*HOT* Tech News And Downloads, I Would Read This Thread And Post Any Good Info

How to see hidden files in Windows


Windows 2000

To enable the viewing of Hidden files follow these steps:

1. Close all programs so that you are at your desktop.
2. Double-click on the My Computer icon.
3. Select the Tools menu and click Folder Options.
4. After the new window appears select the View tab.
5. Under the Hidden files and folders section select the radio button labeled Show hidden files and folders.
6. Remove the checkmark from the checkbox labeled Hide file extensions for known file types.
7. Remove the checkmark from the checkbox labeled Hide protected operating system files.
8. Press the Apply button and then the OK button and shutdown My Computer.
9. Now your computer is configured to show all hidden files.

Windows XP and Windows 2003

To enable the viewing of Hidden files follow these steps:

1. Close all programs so that you are at your desktop.
2. Double-click on the My Computer icon.
3. Select the Tools menu and click Folder Options.
4. After the new window appears select the View tab.
5. Put a checkmark in the checkbox labeled Display the contents of system folders.
6. Under the Hidden files and folders section select the radio button labeled Show hidden files and folders.
7. Remove the checkmark from the checkbox labeled Hide file extensions for known file types.
8. Remove the checkmark from the checkbox labeled Hide protected operating system files.
9. Press the Apply button and then the OK button and shutdown My Computer.
10. Now your computer is configured to show all hidden files.

Windows Vista

To enable the viewing of Hidden files follow these steps:

1. Close all programs so that you are at your desktop.
2. Click on the Start button. This is the small round button with the Windows flag in the lower left corner.
3. Click on the Control Panel menu option.
4. When the control panel opens you can either be in Classic View or Control Panel Home view:

If you are in the Classic View do the following:
1. Double-click on the Folder Options icon.
2. Click on the View tab.
3. Go to step 5.

If you are in the Control Panel Home view do the following:
1. Click on the Appearance and Personalization link .
2. Click on Show Hidden Files or Folders.
3. Go to step 5.

5. Under the Hidden files and folders section select the radio button labeled Show hidden files and folders.
6. Remove the checkmark from the checkbox labeled Hide extensions for known file types.
7. Remove the checkmark from the checkbox labeled Hide protected operating system files.
8. Press the Apply button and then the OK button and shutdown My Computer.
9. Now Windows Vista is configured to show all hidden files.

Conclusion
Now that you know how to see all hidden files on your computer, malicious programs such as viruses, spyware, and hijackers will no longer be able to hide their presence from you or people helping you.

 

Best Buy lawyer falsifies e-mails, memo

By Nate Anderson | Published: June 11, 2007 - 11:03PM CT

Best Buy can now add "faking two e-mails and a memo" to its list of legal problems. A lawyer working for the company confessed his indiscretion, potentially putting Best Buy on the hook for millions of dollars in damages in a class-action lawsuit that was filed back in 2003.

The plaintiffs claim that Best Buy routinely signed new computer owners up for MSN trials without permission. When the trial period expired, customer credit cards were charged. Microsoft is also a party to the case, as the plaintiffs allege that it failed to act after receiving numerous complaints.

All pretty standard class-action stuff, so far. But one of the company's main attorneys in the case, Timothy Block, has just thrown a spanner into the works by admitting that he falsified two e-mails and one internal memo, according to the Associated Press. The changes were (one suspects) designed to make Best Buy look better, though few details are available. Block claims that the alterations were made solely at his discretion, and that no one at his firm or at Best Buy was aware of what he had done.

Faking evidence doesn't sit well with judges, and the judge in this case might simply issue a default judgment against Best Buy. If that happens, the company would owe millions of dollars to the affected class, and Microsoft would be off the hook.

The bizarre story comes shortly after allegations that Best Buy used a high-tech version of the old bait and switch to cheat consumers out of discounts. The company was also sued a year ago by Winternals, a software developer that accused Best Buy's Geek Squad of using an expensive piece of diagnostic software across the country without bothering to pay for a license.

Take together, the three cases suggest that there's something in the water at the company's Twin Cities headquarters... and that consumers might not want to drink from the Best Buy fountain. But the company has done at least one thing for the customer—it has worked to eliminate the dreaded mail-in rebate. That's small consolation, though, for customers who believe that Best Buy intentionally ripped them off.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070611-best-buy-lawyer-falsifies-e-mails-memo.html

 

Weedshare and DRM

p2pnet.net news:- "At OpenBusiness I read WeedShare is officially dead," posts Marco Raaphorst in his blog over in Holland.

In an email, Raaphorst says he'd "never liked WeedShare because of the DRM" and kindly translated his article into English >>>>>>>>>

With its demise, an end comes to another new business model for musicians and fans. But I was expecting this to happen because there were a couple rather nasty disadvantages when using that service.

How WeedShare worked

A track of WeedShare, WMW fileformat (Windows Media Audio), could play 3 times for free. After the third time, a sales-order demand was send to the listener. A track you've bought you could also resell to friends, and you received percentage as a first purchaser, as well as a percentage which went to the musician/link and WeedShare. This system had the advantage that is was suitable for p2p systems. Passing on music ensured that more people would buy this music.

