Global Toad News

According to Canada.com:

PC maker Dell Inc. said on its Web site Thursday it will once again let home PC buyers choose between Microsoft Corp.’s older operating system and Windows Vista when they purchase certain new machines.

Dell, like many computer makers, stopped offering XP on most home desktops and laptops soon after Vista launched at the end of January. By late March, the company said only two models aimed at home users could be configured with XP (the option still existed on many models for business users).

Gee, why would a major computer manufacturer start offering an “outdated” operating system?  Could it be that the support calls and returns of Vista infected machines are hurting Dell’s bottom line?  I mean Dell takes a big hit from Microsoft for offering XP, they don’t get the upgrade $$, the marketing $$ and all the other $$ that Microsoft gives to it’s partners in crime marketing Vista.

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According to SonyStrikeAgain:

Sony Pictures DVD’s have a new a copy protection that makes the movies unplayable on some Sony (& other makes) DVD players!

YES ! It appears that Sony have done it again.  In their zeal to make their DVD movies copyproof (yeah right) they have in fact made their latest releases unplayable on some DVD players, including my Sony DVP-CX995V DVD player. I recently rented “Stranger than Fiction” (2 copies) and “The Holiday” ( please no comments on my choice of movies) both by Sony Pictures.  Both load up to the splash title screen and then load no further,  then after about 60 secs the player turns itself off!

Hmm, well that’s what you get for buying some cheap DVD player right?  Oh wrong, because according the the original author:

After spending $350 on a Sony DVD player 3 months ago am I now supposed to avoid Sony Pictures products?

Sounds like fun.  Spend $350 on a DVD player from Sony and you won’t be able to play Sony DVD’s.   Sounds like Sony just doesn’t care about it’s customers.  I guess that’s why they get along with Microsoft.

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According to News.com.au, some “prize-winning Australian geologist” is claiming that the sun influences the global environment more than mankind. He further claims “hat about 0.1 per cent of the atmospheric carbon dioxide was due to human activity”. Obviously this person is entirely clueless, because Al Gore has proven that humans are the cause of everything. It’s an inconvenient truth for the “deniers” that the sun has no real effect on the planet’s temperature, and that there are no really significant natural causes of CO2.

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According to Cnet.com, Apple has delayed the long awaited Mac OS X 10.5, because of work on the iPhone.  I have to agree with Apple making this decision, because I don’t think that many people really care about the new OS release compared to the hoards that want a 8 gig iPhone, plus Apple has contractual relationships with Cingular to provide the iPhone within a certain time period, and there is no such requirement for the new OS.

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According to Alex Ionescu, Vista has “Protected Processes” which are supposedly super secure processes.  According to Alex:

Which means that all applications such as virus scanners, malware protectors, and any other kind of application that hooks all system processes, injects threads into them or even discretely reads their memory doesn’t work on Vista when it hits a protected process.

But that’s ok, because it’s hard to create a protected process, isn’t it?  Alex says no, he’s done it, and what’s more he’s releasing the code into the wild.

So your anti-virus solutions won’t work on Vista, you’ll have secret processes running in the background and your computer might “degrade” performance for any number of random reasons.  Seems like good reasons to hold off to me.

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Apparently Vista is a dog.   From the author of “Vista For Dummies”:

For more than a year, I poked and prodded my way through hundreds of Windows Vista menus and dialog boxes. But after I finished writing “Windows Vista For Dummies” and “Upgrading and Fixing PCs For Dummies,” I turned off my Vista PC.

On the rare occasion I fire it up to double-check a few settings, Vista constantly reminds me why I’ve never installed it on my main PC. Let me count just a few of the ways:

He goes on for 2 pages on the reasons why he doesn’t like Vista.  But heck, what do I know I didn’t write a book about Vista.

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According to zert.isotf.org, there is possibility to take control of your computer via a flaw in the animated cursor handler for at least Microsoft Windows 98, 2000, XP, Server 2003 and Vista.

You can download a patch here.

