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RIAA/MPAA vs. xMule Author, EarthStation 5 1107

Two bits of news in the ongoing battle between the RIAA/MPAA and the rest of the internet: One P2P company, apparently based in Palestine, has thrown down the gauntlet to the movie industry. Meanwhile, a developer of another P2P tool who unwisely chose to live in the USA has been shut down (mirror) by the RIAA.
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RIAA/MPAA vs. xMule Author, EarthStation 5

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  • by kindbud ( 90044 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @11:18AM (#6754792) Homepage
    No other press releases that I can find on prnewswire.com have had their company website URL link made inactive. Looks like the MPAA/RIAA can strongarm Prnewswire to remove what they allege are offending links from press releases, even if its a corporate website.

    Watch out Apple, your press releases may be next to have links disabled.
  • Re:Anti Semitism? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Scrameustache ( 459504 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @11:20AM (#6754815) Homepage Journal
    Palestinians, being semites themselves, can hardly be anti-semitics...

    Main Entry [webster.com]: Semite
    Pronunciation: 'se-"mIt, esp British 'sE-"mIt
    Function: noun
    Etymology: French semite, from Semitic Shem, from Late Latin, from Greek SEm, from Hebrew ShEm
    Date: 1848
    1 a : a member of any of a number of peoples of ancient southwestern Asia including the Akkadians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs b : a descendant of these peoples
    2 : a member of a modern people speaking a Semitic language
  • Re:Anti Semitism? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 21, 2003 @11:25AM (#6754884)
    Main Entry: anti-Semitism
    Pronunciation: "an-ti-'se-m&-"ti-z&m, "an-"tI-
    Function: noun
    Date: 1882
    : hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group
  • Interesting (Score:5, Informative)

    by randyest ( 589159 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @11:37AM (#6755004) Homepage
    From the website, it seems they do have their privacy ducks in a fairly neat row:

    ES5 #1 goal is to protect its users from intrusions to their privacy by providing encrypted traffic, random ports and IP anonymity:

    ONE CLICK PROXY SERVER - Users can send connection requests through intermediary proxy servers located throughout the world so that the download destination of a file cannot be traced by any entity whatsoever. There is nothing for the user to set-up, just right click to enable the proxy server.

    SSL - SECURE SOCKETS - Prevents monitoring of a user's uploading or downloading activity. Users can automatically deploy SSL by right clicking.

    UDP -USER DATAGRAM PROTOCOL Using UDP makes it impossible to reliably scan a useras computer to determine if ES5 is running. Also, unlike TCP connections, UDP traffic can not be easily blocked by ISPs.

    ES5 SECURITY KEY - ES5 utilizes a standard HTTP server to transmit files, but deploys a special "security key" so than only ES5 users can access your shared files.

    IP ADDRESSES - ES5 does not display user IP Address information.

    DYNAMIC PORTS- Each ES5 node uses a randomly chosen port (unless the user chooses a specific port themselves). Therefore, ISPs will be unable to identify file-sharing traffic based upon port numbers and unable to throttle back the users bandwidth.

    USER DEFINED PORT SETTINGS- ES5 provides users with "one-click" port setting options for ES5 to use port 53 (the port used by DNS) or port 37 (the port used by time service) therefore rendering all blocking attempts hopeless.

    MULTIPLE POINTS OF ENTRY - ES5 uses multiple methods for connecting to the ES5 network including IP Multicast, Usenet Articles, Web Sites, Node List Files and a several other undisclosed methods.

    PENETRATING FIREWALLS - UDP allows seamless penetration of firewalls without inconvenient setting of firewall parameters. For users behind firewalls, ES5 uses UDP to request a PUSH, where the behind-the-firewall computer initiates the connection back to the requested user's computer. PGPDisk - As an additional security feature, to all P2P programs, is that ES5 integrates seamlessly with PGPDisk (which is a free program and will be provided by ES5 to its users) that lets you encrypt your disk drives to store your P2P content. No one except you will ever be able to see your files, not your kids, your spouse, your mother, your boss, the FBI, the KGB or anyone else!

