Posts by Turtle

Re: $850 meeeeeelion!!!!

"Who said crime didn't pay."

Here's that statement again: The ten suspects are allegedly responsible for multiple variants of the Yahos malware, which is linked to more than 11 million computer takeovers and over $850m in losses using the Butterfly botnet"

Note that it does not say that the the gang made $850 million; it says that the losses were $850 million. Now it's possible that the gang did make that much but it is also possible that this astronomical figure includes the cost of securing computer systems and networks, lost productivity, money spent on investigations and consultants, time and effort spent by both affected customers and banks putting matters to right, and certainly quite a lot of expenses like that - in addition to the money that was actually gotten by the criminals.

It would have been nice if the article were more precise.

@McWibble Re: Console name

"Not very original, but surely it should be the Companion Cube."

Well here we have a nascent marketing genius. Son, you have found your true calling.

@AC: Why Apple and the PRC get all the hate

"I'm not sure why Apple and the PRC get all the hate - there are more and better targets out there and, let's face it, they're all robber barons anyway."

For me, there are two simple reasons for it.

1) Apple's margins are enormous whereas the margins for every other hardware company range from "paper-thin" to "razor-thin". If there is one company that can afford to pay its workers a decent wage and provide with at least somewhat humane working conditions it is Apple - and before anyone objects, let me state that I am cognizant of the morally-immaterial fact that the Foxconn workers are not directly employed by Apple. But, as I just said, that, as far as I am concerned, is morally immaterial.

2) The PRC or rather the Chinese government is pretty directly responsible for protecting its workers, even if that government seems to be populated almost exclusively by corrupt officials concerned with lining their own pockets, and the well-being of their citizens is simply a commodity to be bargained away or given to commercial interests in exchange for whatever petty personal advantages can be gotten for it.

Hope that helps.

@asdf: Re: According to wikipedia...

re: Stallman's attitude towards pedophilia:

"According to wikipedia...was that before or after you edited it? Your title alone pretty much makes reading your post pointless."

You can find that opinion on Stallman's OWN blog. (And it's been referenced on these forums before.) The reference on the Wikipedia page is not in the main article (geez, i feel dirty even have looked at it!) but is referenced on the discussion page, in notes dated 2009 with a link to the original remarks on Stallman's own site (and I feel even dirtier for having looked at that.)

The "pointlessness" to which you referred is, once again, yours. Unless, of course, it was your intention to exhibit your ability to instantly deny unpalatable facts - even when those facts are very easily verifiable.

Re: States!

"There are only a handful of laws that are federal..."

Oh, it's more than a "handful". Much, much more...

@TaabuTheCat: Not a good answer.

"Once and done is the answer."

That's not a good answer. Why should an elected official who has no chance of being elected care at all about the interests of any of his electoral constituents? Maybe he will simply indulge his own, personal interests - such as who will offer him or his family members the most lucrative investment opportunities in exchange for his votes on this or that issue, or who promises the most lucrative consultant contract when his one term is over, or, well, you should be able to think of any number of other devices that can accomplish the same purpose.

Or... A Blessing In Disguise: Re: Thumbs up!

"''Students who have iPhones don’t work. Everything you have was bought by your parents. You haven’t bought anything by working yourself. You are wealthy and can’t stand the stress. Working at our company is tough. It calls for someone who can take the pain and suffering.'"

Or possibly the iPhone owner should consider this job rejection a blessing in disguise.

Re: Gotta love it

You know, instead of blaming the media industry, how about blaming Google for making it so convenient to find illegal downloads, or blaming The Pirate Bay for enabling those downloads, or blaming Google for making it so profitable for people to have websites for illegal downloads, or - and this should be a BIG favorite here on this forum! - how about blaming her parents for not sufficiently closely supervising the kid's internet use?

Additionally, the idea that the first time this kid illegally downloads a song is the time she gets caught, is not to be taken seriously. Of course, if we knew what was on her li'l laptop, we would know better - but the idea that the first time she illegally downloads a song is the time she gets caught, is unlikely to say the least and we are justified in so thinking until we have some reason to think otherwise.

And if her parents felt that there was anything unjust about it, they should have fought the charges.

One last little note. Technical note. That the girl did not successfully download the song does not mean that she did not help other people successfully download it. That's the way torrents work.

