Tag: media

One View of Pirating

Posted onAuthorTech Review Man

I was having a discussion of what pirating was in a forum that I typically converse in. I was having an issue with games for windows live not accepting my install cd key, the thread was created to inform the other users of said site of what betrayal i was facing from something i trusted to invest $60 into. Here is more on games for windows live having a limited install.
I said “no one pirates itunes garbage”. This person from the site gave a response that stunned me. I didn’t expect it , I didn’t believe it till the second time he stated it more clearly. He actually said “iTunes itself is free, some Apps are free, but with a jailbroken device you can find most any app you…..” it goes on a bit after that, but really. I can handle only so much. So I realized I was actually holding a conversation with someone who is brand new to the topic. This person did not see the heyday, this person got interested in computers and the internet, within the last three years. This person was born after 1994.
So I decided to make it clear for others who did not get to be a part of the boom. I give you internet history on it’s dirty side. The side that will not be in future history books.

I give you the response I gave him

You just now told me what age group you are in.
Sorry didn’t know how new you are.
Itunes the name means “music” (tunes is clue #1)
I tunes has been selling music for +5 years now.
The apps thing is quite new
Roughly 3 years

Back in the day, music was the number one controversial pirated item on the internet.
There used to be some major hitters in the pirating world.
Napster
Limewire
winmx
Kazzaa
Almost all are gone now.
Some have resurfaced as something else.
Truly if it was not for them, the public never would have demanded greater speeds for their internet connections and we would not have the internet the way it is now. 2.0 would not have been an option. php would not have been an option, flash well it would have demised…. well in a flash.
1994-1998 Music pirating was so common that radio station djs would make their playlist at home and bring to the station these crappy assed 32-64bit overly compressed 200k songs and play them on the radio. some of us would bitch how it sounded like the music was being played in a sewer drain.
Around 2000- 2002 Itunes was announced. No one moved for the first year. because it was free. but apple played a bunch of clever commercials. by 2004 all pirating had come to a skid. there was a huge standstill, because Kazaa was seized and millions of i.p. addresses were placed public as targets of interest by the riaa..

You know what… I have gone to far with this. i think I have a cool post for the tech blog… later dude.

Some of the time-line might be a tiny bit tilted, but it’s can’t be by much.

Is Internet Pirating Really Theft ?

Posted onAuthorTruXter

If you see something that you are not willing to pay for, is that considered theft ?

There is a movie in the theater, and you really have no interest in that particular movie, you do not just jump on your bicycle and head up there to watch this movie. You never bother. One day it comes on cable or regular tv and there is nothing on, so you finally watch the dang thing. That is not pirating. If there is no access to this item other than pay, and you do not want to pay to see the movie, you do not see the movie, if the same person sees the movie for free, there is no actual loss to anyone. If anything, there is one more person on the street to say ” hey man I saw that dang movie and it really was a whole lot better than I expected.” Or the reverse. I can see how bad press from someone who has not completely earned and completely does not deserve the privilege to have an opinion of said film, could be offensive, but if you think about it ” yeah we know our film sucks, but we want people to pay for before they say anything”, is twice as offensive.

Is it bad to buy a $60 video game, install the game with your registration code and then turn around and download the pirated version and use the “no cd crack” that way you can leave the game disk in it’s case so that it will not get scratched? So you are not pulling the disk out every single time you want to play the game you paid for ?

Should purchasing be considered a gamble?

If one friend tells you the media you are interested in is garbage, while another friend tells you it is the best thing since gravity, would it be wrong for you to download the media and try it out so you can decide for yourself ? That is of course if you are in the position to not be able to try your friend’s copy.

As far as software goes, it’s kind of the same situation. How do you know if something is worth having without knowing if it will serve your needs?

