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

I have come to the conclusion that everything is obsolete as soon as I buy it. Ah, conspiracy to drive you nuts

 

Researchers take the blur out of shaky photos

By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: August 9, 2006, 4:00 AM PDT
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Researchers have unveiled an image-processing technique that shows promise for fixing images spoiled by camera shake.

The technique is based on an algorithm that deduces the path that a wobbling camera took when a photo was shot, then uses that path to reverse much of the resultant blurring. The method isn't a miracle cure, but researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Toronto have used it to significantly help a wide variety of sample images.

One example shows a bird with black, white and rust-colored feathers, blurred to the point where its legs are barely discernable. After processing, it's possible to see not just the legs, but also a dark patch around its eyes, white patterning amid the black feathers and other details.
Un-blurring images

click to view pixs
http://news.com.com/2300-1041_3-6102533.html


and click here to read the total article
http://news.com.com/Researchers+tak...photos/2100-1041_3-6102910.html?tag=nefd.lede

 

A GOOD READ
RIAA attacks Vietnam vet
It gets worse ......

RIAA attacks Vietnam vet

p2pnet.net News Special:- The US administration is in rigid lock-step with the corporate entertainment cartels as they try to use American tax-payer funded resources to further their vested, hard-core commercial interests.

The Big Four record labels – Vivendi Universal (France), EMI (Great Britain), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) and Warmer Music (US) - started it, but the movie industry is now close behind and, using the willing mainstream media as their principal print and electronic outlets, the two sectors have successfully escalated a simple commercial concept, copyright infringement, to the level of major crime, ranking it with murder and rape.

Pretending that heirs be made responsible for responding to a lawsuit against their father is a very interesting proposition. Some possible ramifications are...

How about sending to jail the children of criminals who die in jail without completing their sentences? The children would then complete the sentence, unless they prove their father was innocent. Surely some lawyer will make money on the new case.


go here to read a dam good article
http://p2pnet.net/index.php

 

The future is OFF,

p2pnet.net News:- The copy fight has ended.

So states the Digital Douwd coalition of "of otherwise anonymous hacker 'meets', 'cons' and 'orgs'," saying it's challenging the media giants with its Owner-Free File System..

"The new system is purported to be immune from the consumer lawsuits that have plagued previous P2P systems," a Digital Douwd member tells p2pnet. "While the creators do not contend the fact that copyright laws exist, they do maintain that the users and operators of OFF System peers don't actually break any of those laws.

"The OFF System does not require storing or transmitting copies of creative works.

"This simple bit of mathematical and computer science wizardry supposedly renders traditional copyright laws moot. The system relies exclusively on multi-use randomized blocks for its storage and transmission needs.

"Each stored OFF block is used to represents multiple works simultaneously. Interestingly, new meaning can be added to any stored block without needing to modify the block. This makes it impossible for anyone to 'know what a block is for' because every block can be used to represent anything."

Meanwhile, Digital Douwd, "seeks an end to copyright lawsuits and a re-conceptualization of digital property laws," it declares. "History has shown that current mechanisms are inadequate at preserving both consumer value and access to the public commons."

Here's what it says in its closing letter to the "Copyright Industry Associations of America".

Attention:

Mark today on your calendar! You will need to write it in your post mortem. Today is the day our future began and your future ended.

For three years now you have pursued your lawsuit campaign. Twenty thousand plus consumers, a dozen companies, and several very prominent friends of ours have fallen victim to your charade. We hoped you would see the obvious foolishness of your ways. Now, however, it appears clear that your shenanigans have gone on too long—You have begun deposing bereaved families of the deceased.

This can not stand. This will not stand. You will not stand. And from this day forward, your manipulative copyright claims will have no standing.

Today is the day we end all of your problems with consumer copyright infringement. For from today forward, consumers have no need for copies, infringing or otherwise. One common copy is all that is needed. One copy for everyone. Accessible forever.

Today we announce a massively distributed copy-less file system. A place where all content is available instantly, anonymously and to everyone, without breaking any laws. Today we announce the Owner-Free File System. An island of sanity in your sea of madness.

Feel free to monitor OFF’s communications. You’ll find no copying. Subpoena a few servers. You’ll find nothing that belongs to you. Only bits of randomness. This new internet infrastructure is truly a place without ownership. Nobody owns the OFF System. Nobody owns bits of randomness collected in the OFF System. There is beauty in randomness. As with all things beautiful, randomness’ value lies in the eye of the beholder. There is no intrinsic meaning in randomness but an infinite amount of extrinsic value. And behold that value we will.