But it didn't work well

The principal disadvantage of WeedShare was the fileformat: WMA (a DRM-ed version). This could only play on certain media-players, particularly Windows Media Player. My favorite foobar2000, as a result, won't play those DRM-crippled files. Also, you couldn't set up these files for your iPod---- couldn't play them on systems like Apple, Unix or Linux. `Therefore: Windows only.

DRM, Digital Rights management, was used to track how often the song was played on a system and whether or it was properly licensed. A quote from OpenBusiness:

"Some time ago, Microsoft released a new version of the Windows Media Player, and it no longer worked with WeedShare files as it had in the past. Suddenly, WeedShare didn't work, and if Microsoft didn't change things, they couldn't work."

This is exactly my criticism concerning DRM: one day all your music files can become unplayable. A file bought at the iTunes can't be played in most other non-Apple software. Also, DJs have a huge problem because most music software (NI Traktor, Ableton Live) can't play these files.

And what if film-makers want to add this music to a movie? They can't. DRM is not at all remix ready.

WeedShare cooperated closely with Microsoft, but that produced zero guarantees. One simple Windows Media Player update, and all was lost. The same thing can happen to any DRM file format, and we'll see a lot more examples of this in the future.

Copy Control on CDs was also a mistake. Instead of an enhancement, it broke the format and most CDs became unplayable on car-systems, or very high-end equipment.

Today we live in a sharing economy. Sharing is an essential part of how we work together. It's also a friends thing: sharing.

Now with the internet, our friends are all connected and it's much easier than ever before to share files with each other.

In Holland, it's legal to share and download music files for private use. The music industry thinks this is an evil act and they want to 'protect' it. But instead of adding DRM to files, the music industry simply should become more creative.

Napster was a smart idea. p2p and bittorrent protocols are great inventions. The Pirate Bay is a creative bunch of people.

There are new opportunities for selling music, but it'll probably mean radical change. Nothing will be the same again. Downloads and file sharing are here to stay. We'll discover new music because our friends tell us about it. Word of mouth, the most powerful thing in the world and also: free marketing. These are the things the music industry needs to focus on, but I'm afraid there's a long way to go. A long way which simply will offer new business models build by smart music fans or bands which are offering direct downloads to fans.

In short: the music industry has to become more creative. DRM is not the answer, it is the bullet with which the music industry has shot itself in the foot. And that's a painful mistake. CD-control, Apple's iTunes and also WeedShare has shown the world that DRM is not a solution, it's the worst way to kill your own business.

(Thanks, Marco)
http://p2pnet.net/story/12482

 

Cheaper than a dentist: Photoshop teeth-whitening filter
Posted by Stephen Shankland

Austin, Texas-based Image Trends plans to release new Photoshop plug-ins Tuesday that automate two common tasks for cosmetic retouching of digital photos: whitening teeth and removing skin glare.

go here to see more
http://www.imagetrendsinc.com/

The company's PearlyWhites and ShineOff plug-ins cost $49.95 each. The plug-ins work on Windows, but Mac OS X versions will be available later.

The filters can operate in a batch mode, allowing Photoshop users to edit large groups of images in bulk. The PearlyWhites plug-in doesn't need to be told where teeth are located--the often-laborious selection process. Instead, it applies its changes to white areas that it finds surrounded by flesh tones, said Michael Conley, vice president of marketing and sales.

The company also plans to release the Mac OS X version of a plug-in called Fisheye-Hemi that converts the distorted view of a fish-eye lens into a perspective more familiar to human eyes. That plug-in costs $29.95.

Image Trends was formed from the core members of the former Applied Science Fiction Group, now Kodak's Austin Development Center, the company said.
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9728345-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

 

The RIAA's Beaverton bust: II

p2pnet.net news view:- Yesterday, p2pnet ran a story centering on the corporate music industry use of local police in a raid on two flea markets in Oregon, and I've had several emails mirroring some of the comments in the Slashdot post on this. They say, in effect, Why shouldn't the police be acting against counterfeiters?

As I posted in a Slashdot response, I didn't say, and I'm not saying, that shouldn't be happening. Rather, I was trying to underscore the completely distorted emphasis on what is, after all, a minor event in the scheme of things.

Thanks to an ongoing PR blitzkrieg in the mainstream media, duping music in any way, shape or form is coming to be regarded as a major crime and police forces are being suborned by the entertainment industries to act as copyright cops and in the process, they're being stopped from dealing with far more important incidents.

Counterfeiters are lumped together with file sharers under the now-generic term 'piracy,' which makes it much easier for the Big 4 - EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) and Warner Music (US) - to drag innocent men, women and children into court, accusing them of being thieves and criminals of the same ilk as the counterfeiters. But there's no similarity whatsoever. And not one of these approximately 30,000 cases has yet been decided, and no one has yet been found guilty of the non-existent crime of file sharing, or anything else..

Sharing means exactly that. Sharing. No one has deprived of something he she used to own, no money has changed hands and it's often argued that file sharing is, in fact, an invaluable form of viral marketing.

The Big 4 use their so-called trade organisations such as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), BPI (British Phonographic Industry), IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry) or, CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association of America), to name but a few, to suggest files share shared equal sales lost, and that sharing is exactly the same as someone walking into a retail outlet and shoplifting ------- or duplicating a disc and selling it in a flea market.

