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

Ex-Border Agent Said Beaten in Prison

Feb 06 3:15 PM US/Eastern


By ALICIA A. CALDWELL
Associated Press Writer




EL PASO, Texas (AP) -- A former U.S. Border Patrol agent who was convicted of shooting a drug smuggling suspect and then lying about it was beaten by fellow inmates in prison, his relatives and a congressman said Tuesday.

Prison officials did not immediately confirm that Ignacio Ramos had been attacked.

The convictions of Ramos and fellow former agent Jose Alonso Compean sparked outcry from critics who argued that the men were merely doing their job defending the border against criminals.

U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., a vocal supporter of the agents and opponent of illegal immigration, criticized the Bush administration Tuesday for failing to protect Ramos and demanded a full presidential pardon for the two men.

"Not only did the administration choose the side of a foreign dope runner over the agents who stopped him from smuggling a load of drugs into the county _ now they've failed to protect that agent while his case is on appeal," he said in a statement.

Ramos and Compean, who reported to prison in January, were each sentenced to more than a decade behind bars. Ramos is being held at a medium- and low-security federal facility at Yazoo City, Miss. Compean is serving his sentence at the Elkton Federal Correctional Institution in Ohio; no problems have been reported with his detention.

The agents were convicted last year of shooting Osvaldo Aldrete Davila in 2005 near El Paso and then trying to cover up the incident. Davila was shot once in the buttocks.

Ramos' wife, Monica Ramos, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that her husband described being attacked late Saturday, when he "let his guard down." She said the attackers kicked and stomped him for several minutes.

He was able to identify one man in the group, Monica Ramos said.

Officials of the Federal Bureau of Prisons did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment Tuesday.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2007/02/06/D8N4E48O0.html

 

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Why Macs are so much better than PCs

Letters Old coals raked over at length

By The Letterman: Wednesday 07 February 2007, 13:04
Subject: Vista @ $8 a pop

It's funny to see that such a capitalstic idea is happening in ole Iran.

$8 a registerable through a Vole Hole.

I hope the little critter doesn't get many paper cuts from all that registering passing through the ol' vole' hole.

Daysum

Subject: scribble of CSI

are you sure that's not a ~4 year old scribble of an opteron/HT system?

hahn

Subject: vista's pretty face

Since all vista has to offer is a pretty face why not mention this option to spending $200 on a drm fiasco.

http://www.windowsxlive.net/?page_id=15

regards
Mike H.

Subject: Apple urges users to delay Vista upgrade

"Apple telling consumers to 'wait' before upgrading seems to suggest that it did not really want punters to upgrade at all."

If apple releases its OS as a stand alone product, i.e. with no hardware...

i'd definitely go for Mac OS, or atleast give it a try...

the question is,,, why aren't they doing so, it will be a good thing for people who are p*ssed off with Vista... and that's including me

A.H.A

Subject: numa numa

Since the Everywhere Girl is apparently not suitable material for wikipedia then perhaps it's time to start a campaign to also get this page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numa_Numa removed.

And maybe everything else on this page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_phenomenon

Andy

Subject: Please Bill Gates, save this Russian pirate from the gulag

Hi Desky!

If I would see that a teacher uses stolen software in a school, I would go angry too!

They can work and learn on an good or better Office and Database with a free DEBIAN distribution, FreeBSD, a cheap SUSE LINUX an so on and if they must work on a cheap CAD workstation (3D mechanic, programming, SPICE simulation, PCB layout and more) there can buy an old W2K system, install an free WIDGETS engine (and other free goodies more!) on desk and work with it!

For a school CAD System under W2K SP4 you can use an old 800Mhz CPU with 256MB memory, an good 19" display and a new fast HD drive! (costs an sixpack on a scapyard and it will be enough power for the fastet CAD Software like IronCAD and the best SPICE simulator and VHDL programmer like Electronic Workbench!)

Who understand an OS and can work under Linux or BSD with an computer can also work under MS Windows ..... aaaannnnd ..... who can only work with an pretty shiny stupid Windows thing, sheesh ...... is too rich an too stupid for the real life thing on earth!

Have nice week!
Frank-J. Bebber

Subject: Proof reading

Since the four people here who read this can't proof read as well as you, I've institued a new policy - we'll just send it to you first, then after you've proof read it, we'll send it out to the rest of the world.

Thanks
Jon Peddie

Subject: Cracked Vista

I always wonder about these cracked versions. Sounds like a scheme.

I can see Bill at his desk right now: "Yes, yes! THEY ARE EATING IT UP! They won't be smiling when they find out we started this fiasco in the first place - I want to see the look on their faces when 'Sorry, you just got fucked by Microshaft, again.' appears. Kodak Moment"

I agree, Kodak Moment.

Source: Right outta my ass.

Regards,
Mark

Subject: Bill Gate$

Argh, bother me not with that pocket calculator stuff! They invented menu bar?!? Oh noes, Firefox is doomed, Gate$ will sue them for using File, Edit, View... they better change it into File, View, Edit.. just to be safe. In these crowded days you never know whose toes you are stepping onto.

I am sorry but there were systems in use with displays, windows and menus when PC was still amber text on a black background only.

Regards,
Igor Levicki

Subject: Intel CSI diagram scribbled on back of fag packet

Intel's new architecture will differ from Hyper Transport how?

Heath

Subject: Iran

Iran ! Iran ! Iran !

Hackers

Subject: Microsoft has no plans to close Vista upgrade loophole

Hi there,

Interesting article especialy for people who have XP licence and want to do a clean Vista installation after they bought the Upgrade for £20 through the redeemer coupon.

But I cannot understand why someone will buy the upgrade version of e.g. Vista Premium for £133 and not the Vista Premium OEM (£67) plus a mouse worth £2. MS OEM licence state "any kind of hardware including keyboard or mouse". At least the last time I look at it 4 days ago.

Also if someone isn't bothered about Aero, the Vista Home Basic OEM cost less than XP SP2 (£50) and just get a Flash mem stick to use it at SSD Ram.

Thank you
Panos

Subject: EMF damage the Swedes

the swedish people are right,the damage of WiMax can not be over stated enuff. ck out lighthealing.com their rejuvinizer's(I've had mine for 16 plus years I never take it off) this is NOT spam,what I saying here is that I diligently protect MYself from eletromagnetic damage,this stuff WiFi and WiMax,cell phone EMF damage is NO Joke and this will show to be so,in the coming months,weeks and years as such. thatsd the ONLY reason I'm even recommending the rejuvinzer devices for protection. lighthealing.com blessings and light Bryan Keith. stay conscious,stay free. with NO Bullshit ,sincerley and authentcially,

Bryan

Subject: Apple urges users to delay Vista upgrade

Hello, sign me up, I'll buy OSX.... oh yeah the only problem;

Desktop: CPU: AMD X2 4800+

Laptop: CPU: AMD 64 mobile 3000+

DOH!!

Ah well I guess if they can't do that then I can't buy. Come on Apple open up your OS let us all enjoy your OS even those pesky AMD Fanboi's.

Dan Bastianello

Subject: Apple urges users to delay Vista upgrade

Nick,

This is anything but unbiased reporting. Having given Vista a test drive for the last year in it's various forms, PB1, PB2, RC1 & RTM I'm not surprised by Apple's announcement, bc almost nothing is ready to run on it. Even RTM is quirky and unstable, with tons of new security hooks to throw non MS programmers into a tailspin. I had to use compatibility mode for nearly everything, as nothing will run on it unless it was deliberately programmed for Vista, and nearly nothing has been released that is designed to run on Vista native to date.

What do you gain by demostrating such unenlightened bias? Nearly all the "Wow factor" features of the Aero interface were embedded into Mac OSX years ago when Steve Jobs design folks got the final version of NeXT ported over to the Mach Kernel and released it as Mac OS X 10.0 Beta. And that was 1999! So where's the wow now? Vista is a dog, it eats resources like there's no tomorrow. I have a 3.8GHz P4 with hyperthreading, 2GB's of RAM and both a 100 GB and 60 GB 7200rpm Hitachi hard drives in my Alienware M7700 notebook, and Vista has burned out not one but two NVidia 6800 Go Ultra video cards in the last 6 months, and I'm using it for forensics, not even for high-texellation features like gaming!