This is not a threat. This is not a negotiation. This is the future - A future with no one to sue.

Adapt or die.

The Digital Douwd

Go here for an overview and for now, definitely stay tuned

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(Monday 14th August 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/9583


OFF System Development

Overview

Numbers
A computer file is simply a number. Normally it is a really big number, but it is otherwise just like any other number. It is one more then the previous number and one less than the next.

We often think about it as a sequence of small numbers (bytes) or sometimes a sequence bits (ones and zeros). However, when you line these up in a sequence they form one big number.

Imagine lining up decimal digits. When you line up the sequence of decimal digits; Five followed by three followed by two, is interpreted to be 532 (Five hundred, thirty-two). The same thing happens with binary numbers, but the numbers are usually much longer.

Small Numbers
Why is this important? Well for every number there are an infinite number of possible representations for this number.

Think of the number twelve (12). It can be represented as five plus seven (5+7), or twenty-five minus thirteen (25-13). Taken individually the numbers 5, 7, 13 and 25 are never 12.

If for some reason we were to allow 12 to be copyrighted by Brittney, she would still have no claim on the numbers 5, 7, 13 and 25. I could still copy these numbers and pass them around as I saw fit. As long as I didn’t copy the number 12, I should have no problems with the law.

So what happens if I transmit the “formula” (5+7)? Am I allowed to do that? What about the formula (25-13)? What if I only transmit (5,7) or (25,13)? What is the “meaning” of these transmissions?

There is actually no way to know the meaning of any of these transmissions. The interpretation is purely up to the receiver. The + sign may not mean plus at all. It may only be a separator. (5,7) many mean 57 or 5.7 or any number of possible other interpretations.

There are many legitimate reasons to store or transmit the numbers 5 and 7. As such, the only possible one who can cause a law to be broken is the receiver. If the receiver reconstructs 12 from any transmitted numbers then perhaps the receiver has broken the law. But then again, perhaps not. If no “copy” of 12 is made then no copyright law can have been broken. To play a song is not to copy a song. No more then to play a VHS tape is to copy a VHS tape.

Big Numbers
So now lets translate these principles to big numbers. When we translate something into a computer file we create a sequences of digits that represent the original.

Lets take a song for example. Let’s say, “Lawyers, Guns and Money” is 3MB long. That means the song is three million bytes long or twenty-four million bits long. This makes a very big number, but it is still a number. As every binary number can be translated into a decimal number, I’ll use them to simplify these examples.

Picture the song as this, but much longer.
24332984303829732498…398724

Now there are two other numbers that may be of interest, depending upon how you interpret them. Consider the following big numbers:

11230243302314110327…264211

and

12102741001515622171…134513

Then consider adding them together.

Are these numbers copyrighted? Can I store them on two separate computers? Would that break the law? What if they were never added together? Would their existence still break the law?

What if I give you two other numbers? Again, and again.

There are two consistent ways to answer the above questions. One leads to the conclusion that “All numbers are copyrighted.” The other leads to the conclusion that, “There exists encodings of copyrighted number that are NOT copyrighted.”

If the first conclusion is true, copyright is pointless. If the second is true copyright is meaningless.

Multi-Use Numbers
This is the idea (or meme) at the core of the OFF System. The OFF System then takes it farther to show that each of these numbers can be used for many different things simultaneously. Let’s name these numbers now, and add a couple more.

11230243302314110327…264211 = A
12102741001515622171…134513 = B
47379872610938161983…471179 = C
02810398720484003497…102380 = D

We showed above that (A+B) could represent, “Lawyers, Guns and Money”. Interestingly, at the same time (A+C) could represent, “Oops, I did it again!” Who then owns A, Warren or Brittney? Also (B+D) could represent, “Piano Man”. So who ones B, Warren or Billy? Each of these numbers can represent an infinite number of things simultaneously.

No one person can lay claim to any one number. That is why I claim that these numbers are not copyrightable.

OFF System
This is exactly what the OFF System does, but instead of adding it uses another logical process called XOR that simplifies the programming. Otherwise the logic is exactly the same.

It then spreads each number to different servers around the internet. This is done to speed retrieval. No fancy encryption is needed as each number has no meaning. No anonymity is needed as no one can tell how the numbers are being interpreted. That is why we termed this a “Brightnet”. No secrecy is needed.
http://offsystem.sourceforge.net/wordpress/?page_id=4

 

OFF Press Release

(167 total words in this text)
(897 Reads) Printer friendly page

** 1PM CST EMBARGO **

Embargoed until 1pm CST
Monday, August 14, 2006
http://www.thebighack.org

HACKER COALITION ANNOUNCES NEW PEER TO PEER SYSTEM

System allows access to any content without making infringing copies.