    So, the plot thickens. Whatever will the *AA do? ;)
  • by kossico ( 1798 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @11:39AM (#6755023)
    Although it's been said (and proved!) numerous times, I'll say it again here because it's just so obvious. File sharing HELPS record and movie companies. The singles that I download are songs that I like, but would never buy the full album. However, maybe while downloading that song I grab another one that I've never heard from the same band, and if I like it, I'll go get that CD. Same thing with movies. If I want to see a movie, I'll go to the theatre and pay money to see it. If there's a movie that I'm not that interested in, and my friend downloads it and I see it on his 17" monitor and end up liking it, then I'll spend my money and go see it on the big screen with the big sound in the theatre. Maybe the RIAA/MPAA don't believe this, but it's true. There's proof. Everyone I know feels the same way! Wake up!!!
  • Re:Palestine? (Score:2, Informative)

    by DebianDog ( 472284 ) <dan@dansla[ ].com ['gle' in gap]> on Thursday August 21, 2003 @11:43AM (#6755076) Homepage
    Well that working out well for them. There are more Americans up their ass now then ever before. Plus, about 100,000 right next store in Iraq.

    Oh, and Palestine is NOT a country.

    Here is some good info for you
    --

    Apparently, Benjamin Netanyahu gave an interview and was asked about Israel's occupation of Arab lands, his response was "It's our land."

    Here are overlooked facts in the current Middle East situation. These were compiled by a Christian university professor.

    Nationhood and Jerusalem

    1. Israel became a nation in 1312 B.C.E., two thousand years before the rise of Islam.

    2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.

    3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 B.C.E., the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.

    4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 C.E. lasted no more than 22 years.

    5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their
    capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.

    6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.

    7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem.

    8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem.

    Arab and Jewish Refugees:

    9. In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.

    10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and programs.

    11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same.

    12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples' lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.

    The Arab - Israeli Conflict:

    13. The Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended its self each time and won.

    14. The P.L.O.'s Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them.

    15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.

    The U.N. Record on Israel and the Arabs:

    16. of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel.

    17. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel.

    18. The U.N was silent while 58 Jerusalem Synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians.

    19. The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.

    20. The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians enforced an policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and Wall.

    These are incredible times. We have to ask what our role shou
  • by Kaa ( 21510 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @11:53AM (#6755170) Homepage
    It saddens me as a developer that you can't even deign to write a P2P add without the assumption that it will be used for sharing copyrighted materials and thus shut down by the RIAA/MPAA.

    Sure you can. Grokster and Morpheus won their court case, remember?

    The xmule situation is very unclear. There are three not necessarily related things happening:

    (1) The guy got a subpoena. That's basically a court order saying "come talk to us". He is not under arrest and so far hasn't been charged with anything. Hysterics about federal jails and moving to Mexico seem to be quite uncalled for.

    (2) His ISP cut him off for "unacceptable use". Looking at cable providers' Terms of Service, it seems you can't do anything but browse the web anyway, so I am sure he broke some clause there. Likely he's been running a server on his connection which most ToSes prohibit. Tough luck. Dump the cable and get a DSL line instead.

    (3) He is getting close to his bandwidth limit. Well, that's the consequence of popularity. Nothing earthshattering there.

  • by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @11:55AM (#6755193) Homepage
    Don't keep asking what xMule is, ask Google. [216.239.53.104]
  • by bigpat ( 158134 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @12:00PM (#6755241)
    I've been boycotting the music industry since 1996, not because of the RIAA, but because I don't care about music enough to buy it. Nor do I care enough about music to go through the hassle of downloading it, I'll stick to just listening to brainless pop or classical on the way home if I happen to get tired of NPR and the BBC.

    "The problem is that the entertainment industry is using dropping revenue as proof that they need to implement tighter controls to prevent file sharing. So any boycott may be backfiring!"

    They can use it as proof, but that does not make it proof. It is very easy to show that with the increased popularity of Napster that Music sales went up, but when Napster was shut down music sales went down. I don't think that is proof that file sharing increases sales of music, but it certainly shows that their proof is garbage.
  • by mgpeter ( 132079 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @12:28PM (#6755668) Homepage
    Damn straight! That fucking Bush!

    He will always be damned for signing the DMCA into law!


    I'm sorry to break it to you, but CLINTON signed the DMCA into law.
  • by SpikeSpiff ( 598510 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @12:28PM (#6755674) Journal
    This is silly. 5 times more children die of backyard-pool drowning then gun accidents. We must hold the pool-industrial complex responsible for their reckless murder of thousands of innocents!