What's uncanny is that Microsoft's perpetual ability to write sloppier and sloppier code, hogging eternally more memory without freeing it, code that's ever becoming more and more bloated so that their software inefficiencies more than make up for any gains Intel gives us with it's perpetual doubling of internal clocks and transistor counts. The faster the hardware the slower the OS Mr. Gates gives the minions of the world to run on.

Now that Apple has rolled their systems onto an all Dual Core Intel Architecture you are finally going to see the beginning of the end for Microsoft. Vista is going to flop and big time. Why else would Gates be spending billions on "demand creation" a term I saw in an official MS communique a few weeks ago. Demand creation to generate a need for an OS that won't run well on any mid range machine out there today--just like ME which decimated well running Windows 98 machines, promising an upgraded GUI and delivering a lot of glitz and eyewash without boosting the core OS engine by trimming and optimizing the underlying OS code. Instead it was bloated boggy, and slow. Vista will be a disaster for users who currently are running XP on anything less than a 2GHz machine with a Gig of RAM!

And wait until they get a load of the wonderfully, mind-numbingly annoying User Access Controls which lock your desktop, grey out your screen and ask "Mother may I run this executable" every time you click on a program! It was the first thing that had to go! It's not like using a personal firewall like Black Ice or Zone Alarm, those products actually "learn" which programs you are okay with running--UAC never learns!!!! I couldn't wait to figure out how to turn UAC off so I didn't have to deal with it any more. And then there's the issue of how locked down the accounts are so that even the normal user will have to know his way around the NT permissions controlls like an MCSE in order to do anything Gates' folks think is risky or unsafe, like actually have write permission to your own files! Of course this might actually prevent some of the critical files from being deleted by users too--more on that later...

No I think you're going to see a lot more reviews like this one instead: http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/17992/page1/. And that's what Job's is secretly hoping for. Will they move more machines, yes I think so. There's very little reason *not* to buy a Mac now. The price for a good Mac is equivalent to a good PC, and you get a superior OS for nearly everything you do. I got tired of having to repair my PC just to do simple things years ago and have been slowly migrating all of my family over to Apple and Macs. I didn't start out this way. I was a Unix power user and forensic examiner for the US Army and they sent me to a Mac Forensics course to be the resident expert in Mac OS. I was surprised about what I learned about why Macs are so much faster, why they are better at graphics, why they never crash, and why they are just all around better thought out and why they operate better period. I know you are a hard sell, so hear me out and I'll give you some things to thi

Most PC enthusiasts think they are better than the average user because they want to muck with the hardware and aren't afraid to pull and reseat a CPU, or add memory, or add a hard drive or whatever. And they like the freedom to do just that. Well, if you've ever worked on a Mac, you'd know that for years, the form of the Mac is just as important as it's function. At least since Jobs came back and rescued Apple from it's love affair with beige, and we've seen for years that Macs are uncannily physically beautiful from both a physical Art Deco standpoint and from an engineering standpoint--they are as much a pleasure to open and work on as they are to look at. All of the edges are either ground smooth or the sheet metal is folded over and rounded--you'll never scrape or cut your knuckles open in a Mac Case. Go to CompUSA and open the side panel on a G5/Pro model and you'll see what I mean. The cooling system is divided into zones and the fans are thermostatically controlled so they

The file system is likewise a beautiful thing. I am referring to the Hierarchical File System, and the Hierarchical File System Extended (which equate to FAT-16 and FAT-32 on a PC) which are far superior to either FAT for reasons which I will now enumerate:

1) instead of using a maximum of 4 physical partitions with numerous logical partitions in the fourth partition like the original IBM/MS partitioning scheme, Mac's can have as many as 64 partitions--as many as you want, and you aren't limited to an assignment to a corresponding drive letter. In fact, it is not uncommon for a Mac to have a dozen or more partitions, and here's why:

2) There is great logic in the way Macs are partitioned: The first partition is the Partition Map Partition, it is 64 sectors long and each sector provides a pointer to a separate physical partition. Its a roadmap to the rest of the drive's layout...

3) On the Mac, each device driver sits in it's own separate personal physical partition--There are separate drivers for the Internal and External SCSI Chains for older SCSI-based Macs, theres a separate driver for the Primary and Secondary IDE chains on IDE based Macs, there's a separate partition for the IOKIT module which deals with all the IO devices, (keyboard/mouse, video and audio), theres even a partition for Apple driver updates, and for firmware pushes, and finally there's as many User partitions as the user wants to create from the remaining space as evenly divided out, left over space (less than a single allocation unit) is allocated to a partition called "Apple Free."

Okay, you buy that this is different, why is it superior?

How many times have you had a BSOD because some file in Windows got corrupted? Like when the $MFT can't find the $Boot file and you get "NTLoader not found?" Has this ever happend to you? It happens all the time--the NT bootstrap loader $Boot's pointer in the master file table $MFT gets lost and $Boot can't find the cross reference to NTLDR which has the actual boot strapping instructions. Why does this happen? Because all of these critical files $Boot, $MFT, and NTLDR are all in the root of Drive C:\ the user accessible area.

4) On the Mac all of the bootstrap code is in a /MacBoot partition that is not visible to mere mortals, nor are any of the device drivers, such as you find in a PC in C:\Winroot\System32\Drivers\.

5) Because they are unaccessible, neither virii, nor mere mortal mac users can inadvertently corrupt them. But the OS Kernel knows where they are and that location never changes and is never stepped on, never accidently deleted.

Now let's address file system inefficiencies.

Let's say you work in an office where all of the filing cabinets have all of the files but they are organized by the date of creation. So the oldest files are in the left most cabinets and the newest files are in the right most cabinets. Someone calls you and you are not allowed to ask how long the customer has been with your company. How do you find the file? You start at the left and begin there and work forward until you find their file right? It could be the first or it could be the last file in the last drawer, you have no way of knowing until you pull it. So on average you have to pull half of the files before you will find the customer's file. Best case is it's the first, worst case it's the last average is half. That's how FAT filesystems work. Chronological storage with no hierarchy. It's a flat file lookup, and yes I know that NTFS is a hybrid but it still suffers from what amounts to a basically flat architecture within the $MFT itself.

6) In contrast with that is the HFS/HFS+ file system where everything is stored on not one but two hierarchical binary trees. Unix and linux use a single tree, but Macs are superior to both and here's why: the Catalog tree in HFS stored the first three fragments of a file in HFS+ it's 8. In the Extents tree, the remaining fragments are stored (in HFS 4-End of File (EOF) in HFS+ its' 9-EOF)

7) To use our corporate Analogy imagine you're working in the same office and the same customer calls you and gives you the same information--his name, and just his name. The difference is that now instead of being sorted chronologically, the file cabinets are sorted Alphabetically, and even though there's still no labels on the drawers the sorted order of the file system leads to much greater efficiencies in house keeping: Say the customer's name is Mr. Smith, On the PC you start at the beginning looking for Mr. Smith and you stop when you get there.

On the Mac you start at the middle of the file system at the master index node and then you play high-low to find Mr. Smith's file. The binary trees enable you to quickly divide and conquer the entire file system in just a few splits.

We start at the Middle drawer and find the first folder is McInerney, so we split the distance between M and Z 13/2=6.5 so we go to the 7th drawer from M and we discover the first file is Simmons, now we divide the drawer's contents in half and voila we are in the Smith's and have to find the first name. With an ordered hierarchical file system it is rare for the OS to have to do more than 7 divisions. The OS makes up for this by creating a series of Index nodes which point to the bottom-rung leaf nodes which actually contain the pointers to the sectors containing the files out on the hard drive. The number of index nodes constantly grows as files are added at the leaf node level, so that no index node tracks more than 7 leaves.

This is an extremely efficient way of storing data. The user doesn't ever know the machine is doing this, they just know that when they ask their mac to bring up a file, it's got a lightning fast response time, and that's why. 8) It doesn't matter if you're running OSX on the latest Intel Mac Pro, or on the oldest slowest Motorola-based G3, or even older Motorola 68K series machines running Mac OS 6--the HFS file system was the same, so file accesses are extremely quick even on a slow hard drive.

Why are Macs so great at graphics?