The story I refer to, published in The Oregonian, says police grabbed, "50,000 items worth about $758,000," the implication being this was all music industry 'product'.

But also mentioned, though only in passing, are, "knockoff designer purses, sunglasses and clothing, and counterfeit brand-name toys".

The owners of these items would no doubt love to see the police giving the same kind of undivided attention to their products as the CDs and DVDs. But that isn't happening.

The story says Beaverton police, "got a tip about counterfeit items being sold at a Beaverton market in December, and the investigation led them to the Hillsboro flea markets".

No prizes for guessing where the tip came from, and about "20 recording and movie industry investigators" arrived from California to "help" police (who numbered in their dozens, according to the story) identify counterfeit items.

Beaverton's population in 2006 was, says the Wikipedia, estimated at 84,270. So you'd hardly call it a major city. Nonetheless, the movie and music cartels assigned 20, TWENTY!, 'investigators' with "dozens of police officers" taking part in the raid?

The report says the CDs were going for $4.50 each, and the DVDs for between $4 and $12. But let's deduct, say, $10,000 for the sunglasses, etc. That leaves $748,000 for 50,000 (or so) DVDs and CDs, which also means the $4.50 to $12.00 claim doesn't compute.

Meanwhile, the issue isn't whether or not counterfeiting is illegal, or if police should be arresting counterfeiters: it's the disproportionate amount of time and manpower being allocated when it's generally acknowledge that enforcement authorities everywhere are already finding it hard enough to cope with serious problems, including shortages of personnel and other resources.

It's piracy, all right. But the pirates are the entertainment cartels.
http://p2pnet.net/story/12483

 

June 12, 2007 6:13 AM PDT
Security researchers: Safari for Windows not so secure

Within hours of Apple's public release of the beta for Safari 3.0 for Windows, three security researchers independently found holes within the new browser. Researcher Aviv Raff highlighted in a blog post the company's product statement, that reads: "Apple's engineers designed Safari to be secure from day one." Raff found a vulnerability, a memory corruption error that could allow an attacker to insert malicious code on a Windows machine, within three minutes using publicly available fuzzing tools.

Security researcher David Maynor, posting on his Errata security blog, said he was also able to generate a memory corruption error "in no time." By the end of the day, he was able to generate a total of six bugs--four producing a denial of service (crash), and two capable of executing remote code.

Veteran security researcher Thor Larholm wrote in his blog that he found a "0day" vulnerability in Safari within two hours. The flaw exists in how Safari handles URL protocols within Windows, causing a denial of service (crash). Larholm has published an exploit to demonstrate the flaw.

All of the vulnerabilities were found on Windows machines; none of the researchers could say whether these flaws also existed on the Mac OS.
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9728500-7.html

 

TorrentSpy ruling a 'weapon of mass discovery'


news analysis It was a pro-copyright ruling that stunned nearly everyone dealing with the issue of online piracy.
In a decision reported late Friday by CNET News.com, a federal judge in Los Angeles found that a computer server's RAM, or random-access memory, is a tangible document that can be stored and must be turned over in a lawsuit.

If allowed to stand, the groundbreaking ruling may mean that anyone defending themselves in a civil suit could be required to turn over information in their computer's RAM hardware, which could force companies and individuals to store vast amounts of data, say technology experts. Roaming the Web anonymously was already nearly impossible. This ruling, which brings up serious privacy issues, could make it a lot harder.

"I think that people's fears about a potential invasion of privacy are quite warranted," said Ken Withers, director of judicial education at The Sedona Conference, an independent research group. "The fear is that we're putting in the hands of private citizens and particularly well-financed corporations the same tools that heretofore were exclusively in the hands of criminal prosecutors, but without the sort of safeguards that criminal prosecutors have to meet, such as applying for search warrants."
"I think that people's fears about a potential invasion of privacy are quite warranted."
--Ken Withers,
The Sedona Conference

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Chooljian issued the decision while presiding over a court fight between the film industry and TorrentSpy, which is accused of copyright infringement in a lawsuit filed last year by the Motion Picture Association of America. Following her decision, Chooljian ordered TorrentSpy to begin logging user information and allowed the company to mask the Internet Protocol addresses belonging to visitors of the Web site. TorrentSpy must then turn the data over to the MPAA. The judge stayed the order pending an appeal, which the company filed on Tuesday. It's not clear when the appeal will be heard.

The question now, of course, is whether Chooljian's ruling with hold up legally or technically. From a legal standpoint, Withers said he feared the judge's decision may mean a "tremendous expansion" of the scope of discovery in civil litigation. The trend in the courts lately has been to create what Withers called "weapons of mass discovery." Discovery is the legal process by which lawyers obtain documents and other materials to help defend their case.

He also said that the judge's order for a defendant (TorrentSpy) to create logs of user activity so they can be turned over to a plaintiff (MPAA) is unprecedented.

"There's never been a requirement that (defendants) must create documents that they wouldn't ordinarily maintain for the purpose of satisfying some (plaintiff's) discovery requests," said Withers.

