Recent Posts

576

Living Room / DRM has nothing to do with piracy

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 20, 2013, 08:13 PM »

Google engineer: DRM has nothing to do with piracy
 

A Google engineer claims that DRM is not about thwarting piracy, but giving content providers control over software and hardware providers.

In a Google+ conversation, Google engineer Ian Hickson argues that digital rights management (DRM), often found embedded within products including DVDs and eBooks to prevent unauthorized copying or use, is not in place to protect firms from the prevalence of piracy.

Instead, Hickson argues that this belief is based on "faulty logic," and it is actually used as a tool to give content providers power over playback device manufacturers, as distributors cannot legally distribute copyrighted material without permission from the content provider. So, those who offer media, including games and film, gain leverage in how the files can be used and shared, as well as the means to tap into additional revenue streams.

http://www.zdnet.com...th-piracy-7000012886

577

General Software Discussion / Re: How to detect parent .EXE from tray icon?

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 20, 2013, 05:45 PM »

In case you have problem in finding the required feature, I am giving below the screen shots from my machine.

-anandcoral (March 18, 2013, 03:23 AM)

Many thanks!    I wouldn't have found that, even though I know perfectly well that my sticky notes program makes all its notes hidden windows.  Pistachio is an interesting utility; pity it doesn't show icons as well in that list.

@Tinman57: thanks - did a quick check on the original pages, but they don't seem to have a known solution for Vista.

-rjbull (March 19, 2013, 04:03 PM)

  Darn rjbull, sorry to hear that.  You would think that someone would have done the same for Vista.  I haven't had this problem since I did this hack until MS released a new version of shell32.dll last year.  I just re-ran the patch and back to happiness again....

EDIT: I got to reading some more on this problem and the patch.  From what I can see, the patch works for any version of the shell32.  Give it a try and see.
  NOTE:  Backup your original shell32.dll just in case.  I'm not familiar with Vista and how it may (or may not) automatically restore the original .dll.  You may have to copy the patched .dll to your cache, and possibly to other "Backup" locations in the OS.

  If you don't feel comfortable running this patch, you can get the offset information from the website, and using a hex editor make the changes manually.  Good luck....

578

General Software Discussion / Re: ironshield antivirus

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 20, 2013, 05:33 PM »

  Basically it just comes down to who codes the best and without shortcuts.  I've owned a lot of commercial programs that were very poorly coded and have some awesome open source programs....

579

Living Room / Re: The US Registrar of Copyright herself calls for a mixed bag of reforms

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 20, 2013, 05:26 PM »

Nope. You won't.
courtesy of TechDirt's Mike Masnick:

Congressman Already Claims That He Needs To Overturn Supreme Court Ruling In Kirtsaeng
from the and-off-we-go dept

Now that didn't take very long at all did it?  

-40hz (March 20, 2013, 03:54 PM)

  Amazing, it takes congress years and years to get some things done, but totally screwing up something only takes them a few days or less....   

580

Living Room / Re: Probably the single most obvious reason why DRM doesn't (and can't) work

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 20, 2013, 04:45 PM »

  I've posted in the past that there has been many times where I couldn't even run the software that I bought and paid for because of the DRM.  I had to go to hacker sites to get the DRM-free copies.  What I found out from this is there is some software that is 60% or more DRM.  I bought a game on CD that wouldn't work.  There was almost no space left on the CD, but the downloaded DRM-free game was only about 5 mb total.  Some of these games weren't worth the time to install, crappy gameplay/graphics/etc.
  It got to the point where I was first downloading the hacked software to see if I liked it or not, then buying the legal copy and continued playing the hacked version for compatibility with my computer.

  There's been a few times where I've bought music CD's only to find one or two songs max were good, and the rest of the songs were pure crap.  I started downloading the illegal copies to see how many good songs it had before ordering/buying the CD.  Of course now we can order music by the song on the internet with samples that makes it much easier.