9) I don't know that they will be any more, because the key to fast graphics was the Big Endian vs Little Endian way of processing data. In graphics it is key to know what you are drawing/displaying. The Motorola chips functioned by processing the most significant nybble of the byte first--the high order nybble, then the low order nybble. Intel based processors do the exact opposite, processing the low order nybble before the high order nybble. If you're painting a shade of lipstick it's more important to know that the color is Red or Pink first, then rendering the exact shade of Fire Engine/Candy Apple Red or Coral Sea Pink. Make sense? The intel is trying to give a specific shade number to a GPU that wants to know what end of the RGB spectrum are we in first, and it has to do this for every stinking pixel it renders all day long 60 thousand times per second (at 60Hz refresh rate) Do you see why this mattered to graphic artists? Do you see why many still prefer to use a G5 t

Okay, so why are Mac's so great at iLife type things:

10) Because, well let's face it Steve Jobs is well, a little bit of a nut. He's a severely ADD type, an out of the box eccentric who knows what's cool, what's hip and what real people are into. He cares about what they're into because he likes people, and also because he's a blatent opportunist who wants to make his next billion by making products that people love and want to use. You can't get there by making an inferior product and he knows that.

Gates does not. Bill Gates is a real geek who's out of touch with how real people interact, how they work, and in general with how they live. And the results show up in the product. He cares only about getting a mediocre product out to the public--getting it good enough that people will buy it. And just barely good enough at that. And he expects that advertising will convince the uninitiated and the inexperienced that Bill knows best what you want and need, and that he has the "cool factor" or as they're actually calling it the "demand creation field" the "Wow factor."

11) Apple on the other hand has understood the real needs of real people for years and years. Mac OS 8 had the concept of building network profiles so that you could connect to various networks with your laptop. Once you built that profile once and all the settings were stored including whether the network was DHCP or Static IP, what the gateway and router and DNS servers were, what your primary printer was on that network, and even what time zone the location was in for all the jet-setting types, all you had to do was select the appropriate profile for that location on the Mac from the Apple Menu, or the Power Strip and all of those settings changed instantly without rebooting. Vista's so-called "Automatic" network discovery features don't do that. Vista's Automatic Discovery features only work when you change from one static network to another. Move from Static Network to a DHCP and it'll futz up every time, and you're back to the comparatively painful process of havi

And on a PC wireless is even harder with WPA settings etc.

12) Whereas Airport just works. Set it up once, build an Airport profile, the WPA key is stored in your keychain and you are automatically connected as soon as you click on the Airport icon in the menu bar and select the profile you want to connect onto. That's how real people work.

13) And the Ethernet network routines are compiled into the Mach kernel, just as they were in Mac OS 6-9.22 OS Kernels, which has always made Mac's superior at networking whether you were surfing the net or FTP'ing the file from hell across the globe using Timbuktu. Vista still has networking functions external to the kernel as if it's optional to be connected to other people in 2007... Get a grip will ya Bill!!!

There's a few thousand other reasons why Macs are far superior to PCs but I'll spare you those. For instance there's the power of open source code, Open Firmware, (Running XP in Parallels so you can run a PC app if you have to), Macs don't have tons of extra drivers so the installation process is quicker when you do need to rebuild a drive, or migrate to a new system, I could go on and on and on, but you can go revel in your ignorant "Bliss" in XP or in your new "Wow Factor" Aero desktop...

Sincerely,

Tom

Thomas P. Milley, Mac Forensic Examiner dNovus RDI Systems
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37461

 

Male sweat boosts women's hormone levels Discussion at PhysOrgForum
Just a few whiffs of a chemical found in male sweat is enough to raise levels of the stress hormone cortisol in heterosexual women, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, scientists.
The study, reported this week in The Journal of Neuroscience, provides the first direct evidence that humans, like rats, moths and butterflies, secrete a scent that affects the physiology of the opposite sex.

"This is the first time anyone has demonstrated that a change in women's hormonal levels is induced by sniffing an identified compound of male sweat," as opposed to applying a chemical to the upper lip, said study leader Claire Wyart, a post-doctoral fellow at UC Berkeley.

The team's work was inspired by previous studies by Wyart's colleague Noam Sobel, associate professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and director of the Berkeley Olfactory Research Program. He found that the chemical androstadienone - a compound found in male sweat and an additive in perfumes and colognes - changed mood, sexual arousal, physiological arousal and brain activation in women.

Yet, contrary to perfume company advertisements, there is no hard evidence that humans respond to the smell of androstadienone or any other chemical in a subliminal or instinctual way similar to the way many mammals and even insects respond to pheromones, Wyart said. Though some humans exhibit a small patch inside their nose resembling the vomeronasal organ in rats that detects pheromones, it appears to be vestigial, with no nerve connection to the brain.

"Pheromones are chemical molecules expressed by a species aimed at other members of the species to induce stereotyped behavior or hormonal changes," Wyart explained. "Many people argue that human pheromones don't exist, because humans don't exhibit stereotyped behavior. Nonetheless, this male chemical signal, androstadienone, does cause hormonal as well as physiological and psychological changes in women. More cognitive studies need to be done to understand how androstadienone affects female cognitive functions."

One implication of the finding is that there may be better ways to raise cortisol levels in patients with diseases such as Addison's disease, which is characterized by low cortisol. Instead of giving the hormone in pill form, which has side effects such as ulcers and weight gain, "a potential therapeutic mechanism whereby merely smelling synthesized or purified human chemosignals may be used to modify endocrine balance," the authors wrote.

Sweat has been the main focus of research on human pheromones, and in fact, male underarm sweat has been shown to improve women's moods and affect their secretion of luteinizing hormone, which is normally involved in stimulating ovulation. Other studies have shown that when female sweat is applied to the upper lip of other women, these women respond by shifting their menstrual cycles toward synchrony with the cycle of the woman from whom the sweat was obtained.

Androstadienone, a derivative of testosterone that is found in high concentration in male sweat, and in all other body secretions, has garnered the most attention. However, though its effect on a woman's mood, physiological arousal and brain activity suggests that the chemical is a possible pheromone-like signal in humans, its effect on hormone levels was unknown.

Wyart and Sobel set out to test whether androstadienone affects hormone levels as well, focusing on the hormone cortisol. Cortisol is secreted by the body in times of stress, priming the body for "fight or flight."

In two trials, a total of 48 undergraduate women at UC Berkeley were asked to take 20 sniffs from a bottle containing androstadienone, which smells vaguely musky. Over a period of two hours, the volunteers provided five saliva samples from which cortisol levels were determined.

Compared to their response when sniffing a control odor (yeast), the women who sniffed androstadienone reported an improved mood and significantly higher sexual arousal, while their physiological response, including blood pressure, heart rate and breathing, also increased. This was consistent with previous studies.

In addition, however, the UC Berkeley researchers found that cortisol levels rose within about 15 minutes of sniffing androstadienone, and remained elevated for more than an hour.

Wyart noted that, though this is the first time a specific component of male sweat has been shown to affect women's hormones, other constituents of male sweat likely have a similar effect. The question remains: Which comes first - the change in cortisol level, which may induce a change in mood or arousal; or a mood change that increases cortisol levels?

"We next need to look at other hormones that could explain the diversity of effects of androstadienone on sexual arousal and mood," she said.
http://www.physorg.com/news90053913.html

 

20 Things the Average Person Doesn¡¯t Know About Windows XP


By Unknown Writer
Via Digg
1. It boasts how long it can stay up. Go to the Command Prompt in the Accessories menu from the All Programs start button option, and then type ’systeminfo’. The computer will produce a lot of useful info, including the uptime. If you want to keep these, type ’systeminfo > info.txt’. This creates a file called info.txt you can look at later with Notepad. (Professional Edition only).


2. You can delete files immediately, without having them move to the Recycle Bin first. Go to the Start menu, select Run… and type ‘gpedit.msc’; then select User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Windows Explorer and find the Do not move deleted files to the Recycle Bin setting. Set it. Poking around in gpedit will reveal a great many interface and system options, but take care — some may stop your computer behaving as you wish. (Professional Edition only).


3. You can lock your XP workstation with two clicks of the mouse. Create a new shortcut on your desktop using a right mouse click, and enter ‘rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation’ in the location field. Give the shortcut a name you like. That’s it — just double click on it and your computer will be locked. And if that’s not easy enough, Windows key + L will do the same.


4. XP hides some system software you might want to remove, such as Windows Messenger, but you can make it show everything. Using Notepad or Edit, edit the text file /windows/inf/sysoc.inf, search for the word ‘hide’ and remove it. You can then go to the Add or Remove Programs in the Control Panel, select Add/Remove Windows Components and there will be the software and you can now uninstall it.