I believe it is theft when you know the product that you are obtaining is going to suite a need for you and you still decide to not pay for this product. It is theft when you yourself pirate the item then turn around and sell your copy or sell duplicates of this product. You are then cutting into the profits of the original maker of the product. I believe it is theft when a manufacturer creates a product and tells you it will fullfill your needs in one specific area, and the product turns out to not serve the purpose stated. I believe it is theft when a manufacture creates a music cd and sells you this cd for $20+ and on the whole disk, only one song is worth listening to. I believe it is theft when a manufacturer creates a cd $20+ and it only has two or three songs on it total. I believe it is theft when a musician decides to not create a cd and use a professional label yet turns around and splits up all of their music on a media sell site, like itunes and sells the items at the price greater than what they would have made through a label, I mean really, we don’t even get a hard copy of the media and the quality is far to low. It is wrong to justify any of these earlier mentioned statements, to decide to download a copy of these items and not show your apreciation by giving the money required to obtain such media.

but everyone should be able to sample.

Joost Gets Bought up

Posted onAuthorGame News

Well, I had so much hope for joost when it first came up.

Leo Laporte and Amber Macarther talked so much about it.

I had to run out and get me a beta test. The first branch of i.p. TV tree had sprouted. They had a program you had to install that seems a whole lot like what  is now called Adobe Air. The program and the videos ran and played really smooth, looked pretty good also. One day a bunch of people started complaining about the install process (a whole 4 seconds to download, 12 seconds to install..) So the Joost team dropped the installer and started at going with online streaming video, much like Hulu. I really liked the program, it ran like a torrent  program or good ol Kazzaa. On a peer program.

Sad to say though, Joost never had any really good videos, other than “The Lexx”.

Joost  is sold to a company called “Adconion Media” . Really I never heard of them. I hope they make the best of it. I was actually hoping for nbc,cbs and or hbo/showtime/usa to merger on a deal to buy it. Oh well .

Good luck gang.

Fake ipod From Ebay Compare

Posted onAuthorTruXter

Maybe it’s safer to just say they are an MP3 players that to me look very similar to the ipod.

Purchased one for about ten dollar and it has 2 gigs storage. got it cheap because it’s pink. No one gives their daughter a fake ipod (i would because it really looks like linux). No one gives their son anything pink, so i grabbed it. If I cared, I would take it apart and paint the exterior.. Who knows, maybe a later post :-P. Took the MP3 player out of package and set it on the counter. Three days it sat there untouched. The comparison MP3 player came in , While opening the comparison MP3 player, I knocked the first one (the pink one) on the floor. blah blah blah, I stepped on screen area.

All seems to function well on both of them, so no harm no foul. I now have two mp3 players that I can plug into my VR3 car stereo I bought for $79 at walmart.

Here is a place for firmware and software knowledge base

The first one that came in has a phone book,mp3 player, mp4 player,Fm Radio, picture viewer

mp3 player I got on ebay for ten bucks

2g mp3 player I got on ebay for ten bucks

The fm Player, is nothing to brag about, Signal was rough, almost had to hold it on my head in a clear open area before I got single signal in a major U.s. city.

MP4 Player, The format isn’t exactly  an mp4 and not high quality at all, it’s like a really fast flipping gif.

Picture Viewer, yeah you guessed it, looks bad, really pixelated, so don’t let that sale you on the deal.

Phone book, exactly what you think it is, it is a phone book, you can add email address, home phone number and cell phone

Mp3 Player, 2 gigs is many hours of podcasts for me to listen to. The battery plays for exactly 6 hours 20 minutes. To play 6 hours of podcasts, i barely consume 100 megs of storage, leaving me 1.9 gigs of unused storage.

the usb connection plugs into my car stereo and the stereo sees it as a storage device, and charges the mp3 player at the same time. I have no idea how long it lasts, because I am usually where ever I am headed, within just a couple songs. Bad side is, it does not resume as you left off. Could be the stereo. Most likely is. Does it with the black one also.

512 megabyte mp3 player

512 megabyte mp3 player - 40 bucks

The black one is 512 megs and costs more than the pink one and is more squared, interface is exactly the same minus fm radio. less storage, and the ear connection busted within an hour of use and only plays out of one ear. Plugs into car stereo like the pink one, but battery dies unless I turn it off for a few minutes.Screen area is very very tiny. little more than half an inch looks great but very frustrating.

I have to give all  credit to the Pink one with round edges. sound is better, storage is greater price was cheaper (circumstantial though)
Display a tad larger, 1/16th of an inch larger, at best.

