Set up a bot to randomly surf the net thus polluting the database.
for extra lulz, run the bot 24x7, but tunnel your "real" traffic through SSH, that way all phorm will see is your randomized traffic and not your actual surfing habits :-)
rather than randomize, your bot could surf anti-phorm websites exclusively.
the hardware requirements should be fairly low, perhaps the bot and SSH functionality could be built into an appliance of some sort so all a consumer has to do is plug a box into their broadband modem.
anyone interested in collaborating on such a device?
the republicans love big business and love family values, so we saw lots of moves that favor defense contractors and telcos and censor hollywood.
the dems love free speech, so we will see our withdrawal from iraq and progress on the net neutrality and censorship fronts at the expense of some serious pro hollywood/silicon valley moves.
the only difference in the two parties is which industries sign the checks.
it really sums up this whole "war against piracy" thing pretty nicely. having power means playing games to get control of natural and finite resources. people, governments, armies, and companies have been doing this since the dawning of life itself. in this game, keeping those resources finite is at least as important as obtaining the resources themselves.
in essence, we are are talking about the means of production. mass production and mass distribution favor small numbers of large companies, unless the finished product and its distribution are digital. when everything is digital, the rules change.
the problem with digital goods is that since anything digital can be reproduced effortlessly by anyone with a computer, the old rules of mass production and distribution no longer apply and the resource game is now in a state of flux.
If Viacom said something like "We will block Road Runner IPs from our websites if you don't approve of this rate hike" it would get real ugly real fast.
i hope they do it, it would quintuple ad revenue for the torrent trackers :-)
disney will see the world destroyed before it loses control of mickey mouse.
disney has billions invested in tilting copyright law in its favor. that kind of money doesn't just go away over night.
even in some sort of black swan scenario where disney forgets to write all of it's checks to the government and disney is punished out of spite, disney would still keep control. they will simply eschew the legal system and use armed force to protect it's profits the way that the mafia or hamas does.
it's laughable to suggest that this kind of arrangement is detrimental to all parties involved. I'm sure that the artists who sell the movie rights and get a big fat check don't feel harmed. I'm sure that the movie studio which is able to shut out its competition doesn't feel harmed.
i'll bet the checks to the artists for these deals aren't that fat to begin with, and even if they are, the artist could make more by selling the rights multiple times.
shutting out the competition only works out if they don't return the favor. if preemptively buying rights becomes standard operating procedure in the film industry, the cost of making more movies will continue to go up.
spending a lot on a production doesn't automatically make it successful. spending less on a production makes it easier for said production to become profitable.
breast feeding is a big deal in the US, with womens' groups acting like breast feeding has been criminalized, or somehow frowned upon. maybe i'm just not aware of the vast conspiracy against breastfeeding... but i'm not surprised at all that there was a huge backlash against facebook taking down the pictures.
here's why i think there are some strange culture or politics surrounding breast feeding: my first child was born in german hospital and they encouraged breast feeding but there was not a lot of pressure. my wife got a fever a week after delivery and couldn't continue nursing and it was no big deal. a few months later, at the american military clinic there was a full scale freak out that the baby wasn't breast fed. for a few minutes i was worried that social workers were going to get involved.
in the US, my second child was adopted as a newborn, and so we got a pass on the whole breastfeeding thing. when my good friend's wife had a baby a whole team of nurses and "consultants" descended on her to indoctrinate her into breastfeeding complete with someone coming by their house and membership in some sort of league.
so with all the cultural/political investment in the US i am not surprised at all that facebook took a lashing over taking down the pics.
If i was american would be more pissed about that than the actual cost of texting, deal with fact you are getting ripped off twice before you argue about the actual ripp off costs individually
i've got my torch and my pitchfork in hand and i'm heading to the AT&T building. BRB.
It's like saying kidnap and ransom is not a crime, because most of the time no one gets hurt, because most people choose to pay the ransom money anyway.
a bulk or unlimited text plan is like paying protection money... you pay your attacker to not steal from you.
paying the overage fee is like paying the ransom. you pay the attacker after they have stolen from you.
it's like saying extortion is less criminal than kidnapping because people choose to pay in and not get hurt.
when it comes to controlling a network of any kind the end result is fracture.
the internet decency fight will result in at least two networks. those in favor of internet decency want everything bad lumped into .sex or .xxx domains. those who oppose censorship want a safe zone for families, like the .fam subnet suggested above.