5. For those skilled in the art of DOS batch files, XP has a number of interesting new commands. These include ‘eventcreate’ and ‘eventtriggers’ for creating and watching system events, ‘typeperf’ for monitoring performance of various subsystems, and ’schtasks’ for handling scheduled tasks. As usual, typing the command name followed by /? will give a list of options.


6. XP has IP version 6 support — the next generation of IP. Unfortunately this is more than your ISP has, so you can only experiment with this on your LAN. Type ‘ipv6 install’ into Run… (it’s OK, it won’t ruin your existing network setup) and then ‘ipv6 /?’ at the command line to find out more. If you don’t know what IPv6 is, don’t worry.


7. You can at last get rid of tasks on the computer from the command line by using ‘taskkill /pid’ and the task number, or just ‘tskill’ and the process number. Find that out by typing ‘tasklist’, which will also tell you a lot about what’s going on in your system.


8. XP will treat Zip files like folders, which is nice if you’ve got a fast machine. On slower machines, you can make XP leave zip files alone by typing ‘regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll’ at the command line. If you change your mind later, you can change things back by typing ‘regsvr32 zipfldr.dll’.


9. XP has ClearType — Microsoft’s anti-aliasing font display technology — but doesn’t have it enabled by default. It’s well worth trying, especially if you were there for DOS and all those years of staring at a screen have given you the eyes of an astigmatic bat. To enable ClearType, right click on the desktop, select Properties, Appearance, Effects, select ClearType from the second drop-down menu and enable the selection. Expect best results on laptop displays. If you want to use ClearType on the Welcome login screen as well, set the registry entry HKEY_USERS/.DEFAULT/Control Panel/Desktop/FontSmoothingType to 2.


10. You can use Remote Assistance to help a friend who’s using network address translation (NAT) on a home network, but not automatically. Get your pal to email you a Remote Assistance invitation and edit the file. Under the RCTICKET attribute will be a NAT IP address, like 192.168.1.10. Replace this with your friend’s real IP address — they can find this out by going to www.whatismyip.com — and get them to make sure that they’ve got port 3389 open on their firewall and forwarded to the errant computer.


11. You can run a program as a different user without logging out and back in again. Right click the icon, select Run As… and enter the user name and password you want to use. This only applies for that run. The trick is particularly useful if you need to have administrative permissions to install a program, which many require. Note that you can have some fun by running programs multiple times on the same system as different users, but this can have unforeseen effects.


12. Windows XP can be very insistent about you checking for auto updates, registering a Passport, using Windows Messenger and so on. After a while, the nagging goes away, but if you feel you might go insane before that point, run Regedit, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/Advanced and create a DWORD value called EnableBalloonTips with a value of 0.


13. You can start up without needing to enter a user name or password. Select Run… from the start menu and type ‘control userpasswords2', which will open the user accounts application. On the Users tab, clear the box for Users Must Enter A User Name And Password To Use This Computer, and click on OK. An Automatically Log On dialog box will appear; enter the user name and password for the account you want to use.


14. Internet Explorer 6 will automatically delete temporary files, but only if you tell it to. Start the browser, select Tools / Internet Options… and Advanced, go down to the Security area and check the box to Empty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed.


15. XP comes with a free Network Activity Light, just in case you can’t see the LEDs twinkle on your network card. Right click on My Network Places on the desktop, then select Properties. Right click on the description for your LAN or dial-up connection, select Properties, then check the Show icon in notification area when connected box. You’ll now see a tiny network icon on the right of your task bar that glimmers nicely during network traffic.


16. The Start Menu can be leisurely when it decides to appear, but you can speed things along by changing the registry entry HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/Desktop/MenuShowDelay from the default 400 to something a little snappier. Like 0.


17. You can rename loads of files at once in Windows Explorer. Highlight a set of files in a window, then right click on one and rename it. All the other files will be renamed to that name, with individual numbers in brackets to distinguish them. Also, in a folder you can arrange icons in alphabetised groups by View, Arrange Icon By… Show In Groups.


18. Windows Media Player will display the cover art for albums as it plays the tracks — if it found the picture on the Internet when you copied the tracks from the CD. If it didn’t, or if you have lots of pre-WMP music files, you can put your own copy of the cover art in the same directory as the tracks. Just call it folder.jpg and Windows Media Player will pick it up and display it.


19. Windows key + Break brings up the System Properties dialogue box; Windows key + D brings up the desktop; Windows key + Tab moves through the taskbar buttons.


20. Windows XP secretly KNOWS that the average user has no idea what they are doing. Therefore, it doesn’t let you do really stupid things like deleting the windows directory (at least not without spending several hours convincing it that you REALLY want to do this). Oh yeah, and internet explorer kinda sucks, get Firefox.

 

Victim of RIAA "driftnet" awarded attorneys' fees

2/7/2007 9:12:04 AM, by Eric Bangeman

Some of you may remember Capitol Record v. Debbie Foster, where the RIAA sued an Oklahoma woman over copyright infringement. In July, the case against her was dismissed with prejudice, which, in the eyes of the judge, made her the prevailing party. Earlier today, the judge handed her another legal victory, awarding her "reasonable" attorneys' fees from the RIAA.

Foster was originally sued in November 2004 after someone using an IP address assigned to an Internet account in her name was discovered with a shared folder available on a file-sharing network. Foster said that she owned the account, but that she was completely ignorant of the existence and use of file-sharing software. Foster did say that her adult daughter and estranged husband had access to the account, and may have been responsible for the infringement. (The RIAA was granted a default judgment against Amanda Foster after she failed to answer the RIAA's complaint.)

Instead of immediately dropping the case against Debbie Foster and suing those they believed were responsible for the alleged infringement, the plaintiffs amended the complaint to add her daughter Amanda Foster, while keeping Debbie as a codefendant. The RIAA told Debbie Foster that she was liable for any infringement regardless of whether she had shared or downloaded files herself because she was the registered owner of the account. Foster responded by filing a counterclaim for a "declaratory judgement of noninfringement."

Over a year and a half after the lawsuit was filed, the RIAA decided to dismiss their claims against Debbie Foster with prejudice. Foster, however, refused to drop her counterclaim. In July 2006, Judge Lee R. West dismissed both the original lawsuit and the counterclaim (finding the latter to be unnecessary), ruling that Foster was the "prevailing party" under the Copyright Act, opening the door for an award of attorneys' fees.
Secondary infringement and the Copyright Act

The RIAA's strategy of keeping Foster as a defendant and saying that she was responsible for secondary copyright infringement appears to have backfired and was cited by the Judge as supporting his attorneys' fee award. Judge Lee was unconvinced by the the RIAA's argument that she was secondarily liable due to her owning the account allegedly used for the infringement.

"The Copyright Act does not expressly render anyone liable for infringement committed by another. Rather, the doctrine of secondary liability emerged from common law principles," wrote Judge Lee. "Under those common law principles, one infringes a copyright contributorily by intentionally inducing or encouraging a direct infringement."

Judge Lee set out the three elements of a claim for contributory copyright infringement: direct infringement by a third party, knowledge by the defendant that third parties were directly infringing, and substantial participation by the defendant in the infringement. "Merely supplying means to accomplish infringing activity [e.g., an Internet connection] cannot give rise to imposition of liability for contributory copyright infringement," according to the opinion.

The record labels could not support their argument of secondary liability, according to the judge. Perhaps most importantly, Judge Lee could find no case "holding the mere owner of an Internet account contributorily or vicariously liable for the infringing activities of third persons."

The judge also had harsh words for the RIAA, saying that it looked as though they had pressed the secondary infringement claims to force Foster into a settlement, even after they realized she was not responsible for the alleged file sharing.

As expected, the labels submitted a number of opinions supporting their contention that Foster should not be awarded attorneys' fees. Judge Lee found them unconvincing:

Unlike the courts in the unpublished opinions cited by the plaintiffs, this Court must consider whether a defendant should receive an award of attorneys' fees when she successfully defends against the novel application of secondary copyright infringement claims... Her only alternative to litigating the plaintiffs' contributory or vicarious liability claim was to capitulate to a settlement for violation she insists she did not commit. Such capitulation would not advance the aims of the Copyright Act as the plaintiffs' untested theory would remain untested.