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According to CyberSmart India a United States court has upheld International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005 against a foreign company. Basically the act makes it a felony for a U.S. citizen to contact people through whatever might be considered an International Marriage Broker, according to a court document, found here:

The term “international marriage broker”
means a corporation, partnership, business, individual, or other legal
entity, whether or not organized under any law of the United States,
that charges fees for providing dating, matrimonial, matchmaking
services, or social referrals between United States citizens or nationals
or aliens lawfully admitted to the United States as permanent residents
and foreign national clients by providing personal contact information
or otherwise facilitating communication between individuals

I particularly find interesting “social referrals” and “by providing personal contact information or otherwise facilitating communication between individuals“.
I don’t know but the law seems a little over reaching to me, but heck, I guess when you pay to use a service, you no longer have the same freedoms that you have when you don’t pay. The frightening (long term) end point could be that to use the internet AT ALL you might be required to pass a background check, because you are paying for the internet (in most cases).

Of course it will take some time before that is passed, probably under an ISP “know your customer” type legislation similar to the banking laws that were passed that has your bank sending reports off to the treasury about any thing that is “unusual” activity with your bank account (and who hasn’t gotten stopped for “unusual” activity when using a credit card).

I guess this is the price of the “freedom” that Americans have. I don’t understand why every country doesn’t embrace even more of “freedoms” like this.

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The Supreme Court has decided that CO2 is an “air pollutant,”. It blames the reasoning for this on the:

Clean Air Act, which requires that the EPA “shall by regulation prescribe … standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class … of new motor vehicles … which in [the EPA Administrator's] judgment cause[s], or contribute[s] to, air pollution … reasonably … anticipated to endanger public health or welfare,”

So there you have it, CO2 is the reason for global warming (notably part of the reason was because of the “… EPA’s failure to dispute the existence of a causal connection between man-made greenhouse gas emissions and global warming,”), since the EPA didn’t debate the issue, it becomes settled as a matter of law, much as other cases that the government punted on in history. This tradition goes back to the Hylton v. United States case (the case is considered to have been an arranged case according to the Journal of Supreme Court History and the opinion even states “After argument, the court ( consisting of Wilson & Justices) delivered their opinions; but being equally divided, the defendant, by agreement of the parties, confessed judgment”) and has been sadly the trend all too often in the courts to establish a precedent that then stands regardless of new facts.

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In a recent court case, an Israeli court is being asked to invalidate the GPL.  According to Linux.com:

More importantly, although the defence’s understand of the GPL seems minimal throughout the statement, probably what the defence would really like to do is have the GPL declared inapplicable under Israeli law. The statement claims that the the plaintiff’s case depends on the concept of “derivative works” — and that this is a concept derived from American law that is not recognized under Israeli law. This claim is based on the differences between Anglo-American and European-Israeli copyright jurisdictions, and is such a large issue that it is likely to form the basis of the case. It could be that, contrary to the defence statement, the concept of moral rights in the European tradition would actually increase a creator’s control over derivative works — but how it will play out is anybody’s guess.

Hopefully the Israeli court will uphold the GPL, as it would cast a pal over any copyright agreement in Israel if the rather clear, short and simple GPL was rendered invalid in Israel.  Of course this could be a good thing for people who want to share music in Israel.

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There is a good article by Attorney Ray Beckerman on how the RIAA lawsuit machine works. According to the article:

A lawsuit is brought against a group of “John Does”. The location of the lawsuit is where the corporate headquarters of the internet service provider (ISP) is located.

All the RIAA knows, or believes it knows, about the people it is suing is that they are the people who paid for an internet access acount for a particular dynamic IP address.

The “John Does” may live — and usually do live — hundreds or thousands of miles away from the City where the lawsuit is pending, and are not even aware that they have been sued.

The RIAA is aware that most of the defendants do not live in the state, and are not subject to the jurisdiction of the Court, but bring the case anyway.

Futhermore:

… at the core of the whole process are:
(1) the mass lawsuit against a large number of “John Does”;
(2) the “ex parte” order of discovery; and
(3) the subpoenas demanding the names and addresses of the “John Does”.

Nice. But even though it is legally questionable, the RIAA gets around this with their judge shopping, because the orders become “unappealable”

The decisions are not appealable, since they are, theoretically, “interlocutory”. However, it is the RIAA’s usual practice to discontinue the “John Doe” cases, which means that there will never be a final judgment in the case, so the orders will never be brought to appellate scrutiny.

This is how the courts work in America, big corporate interests get their day in court, and the poor fish on the other end pays the bill. Judges let this go with a wink and a nod, and pretend to not understand why people are upset.

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