FCC bigwig kevin martin has been making noise about a free wireless network that is safe for children (and probably monitored for terrorism).
one concession in the SBC AT&T merger was supposed to be naked DSL with no filters or caps, thereby creating the slow lane that the telcos have always wanted.
what all of this does is split up the internet into smaller bits in hopes of controlling the smaller bits and if breaking up napster has taught us anything, it's that numerous smaller networks are much harder to control than one large one.
so go ahead and try to make the internet safe for children. all you will be doing is locking the children into the digital equivalent of a mormon compound.
and the purveyors of the materials the decency crowd is so opposed to will continue unchecked.
Fox paid something for the rights. Maybe they were waiting until the time was right to make a watchmen movie, but they never can, now that WB has already made it. WB is sucking the value out of an IP that Fox paid for, and for that they deserve some compensation.
you can always make something again. the bourne identity was a TV miniseries in the 80's before it became a big budget action film. the lord of the rings was a cartoon in years past.
exclusive deals that tie up rights are a detriment to all the parties involved.
What truly sucks in all this will be the sequel. If Warner has done an exceptional job of adaptation, a sequel will never happen as Fox clearly has no clue on how to make decent movies.
if the film follows the graphic novel at all, there is no way to make a sequel. a prequel maybe...
it does seem kind of pointless to defend the trademark on something you are no longer marketing or selling, but this is probably a cash grab or some other power play conceived and executed the legal department. cisco and apple got into a spat over the term "iphone" a while back and we can see how that turned out.
on the topic of netbooks here are a couple of random funny observations i have made:
only these netbooks that have sprung up are based on intel's atom processor and are not of a very open design. that doesn't stop fans from building communities around the popular models (the EEE and the MSI wind most notably)
funny observation #2:
apple's conspicuous abscence from the netbook movement (the macbook air is the antithesis of a netbook from a price perspective) has lead to some folks taking matters into their own hands:
t he MSI wind, both the netbook variety, and the desktop eqivalent, which some refer to as a nettop, have made the hackintosh (OSX runing on non apple hardware) almost mainstream. it will be interesting to see if/how apple responds.
funny observation #3:
the most popular varieties of netbook are those with strong communities built around them, most notably the asus EEE and the MSI wind. coincidentally, these netbooks are not made by popular laptop manufacturers like dell or IBM (though both companies have netbooks available) but by taiwanese companies that are famous for making motherboards.
conventional wisdom says that companies with a history of making cheap laptops (compaq and acer most notably, but acer does make a fairly popular netbook) would dominate this space. makes you wonder what other possibilities can open up for companies that are willing to move a little bit outside their core competencies.
i don't know why any company would risk getting into a business that involves the copying of media for any reason or purpose. if you do anything with copyrighted material it seems like you are begging for a lawsuit.
i would seem to me that if you were able to do anything with music, movies, television, or books and your device or service was even remotely useful you would be facing a lawsuit from someone somewhere that would put you out of business.
i am surprised there aren't more innovations coming out of countries with questionable enforcement of US copyright law. those seem to be the only places where you have a decent shot at getting your product to market before the big american media companies decide to destroy you.
i think it would be funny to see a country in the third world become a haven for media devices and services. when the lawsuits, treaty shenanigans, and economic sanctions fail, we would see pressure from the media companies to use military action.
On the post: Phorm, Apparently Deaf To Consumer Hatred Of Being Spied On, Plans Expansion
Re: This will be fun
for extra lulz, run the bot 24x7, but tunnel your "real" traffic through SSH, that way all phorm will see is your randomized traffic and not your actual surfing habits :-)
rather than randomize, your bot could surf anti-phorm websites exclusively.
the hardware requirements should be fairly low, perhaps the bot and SSH functionality could be built into an appliance of some sort so all a consumer has to do is plug a box into their broadband modem.
anyone interested in collaborating on such a device?
On the post: Obama Appoints Former RIAA Lawyer To Associate Attorney General
the dems love hollywood
the republicans love big business and love family values, so we saw lots of moves that favor defense contractors and telcos and censor hollywood.
the dems love free speech, so we will see our withdrawal from iraq and progress on the net neutrality and censorship fronts at the expense of some serious pro hollywood/silicon valley moves.
the only difference in the two parties is which industries sign the checks.