581

Living Room / Re: When it comes to EA, it just keeps getting better - or worse...

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 20, 2013, 04:12 PM »

  Like I've said many times before, I stopped buying EA software a very long time ago....

582

Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 20, 2013, 04:09 PM »

But does it have any teeth? A long time ago some **AA type was saying that he was in it for the long game, so yeah maybe we beat SOPA, but they would just introduce another one.

-TaoPhoenix (March 20, 2013, 12:46 AM)

  It only has as much teeth that we give it.  And every time an unjust attempt is made, we provide more teeth.  It will always be a constant fight, and like some famous person said: "Freedom isn't easy".

583

Living Room / Re: The US Registrar of Copyright herself calls for a mixed bag of reforms

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 20, 2013, 03:41 PM »

You reminded me of this:

It's hilarious!

-Renegade (March 19, 2013, 10:15 PM)

  And so true.  Nowwhodathunkit?   

584

Living Room / Fed Ed Data-Mining

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 20, 2013, 03:32 PM »

  So let's just let the government spy on your kids, then store and sell this data to marketers or whoever wants to pay for it.  And the storage part is for future law-enforcement use if needed.

Time To Opt Out of Creepy Fed Ed Data-Mining Racket
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate

Last week, I reported on the federal government’s massive new student-tracking database, which was created as part of the nationalized Common Core standards scheme. The bad news: GOP “leadership” continues to ignore or, worse, enable this Nanny State racket (hello, Jeb Bush).

The good news: An independent grassroots revolt outside the Beltway bubble is swelling. Families are taking their children’s academic and privacy matters out of the snoopercrats’ grip and into their own hands. You can now download a Common Core opt-out/disclosure form to submit to your school district, courtesy of the Truth In American Education group.

Parents caught off guard by the stealthy tracking racket are now mobilizing across the country. Echoing families across the city, Big Apple public advocate Bill de Blasio blasted the tracking database in a letter to government officials: “I don’t want my kids’ privacy bought and sold like this.” On Wednesday, prompted by parental objections, Oklahoma state representatives unanimously passed House Bill 1989 — the Student Data Accessibility, Transparency and Accountability Act — to prohibit the release of confidential student data without the written consent of a student’s parent or guardian.

As I noted in last week’s column, the national Common Core student database was funded with Obama stimulus money. Grants also came from the liberal Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (which largely underwrote and promoted the top-down Common Core curricular scheme). A division of conservative Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. built the database infrastructure. A nonprofit startup, “inBloom, Inc.,” evolved out of the strange-bedfellows partnership to operate the invasive database, which is compiling everything from health-care histories, income information and religious affiliations to voting status, blood types and homework completion.

But it gets worse. Research fellow Joy Pullmann at The Heartland Institute points to a February Department of Education report on its data-mining plans that contemplates the use of creepy student monitoring techniques such as “functional magnetic resonance imaging” and “using cameras to judge facial expressions, an electronic seat that judges posture, a pressure-sensitive computer mouse and a biometric wrap on kids’ wrists.”

The DOE report exposes the big lie that Common Core is about raising academic standards by revealing its progressive designs to measure and track children’s “competencies” in “recognizing bias in sources,” “flexibility,” “cultural awareness and competence,” “appreciation for diversity,” “empathy,” “perspective taking, trust (and) service orientation.”

That’s right. School districts and state governments are pimping out highly personal data on children’s feelings, beliefs, “biases” and “flexibility” instead of doing their own jobs imparting knowledge – or minding their own business. And yes, Republicans such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush continue to falsely defend the centralized Common Core regime as locally driven and non-coercive, while ignoring the database system’s circumvention of federal student privacy laws.

Why? Edu-tech nosy-bodies are using the Common Core assessment boondoggle as a Trojan horse to collect and crunch massive amounts of personal student data for their own social justice or moneymaking ends. Reminder: Nine states have entered into contracts with inBloom: Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Louisiana and New York. Countless other vendors are salivating at the business possibilities in exploiting public school students.