But on the technical side, Dean McCarron, principle analyst at Mercury Research, said the judge erred by defining volatile computer memory as "electronically stored information."

RAM is a computer's ephemeral and temporary memory that helps it access data quickly. Think of RAM as the yellow post-it notes that people keep to remind themselves of tasks. Once completed, the note is tossed out. Data in a computer's hard drive is stored permanently and is more like filing documents away in a cabinet.

"RAM is the working storage of a computer and designed to be impermanent," McCarron said. "Potentially your RAM is being modified up to several billions of times a second. The judge's order simply reveals to me a lack of technical understanding."

A "tap" can be installed in a server, McCarron offered. But that means keeping a running log of IP addresses and other information. A tap would also require a company to store enormous amounts of data, an expensive process, he said.

But lawyers who represent copyright holders cheered Chooljian's decision.

"Unfortunately for TorrentSpy, Judge Chooljian's decision may herald the end of an era," Richard Charnley, a Los Angeles-based attorney, said in a statement. "The process, if affirmed, will expose TorrentSpy's viewer-users and, in turn, will allow the MPAA to close another avenue of intellectual property abuse."

Lauren Nguyen, an MPAA attorney, maintains that because TorrentSpy is allowed to redact IP addresses, nobody's privacy is in jeopardy. "The user privacy argument is simply a red herring," Nguyen said. She also said that the judge "broke no new ground in the case." The courts have long considered computer RAM as "electronically stored information," she said.

To understand the significance of the decision, one must consider that many Web sites promise to keep users' information private. Some, like TorrentSpy, do this by switching off their servers' logging function, which typically records visitors' IP addresses as well as their activity on the site.

While protecting its users' privacy, TorrentSpy also makes it easier for those who download pirated material to work in the shadows, MPAA's attorneys argued. The MPAA has estimated that the illegal downloading of copyright movies costs the six largest U.S. studios more than $2 billion annually.

To prove that TorrentSpy was making it easier to share files, the studios told Chooljian that it was necessary that they obtain records of user activity. They convinced her that the only way to do this was to obtain the data from RAM.

Ultimately, pulling user information off a server's RAM might be a bigger privacy problem than it's worth, said one file sharer, who asked to remain anonymous.

"To imagine my information being disseminated without my written or verbal consent is unnerving," she said. "Then again, if I'm doing something I know is illegal, can I protest?"
http://news.com.com/TorrentSpy ruli...900.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-20&subj=news

 

free,Download the Microsoft Windows Home Server Release Candidate


By Michael Calore EmailJune 13, 2007 | 4:34:28 PMCategories: Windows

Windowshomeserver Microsoft's centralized home media server is ready for testing. Go to the Windows Home Server page on Microsoft's Connect site

HERE
http://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer

and complete the quick survey. Then, you'll be sent a link enabling you to download the server software for free. Test it out by setting it up on a spare machine in your house. You will also need a Live.com login to participate. Kind of a bummer that Microsoft is making us jump through so many hoops to test its software, but hey -- it's free!

The Windows Home Server runs on your LAN and hosts all of your music, movies and digital media, making the files instantly accessible to all of the computers in your home. Here's what we said when it was unveiled in January, 2007: "It can be used to manage data stored within user accounts, shared folders, and external storage devices. More than a simple automated NAS backup, it also sports Zune connectivity, and there's a web component that lets you log in and access your data from any connected computer on the planet."
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/06/download_the_mi.html

 

'Windows' Safari dodgy: researchers

p2pnet.net news:- A mere day after Apple announced a new version of its Safari browser would work happily in a Windows environment, security researchers have uncovered almost 20 bugs.

Aviv Raff, David Maynor and Thor Larholm all reported flaws, says the IDG News Service.

"Maynor alone said he'd discovered six bugs, including two that could be used to run unauthorized software on a victim's PC," says the story, going on:

"Safari 3.0 is getting more attention because, for the first time, Apple has made a Windows version of the software available. Now the software can be downloaded by a much larger group of testers.

And Tom Ferris, an expert at finding Apple flaws, said his 'fuzzer' vulnerability tester nailed 10 holes in the browser in only five minutes.

He had "harsh words for Apple's security team," says IDG, to wit, "That's horrible, and just goes to show that they took no initiative to fuzz their own software."

"Apple engineers designed Safari to be secure from day one," said Apple in a statement Raff called "pathetic."

However, the beta software, "is being held to the standard that a Gold Master copy should," the story quotes Mac user Matthew Baker as saying. "It just seems to me that some people... feel some sort of pleasure in reporting issues with Apple's software."

Apple's claims that the people are safer with Safari have indeed made it irresistible to hackers looking to make their bones in a very public way.

"You see a lot of people running OS X saying it’s so secure and frankly Microsoft is putting more work into security than Apple has," said Dragos Ruiu, winner of the recent CanSecWest Hack a Mac contest.

Meanwhile, why would Microsoft users want to use Safari in the first place? They, " may need to run Safari to get access to some synchronization features with iPhone and the desktop," says InformationWeek.

"Moreover, even a sliver of Windows market share will give Safari a huge boost in the raw numbers of its installed base, which would make Safari a more attractive platform for developers and could increase the range of applications available for the iPhone."