Re: Someone explain this to me:

"Which is it?"

I noticed that too and assume, possibly incorrectly, that the two figures were current gains in speed vs. expected gains in speed as the spec becomes more widely and better implemented and supported.

Re: Everyone's assuming...

"Nope, I'm wrong"

It was a plausible thought and had value in that respect, even if it was mistaken..

Re: I hope it's improved

"This is the reason I do not play betas any more. In the end I found most of them spoil the actual finished game."

I have never played a beta for pretty much the same reason. Playing a half-finished game might appeal to some people, but why it should, is something that escapes me entirely. Possibly some people feel that there is some degree of prestige attached to it.

Re: Strange...

"Is there anything to stop them cuffing him at the airport?"

I certainly hope not.

Re: Here's an example of massive stupidity

"Block all links to any .de domain and see if that satisfies the morons who brought the suit."

Good idea, because it will give an opening to a competitor to found an all-German search engine and Google will lose all revenue from Germany. And of course, it might well cause the EU to (finally) implement some strict rules regarding Google's business practices in light of it extremely dominant position as a search-engines.

Smart. Very smart.

Re: Those pesky datas...

"Oh, and the 25% of the population whose data the scamp failed to get may well mostly be children who wouldn't have cars or be liable for tax."

In Greece, no one is liable for tax.

@Shagbag: Re: And so it begins

"The fact that the Germans have a word for it speaks volumes about them as a whole."

Even though a verb and not a noun, English has "gloat" and that comes pretty close, don't you think?

"As does The Kaiser, Hitler, Hans Reiser and lots of other notorious Germans."

Also, as a general rule, I do not like taking a purposefully-selected group of particular individuals and using them to represent a large and heterogeneous group of people. (And Hans Reiser is pretty mild stuff, really. Any nation or group amongst which a double-murderer would really stand out for viciousness would be a peace-loving and non-violent group of people - double-murders seem about as common as muck throughout the world and its history.)

@tkioz

"Is there a line in that 220 year old toilet paper the yanks worship about cruel and unusual punishment?"

So, uh, I guess you don't like the Bill Of Rights, for example? As a basic and fundamental law for a society, you would prefer what, exactly?

Re: As they say...

""An idiot and his job are soon parted""

Sadly this is not always true and maybe not even often true. And the world might well be a better place if it was.

@Crisp: Re: SHOCKED!

"I think that it's a bit late to try and cover up the fact that people have nipples."

Well in that case, why not see if you can get The Register to remove the "NSFW" tag? Because the logic being applied to the Church in this matter fits The Register just as well.

Re: Argh!

"STOP QUOTING AND LINKING TO FLORIAN MUELLER!!!!"

And also stop linking to and quoting anyone on the Google Shills list that they gave to the court recently, and also stop linking to and quoting anyone who works for any organization that gets Google's shilling too, right?

Re: "a disposition to disease"

"??? Which disease? Or is it just *any* disease?"

Well, specific diseases, of course.

Equity.

"Why is this better than Spotify, considering it costs the same (not counting the 3 month cheaper bit, which I never do) and probably has no more available music than the latter."

You know, my initial thought was that, if Rara can pay musicians more than the "laughable pittance" they get from Spotify, then Rara might be able to sign up quite a large number of musicians, migrating them away from Spotify, thereby increasing Rara's available catalog while at the same time decreasing Spotify's.

But then I recalled that the majors are equity holders in Spotify, so there is no way that Rara could match the deal that the majors get from Spotify, without giving them equity too.

But I wonder, should the majors not give Rara their catalogs at the same rates they give Spotify, if Rara could sue Spotify and the majors for anti-competitive practices, restraint of trade, and so on along these longs.

Re: On the other hand...

"As far as I'm aware, most people use Macs for music production."

In my experience, this is not true. And I know many people, both professional musicians and studio owners, who switched from Mac to WIndows. I can not think of anyone whom I know personally who has gone from Windows to Mac.

"Will Windows 8 be good enough to encourage them to switch to Windows? I doubt it."

And you are basing this opinion on what?

Re: Back in 2003...

"Back in 2003 I used to work at a company that had outlines and heights available for the maps programme they sold. [...] And now google reintroduces it. Oh well."