Google, for example, is peddling its Gmail platform to schools in a way that will allow it to harvest and access families’ information and preferences — which can then be sold in advertising profiles to marketers. The same changes to federal student privacy law (known as FERPA) that paved the way for the Common Core tracking scheme also opened up private student information to Google. As FERPA expert Sheila Kaplan explains it, “Students are paying the cost to use Google’s ‘free’ servers by providing access to their sensitive data and communications.”

It’s a Big Brother gold rush and an educational Faustian bargain. Fortunately, there is a way out. It starts with parents reasserting their rights, protecting their children and adopting that old motto from the Reagan years: JUST SAY NO.

***

READ: From Heather Patenaude – Open letter to parents on publc schooled children regarding Common Core

Attention, homeschoolers: Keep on top of which homeschool curricula are rejecting Common Core.

Parents, know your rights: From Christel Swasey – On FERPA and Common Core in Utah: How to Protect Our State’s Freedoms?

More FERPA background/resources.

http://michellemalki...-data-mining-racket/

585

Living Room / Re: Selling Something? Go to Jail! That's copyright infringement... :-/

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 19, 2013, 08:51 PM »

Good news: the Supreme court upheld the first sale doctrine (overturning the Second Circuit's ruling):

-mwb1100 (March 19, 2013, 04:47 PM)

WOO HOO!!!

586

Living Room / Re: The US Registrar of Copyright herself calls for a mixed bag of reforms

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 19, 2013, 08:44 PM »

  Now for some cynicism....  If congress ever even looks at it, whatever good idea's she has will be immediately ignored, whatever is troubling will be approved, and whatever requires more thought and study will automatically be included.  This seems to be the norm for our government(s), which is how we got the old saying "it's good enough for government work", and is why we're in such a pickle that we find ourselves.

  Now I would absolutely LOVE IT if they prove me wrong.  Hell, I would stand on my head in the corner of the room and chant the Pledge of Allegiance until I passed out!  But as I fear, I won't be doing that....

587

Living Room / Re: Ad-Blockers Kicked From Google Store

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 19, 2013, 08:28 PM »

Talking about trains ... ooo dinosaurs - ah my favourites is the cheesburger

-Carol Haynes (March 19, 2013, 02:44 AM)

EXACTLY!!! 

588

Living Room / U.S. Wants More Warrantless Spying...Again

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 19, 2013, 08:03 PM »

Justice Dept. to Congress: We want greater email, Facebook, Twitter snooping powers
As a US House committee prepares to meet to discuss changing outdated email privacy laws, the US government will today tell lawmakers that it wants greater powers to access email data, along with social networking data, such as Facebook and Twitter private messages.
http://www.zdnet.com...ng-powers-7000012786

U.S. wants warrantless car-tapping
The Obama Administration is appealing the decision made by the Supreme Court that concluded that attaching GPS devices to vehicles requires a warrant.
http://www.smartplan...tless-car-bugs/15287

589

Living Room / CISPA Is Back!

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 19, 2013, 07:54 PM »

[  Got this from the IDLM today:  ]

Dear Internet Defense League member,

Last year, right on the heels of our historic victory against SOPA, a piece of really nasty legislation almost passed that would have radically undermined online privacy.

It was called CISPA.  And it raced through the US House of Representatives, passing before any of us had a chance to react.  We stalled the bill in the Senate, but now CISPA is back, and we don't want to make the same mistake twice.  Before there is *any* movement on the bill, we want to send a strong message to Congress that CISPA shouldn't pass. 

That's why we're partnering with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to launch an Internet Defense League action starting tomorrow, Tuesday March 19th. 

Can you participate? If so, get the code for your site here: http://members.internetdefenseleague.org

And help get more people signed up by sharing this page with your social network:

Wait, what is CISPA?  And why does it matter so much? 