A change in strategy?

Will this cause the RIAA to rethink its litigation strategy? Probably. The industry cartel will have to tread carefully with any secondary infringement claims now that there is case law that owning an Internet account used for infringement does not automatically make the owner liable for said infringement. Attorney Ray Beckerman told Ars that he believes there are huge implications from this opinion. "It sends a message to the RIAA... that there are consequences to this 'driftnet' litigation strategy," Beckerman said.

"We respectfully believe that the Court got it wrong," an RIAA spokesperson told Ars Technica. "We are studying the opinion and will make a determination as to how best to proceed after we have completed our review and analysis." The spokeperson highlighted the previous rulings on attorneys' fees: "Prior to this Court's decision, five other courts have ruled on substantially similar motions for attorneys' fees in virtually identical factual settings. All five ruled for the record companies, and we respectfully disagree with the decision of this Court to depart from those prior decisions." It should be noted that Judge Lee reviewed all five of those cases and in contrast with the RIAA's assertion, found that they were irrelevant in Capitol v. Foster.

The RIAA spokesperson also accused the defendant of working hard "to avoid disclosing that her daughter was the underlying direct infringer." The trade group believes that "Such a pattern of behavior on the defendant's part should not give rise to an award of fees."

One of the worst things that could happen to the RIAA is finding itself on the wrong end of case law. As a result, the RIAA has made a habit of dismissing cases that are going badly. In the case of Capitol v. Foster, the defendant was named the prevailing party, which opened the door for the awarding of attorneys' fees. If the RIAA acts quickly to drop defendants once it realizes they are not responsible for infringement—something it failed to do in this case—it may be able to minimize its liability for attorneys' fees (which are reported to be in the neighborhood of $50,000 in this case).

One of the worst things that could happen to the RIAA is finding itself on the wrong end of case law. As a result, the RIAA has made a habit of dismissing cases that are going badly. In the case of Capitol v. Foster, the defendant was named the prevailing party, which opened the door for the awarding of attorneys' fees. If the RIAA acts quickly to drop defendants once it realizes they are not responsible for infringement—something it failed to do in this case—it may be able to minimize its liability for attorneys' fees.

The ruling also opens the door wider for a "prove it was me using the computer" defense. The RIAA's strategy of relying heavily on IP addresses to identify infringers is likely to draw even closer scrutiny as a result of this ruling. This is the first ruling that we know of where a direct relationship between an IP address and an accused party was demonstrated, but deemed insufficient to prove infringement.

The court's finding that the owner of an Internet account cannot be held liable for copyright infringement that occurs without his or her knowledge is more significant. Although the judge in Elektra v. Santangelo declined to dismiss the labels' infringement claims against Patti Santangelo, he doubted that "an Internet-illiterate parent who does not know Kazaa from a kazoo" could be found liable for file sharing done in her house without her knowledge or consent. In short, it means that merely owning an account used for infringement doesn't rise to the level of liability under the Copyright Act.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070207-878

 

RIAA forced to cough up $50,000 legal fees

Victim support

By INQUIRER newsdesk: Wednesday 07 February 2007, 16:07
THE RIAA IS BEING made to cough up to cover some legal fees incurred by file-sharing defendent Debbie Foster, after the case against her was dismissed last summer.

Wired seems to think the case is definitely significant - until now, there has been no precedent existing for the RIAA compensating wrongfully-sued defendants for their legal costs.

Approved by Judge Lee R. West, whose order you can view here (PDF), the court has granted Foster compensation of "reasonable attorney fees," though the judge has denied her "attorneys' fees under 28 U.S.C. § 1927."

Wired managed to get a word in with Foster's attorney, Marilyn Barringer Thomson, who apparently is "pleased with the outcome." It looks as if the label, Capitol Records, will end up owing Foster over $50,000, not a figure to be sniffed at. µ

See Also
RIAA loses court case
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37491

 

Skype reads your BIOS

Talks to your motherboard when your dad is out too

By Nick Farrell: Wednesday 07 February 2007, 15:02
REPORTS are coming in from eagle-eyed users who have spotted the Voice over IP outfit Skype's software reading their BIOS and motherboard serial number.

Over here, one bloke who runs 64-bit versions of Windows, spotted a strange dialogue box which says "the program or feature "\??\C:\Documents and Settings\Myria\Local Settings\Temp\12\1.com" cannot start or run due to incompatibility with 64-bit versions of Windows."

In other words your phone is trying to run a .com file, which doesn't work that well in Win64 because there’s no NTVDM.

Thinking that getting an unreadable executable file coming from Skype sounds interesting, he opened the file up to see what it was. It is 46 bytes long and includes the phrase

int main(void)
{ fwrite((const void far*) 0xF0000000, 1, 0xFFFF, stdout);
fwrite((const void far*) 0xF000FFFF, 1, 1, stdout);
return 0;
}

Now, as any fule kno, that is a catchy programming phrase designed to dump your system BIOS, which usually includes your motherboard’s serial number, and send it to the Skype Mothership.

The bloke was unsure what the hell Skype would want that information for. He points out that if it weren't for that pesky Windows 64 not having an NTVDM they would have gotten away with it.
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37489



Other places it has been spotted are here
http://www.planetamd64.com/lofiversion/index.php/t29640.html
and here. µ

http://forum.skype.com/lofiversion/index.php/t72320.html

 

RIAA cases, state-by-state

p2pnet.net News:- Warner Music (US), EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France) and Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), the members of the Big 4 Organized Music cartel, are in a decidedly awkward position.

They continue to seriously mismanage the p2p file sharing situation, suing their own customers instead of wooing them. And instead of using p2p as a light, and highly manoeuvrable, distribution and marketing vehicle for the digital 21st century, they've turned it into a massive dead-weight. The big question now is: how can they unload it with the minimum amount of embarrassment?

The answer would be to simply admit they were wrong, lower their wholesale prices, license the full contents of their catalogues, and let bygones be bygones. Music lovers would be delighted and Big 4 shareholders would see the results positively reflected in dividends. It would also be an amazing PR coup they'd be able to capitalize on for years to come.

And who knows, perhaps someday, they'll do that, or something close to it?

Meanwhile, they'll continue their carefully orchestrated victimization of innocent men, women and children around the world, adding to the vast stores of ill-will they've already accumulated.

Ray Beckerman's Recording Industry vs The People, a, "blog devoted to the RIAA's lawsuits of intimidation brought against ordinary working people," has also become a repository of many of the US cases, with a smattering of foreign ones.

And as well as providing links to the documentation, he also has a list of lawyers defending lawsuits launched by the Big 4 not only in the US, but also Denmark, Finland France, Hungary, Israel and The Netherlands.

Now he's gone a step further, providing a directory of cases on a state-by-state basis, with single (so far) Canadian and Dutch examples at the end.

Thanks, Ray.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Alabama
Motown v. Liggins (M.D. Alabama)
UMG v. Heard (Birmingham, Alabama)

Arizona
Interscope v. Duty (Arizona)

California
MGM v. Grokster (C.D. California)
Motown v. Lisberg, (C.D. California)
UMG v. Hummer Winblad (San Francisco, CA)(Case Against Napster Investors)
Universal v. Hogan (San Diego, CA)(MPAA case)
Virgin v. Marson (Central Dist. California, Western Divis.)
Warner v. Maravilla (C.D. California)

Florida
Virgin v. Morgan (Pensacola, FL)

Georgia
Atlantic v. Zuleta (Atlanta, GA)

Illinois
BMG v. Gonzalez (USCA 7th Cir.)
Elektra v. Wilke (Chicago, IL)
Lewan v. Sharman (Chicago, IL)(class action against Kazaa)

Michigan
Elektra v. Harless (Detroit, MI)
Motown v. Nelson (Detroit, MI)
Priority v. Chan (Detroit, MI)(Closed)
Priority v. Chan II (Detroit, MI)
Warner v. Pidgeon (E. D. Michigan, Southern Div.)
Warner v. Scantlebury E.D. Michigan, Southern Division)

Minnesota
Elektra v. McCall (Minnesota)

New Jersey
SONY v. Scimeca (Newark, NJ) (Closed)