    Ban concrete, water, and rubber inflatable animals!

    On slashdot, its banning inflatable dolls that would be unpopular.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 21, 2003 @12:33PM (#6755733)
    And from this [gonze.com] mans blog :

    So I just tried installing ES5 on my Windows machine. The first thing
    it did is attempt to connect to an IP in the Gaza Strip. The
    administrator for that IP block is someone with an earthstationv.com
    email address. Then my keylogger warning program popped up and
    complained that the program had attempted to hook to my keyboard. I
    killed it, and ran an uninstall. The uninstall failed because some of
    its DLL's were still 'in use' despite no matching processes. I rebooted
    and was able to do a successful uninstall manually. Afterwards, I
    checked my registry and removed a fresh entry from "Intertrust," a
    company that makes DRM software.

    Overall, an entertaining experience.
  • by Un-Thesis ( 700342 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @12:37PM (#6755790) Homepage
    Below is a copy of my letter to my senator, McCain, of Arizona. Feel free, indeed encouraged, to email your own senator (or even others!) and representatives. You can find their addresses at http://www.senate.gov/ and http://www.house.gov/

    With respect,
    Un-Thesis
    =====================
    Dear Senators,

    Some of you have . It affected me personally on 17-Aug 03. I am the main developer of one of the few person-to-person filetrading programs for UNIX (Linux, FreeBSD, etc) machines and MacOS X.

    Apparently I was struck without warning by some DMCA clause for downloading 'copyrighted material.' In other parts of the law, you need habeus corpus, search warrants, judicial review, warning, etc. With the DMCA they merely terminate you, with no warning, with no appeal, with no representation, with no pretense of jurisdiction, based upon evidence that was 100% obtained outside the framework of any noticeable governmental or 3rd-party oversight.

    In short, it is an apparently open fascist policy prone to rampant abuse, supporting the rights of the Establishment over the People.

    My life revolves around the marvelous information transport technologies collectively referred to as the Internet. I attend a part-time university online (www.accis.edu), near 95% of my contact with my friends and family is online, 100% of my employment is online (via rentacoder.com), and my personal hobbies (www.xmule.org) and political activities (www.fearlesszippy.com, wakeup-people.com, etc) are online.

    In short, terminating my internet without warning has seriously halted my life. It is time we make the right to chat online a fundamental human right. The government should be allowed to restrict a person's movements (prohibit uploads, downloads, etc) by placing restrictions on the amount of data a 'criminal' should be able to send online in a given day or so (500KB should be sufficient for email, chat, etc). Such bandwidth caps are already implemented by teh vast majority of broadband suppliers throughout the nation adn would be just about as easy to implement and enforce as the current DMCA suspension of accounts.

    I just wish there would be *some* judicial process involved in the DMCA. I should have my constitutional right to a fair trial. This is above and beyond the reasons why most people download movies. People overseas download movies and music because of artificial monopoly regulations that delay the international exportation of American media by weeks and even months.

    People in America download media because they are either too poor to purchase the overpriced media, and also primarily to see if a given media is of good enough intellecutal quality to warrant purchasing, due to the unequal consumer rights 'laws' which prohibit the returning of open media.

    Generally, people download not out of nefarious intent, but because they lack real alternatives to verify the intellectual quality of any given electronic Media before purchasing.

    Thus, more consumer rights laws, less 'illicit' copyright infringement.

    Sincerely,
    Theodore R. Smith
  • by misterpies ( 632880 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @12:38PM (#6755805)
    Israel has never once started one of the wars that it has participated in

    Sorry, I think you must have forgotten about the six day war in 1967 (OK so it was a "preemptive strike". Name a war where the first person to attack hasn't claimed that). You also seem to have overlooked the 1978 and 1982 invasions of Lebanon -- the last one being condemned even by the US. So by my counting Israel was invaded twice in the last 55 years: the 1947 independence war and the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Perhaps you were confusing Israel with Lebanon, which has never started a war but has been invaded three times in the last 30 years (by Syria in 1976, Israel in 1978 and 1982).

    However, it should be noted that there has never been a strike against an unimportant figure.