Slashdot Slashdot it!

Also See:
work happily - Apple's new Safari for Windows, June 11, 2007
IDG News Service - Windows Safari Bug-Hunters Boost Tally, June 13, 2007
finding Apple flaws - Apple trouble: crash and burn, April 24, 2006
Hack a Mac - QuickTime hole could be 'real bad', April 27, 2007
InformationWeek - Windows Users Don't Care About Safari, June 12, 2007
http://p2pnet.net/story/12503

 

PDF IMAGE EXTRACTION WIZARD..........

PDF Image Extraction Wizard is a free utility that allows you to easily extract bitmap images from PDF documents and store them as individual image files. .....(free).....GO THERE!

http://www.rlvision.com/pdfwiz/about.asp

 

PSIPHON..........
Allows citizens in uncensored countries to provide unfettered access to the Net through their home computers to friends and family members who live behind firewalls of states that censor.....(free).....GO THERE!
http://psiphon.civisec.org/

 

OSSWIN PROJECT..........Huge listing of open source software for Windows .....(free).....GO THERE!
http://osswin.sourceforge.net/

EXAMPLES

* Audio editing tools
* Business Software
* CAD software
* Calendar Software
* CD Writing
* Compression/ZIP
* Databases
* Desktop Environments
* Dictionaries
* Drivers/Hardware
* Educational
* Emulators
* Encyclopedia
* Filesharing
* FTP clients
* Firewall & NAT
* File Systems
* Games
* Graphics
* Instant Messaging
* Internet Voice chat
* IRC clients
* Mail & News
* Media Players (audio)
* Media Players (video)
* Media Players (codecs)
* MC303 utilities
* Networking tools
* NTP clients
* Office tools
* Operating Systems
* PostScript viewers
* Programming
* Remote access
* Sciences and Math
* Security, Privacy, Protection,...
* Server software
* SCP (SecureCoPy) clients
* Stream Downloaders
* Text editors
* Utilities
* Video capture/processing
* VJ Software
* Web browsers
* Webcam
* Web editors
* Webgrabbers
* X-servers

 

iPhone buyers MUST have iTunes

p2pnet.net news:- The iPhone is nigh, slated to hit on- and offline stores on June 29.

But guess what?

With the suggestion that non-Mac iPhone users may need Safari under Windows to get some synchronization features in the background, in one of the most blatant examples of corporate hard-sell ever seen, Apple insists anyone buying an iPhone will also be compelled to open an iTunes account.

Whether they want one or not.

Says the Apple site, innocently:

To set up your iPhone, you'll need an account with Apple's iTunes Store. If you already have an iTunes account, make sure you know your account name and password. If you don't have an account, you should set one up now to save time later. To set up an account, launch iTunes, select the iTunes Store, and click the Sign In button in the upper right corner of iTunes. Sign in and you're ready to go.

That's no lever. That's a crowbar.
http://p2pnet.net/story/12505

 

I lived a nightmare: RIAA victim

p2pnet.net:- Big Music has a vast string of agencies strategically sited around the world. With names such as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), BPI (British Phonographic Industry), IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry), ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association of America), CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association of America) and so on, they purport to be looking after the interests of the hundreds of record labels.

But to all intents and purposes, they're the exclusive properties of four multi-billion-dollar mega companies which rule the corporate music industry with an iron hand.

They are EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) and Warner Music (US) and their so-called trade associations are in fact vicious enforcement outfits whose principal job is to make sure 'consumers' consume, consume, consume, rigidly toeing the corporate line as they do so.

To make sure that happens without halt, the Big 4 are using the international law courts to terrorise innocent people such as Tanya Andersen and her daughter, Kylee (right), to make their point.

Andersen and her lawyer, Lory Lybeck, recently joined the ranks of former RIAA victims who'd forced the Big 4 enforcer to scurry off, tail between its legs.

But before that happened, "It was a living nightmare," she told me..

'Criminals' and 'thieves'

Using mass propaganda techniques identical to those originally developed in the early part of the 20th century and honed to perfection by the Nazis during World War II, the Big 4 have been able to turn a purely commercial transgression, copyright infringement, into a major crime on the scale of rape and murder, calling people who share copyrighted music with each other 'criminals' and 'thieves,' although no crime has been committed and nothing has been stolen.

"Propagandists use a variety of propaganda techniques to influence opinions and to avoid the truth," says the Center for Media & Democracy. "Often these techniques rely on some element of censorship or manipulation, either omitting significant information or distorting it."

It's also called 'spin' and mis- and disinformation maestros such as the RIAA's Mitch Bainwol and Cary Sherman distort and twist the truth to suit the ends of their masters, the major record labels who use these techniques to uphold completely unsupportable claims against people such as Tanya, a disabled mother living on medical benefits and her daughter Kylee, who's only 10.

The Big 4, so rich that it'll probably never be possible to assess their true worth, claim unblushingly that the Andersens and people like them are "devastating" them and causing terrible distress to both artists and record industry workers.

Demonstrating their complete disregard the mental well-being of a child, the RIAA actually tried to set its lawyers loose on Kylee. It was defeated only after strenuous efforts on the part of her mother and Lybeck.