New York
Arista v. Lime Wire (New York, NY)(RIAA case against Lime Wire)
Atlantic v. Does 1-25(New York, NY)
Atlantic v. Huggins(Brooklyn, NY)
Atlantic v. Shutovsky (New York, NY)
Elektra v. Barker (New York, NY)
Elektra v. Does 1-9 (Closed)
Elektra v. Santangelo (White Plains, NY)
Elektra v. Santangelo II (White Plains, NY)
Elektra v. Schwartz (Brooklyn, NY)
Interscope v. Does (New York, NY)
Loud v. Does (New York, NY)
Maverick v. Becker (Brooklyn, NY)
Maverick v. Goldshteyn (Brooklyn, NY)
Motown v. Does 1-99 (New York, NY)
SONY v. Does 1-40(New York, NY) SDNY 04cv473(Closed)
UMG v. Lindor (Brooklyn, NY)
Warner v. Cassin (White Plains, NY)
Warner v. Does 1-149 (New York, NY)

Oklahoma
Capitol Records v. Foster (Oklahoma)
Warner v. Stubbs (Oklahoma City, OK)

Oregon
Atlantic v. Andersen(Oregon)
Elektra v. Perez (Oregon)

Pennsylvania
BMG v. Does (E. D. Pa. CV 04-650)

Rhode Island
Elektra v. Werry (Providence, Rhode Island)

South Carolina
Interscope v. Korb (Charleston, SC)
SONY v. DeMaria (Charleston, South Carolina)

Texas
Arista Records v. Greubel (Fort Worth, TX)
Arista v. Tschirhart (San Antonio, TX)
BMG v. Conklin (Pro se case in Houston, TX)
Fonovisa v. Alvarez (Abilene, TX)
SONY v. Arellanes (Sherman, Texas)
SONY v. Crain (Beaumont, Texas)
Warner v. Payne (Waco, TX)

Washington
Interscope v. Leadbetter (Seattle, WA)

Canada
BMG v. Doe (Canada)

Netherlands
Foundation v. UPC Nederland (Netherlands, District Court of Utrecht)
http://p2pnet.net/story/11253?PHPSESSID=466d4ca3431668dc729741e1697046

 

Why movie downloads suck,

p2pnet.net News:- Forget corporate online flics. Why? Gizmodo's Charlie White puts it in a nutshell:

Movie downloads suck.

You know it. I know it. And so do Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney, the Big Six Hollywood movie studios.

But in exactly the same way Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, the members of the Big 4 Organized Music cartel, and the lamescream mainstream media talk about the corporate online music download biz just like it's real, the studios keep coming up with scams to sell movies online just like you and I'd be dumb enough to fall for them.

They seem to think they can handle movie sales like they pump out propaganda. But there's a big difference between repeating lies over and over until they're perceived as truth, and trying to make people buy grossly over-priced 'product' by constantly shoving dodgy sales 'services' in their faces.

White lists Top Ten reasons on why it's a waste of time, but the five we like best discuss:

Pricing. Downloads cost a, "whole lot more than you'd pay to rent a movie at Blockbuster or have one delivered to your mailbox from Netflix". And in the same way the labels are trying to flog paltry selections from their bulging catalogues, movie downloads won't be able to match the "vast collection of an ordinary video store" for a while, at least, says the story.

Speed. Who's going to pay $20 bucks or so for a movie download which'll take hours, and maybe even days? And, "Let's don't even think about downloading HDTV movies, which will take four times longer to download," says White.

ISPs. Some (most?) ISPs throttle the amount of data customers can download. "Sure, might think you have 'unlimited' Internet service, but it's only unlimited as long as you don't use it much."

DRM. "Even if you are able to solve all the problems with downloading movies, there's still gobs of digital rights management slathered onto that data, restricting how and when you can play it back. Nobody but the greedmeisters at the Hollywood studios likes this."

Too complicated. Finally, the average person is, " just not willing to go through the learning curve to get the digital data from the PC to the TV screen when they can effortlessly pop in a DVD".

And the Gizmodo post doesn't even bother to mention most Hollywood's releases are so bad they're not worth 20 cents, let alone $20.

But none of the above will stop the cartels.

Slashdot Slashdot it!

Also See:
Gizmodo - Top 10 Reasons Why Movie Downloads Suck, February 8, 2007
whole lot more - Wal-Mart movie download farce, February 6, 2007
Want to subscribe to p2pnet by email with Feedburner? Just click here.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile - http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php | | And use our own p2pnet newsfeeds for your site If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you're Chinese and you're looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.

(Thursday 8th February 2007)
http://p2pnet.net/story/11268?PHPSESSID=2ebeff0f2d8581c2f9f08b539ba96b27

 

EMI decision to go DRM-free imminent

2/9/2007 9:09:59 AM, by Eric Bangeman

Reports are surfacing that EMI is in negotiations with some of the leading music stores to offer a substantial portion of its music catalog without DRM, with an announcement due as early as today. Under one scenario, music stores like Napster, Real Rhapsody, and others would fork over sizable advance payments in exchange for the right to sell music as unprotected MP3s. Another industry source reports that EMI was also discussing the possibility of selling MP3s on MySpace using SnoCap.

All of the parties reportedly involved are remaining close-mouthed on whatever negotiations may be taking place, but the scuttlebutt is that the negotiations have been going on for months. Needless to say, any decision by one of the big four labels to make a sizable chunk of its music available for download sans DRM would be ground-breaking.

EMI has experimented with DRM-free music in the past. The most recent occurrence was in December 2006 when they gave Yahoo Music the green light to sell a single from Norah Jones and a couple of tracks from Relient K as MP3s. Selling a large portion of its catalog as unprotected MP3s would put it at odds with the RIAA and other major labels, who firmly back the continued use of DRM. "Let me be clear. We advocate the continued use of DRM in the protection of our—and our artists'—intellectual property," said Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman, Jr. during his company's quarterly earnings call.

Steve Jobs has gone on record saying that Apple would gladly sell DRM-free music if the labels agree. If the reports are true, EMI is close to taking Jobs up on his offer, with an EMI spokesperson telling Reuters that the label is pleased with how its MP3 experiments have turned out. "The results have been positive," said the spokesperson. "[The] lack of operability between a proliferating range of devices and hardware and the digital platforms for delivering music is more and more becoming an issue for music consumers and EMI has been engaging with our various partners to find a solution."

Legal music downloads have made up for some of the decline in CD sales, but the labels' decision to insist on DRM wrappers for every track has arguably played a significant role in Apple's ownership of the digital music market. Puncturing the closed DRM ecosystems with unprotected files would likely allow other music services to sell iPod-compatible music for the first time (hacks aside), putting a chink in Apple's armor. More importantly, it would give consumers the same freedom they get with the purchase of an album on CD: the ability to listen to it on the device of their choosing without any restrictions.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070209-8803.html

 

TUBE ME.......... This application can download any movie from www.YouTube.com on to your own computer to be played at any time, even when you're off-line.....(free).....GO THERE!
http://www40.brinkster.com/ashimonovits/products.htm

 

DVDFab 3.0.8.0 is out
Dear all,

DVDFab products 3.0.8.0 is out (02/09/2007):

DVDFab Platinum/Gold 3.0.8.0:
http://www.dvdfab.com/download.htm

DVDFab Decrypter 3.0.8.0:
http://www.dvdidle.com/free.htm

What's New:
* New: "Merge" feature to combine several titles of several sources into one DVD. For example, you can combine two DVD-9 like "The Lord of the Rings" into one DVD-9, or merge season DVDs to fewer discs, or create your own special features collection disc, etc.
* New: Improved copy protection removal engine.
* New: Updated language files.
* Fix: Several minor problems.

Best Regards,
Fengtao
__________________
DVDFab - The ultimate DVD copying/converting/burning software!
DVD Region+CSS Free - Watch and copy any region code CSS-encrypted DVD on any DVD drive!
DVDIdle - Extend lifetime of your DVD drive!
http://www.dvdidle.com/

 

Oi, boyo, thanks for the TUBEME link. I bookmarked it. The site/user is out of bandwidth for now. Looks cool. I have been wanting to DL some slap bass player lessons. I am psyched to try this one.

 

Sex Life and Long Life
By Christopher Wanjek
LiveScience's Bad Medicine Columnist
posted: 06 February 2007
09:01 am ET

Men, take note: Your penis might be telling you something.

Two studies published last week reveal such a correlation between erectile dysfunction and chronic diseases that doctors think the diagnosis of poor sexual health should warrant screening for a serious, underlying or emerging illness.