OFF System Endangers Traditional Media Business Models.

CYBERSPACE (August 14, 2006) –The Digital Douwd, a coalition of computer hacker societies, is proud to announce the beta release of The Owner-Free File System. Available at SourceForge, the OFF System is the first peer to peer system designed to prevent copyright lawsuits.

(Somebody mind finishing this?)

The organization is conveying the single message. “The copy fight has ended.”

The Digital Douwd is a coalition of otherwise anonymous hacker “meets”, “cons” and “orgs”. Its members include some of the biggest names in the technology industry. The organization seeks an end to copyright lawsuits and a re-conceptualization of digital property laws. History has shown that current mechanisms are inadequate at preserving both consumer value and access to the public commons.
http://thebighack.org/modules.php?o...ns&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=24&page=1

 

Best news in a very long time. I hope the future is now...,

I'd like to see those lawyers faces... lol

 

jerry1 i sure would read this..

Music industry threatens guitar tablature sites

8/14/2006 3:48:03 PM, by Nate Anderson

First it was services that provided music, then it was sites that offered lyrics. Now the music industry has trained its legal guns upon guitar tablature, and several of them have already been shuttered.

Last December, the Music Publishers' Association (MPA) chose to take action against web sites that posted either sheet music or tablature (a simplified form of notation used by guitarists) in order to "protect the interests of the creators and publishers of music so that, [sic] the profession of songwriting remains viable and that new and exciting music will be continued to be created [sic] and enjoyed for generations to come."

The MPA represents businesses that make money from the creation and sale of sheet music and tablature. If, as I did last week, you've ever walked into a music store and look at a note-for-note transcription of a Beatles album, you'll have a good idea of what these firms sell. They're understandably unhappy about trying to compete with free tablature available on the Internet, especially when people rip off their work and post it online (most tabs are user-created, but such copying does happen).

go here to read the article
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060814-7498.html

 

Any idea if OFF uses a modified version of Darknets so users' IP are masked through the entire downloading process? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet

 

Thank You, Ireland ... that was very interesting but to be frank, I'm not the least bit surprised; it was only a matter of time.

While I know some guitarists would be angry to hear me say this, the music teacher in me is rather glad to see them go. Tabs do have the small benefit of teaching one how something is constructed but too many get addicted to them ... it is easy to convince yourself that your getting better or impress yourself believing that you're good because you've been able to "parrot" the impressive and creative work of another. Tablature stifles creativity and there is no originality or style at all resulting from the effort...rather like a print compared to the original work of art. If one were to put the same amount of time in one or two other learning techniques, a student would learn just as quickly but this time with originality as he develops his own style rather than merely parroting the style of another.

 

Cindy &Chavez
Venezuela Dictator Vows To Bring Down U.S. Government

Venezuela government is sole owner of Citgo gasoline company

Venezuela Dictator Hugo Chavez has vowed to bring down the U.S. government. Chavez, president of Venezuela, told a TV audience: "Enough of imperialist aggression; we must tell the world: down with the U.S. empire. We have to bury imperialism this century."

The guest on his television program, beamed across Venezuela, was Cindy Sheehan, the antiwar activist. Chavez recently had as his guest Harry Belafonte, who called President Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world."

Chavez is pushing a socialist revolution and has a close alliance with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

Regardless of your feelings about the war in Iraq, the issue here is that we have a socialist dictator vowing to bring down the government of the U.S. And he is using our money to achieve his goal!

The Venezuela government, run by dictator Chavez, is the sole owner of Citgo gas company. Sales of products at Citgo stations send money back to Chavez to help him in his vow to bring down our government.

Take Action

Please decide that you will not be shopping at a Citgo station. Why should U.S. citizens who love freedom be financing a dictator who has vowed to take down our government?

Very important. Please forward this to your friends and family. Most of them don't know that Citgo is owned by the Venezuela government.


YOU CAN VERIFY THIS ON THE CITGO WEB PAGE.
http://www.citgo.com/AboutCITGO.jsp

per jaybo

 

Chavez may vow all he wants against imperialism, but that's what his aming at alienating all his neighbours offering cheap petroleum and mighty petro-dollars.

He's following Castro's strategy to remain in power. All he's got to do is cry out loud that the imperialism is trying to kill him, etc.

I'm not a big fan of Chavez or any of their allies.