On the post: Trust Your Customers... And They Do Amazing Things...
Re:
Works in small places. I would be surprised if somebody replicates this NY
oooooh it doesn't work everywhere, lets roll in the tanks and nerve gas and turn this place into tiananmen square.
On the post: RIAA Dumps MediaSentry, But Hires DtecNet Instead
re: bikey
- Mark Getty, chairman of Getty Images
i first saw that statement quoted in "steal this film II"
http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2
it really sums up this whole "war against piracy" thing pretty nicely. having power means playing games to get control of natural and finite resources. people, governments, armies, and companies have been doing this since the dawning of life itself. in this game, keeping those resources finite is at least as important as obtaining the resources themselves.
in essence, we are are talking about the means of production. mass production and mass distribution favor small numbers of large companies, unless the finished product and its distribution are digital. when everything is digital, the rules change.
the problem with digital goods is that since anything digital can be reproduced effortlessly by anyone with a computer, the old rules of mass production and distribution no longer apply and the resource game is now in a state of flux.
richard stallman discusses this in a rather grim depiction of this digital resource game:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
On the post: Viacom, Time Warner Cable Fight Over Cost Of Comedy Central, MTV
Re:
i hope they do it, it would quintuple ad revenue for the torrent trackers :-)
On the post: UK Copyright Expiration On Popeye May Be A Test For Mickey Mouse
mickey mouse will never be public domain
disney has billions invested in tilting copyright law in its favor. that kind of money doesn't just go away over night.
even in some sort of black swan scenario where disney forgets to write all of it's checks to the government and disney is punished out of spite, disney would still keep control. they will simply eschew the legal system and use armed force to protect it's profits the way that the mafia or hamas does.
On the post: Increasing Broadband Is Good... But The Devil's In The Details
the answer is simple
get someone else to do it. the telcos are so corrupt that a monkey with brain damage could build more infrastructure for less money than any telco.
if the telcos resist, quadruple their taxes. in fact, quadruple their taxes now, and then quadruple them again if they complain or resist.
On the post: Site Certificates Forged; Internet Security Not So Secure
Re: There's no such thing as "secure" in a digital environment.
it teaches us plenty about how NOT to implement PKI. i also teaches us that time and talent will cannot be stopped with money.
On the post: Fox About To Get Paid For A Movie It Had Absolutely Nothing To Do With
Re: Re: Re:
i'll bet the checks to the artists for these deals aren't that fat to begin with, and even if they are, the artist could make more by selling the rights multiple times.
shutting out the competition only works out if they don't return the favor. if preemptively buying rights becomes standard operating procedure in the film industry, the cost of making more movies will continue to go up.
spending a lot on a production doesn't automatically make it successful. spending less on a production makes it easier for said production to become profitable.
On the post: Breast-Feeding Photo Brouhaha Shows How Impossible It Is To Rate Websites
breast feeding in the US is weirdly cultural
here's why i think there are some strange culture or politics surrounding breast feeding: my first child was born in german hospital and they encouraged breast feeding but there was not a lot of pressure. my wife got a fever a week after delivery and couldn't continue nursing and it was no big deal. a few months later, at the american military clinic there was a full scale freak out that the baby wasn't breast fed. for a few minutes i was worried that social workers were going to get involved.
in the US, my second child was adopted as a newborn, and so we got a pass on the whole breastfeeding thing. when my good friend's wife had a baby a whole team of nurses and "consultants" descended on her to indoctrinate her into breastfeeding complete with someone coming by their house and membership in some sort of league.
so with all the cultural/political investment in the US i am not surprised at all that facebook took a lashing over taking down the pics.
On the post: Much Ado About Nothing In Accusations Over Text Message Pricing
Re:
If i was american would be more pissed about that than the actual cost of texting, deal with fact you are getting ripped off twice before you argue about the actual ripp off costs individually
i've got my torch and my pitchfork in hand and i'm heading to the AT&T building. BRB.
On the post: Much Ado About Nothing In Accusations Over Text Message Pricing
Re: There's a reason.
a bulk or unlimited text plan is like paying protection money... you pay your attacker to not steal from you.
paying the overage fee is like paying the ransom. you pay the attacker after they have stolen from you.
it's like saying extortion is less criminal than kidnapping because people choose to pay in and not get hurt.
