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by CRCulver (#46492803) Attached to: 1GB of Google Drive Storage Now Costs Only $0.02 Per Month

Do you need to back up all your movies and music? Either it is all ripped from discs you still have or is pirate and can be downloaded again.

Not everything pirated can be easily downloaded again. There are lots of torrents that only have a single seeder, who might disappear halfway through your download. Often it is hard to find the content in a lossless format -- most films can be had from The Pirate Bay, but only as <1GB .avi files, while tracking down a DVD9 or Bluray image of some titles requires a painstaking search and a lot of luck.

So, backup what you get, because you might not ever see it again.

Comment: Re:The country is already out of step with Europe (Score 3, Informative) 147

by CRCulver (#46490601) Attached to: Hungarian Law Says Photogs Must Ask Permission To Take Pictures

Hungary was deprived of an important step in the development of today's Europe: fascism.

Hungary had a fascist-led government around World War II just like many other countries.

The ruling party quite openly supports pogroms against gypsies.

Can you cite this, please? I would be very surprised to hear this from Fidesz, as it sounds like an exclusively Jobbik thing. Many people outside of Hungary with only a cursory understanding of the country's dour political situation tend to confuse Fidesz and Jobbik, but the latter party does not have much power (yet).

Comment: Re:Reality check (Score 3, Informative) 404

I can personally guarantee* (*worth nothing, not redeemable for anything) that sound studios will not start producing multiple mixes just for the audiophiles.

They already have started, in fact. It's very common for the vinyl edition of an album to be less of a loudness wars catastrophe than the CD or MP3 digital downloads because vinyl customers tend to overlap with audiophiles. Two albums I can name off the top of my head where this was done are R.E.M.'s Accelerate and Rush's Clockwork Angels. After buying the CDs and hearing how they were brickwalled, I was happy to have supported the artist by buying at least something, but then I went to a torrent site, downloaded a vinyl rip and now play that exclusively on my home stereo.

Comment: Re:"one mind control device" (Score 2) 109

by CRCulver (#46468855) Attached to: Is One Laptop Per Child Winding Down?

also when I get on the bus each day, I see each and every one of them starring into their smartphones, no longer interacting with one another, mindless wasting their lives in games and Facebook shit.

Before smartphones, commuters were staring into books (which contained less information than an Internet-connected device can provide), doing crosswords or simply looking out the window. In my considerable experience of commuter transportation around the world, I have never seen people on their way to the daily grind "interacting with one another" to any significant degree.

Comment: Re:Because existing companies suck (Score 1) 224

by CRCulver (#46468719) Attached to: Silicon Valley's Youth Problem



Comment: Re:sec (Score 1) 374

by CRCulver (#46451571) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How Can I Prepare For the Theft of My Android Phone?

The submitter appears to live in South Africa. After all, he wrote:


There's no suggestion that he is an American who has ever had to to deal with "the TSA". Slashdot has had a global readership since forever.

Comment: Re:Who believe "just metadata" reassurances anyway (Score 1) 65

by CRCulver (#46441837) Attached to: Metadata and the Intrusive State

Merry Old England would have rounded up the Founding Fathers using "just metadata" (who called whom, and when) and therefore they would have forbidden its collection to government without a proper warrant.

That analogy might have swayed people decades ago when Americans all had rosy views of the benevolence of the Founding Fathers, but from the better informed perspective of Americans today, maybe it would have been better had the British authorities been able to nip the Revolution in the bud. The Commonwealth countries show that staying a colony for another century would not have been a bad thing at all, and stopping the Revolutionaries would have saved America's Tories from having their houses burned down by self-appointed "guardians of liberty", being looted of their possessions and driven off to Canada just for wanting to stay with the mother country.


by CRCulver (#46441821) Attached to: Metadata and the Intrusive State

Assuming we even believe it's just metadata being gathered - what informed citizen actually believes it's a non-concern?

While I don't align with the politics, I occasionally dip into Charles Johnson's blog Little Green Footballs because in its 12-year history it has had an interesting dramatic arc (highly influential right-wing site in the wake of 9/11, then massively dropping in importance after Johnson turned his back on the right and presumably most of his readers as well). One thing that surprised me is how quick Johnson has been to excuse the NSA's activity, saying it is just "metadata", and collecting just "metadata" harms no one; in fact, revealing the collection of "metadata" has harmed our national security. Johnson processes news all day long and posts his own thoughts on the issues of the day as a profession, and here he is being adamant that it is a non-issue. There must be more news junkies out there who don't feel it's something to protest.

Comment: Re:Goodbye Anonymous Cowards (Score 2) 167

The current decline in anonyminity isn't driven by government. It's driven by corporate interests.

It is also driven by content creators who are sick of seeing the space they set aside for reader comments torn apart by trolls and Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory rudeness. A site admin dropping in a Facebook-authenticated comment system isn't doing so in order to make lots of money for Facebook in selling your data, he's doing it because he's heard that forcing a modicum of self-identification cuts down in flame wars.

Comment: Re:Safe just from prying eyes? (Score 1) 155

You don't and can't, and if that's a problem for you, you don't use Gogle services.

Google collects data (and potentially passes it on to the US government) on more than just those who choose to use its services, as Google Analytics is included in the Javascript package of a great many sites, one might send an e-mail to a gmail.com address, etc. Telling something that they are safe if they don't use Google services is essentially telling someone to give up on use of the internet entirely.


Governments can ask, and Google will say "No, please come back with an order."

How do you know Google will say, "No, please come back with an order?" What if Google only tells the public that it insists on the government presenting a lawfully issued court order, but in fact it secretly gives the government whatever information wants? Speculation that Google is deeply implicated with the US government has been going around for over a decade now.