The only people being "devastated" are, moreover, the Tanyas and Kylees and the 30,000 or so other RIAA victims, not one of whom has yet appeared before a judge or a jury, or been found guilty of anything.

And even when a customer caves in to an extortionate out-of-court settlement, it's not necessarily the end of things. Every time one of the victims, who universally deny they've done anything wrong, agrees to pay the RIAA to drop a case, the Big 4 enforcer acquires a virtual admission of guilt (not to mention a wealth priceless personal data) which potentially allows it to reopen the case sometime in the future.

However, the RIAA is being forced to drop more and more of its cases as more and more people stand against it. Because this isn't a righteous campaign on the part of a genuinely distressed industry group. It's the hard-core persecution of a small group of people who are literally unable to defend themselves by an equally small group of venal companies whose only interest is keeping their shareholders happy.

Bizarre marketing battle

To read corporate press reports, the Big 4 are winning this bizarre marketing battle against their own customers.

However, nothing could be further than the truth and literally hundreds upon hundreds of millions of people around the world are opening Net accounts to tap the burgeoning independent sites launched by musicians and bands, entrepreneurs offering affordable music downloads ----- and, of course, the free p2p networks.

Against that, the number of people Big Music has managed to pillory count only in the thousands. In other words, the likelihood of any individual being specifically targeted is close to zero. But that doesn't matter, the labels believe, because they and major Hollywood studio media elements exert almost limitless control over most segments of mainstream print and electronic press.

This allows the music cartels, in particular, to explode the tiny handful of cases currently in process - the vast majority of which have never reached the courts and never will - into examples of a wave of successful 'prosecutions'.

Refusing to be bludgeoned

For decades the major labels have been ripping off their customers with shoddy, overpriced 'product'. However, the picture is changing in this 21st digital century. Thanks to the Net, blogs, IM, email, chat, news sites, cellphones and other communications vehicles which have become common, consumers have become customers again and worse, these now well-informed people are able to completely bypass the corporate outlets, gaining access to unspun information in a manner never before possible.

More and more people are refusing to be bludgeoned by the Big 4 and Andersen was one of the first to decide she wasn't going put up with it, the fact she had no money and no legal resources to back her up notwithstanding. She was able to get Oregon lawyer Lory Lybeck on her side and together, they've fought the RIAA to a standstill.

The RIAA may have dropped its case against her, but now she's fighting for recompense, so it's not completely over. But before the RIAA slithered away, "I felt constant fear and extreme stress," Andersen says, going on:

There wasn't a day that didn't go by where I didn't think about and wonder what my daughter and my future would be like, what kind of a future would we have, and after all this mess, if we would even be able to afford the basic necessities of life. I wondered often if I would mentally be able to handle all that was happening. The lawsuit affected my daughter greatly. There were times she was afraid what was going to happen.

The lawsuit did a lot of damage to my health, my life with my daughter, and relationships with other people. It made me short-tempered, overwhelmed, nervous and stressed.

At times I would be so edgy and short that I would snap at things I never normally would.

Through this lawsuit, I've been humiliated, embarrassed, shamed, and my privacy has been greatly violated by the other side.

They not only deposed my 10-year-old daughter, but, deposed my grown step-kids (who I've long been divorced from the father), friends, etc.

At one point, they even tracked down and called my new landlord. I had been living here for only one month. They've asked and investigated quite a bit of extremely personal information, which was very humiliating.

As you know, I never did what the RIAA accused me of. There was no need for this lawsuit to ever even take place. I did everything humanly possible from the day I received the first letter to tell them there was a mistake. I even offered for my computer to be looked at from the beginning. They didn't want to listen. I'll never under why they continued to put me through the drug out nightmare that they have.

The real tragedy is: the suffering undergone by the Andersens and all the others is completely unnecessary. P2p, file sharing and other forms of digital distribution are here to stay whether the Big 4, Hollywood or any of the other vested corporate interests like it or not.

Sooner or later, they'll be forced to bite the bullet and start treating their customers with respect and as reasonable people, instead of potential criminals.

Tn the meanwhile, the conglomerates have achieved at least one thing. They've created an already a vast and still growing base of new consumers who'll do almost anything rather than go anywhere near the Big 4, or anyone associated with them.

This in turn means the corporations will be forced to compete for the first time in their lives, and this can only mean a lowering of prices and a raising of standards, things which have been desperately needed for decades.

Jon Newton - p2pnet
http://p2pnet.net/story/12506

 

YODM 3D..........We love this one - Virtual desktop manager puts each desktop on a different side of a 3D cube.....(free).....GO THERE!
http://chsalmon.club.fr/index.php?en/Home

 

MPlayer for Windows (2007-06-16)

Size: 22.12MB

Publisher: Visit Website

Release Date: 2007-06-16

Submit Date: 2007-06-17

OS: Win NT/2000/XP/Vista

Publisher's Description
This is a full package of MPlayer for Windows and the MPUI front-end.
This package contains everything you´ll need in one single download!

Note: The anti-virus software "AVG Free Edition" seems to cause the installer to fail, because MPlayer cannot be terminated. If you experience such problems, please send a bug report to AVG...