On the post: Innovation And Invention In Virtual Rock Band Video Games
Re: I think
easy, infinium took pre-orders on a game console that never existed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_(game_system)
the hard part is staying out of jail and getting the press to keep hyping your product even though you keep pushing back the ship date.
when the phantom finally does ship, i am going to play duke nukem forever on it.
On the post: UK Culture Secretary Andy Burnham Wants Websites To Be Rated... To Protect The Children
everyone will get their own network
the internet decency fight will result in at least two networks. those in favor of internet decency want everything bad lumped into .sex or .xxx domains. those who oppose censorship want a safe zone for families, like the .fam subnet suggested above.
FCC bigwig kevin martin has been making noise about a free wireless network that is safe for children (and probably monitored for terrorism).
one concession in the SBC AT&T merger was supposed to be naked DSL with no filters or caps, thereby creating the slow lane that the telcos have always wanted.
what all of this does is split up the internet into smaller bits in hopes of controlling the smaller bits and if breaking up napster has taught us anything, it's that numerous smaller networks are much harder to control than one large one.
so go ahead and try to make the internet safe for children. all you will be doing is locking the children into the digital equivalent of a mormon compound.
and the purveyors of the materials the decency crowd is so opposed to will continue unchecked.
On the post: Fox About To Get Paid For A Movie It Had Absolutely Nothing To Do With
Re:
that's probably why fox is doing this, so it gets real money, not an imaginary percentage of some accounting magic.
On the post: Fox About To Get Paid For A Movie It Had Absolutely Nothing To Do With
Re:
you can always make something again. the bourne identity was a TV miniseries in the 80's before it became a big budget action film. the lord of the rings was a cartoon in years past.
exclusive deals that tie up rights are a detriment to all the parties involved.
On the post: Fox About To Get Paid For A Movie It Had Absolutely Nothing To Do With
Re: Warner should cancel the release.
if the film follows the graphic novel at all, there is no way to make a sequel. a prequel maybe...
On the post: Trademarks And Netbooks
funny observations
on the topic of netbooks here are a couple of random funny observations i have made:
funny observation #1:
via releases it's open notebook reference design and coincidentally everyone gets into the netbook market over night: http://www.via.com.tw/en/initiatives/spearhead/openbook
only these netbooks that have sprung up are based on intel's atom processor and are not of a very open design. that doesn't stop fans from building communities around the popular models (the EEE and the MSI wind most notably)
funny observation #2:
apple's conspicuous abscence from the netbook movement (the macbook air is the antithesis of a netbook from a price perspective) has lead to some folks taking matters into their own hands:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/15/realtek-employees-leak-os-x-wifi-drivers-for-the-msi-u100-win d
http://gizmodo.com/5109902/msi-encourages-hackintosh-leaks-os-x-wi+fi-drivers-for-the-wind
t he MSI wind, both the netbook variety, and the desktop eqivalent, which some refer to as a nettop, have made the hackintosh (OSX runing on non apple hardware) almost mainstream. it will be interesting to see if/how apple responds.
funny observation #3:
the most popular varieties of netbook are those with strong communities built around them, most notably the asus EEE and the MSI wind. coincidentally, these netbooks are not made by popular laptop manufacturers like dell or IBM (though both companies have netbooks available) but by taiwanese companies that are famous for making motherboards.
conventional wisdom says that companies with a history of making cheap laptops (compaq and acer most notably, but acer does make a fairly popular netbook) would dominate this space. makes you wonder what other possibilities can open up for companies that are willing to move a little bit outside their core competencies.
On the post: Sling Still Upset About Remotely Hosted Slingboxes
why bother?
i would seem to me that if you were able to do anything with music, movies, television, or books and your device or service was even remotely useful you would be facing a lawsuit from someone somewhere that would put you out of business.
i am surprised there aren't more innovations coming out of countries with questionable enforcement of US copyright law. those seem to be the only places where you have a decent shot at getting your product to market before the big american media companies decide to destroy you.
i think it would be funny to see a country in the third world become a haven for media devices and services. when the lawsuits, treaty shenanigans, and economic sanctions fail, we would see pressure from the media companies to use military action.
On the post: RIAA Caught Lying About Stopping Lawsuits
Re:
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