 

I don't know enough about our relationship (or lack thereof) with Chavez to comment on it, but I can't help but wonder what kind of effect boycotting Citgo would have or is it just to send some sort of message? His is a pretty hot commodity...its not like he won't be able to sell it elsewhere if we don't buy it.

 

Microsoft patches fix

p2pnet.net News:- Microsoft is issuing a fix for a fix it's already issued.

“The MS06-042 bulletin, which fixed 8 flaws in Internet Explorer 5.01 and 6, will be recrafted, then re-released next Tuesday, Aug. 22, a company security program manager said Wednesday,” says InformationWeek.

Recrafted,eh? ;p

"We've made an update to MS06-042 to let customers know of an issue they might see after applying the update to Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 systems," the story has Mike Reavey, the operations manager of the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), saying.

Users running IE 6 SP1 on Windows XP SP1 and Windows 2000, “will watch their browsers crash when they visit sites that have both compression and the HTTP 1.1 protocol enabled.

“Until MS06-042 is re-released, users can apply a Microsoft-made hotfix. However, it's not available for download; users must contact Microsoft's product support by telephone to request the hotfix.”

Although the prospect of crashes looms for users, Bill and the Boyz, “continued to urge everyone to apply the MS06-042 fixes,” adds InfoWeek.

Also See:
InformationWeek - Microsoft To Fix Patch That Crashes IE, August 17, 2006

p2pnet newsfeeds for your site.
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Mobile - http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php

(Friday 18th August 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/9616?PHPSESSID=33b95b9dfb84359b905cd26d41e088f4

 

Apple in Nordic CRAP talks,

p2pnet.net News:- In typically cocky fashion Apple, a hard-core US corporation which answers only to its shareholders, has finally agreed to discuss complaints from consumer agencies and other rights groups in Scandinavia that iTunes Apple C.R.A.P. breaches consumer laws.

Nordic regulators are slated to meet in Iceland this month to discuss possible legal action against Apple Computer Inc and with that on the horizon, the company has “responded in writing and wants a face-to-face discussion as well,” Reuters has Sweden's acting consumer ombudsman, Marianne Abyhammar, saying.

go here to read the article
http://p2pnet.net/story/9615?PHPSESSID=1bf6d016f4f64b61482c80a7295de979

 

K-LITE CODEC PACK.......... K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of codecs and related tools. Codec is short for Compressor-Decompressor. Codecs are needed for encoding and decoding (playing) audio and video. The K-Lite Codec Pack is designed as a user-friendly solution for playing all your movie files. With the K-Lite Codec Pack you should be able to play all the popular movie formats and even some rare formats.....(free).....GO THERE!
http://www.codecguide.com/

 

A third of US students are thieves

p2pnet.net News:- Fully one third of all American teenagers and college students are thieves, says a new Hollywood report.

“Research conducted by the MPAA revealed that one-third of all internet piracy is committed by college students in the U.S,” says the Hollywood 'trade' organization, going on:

“The vast majority of Internet piracy in the U.S. - 71 percent - is committed by individuals between the ages of 16 and 24.”

In its specious Red Carpets Ratings service, “Piracy is theft, and pirates are thieves, plain and simple,” the MPAA states unequivocally. “Downloading a movie off of the Internet is the same as taking a DVD off a store shelf without paying for it.”


GO HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE
http://p2pnet.net/story/9617?PHPSESSID=1791f3c549e2f0fee9485ec107faae1a

 

QUICKTIME ALTERNATIVE..........QuickTime Alternative will allow you to play QuickTime files (.mov, .qt and other extensions) without having to install the official QuickTime Player. It also supports QuickTime content that is embedded in webpages. (And, at last, play Quick Time files without the intrusiveness of qttask.exe constantly asserting itself).....(free).....GO THERE!
http://www.codecguide.com/


REAL ALTERNATIVE.......... Real Alternative will allow you to play RealMedia files without having to install RealPlayer.....(free).....GO THERE!
http://www.codecguide.com/

 

Teens Don't Think CD Copying is a Crime
Posted by Zonk on Saturday August 19, @01:28AM
from the don't-copy-that-floppy dept.
Businesses Media The Courts
An anonymous reader writes "An article in the Orlando Sentinel reports on a poll done by the LA Times and Bloomberg. The informal study looked at teenager attitudes towards copying media. Only 31 percent said they thought it was illegal to copy a CD borrowed from a friend who had purchased it. Attitudes about ill-gotten media were less clear, and the article admits than even the legal system is slightly fuzzy on this issue." From the article: "Among teens aged 12 to 17 who were polled, 69 percent said they thought it was legal to copy a CD from a friend who purchased the original. By comparison, only 21 percent said it was legal to copy a CD if a friend got the music for free. Similarly, 58 percent thought it was legal to copy a friend's purchased DVD or videotape, but only 19 percent thought copying was legal if the movie wasn't purchased. Those figures are a big problem for the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America, both of which have spent millions of dollars to deter copying of any kind. The music industry now considers so-called 'schoolyard' piracy -- copies of physical discs given to friends and classmates -- a greater threat than illegal peer-to-peer downloading, according to the RIAA."