Key features are:

* The award-winning OpenSource Movie Player available for Windows now
* Plays almost every Audio/Video format that exists today, try out yourself!
* Intuitive user-interface, no need to run MPlayer from the command-line
* Two front-ends included: SMPlayer and MPUI (custom build)
* Full multi-language and Unicode support, more than 20 languages included
* Self-contained "all-in-one" install wizard (made with NSIS)
* More than 192 Video- und 85 Audiocodecs supported natively! (full list)
* Latest optimized MPlayer builds by Celtic Druid for best performance
* Binary Codec Package for MPlayer included, no need to download/install manually
* Optimized builds for: Athlon-XP, Athlon-64, Pentium-4 (Prescott), Core/Core2, Pemtium-M
* Also includes a ´Generic´ build with Runtime CPU Detection
* about 17 MB total download size for the complete package


Recent Updates:

* [2007-06-16] Installer fixes
* [2007-06-16] SMPlayer updated to v0.5.14
* [2007-06-11] QT4 libs are now statically linked to smplayer.exe
* [2007-06-11] SMPlayer updated to v0.5.10
* [2007-06-10] Added new SMPlayer fron-end (Full Package only)
* [2007-05-28] Installer Updates
* [2007-05-25] MPlayer builds updated to latest SVN revision (2006-05-23)
* [2007-03-31] MPlayer builds updated to latest SVN revision (2006-03-31)
* [2007-03-10] MPlayer builds updated to latest SVN revision (2006-03-10)
* [2007-03-10] The OpenGL renderer should work with MPUI now - more or less
* [2007-03-10] Added a tweak to enable OpenGL renderer (-vo gl2) to the installer
* [2007-02-23] MPlayer builds updated to latest SVN revision (2006-02-22)
* [2007-02-23] Install will now use UPX to "optimize" MPlayer.exe
* [2007-02-11] MPlayer builds updated to latest SVN revision (2006-02-10)
* [2007-02-01] MPlayer builds updated to latest SVN revision (2006-02-01)
* [2007-02-01] Added optimzed MPlayer build for Intel Core 2 processors
* [2007-01-26] MPlayer builds updated to latest SVN revision (2006-01-26)
* [2007-01-26] This update fixes Real/WMV problems introduced in previous update!
* [2007-01-26] Updated installer to NSIS 2.23
* [2007-01-21] MPlayer builds updated to latest SVN revision (MPlayer 1.0 RC-1 Try-2)

LINK,Publisher: Visit Website
http://mulder.dummwiedeutsch.de/home/?page=projects#mplayer


DOWNLOAD
http://www.freewarefiles.com/downloads_counter.php?programid=21340

 

River Past Wave@MP3 3.4.1

Size: 2.12MB

Publisher: Visit Website
http://www.riverpast.com/

Release Date: 2007-06-17

Submit Date: 2007-06-17

OS: Win 9x/ME/NT4/2K/XP/2K3


Publisher's Description
River Past Wave@MP3 is a FREE WAV to MP3 converter and MP3 to WAV converter. It is extremely easy to use. Select the input file, and click "Convert", that´s it!

Convert your WAVE files to put on your portable MP3 player, or convert your MP3 files to burn to a CD.

DOWNLOAD
http://www.freewarefiles.com/downloads_counter.php?programid=14660

 

p2pnet talks to MyBloop

p2pnet.net news special:- Last year MyBloop went online more as an exploratory project, a prototype, than anything else.

Now it's back, and it's here to stay, say (left to right) Angel Leon, Eugene Kim, Yacine Benzine, Ethan Lu, Fitim Blaku, Cristian Radu and Francis Ho, the multi-national team behind it.

Users can upload, and share, an unlimited number of files, listen to music, create playlists, back up files ---- and there's nothing to download or install.

They have total control of personal data and can keep private information from prying eyes, promises the group.

p2pnet spoke with Leon, whom we already knew through his connection with the FrostWire team, members of the LimeWire open-source community who decided to go their own way with a free, non-profit and independent p2p application when LimeWire started filtering content on Gnutella.

p2pnet: Aren't you afraid you'll have the entertainment cartels breathing heavily down your necks, accusing you of facilitating illegal file sharing?

Leon: More and more Internet users are beginning to realize that they should be allowed to share their files however and whenever they choose to. The entertainment industry has been holding back innovation in file sharing for nearly a decade. People have always shared their files, but they've mainly been doing it the tedious way; through email or file transfers over IM. The more technologically inclined have relied on FTP or newsgroups, to name a few.

But really, there's no central place on the Internet which gives these users all the storage and other tools they need to share and backup files easily. That's where MyBloop.com comes in.

It's important to mention that we abide by all international laws. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act gives us the right, by law, to run this website. Copyrighted content is taken out when get a DMCA takedown request from the copyright holder.

p2pnet: Why are you offering this service?

Leon: There's no easy way to send a bunch of files to someone. Often, many of us wish we had access to our own files from any computer with an internet connection. MyBloop offers the platform, the service, the community and the features people have come to expect from a great file sharing website.

p2pnet: Where are you located?