CISPA (the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) would give companies complete freedom to share your personal data with the US government.  It doesn't *require* them to do so, but if the government asked it would be hard to say no, and they'd have no reason to-- CISPA would free them from any promises made to customers in public statements or privacy policies.

Your emails, your Facebook account, your bank statements, the websites you visit, your real-time location (courtesy of your cellphone company)-- all of it could soon belong to a slew of government agencies and even local police, who could use it against you without a warrant.

http://www.cispaisback.org/

590

General Software Discussion / Re: ironshield antivirus

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 18, 2013, 08:33 PM »

  And if your using Open Source Code, don't that open a channel for hackers to figure out how to bypass it?

591

General Software Discussion / Re: How to detect parent .EXE from tray icon?

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 18, 2013, 08:28 PM »

  This has been a problem that MS has refused to fix since XP.  I found a hack that reverses this problem, though I'm not sure if there's a Vista version or not.  Here's a snippet that I copied for future reference:

Spoiler

Systray icons missing problem
-----------------------------

Some Windows XP installations show a peculiar defect in that some systray icons do not appear when the system is booted and the user logs on. The problem seems even more noticeable on systems with autologon and/or with many applications (with systray icons) running at startup.

According to the excellent analysis in the "Problem analysis and proposed solution" comment by "tasmanian" user at http://winhlp.com/no...;cs=2231#comment-406 this is caused by a timing defect in the Windows function Shell_NotifyIcon in shell32.dll, which has a timeout fixed at 4 seconds. Combined with an unfavorable Windows API message this causes the problem, which befalls many heavily loaded computers that don't have ultra-fast hard disks. Changing the timeout to one minute and removing the unwanted message solves the problem.

This Patch Tool
---------------
Tired of manually applying the patch each time MS updates shell32.dll or on new Windows installs I decided to create this patch tool, it will easily patch shell32.dll file according "tasmanian" purposed solution, it should work with any version of shell32.dll as it will automatically find the correct offset for the bytes to patch.

Thanks
------
tasmanian - for the excellent analysis and proposed solution
WinHlp.com - for supporting all the discussion about this problem

592

Living Room / Re: Advice needed re: locking windows kernel in RAM

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 18, 2013, 08:13 PM »

  I set XP SP3 to do this years ago and haven't looked back.  I use my memory tweaker program to turn this option on.

593

Living Room / Re: Can you inagine a world without any personal privacy? Because it's here.

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 18, 2013, 07:50 PM »

  Basically I've been saying the same thing for the last 10 years, and have been "boo'ed" over it too many times to count.  So I just sit behind my computer wearing my tin-foil hat and watch as the world goes to hell in a handbasket....

594

Living Room / Re: Ad-Blockers Kicked From Google Store

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 18, 2013, 07:46 PM »

Thanks for the clarification -- I was confused too

-ewemoa (March 17, 2013, 06:40 PM)

  That's why I hate starting a post and getting sidetracked before finishing it.  Seems the older I get, the harder it is to get back on track once interrupted.  Guess my brainium is starting to go by way of the dinosaurs as well.   

595

General Software Discussion / Re: screenshot and video capture software

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 17, 2013, 06:59 PM »

yes, I am aware of that, but... after trying I found it too complicated to use it!
although, I wouldnt classify myself as novice in using software and I have used thousands of programs UIs.
I realize it's powerful, but, it seems an overkill... :/

-kalos (March 17, 2013, 08:42 AM)

  Even though it's a complex screenshot capture program with all kinds of bells and whistles, it really is quite easy to use.  The shortcut keys are listed right in the drop-down "Caption" menu.  All you have to do is look there to see what kind of snapshot you want to take, go to where you want to make the snapshot and do it.  If you use it quite often you can make a list of the shortcuts to get right down to business....

596

General Software Discussion / Re: Many games turn my dual screens black then freeze - help!

