up tech company Qumranet, leverages x86 virtualization extensions included in various Intel and AMD processors. Several distributions, including Ubuntu and Fedora, are already preparing to include the KVM kernel module in upcoming releases.
KVM provides support for "full" virtualization, which means that, like VMware, it uses simulated hardware to allow users to run unmodified versions of other operating systems simultaneously. It can take advantage of processors that support either Intel's VT extensions or AMD's SVM extensions, and it uses a modified version of Qemu in userspace. Like the Xen virtualization system, KVM also has paravirtualization support, but it is still highly experimental. Modern paravirtualization technologies enable modified guest operating systems to direct system calls to a hypervisor rather than emitting machine instructions that are interpreted by a virtualized hardware layer. The recent addition of paravirtualization support to KVM, which uses an ad-hoc hypercall API, has improved performance by 30 percent in some contexts.
Since paravirtualization only works with guest operating systems modified to interact with a hypervisor, proprietary operating systems traditionally haven't been supported by open source paravirtualization technologies. A technical collaboration roadmap recently released by Microsoft and Novell reveals that the two companies are collaborating to bring support for Xen's hypervisor to Microsoft's upcoming Windows Server release, meaning that Xen will eventually be able to run Windows Server as a guest operating system with full paravirtualization capabilities. The KVM developers plan to use the same paravirtualization interfaces already used by Xen and VMware. Such compatibility could eventually make it possible for Windows Server to run paravirtualized in KVM.
Since KVM is now officially supported by the Linux kernel, the module will be available in some upcoming Linux distribution releases. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Product Management Director Joel Berman has stated that KVM is being packaged for Fedora, but Red Hat will not include KVM in the upcoming release of Red Hat's commercial distribution for enterprises, which already includes Xen. Ubuntu developers have also built a KVM package for Feisty Fawn, the upcoming Ubuntu release.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070219-8880.html
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AfterDawn Addict
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21. February 2007 @ 05:08 |
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