The studies might very well raise the profile of erectile dysfunction, or ED, from a trivial disease of inconvenience treatable with a little blue pill to a warning sign from below that can save your life.

Researchers also confirmed that ED is less about old age and more about poor health, with men as young as age 20 reporting erection problems attributed to obesity or inactivity.

Get up, exercise

One study, led by Elizabeth Selvin of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, published in the American Journal of Medicine, found that nearly 20 percent of the 2,100 men participating in a health and nutrition survey had ED, often as a result of poor physical health or inactivity. That would translate to 18 million American men nationwide.

In this study, over 50 percent of subjects with diabetes and 44 percent of those with high blood pressure had trouble achieving an erection either "sometimes" or "always." Ditto for 22 percent of obese men and 26 percent of subjects who reported such sedentary behavior as watching three or more hours of television per day. It didn't matter if they were ogling The Golden Girls or Desperate Housewives.

Conversely, only 10 percent of physically active men ages 20 and up reported sexual problems. One take-home message from this study is that you have to get off the couch if you want to move into the bedroom. Selvin said that her group's research strongly suggests that lifestyle changes can prevent the onset of ED.

Cause and effect and cause

A second paper, led by Rosemary Basson of the University of British Columbia, published in The Lancet, details how sexual dysfunction can herald a chronic disease. The authors reviewed scores of health studies from the past six years and found cases in which ED predated the diagnosis of coronary heart disease more than half the time.

Similarly, one case they reviewed revealed that otherwise healthy men with erectile dysfunction were twice as likely to develop heart problems at the end of the one-year study.

The take-home message in this study is that any man with ED should be screened regularly for heart disease and diabetes. The authors said that sexual health needed to be part of the doctor-patient dialogue. Men are often too embarrassed to mention the topic with their doctor; or they might associate ED with total impotence and not feel they have a problem if they can occasionally achieve an erection; or they might view ED as a natural part of getting older and thus not see it as a health issue. Doctors need to initiate the discussion if the patient does not.

The Viagra revolution

Viagra and similar prescription medications have revolutionized the treatment of ED. They work, despite a few pesky side effects such as blurred vision and, in rare cases, temporary blindness. Guys don't see to care.

As the Viagra website notes, however, this pill is only one of many treatments for ED. The treatment depends on the cause. Sometimes the cause is mental and can be treated with psychotherapy. Other times the cause is chronic fatigue or from certain medications. This is why a doctor's diagnosis is needed to determine the appropriate remedy.

Treating ED with a pill, however, does nothing prevent or ameliorate a chronic disease. Yes, you're having sex, and that's nice for now; but you have to stay healthy to continue to have sex, even with Viagra. That part only comes with improvements in diet and exercise.

The Hopkins study found that 30 percent of men over age 70 did not have ED. That could be you or your partner someday.

Christopher Wanjek is the author of the books “Bad Medicine” and “Food At Work.” Got a question about Bad Medicine? Email Wanjek. If it’s really bad, he just might answer it in a future column. Bad Medicine appears each Tuesday on LIveScience.
http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/070206_bad_ed.html

 

Copyright tax for Canadian iPods?

p2pnet.net News:- A vested interest group wants all Canadian mp3 players to come pre-loaded ------ with a new copyright tax.

Behind the demand are Warner Music (US), EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France) and Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), the members of the Big 4 Organized Music cartel. They're losing money largely because of bad management, bad business decisions, bad product and and their refusal to remodel outmoded practices to take into account the fact they're now operating in the 21st digital century, catering to a customer base which is in large part, and for the first time in history, consistently and universally well informed, thanks to Net p2p communications.

In 2003, the Big 4 introduced a bizarre sue 'em all marketing scheme under which they're trying to force hundreds of millions of their own customers around the world, whom they call file sharing "criminals"and "thieves," into buying over-priced, low quality digital music downloads.

Meanwhile, in 2005, Canada's Federal Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada ruled the tax set by the Canadian Copyright Board on the internal memory of digital audio recorders was illegal and the decision meant makers had to refund $15 and $25 retail surcharges on mp3 players.

The Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC) had been trying to claim the board didn't have the authority to impose a levy on memory permanently embedded in digital audio recorders and since December 12, 2003, had been collecting on non-removable memory, including both flash memory and hard drives, in digital audio recorders.

The CPCC boasts Richard Pfohl, general counsel to the Big 4's CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association of America), as a board member.

"When you go and buy an iPod, the retailer gets paid," says another board member, David Basskin, quoted by the Canadian Press. "So you can't say that the people who make the music should get a free ride."

Now the group wants the copyright board to say mp3 players fall under the category of audio recording media and if it gets it way, the price of portable music systems could rocket to $75 in some instances, depending on players' hard drive capacities.

But, "They're really getting quite existential here," CP has CIPPIC's (Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic) David Fewer saying.

Mp3 players fall into both the categories of "player" and "medium" and the CPCC is, "asking the copyright board to look into the sould of an iPod and determine its true identity," says Fewer and,"That's hard to do."

However, Fewer says the CCPC demand is a step in the right direction because the other legal alternatives are impractical.

"It's a good way to get our government to start thinking about policy in a different way than it has," he says in the story.

"Digital copyright under the past few years has always been dictated by the big labels, which adopt the perspective that fans are thieves and that the lock 'em up and sue em strategy is the only way to go."
http://p2pnet.net/story/11283?PHPSESSID=544503e2b2da0136fa277a1925799ab7

 

Father of MPEG Replies To Jobs On DRM
Posted by kdawson on Saturday February 10, @01:00PM
from the way-forward dept.
Music Encryption Apple
marco_marcelli writes with a link to the founder and chairman of MPEG, Leonardo Chiariglione, replying to Steve Jobs on DRM and TPM. After laying the groundwork by distinguishing DRM from digital rights protection, Chiariglione suggests we look to GSM as a model of how a fully open and standardized DRM stack enabled rapid worldwide adoption. He gently reminds Jobs (and us) that there exists a reference implementation of such a DRM stack — Chillout — that would be suitable for use in the music business.

A simple way to skin the DRM cat

Steve Jobs, the founder and CEO of Apple, the company that more than many others has offered innovative solutions based on digital technologies, deserves an applause for restarting a languishing debate on the “why and how” of Digital Rights Management (DRM), particularly of his own FairPlay.

He did forget one thing, though. It is true that he is not the only one but he uses the term DRM without defining it. Don’t say that there is no need to be pernickety about it as everybody talks about DRM. It so happens that a good share of the contentions around DRM stems from the fact that there are too many conflicting perceptions of the DRM “thing”.

So, let’s first clear this one by stating the obvious: “DRM is a means to manage rights with digital technologies”. The definition is a tautology but when there is confusion the best is to start from the obvious. If I create a file and, before sending it, I digitally sign it, I am using a form of DRM because I digitally manage my right make sure that the recipients of my file are informed if somebody has tampered with it. Ditto if I send an email with PGP.

It is apparently a different story if I release an MP3 file of a song composed and played by me with a Creative Commons (CC) licence. In this case I am managing my author's and performer's rights attaching (or making reference to) a human readable licence. If, however, I express the CC licence in a computer-readable form, I digitally manage my rights, i.e. I apply DRM.

There are, however, people who add to the DRM (management) technologies described above other (protection) technologies in order to physically force people to comply with their expressed rights. It is an abuse of words to call these technologies DRM (even the most oppressive of managers do not make recourse to physical forcing), but I do not object as long as the original “M as in management” meaning is not forfeited.

Typically protection technologies scramble the bits in such a way that only those who own the descrambling key can actually access the information in an understandable form. Typically you also get the key only if you pay for the thing and you can play or otherwise use the content only if you employ a device specially-tailored to the particular service. The iPod is one such device that plays protected music tracks sold by the iTunes online music service run by Apple. Other music players also exist that can only play music from specific online services, such as Zune and Connect. None of these are capable of playing music purchased from competing services.

The theory has it that a healthy market of competing products and services benefits users. The practice, however, is that a user with 3 different players would need to buy 3 times the same song to be able to listen to it on all three players. Call it benefit...

Since its introduction 5 years ago some 90 million iPods and some 2 billion iTunes tracks have been sold. The numbers look impressive but simple math tells you that for each iPod sold only an average of just 22 tracks have been purchased (and iTunes is by far the most successful service). Probably more important is the fact that the number has been nearly constant over the years and is actually decreasing, and that statistical samplings show that most of the hard-disk or flash-memory space of iPods is full of MP3 that users can freely enjoy.