Leon: We're located in New York, but we've incorporated in New Jersey.

p2pnet: Do people simply upload files, and if they do, aren't they inviting unwanted attention from the entertainment cartels? And what about downloading?

Leon: No one can "download" someone else's music files through our site. Users can only download music they've uploaded themselves. This makes MyBloop a great way to backup files. Anyone can listen to another MyBloop user's music through their web browser with MyBloop's Flash Player.

Users can also make playlists with other users' songs, but we prevent and are against the actual downloading of music, as was made famous by Napster. Moreover, any user can choose to make any or all of their files private. MyBloop encourages users to share their files, but we also fully respect people's privacy.

p2pnet: Are you talking about any files, or purely independent files which aren't tied down by copyright?

Leon: Users can upload any type of file and uploads as many files as they want. If someone wants to upload a new album by Beyoncé they purchased online, or a song they ripped from a CD they bought, they just mark it as a "Private" file once it's uploaded. This will ensure only the user who uploaded it can access the file. Then that user can decide whether or not to share the private link.

This ensures they're never held liable for copyright violations, because they'll be the only user with access to it.

p2pnet: If copyrighted files are involved, do you have agreements with any of the corporate entertainment companies?

Leon: We only have agreements with our users. It's really their call on what they decide to share, though we do moderate the site. However we're open to talking to entertainment companies if they want to freely distribute promotional material from their artists. We're also interested in helping independent artists, and we always accept Creative Common-based playlists. Major labels and independent artists can create an account in MyBloop, make a playlist with promotional music, and talk to us to promote their playlist with links to buy the music on iTunes, MP3.com, etc.

p2pnet: Will you ultimately charge fees, or in some way bundle MyBloop with advertisements?

Leon: Our main service will always remain free. We're really trying to provide a service that would normally cost users a lot of money if they went anywhere else. The site is driven solely by targeted advertising at this point. We have plans to eventually introduce premium accounts, but right now we're focusing solely on perfecting the free service.

p2pnet: People have to sign up to use MyBloop, giving their ages, sex, home country and email address. How safe will this information be?

Leon: If you want to just listen to music and browse files, you don't have to register at all. If you want to start sharing files, we ask you to create an account. We ask for an email address to make contact with you and in the event that you forget your password. We ask for the country you're located in because we will be expanding to data centers in other countries, and when you download a file, MyBloop will serve the file from the location that's closest to you. Age is used for filtering adult content from underage users. To prevent showing unrelated, annoying banner ads, the age and gender are also used for showing targeted ads in the future.

No personally identifiable information will ever be shared with, or sold to, a third party.

p2pnet: You say, "You are given complete control, enabling you to easily hide personal documents from public viewing." How does that work?

Leon: After creating an account, you can access the My Files page and set any file as "Private". The file will be removed from the search engine and all public listings (top files, new files, etc).

The only way someone else can access the file is if the file's original owner gives them the URL.

p2pnet: I see you have a bunch of football files online right now. Are you targeting the sports videos in particular, or is this just coincidence?

Leon: Just a coincidence. We've got some sports enthusiasts who must have found out how easy it is to share their files on MyBloop.

Fitim Blaku started developing the first version of MyBloop, which only supported pictures, in 2006. He recruited friends of his to help develop and grow the service, which now supports music playlists, videos and every single type of file.

Ethan Lu worked with Fitim and Eugene Kim, re-vamping the core code and database architecture. His main project is developing a new file-browsing interface for the site: Bloop Explorer.

Eugene Kim is from Uzbekistan and has experience in client and server side programming in different programming languages. He linked up with the MyBloop team early on and currently leads the development of the flash uploader and classic uploader.

Angel Leon is a Venezuelan software engineer who, after working for LimeWire.com, moved over to Flycell.com, at the same time, starting the FrostWire development in his spare time for fun. He met Blaku and Lu at his day job and after sharing bite to eat on Broadway, decided their mutual interest in file sharing was worth taking several important steps further.

"I tried MyBloop.com and I wasn't going to let the chance of being part of something so important go away," he says. Currently designing and developing the MyBloop API and a top secret project with Francis and Fitim. He's also a podcaster under the pseudonym of Gubatron and will try to make MyBloop.com a great tool for the podcasting community.

From Romania, Cristian Radu met Fitim and the rest of the group while he was working for New York advertising company. He, too, fell in love with the concept and started helping out on the development side. He's urrently working on new version of the Bloop Player (Flash Music Player).

Yacine Benzine was born in Algeria and also has French citizenship. His family lived in Ethiopia full while before moving to New York city when he was 11. Benzine focuses on the business, marketing and financial and of MyBloop.

"After years of working on mind numbing web applications and treading the intricate mine fields of office politics, joining MyBloop's development team was a great substitution for overdosing on Prozac," says Francis Ho, only partially joking. He's working on new features for the website and the MyBloop API, as well as heavily cloaked secret project also involving Leon and Blaku.

Slashdot Slashdot it!

Also See:
started filtering content - October 13, 2005

If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, and here for details. And if you're Chinese and you're looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.

rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile - http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php | | And use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don't buy their 'product'. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you're into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep's doorstep, making sure you've contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don't just complain. Do something!

(Monday 18th June 2007)
http://p2pnet.net/story/12524