They will both make for good media storage devices to listen to in the car, that’s what I bought them for anyway. but the rounded edge one is the better quality . I have no model numbers on either one, sorry for the lack of info.

net@night 104

Posted onAuthorTech News

http://twit.tv/natn104

Is up and ready, Swing by Leo’s site (click his name) and send him a thanks. Don’t forget Sarah an Amber Mac! (is it still Mac?)

Hosts: Amber MacArthur, Sarah Lane, and Leo Laporte

Guest: David Cann of almost.at.

Facebook’s vanity URLs, tweet reading cat burglars, Keyboard Cat, Jauntsetter, and more.

Site of the week: Sarah Lane shows us Jauntsetter

Audible.com pick of the week: Raise Your Social I.Q.: How to Do the Right Thing in Any Situation , unabridged by Michael Levine, Narrated by Mary Woods. For a free audiobook, visit Audible.com/night.

Bandwidth for net@night is provided by AOL Radio.

Compact Disc is 30 years old

Posted onAuthorTruXter

According to Gizmodo

http://i.gizmodo.com/5166399/happy-30th-birthday-compact-disc

Happy birthday! 1979-2009.Thirty years. Pretty amazing that it’s been that long since those crazy Dutchmen at Philips spun the technology off of laser discs as part of an optical digital audio disc demo in Eindhoven.

It sure has come a long way from a peice of plastic that would orange peel.. wait, they still do that.

Well it came a long way from back when they called them “indestructable” to  almost obsoleted by it’s grand son the blue ray, or hd  disk that holds nearly 100 times it’s 700 mb capacity.

Thank you compact disk for creating this wonderfull peice of junk that skips or silences every time I hit a railroad track.

Best Online Video Outlets of 08

Posted onAuthorTruXter2 Comments

I can not say that Youtube is the best, just the greatest used. When they get the whole “hd” version and time span thing worked out. In due time, we all know google has a big plan somewhere up their sleave. lol.

Ok on to my favorites:

3.VEOH Nothing major ground breaking but a great gathering of videos on other people’s sites.

2.Joost The first of the best High quality, Could be best but had a face lift  mid year that changed everything and started them back at point zero, to follow hulu. I would like to locate their media player again.

1. HULU very high quallity high resolution videos.  Bad thing is, fox focused, and all the really good shows, are on fox’s website not Hulu’s. I still after 5 tries can not get the fox media player to work at all. I tried  Xp,Xp64,Vista,Xandros Linux.  but other than that, what shows they do host, are very high quality with tiny short advertisements

My work week’s favorite podcasts

Posted onAuthorTruXter

Jobacle – Helps relaxe you in your job, but helps you keep a level on head on self respect, no more working on your knees for little pay. you don’t have to take it. Jobacle can help.. oh yeah and the occassional favorite song from indies, excelent. MAKE WORK BETTER

Slashdot review – This week was a bit messed up though. The feed died out and showed the same stuff as last week.  On the spot steady fire of tech news. Usually informative enough to be plenty for you, but you can always google it and read about it when you get home. by then it will be out in the main wild. you will hear stuff here a day ahead, sometimes a month.

The linux action show – These dudes are fun to listen to. I have some of the people in the office saying  “ON THE LINUX ACTIiioON   SHOWWWWWW” just like the dudes on the podcast, as they walk past me. Funny stuff.

The tech guy – Excelent show, nothing could make it better than just leo sittingthere breaking news to the main stream tech community and helping by answering their questions or giving them a usefull link to somewhere usefull.

See every day I listen to these guys, some times I mix it up and listen to a whole other batch of rss feeds. but these guys I have at the top of my list of feeds. I have to hear them as soon as they come out. It beat sitting around listening to the same  15 songs all week on public radio. I hate when I listen to a fricken song  that I do not like, and find myself singing along like 2 months later. Feel like I’m being brained.

So I come to talk internet media  AKA “NEW Media”. This stuf is really good talent and great media..

If you have a work computer with speakers, you might want to look into rss feed media. wild how you get graduated into a higher level of apreciation.