If they have patents on it, or parts of it, then your "Oh well" could end up needing to be changed to "The luckiest move of their lives was getting those patents and then, effectively although by accident, hiding the product, so that Google didn't know the prior product even existed, and so did not research the relevant patents, and therefore could not engineer around those patents; and then when the patent-holders went to see a lawyer, a jury would not let Google worm its way out of having to pay $125 million for infringing those patents. And they lived pleasurably and opulently ever after. Nice!"

@Big_Ted: Re: Re.....Won't be long before Android becomes more closed

"Your (sic) joking, they make a fortune from it, both from phone makers paying for all the extras like gmail and maps etc plus all the ad revenue they get from it."

There are reasons to think that they are not really making much money at all from Android, even holding the legal costs of IP/patent/copyright litigation in complete disregard. I have seen analysts on both sides of the question of its profitability. If I remember correctly, Google filed affidavits in the Oracle-Google matter in connection with their Daubert motion that claimed that Android generated less that $100 million per year. I would expect that they spend more than that on lawyers and litigation and connected costs in defending Android. On the other hand, if the Google affidavit turned out to be borderline fraudulent, I wouldn't be surprised either.

You need to understand the past before you understand "The future"

"The only future for music which is beneficial to listeners and musicians is to cut out the fat cat record labels who take most of the profits."

That's an exceedingly stupid comment because compared to what, in general, the internet offers musicians (and all content producers, in fact) the record labels begin to look like paragons of generosity.

Here's a nice, detailed post to explain it to you. It is entitled "Meet the New Boss, Worse Than The Old Boss?" Although it is somewhat lengthy, it should not be a problem - unless, of course, you have Attention Deficit Disorder or similar.

http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/meet-the-new-boss-worse-than-the-old-boss-full-post/

@Flocke Kroes: Re: Ad hominem

"People often accuse others of the crimes they would commit themselves. Say whatever you like about the people who collected the data, but bare in mind how many will interpret what you write."

And since there have been a huge number of occasions when you could have made these same comments on this website but didn't, I assume that they are only operative when someone is impugning an organization, researcher, or study of which you approve. And note that while you are accusing me of making ad hominem attacks, that is what you are doing here. So tell me again why I need to listen to a hypocrite such as yourself. And so, yes, people *do* sometimes accuse others of the crimes they would commit themselves, as your behavior shows.

And we will all do our very very best to "bare" that in mind. : )

"If you think the study results are caused by bias, conduct your own study and publish the results - even if those results are not the ones you want."

Insofar as this site reports on studies done for all sorts of reasons, and insofar as every single study reported on here has critics, please feel free to make this same inane comment all over the website. Just to sort of balance out the hypocrisy of the first paragraph of your post, as opposed to adding to it.

I bet your mother used to tell you this kind of drivel all the time when you were a kid, right? "Don't criticize it if you can't do it better" or "If you don't like how I cooked your oatmeal, then cook it yourself, you little shitass!" Well the next time you take a plane ride, and you are dissatisfied for any reason - such as not getting to your destination fast enough, or being stacked up while waiting to land, well you just go right to the cockpit and grab that control column and fly that fucker yourself! Good luck! And this principle can be applied to so very many things in life, always with outstanding and noteworthy results!

@DaeDaLuS_015

"If i was that much of an idiot, i think i'd plead guilty as well."

You know, sometimes it's the idiots that plead innocent. Especially if the prosecution has really strong evidence. A guilty plea is more likely, by quite a bit, to get a lenient sentence from the judge, than is a hopeless defense in the face of overwhelming proof of guilt. In the case of a guilty plea, it seems as if the defendant is showing remorse and taking responsibility for his actions, whereas mounting a hopeless defense looks like the defendant lacks all remorse and is refusing to take responsibility for his actions, and generally still "trying to get away with it"... and so is worthy of a harsher sentence.

"I wouldn't have thought it'd hit hidemyass too hard since their competition is largely subject to the same rules i think?"

Quite.

People need to realize that "HideMyAss" is actually "HideMyAssFromMyParentsAndClassmates" and not "HideMyAssFromTheLaw".

@Esskay

"But this latest instance indicates that perhaps the desirability of the apple brand is wearing off a tad... Not meeting reserve is one thing, not even meeting *half* of the reserve should be a warning."

Now that kind of reasoning just reeks of desperation...