Still people are complaining that their inability to play legitimately purchased iTunes tracks on the device of their choice is affecting their rights. Here Steve Jobs has to do a bit of tight-rope walking because he wears at least two hats: the “electronic retailer's” and the "device manufacturer's" hats. Wearing the former Steve Jobs says: the importance of iTunes is marginal (this is what his words amount to) because people use the iPod most of the times to listen to an MP3, so why should people care? The answer is easy: we do care because the law in most countries forces us to be serious about protected music (and other types of content), as you go to jail if you tamper with the underlying protection technology, and you never know what happens to technology because what is marginal and a simple nuisance today can become mainstrean and a major hindrance tomorrow.

Wearing the latter hay Steve Jobs makes a bold proposal: let’s get rid of DRM altogether for digital music. Here is where the DRM management/protection ambiguity affects the message because while it makes sense to claim, based on empirical evidence, that protected music does not sell, it remains to be demonstrated that managed music does not. That would be like saying that the Creative Commons movement is a hollow shell. Indeed there is a whole range of business models that can be based on pure DRM (management) technologies and once you start with management...

Knowing that his proposition may not find all the receptive ears it deserves Steve Jobs does address the message coming from his protesting customers. He recognises that a DRM (protection) system that is transparent to the user would be an advantage to them. After all the DVD’s CSS does exactly that, were it not for the unfortunate “region code”. Curiously Steve Jobs restricts his analysis to just one option: how can Apple safely license its DRM technology to other manufacturers and be able to keep its obligations vis-à vis the record companies.

Others have already pointed out some of the weaknesses of his reasoning which, by the way, would not achieve full interoperability as buyers of Zune and Connect players would still be left out in the cold. My intention here is to get inspiration from probably the most successful communication system ever – GSM – to find a good way forward. Indeed most people are unaware that this 20-year old communication system is based on a very sophisticated DRM (protection) technology that has been standardised by ETSI which also handles the governance. Do you think that there would be literally billions of people using GSM billions of times a day if the system had been designed to allow incompatible DRM systems? Incidentally I am not aware of any anti-DRM guru protesting the use of DRM (protection) or avoiding it because it uses DRM.

The way to go is to have a standard system like the one used in GSM that anybody can practical implement and anybody can use to enjoy the content that they legitimately purchase. If you do not like the GSM example, do you think that we would have had the MP3 phenomenon without the MP3 standard or the billions of video files taken by cell phones without the MP4 standard?

Let's suppress the enthusiam and avoid an easy criticism: clearly a DRM standard is a different beast than most other standards. The ways people apply DRM for their needs are countless, starting from the management/protection varieties, continuing with the network/broadcast/stand alone varieties, supporting user privacy etc. It would be really hard to define a “one size fits all” DRM standard. But look no further because there is already a solution. The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) has produced most of the standard DRM technologies that are required by a DRM system. The Digital Media Project (DMP) has added a few more technologies that were missing integrating them with the basic MPEG technologies to provide complete solutions, is now setting up the governance of the system based on established practices and is releasing Chillout, the reference software of its specification, as open source under the Mozilla Public Licence v.1.1.

Should the use of the standard DRM be made compulsory? In spite of the evidence coming from GSM (the fact that in Europe the use of the standard is compulsory is quoted as the main reason for its world-wide success), there is no need to do as much in the age of digital media. Digital Media in Italia (dmin.it). an Italian initiative advocating the use of a freely selected DRM on the part of an entrepreneur if seconded by the use of the standard DRM is building evidence that this is not necessarily a requirement.

Twenty years ago the mobile telephony industry barely existed and 10 years ago it was still serving a small élite community. By cleverly designing a standard – GSM – that accounted for users concerns – DRM – the mobile telephony industry has become global and multiplied its size by orders of magnitude and is posed to become the first digital technology affecting each of the six billion humans on the Earth. While getting rich that industry has made billions of people happy. In contrast with this the music industry, because of the absence of a standard that accounted for users concerns – DRM – has shrunk in size. While punishing its stakeholders that industry has made millions of people unhappy.

Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

About the author

Leonardo has some say in matters realted to digital media

* He chairs the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), the international ISO/IEC standards committee that has ushered in the digital media age
* He chairs the Digital Media Project (DMP), a not-for-profit organisation with the mission to promote continuing successful development, deployment and use of digital media that respect the rights of creators and rights holders to exploit their works, the wish of end users to fully enjoy the benefits of digital media and the interests of various value-chain players to provide products and services
* He coordinates Digital Media in Italia (dmin.it), an interdisciplinary, open, not-for-profit group with the goal to make proposals of action that will enable Italy to acquire a primary role in the exploitation of the global digital media phenomenon.

http://www.chiariglione.org/contrib/060209chiariglione01.htm

 

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http://www.wavosaur.com/

 

A little bit of luxery. 4 port USB hub with built in hot plate for keeping your coffee warm.

 

Teenage drinkers face alcohol test

* 14 February 2007
* From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
* Andy Coghlan

Big Brother has arrived at a high school in New Jersey. Determined to stop their students consuming alcohol at weekends, staff at Pequannock Township High School in Morris county are to start using a controversial test that can detect if students have been drinking up to a week earlier.

The test measures urine concentrations of an ethanol breakdown product called ethyl glucuronide (EtG). "We plan to use this new test as part of our comprehensive testing programme to keep our kids safe from the dangers of drugs and alcohol," says Larrie Reynolds, superintendent of Pequannock High School. "About four to eight kids will be tested every day." In New Jersey drinking alcohol is illegal under the age of 21.

Drinking is a growing problem in US schools. "As many as half of our kids are doing this," says Reynolds. An estimated 1700 US high-school students died from alcohol poisoning or related accidents in 2005 alone.

However, the EtG test poses a problem. It is so sensitive that even total abstainers can sometimes test positive. Alcohol absorbed from soaps, mouthwashes or contaminated vinegars or by drinking a sip of communion wine can be enough.
“The EtG test poses a problem. It is so sensitive that even total abstainers can sometimes test positive”

Despite this, the test's popularity is growing, and around a dozen commercial versions are now available. Estimates by the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) suggest that as many as 20,000 tests are being performed each month, mainly among medical staff - including 9000 physicians - pledged to abstinence following the discovery that they have a drink problem. Law firms and the military have started using it on their staff too. Greg Skipper, medical director of the Alabama Physician Health Program, says the test has been invaluable for monitoring doctors in recovery from alcoholism. "It enables them to comply, stay sober and keep their jobs," he says.

Skipper is, however, critical of health boards and agencies in some states that he says have been automatically sacking people who fail the EtG test without using other tests to confirm its findings. In the three to four years that the test has been commercially available in the US, more than 100 nurses in recovery from alcoholism have complained of losing their jobs after testing positive despite, they say, not drinking. Blood tests for a second metabolite such as phosphatidyl ethanol would be far less likely to give a false positive, as this substance appears only after large amounts of alcohol have been consumed, but these tests are more expensive.

In 2006, Skipper helped compile an advisory document for the DHHS which stated that "legal or disciplinary action based solely on a positive EtG test is inappropriate". Since the advisory was published, Skipper says there has been a fall in the number of complaints of unfair dismissal posted on a website he set up (www.ethylglucuronide.com).

Using the EtG test alone, the risk of false positives remains, particularly in hospital wards, where nurses and doctors routinely use soaps containing ethanol. "In intensive care units, nurses and doctors apply it every 5 minutes," Skipper says. He has shown that the test could give a positive result in ward staff who have simply breathed vapour in. Even bystanders can test positive.

Both Skipper and the test's creator, Friedrich Wurst of the psychiatric clinic at the University of Basel, Switzerland, say that there is not yet an agreed threshold concentration that can be used to separate people who have been drinking from those exposed to alcohol from other sources. Below 1000 nanograms of EtG per millilitre of urine is probably "innocent", and above 5000 booze is almost certainly to blame. In between there is a "question zone", Skipper says.

Skipper backs use of the tests by schools if they accept its limitations. "Schools must have a system for dealing with positives, managed by a medical review officer, and not automatically expel the child," he says.
From issue 2591 of New Scientist magazine, 14 February 2007, page 14
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