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 17, 2013, 06:53 PM »

  If your playing these games offline, you can RMC on Comodo Firewall and set Sandbox Security Level and Defense + Security levels to Disable, and Firewall Security Level to Block All, and then exit Comodo Firewall.  The front-end of Comodo will exit but will keep a portion of itself running in the background to block all incoming and outgoing transmissions.  You can now disable your anti-virus since the internet is blocked.  Whenever your done gaming, re-enable your anti-virus, run Comodo Firewall again and change the Sandbox, Defense and Firewall Security Level back to it's original settings.  Now your ready to surf again.  If you have a Network not working error of any kind, just RMC and select "Repair" and it will refresh your network.  This is the best way to play graphic/cpu intensive offline games and give yourself more RAM to work with as well.

597

Living Room / Re: Ad-Blockers Kicked From Google Store

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 17, 2013, 06:34 PM »

Hmmm - I was responding to the comment:

Perhaps when GoOgle and the others see a severe drop in the sales of their closed app phones, they will reconsider this totalitarian system of theirs or go the way of the dinosaurs

-Tinman57 (March 15, 2013, 08:36 PM)

Which seems to argue that Android is a closed eco-system - have I misunderstood?

-Carol Haynes (March 16, 2013, 07:30 PM)

OIC!  I was going to word that differently after I typed it, but got sidetracked by a system error and a cat screaming to go outside.  LOL!  It was supposed to say "Perhaps when GoOgle stops their anti-consumerisms and the others see a severe drop in the sales of their closed app phones, they will reconsider this totalitarian system of theirs or go the way of the dinosaurs.".... or something like that anyhow. lol  I'll see if it will let me correct it.  Good catch though!    

598

General Software Discussion / Re: FLV downloader needed

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 16, 2013, 07:20 PM »

I pretty much gave up on all those vid-downloaders, they work for a while until youtube (and others) changes things, or they're loaded with adware.

  Now I use VideoCacheView.  Now I don't have to download the same video twice, first time watching it, second time downloading it.  With VideoCacheView, you watch all the movies you want, then run VideoCacheView, select the vids that you want to keep, and it copies them to the folder you choose.

-Tinman57 (March 14, 2013, 08:05 PM)

I both agree and disagree. Many videos are available in much higher resolution than the auto-played one, especially if it was on facebook. So, as an example, I watch a 640 pixels version, but want to keep the 1920 pixels version - which is not in the cache.

-Curt (March 16, 2013, 01:46 PM)

  Which ever one you watch is in the cache.  You have to change it to the resolution that you want while your watching it, then it will be in the cache.

599

Living Room / Re: Ad-Blockers Kicked From Google Store

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 16, 2013, 07:15 PM »

Am I missing something? Google's PlayStore is not like Apple or Microsoft's App store. You can download apps from any web and install it, just tap on the downloaded file. OK they can stop the app appearing on PlayStore but it doesn't stop you manually installing it for the developers website.

Maybe removing AdBlock Plus from Play Store is manipulative - but it may also because it doesn't actually work well and causing a lot of users big headaches on locked phones where they don't have access to Proxy settings!

-Carol Haynes (March 16, 2013, 08:34 AM)

That's why I lead off with the statement "Any time your locked into a proprietary system for apps"

600

Living Room / Re: Ad-Blockers Kicked From Google Store

« Last post by Tinman57 on March 15, 2013, 08:36 PM »

  Any time your locked into a proprietary system for apps, they will tell you what you can and cannot install on the phone you bought.  IMO, it's just wrong, but if you bought the phone with this knowledge in mind, then you really don't have a leg to stand on.  Next time, go with a phone that allows you to install apps from any source.  Perhaps when GoOgle stops their anti-consumerisms, and the others see a severe drop in the sales of their closed app phones, they will reconsider this totalitarian system of theirs or go the way of the dinosaurs......