go here to read the total article

Are kids 'sharing' or stealing?
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/feat...g09,0,3450772.story?coll=orl-living-headlines

 

Digitising analogue signals may violate DMCA by ignoring ACP
Posted by Seán Byrne on 19 August 2006 - 01:06 - Source: Ars Technica

Back in June 2005, Macrovision sued Sima Products for making video processors that made it easy for consumers to circumvent Macrovision's analogue copy protection (ACP), such as that used in DVDs and certain pre-recorded VHS tapes. Early this year, the court issued a preliminary injunction against Sima earlier this year, however this was later upheld in June.

ACP works by inserting noise into the vertical blanking interval, which causes havoc with the automatic gain control of most VCR's, thus resulting in a poor quality recording

go here to read the total article
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13831

 

Movies File Share Top Ten,8-19-06



p2pnet.net Feature:- p2pnet's regular, and unique, Movies File Share Top Ten is compiled with statistics from Big Champagne. For an explanation of how BC arrives at the numbers, here's the company's Adam Toll.

“We monitor BT sites (a constantly evolving set) and observe, in addition to all the other available information, the number of users leeching(downloading) each title at any given time. Using the information collected and processed continually, we then calculate the average number of simultaneous leechers for each period. This is a little different from the P2P measure, as explained below.

“While the P2P measure published on p2pnet.net shows the average simultaneous users who are sharing the movie on P2P networks, the BT measure represents the relatively smaller number of people who are, on average, actively downloading the movie (in other words, in the process of downloading the movie) at any given time. This is a very different statistic. These two measures are a consequence of the differences in the ways that P2P and BT work.”

With all the dross being pumped out by research and marketing firms on what's supposedly happening with p2p, it's good to have at least one firm around which shows the picture as it really is as opposed to the way the many supposedly 'independent' reports commissioned by the entertainment and software cartels present it.

Note: 'Return' means back after a week's absence. If it's back after longer than that, it's designated 'new'.

(PS - This week's chart is a day late. Sorry about that. Our fault ; )

Movies File Share Top Ten Downloaders ('leechers')
BitTorrent, World-wide
Current simultaneous leechers as of August 19, 2006
Ranking Movie Number of Downloads
01 >>> Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (unchanged) 49,952
02 >>> Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (unchanged) 48,630
03 >>> The Benchwarmers + 4 48,370
04 >>> Barnyard: The Original Party Animals + 5 45,953
05 >>> V For Vendetta (new) 43,685
06 >>> Final Destination 3 (unchanged) 42,158
07 >>> The Devil Wears Prada (unchanged) 42,745
08 >>> Superman Returns - 3 39,839
09 >>> John Tucker Must Die + 10 40,128
10 >>> The Break-Up (return) 40,029

Movies File Share Top Ten Downloads
p2p, World-wide
Week ending August 19, 2006
Ranking Movie Number of Downloads
01 >>> Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (unchanged) 1,539,888
02 >>> The Benchwarmers + 3 1,534,227
03 >>> Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby + 5 1,494,080
04 >>> Superman Returns - 2 1,474,533
05 >>> Barnyard: The Original Party Animals + 6 1,470,228
06 >>> The Devil Wears Prada - 4 1,469,625
07 >>> V For Vendetta (new) 1,464,222
08 >>> Final Destination 3(unchanged) 1,423,623
09 >>> Inside Man (new) 1,421,707
10 >>> The Break-Up - 9 1,408,942

Movies File Share Top Ten Downloads
p2p, USA
Week ending August 19, 2006
Ranking Movie Number of Downloads
01 >>> Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (unchanged) 923,192
02 >>> The Benchwarmers + 3 909,294
03 >>> Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby + 5 905,610
04 >>> Barnyard: The Original Party Animals + 6 894,952
05 >>> Superman Returns - 2 883,785
06 >>> V For Vendetta (new) 878,325
07 >>> The Devil Wears Prada - 4 864,970
08 >>> Inside Man (new) 861,549
09 >>> Final Destination 3 - 8 861,384
10 >>> The Break-Up 828,803