    I suppose that depends how you defined important figures. Even if you count any suspicious looking palestinian as "important", I don't see how you can include people like James Miller, a british reporter, or Iain Hook, a UN aid worker. Of course the Israeli army admits these were "mistakes", but does that exonerate them?

    Never do you see in the news: Israel kills busload of Palestinian schoolchildren. Why?

    Because the Palestinians don't have the option of sending in helicopter gunships to assassinate Israeli politicians. I'm not condoning suicide bombings, but your comparison is laughable. In a conflict, each side will naturally make use of the means at its disposal. Moreover israel's "targeted assassinations" invariably kill many more people than just those being targeted -- but obviously a 6-year-old girl who happens to live next door to a Hamas leader doesn't matter as much as a 6-year-old killed in a suicide bombing.
  • Re:probably hoax (Score:3, Informative)

    by infolib ( 618234 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @12:48PM (#6755927)
    What's more, with the fighting in the west-bank over the last two years, I doubt that people there had time to run any OS project

    According to my traceroutes, they may very well be in occupied Palestine, note especially step 13 - a forwarder in Israel (.il)

    /usr/sbin/traceroute www.es5.com
    traceroute to www.es5.com (213.152.100.163), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
    [...]
    9 goldenlines-4-il-pal6.seabone.net (195.22.197.18) 66.267 ms 65.256 ms 64.544 ms
    10 212.199.28.4 (212.199.28.4) 65.075 ms 65.954 ms 65.379 ms
    11 212.199.28.242 (212.199.28.242) 83.267 ms 83.360 ms 83.277 ms
    12 212.199.26.35 (212.199.26.35) 83.541 ms 82.899 ms 83.291 ms
    13 * 212.199.218.130.forward.012.net.il (212.199.218.130) 82.169 ms 81.092 ms
    14 213.152.100.254 (213.152.100.254) 83.539 ms 84.474 ms 83.524 ms
    15 www.es5.com (213.152.100.163) 83.324 ms 82.545 ms 85.788 ms

    The route to download.es5.com is different, I can't trace it beyond Amsterdam:

    /usr/sbin/traceroute download.es5.com
    traceroute to download.es5.com (213.152.119.5), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
    [...]
    10 ae0-53.mp1.Frankfurt1.Level3.net (195.122.136.65) 23.155 ms 23.107 ms 22.959 ms
    11 so-3-0-0.mp1.Amsterdam1.Level3.net (212.187.128.14) 18.825 ms 18.865 ms 18.684 ms
    12 gige7-0.ipcolo1.Amsterdam1.Level3.net (213.244.165.7) 19.967 ms 19.835 ms 19.773 ms
    13 unknown.Level3.net (213.244.164.18) 21.935 ms 20.048 ms 20.404 ms
    14 213.152.119.253 (213.152.119.253) 22.642 ms 20.689 ms 20.641 ms
    15 download.es5.com (213.152.119.5) 19.875 ms 18.925 ms 19.824 ms
  • Remember WASTE (Score:5, Informative)

    by cc_pirate ( 82470 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @12:51PM (#6755960)
    You can share with your friends (instead of 60M people) so it's less guilt factor. Plus it is over an RSA encrypted link. The best of all P2P worlds.

    http://waste.sourceforge.net/
  • Just to make note (Score:2, Informative)

    by phorm ( 591458 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @01:00PM (#6756068) Journal
    Before I get flamed to death for the parent, I suppose I should point out that:

    -I think sueing the authors of P2P apps is retarded
    -I think sending out nastygrams to almost random IP's is retarded
    -I think that the MPAA should be able to expect profit (and less "piracy") on the good movies. The others end up in bargain-bin anyhow...
    -I think that sueing heavy P2P users, or litigating them, is a workable solution
    -I think that sueing college students or teenagers for unreasonable amounts is retarded
    -I think the RIAA and MPAA could both use a new business model... but that's not entirely the problem (people are cheap)
    -I think that if you made something and millions of people were copying it without authorization you'd be pissed, too
  • by Dyolf Knip ( 165446 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @01:02PM (#6756100) Homepage
    Exactly. More students die each year in football accidents than they do in school fights, but we don't see 'zero tolerance' foolishness implemented on the field.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 21, 2003 @01:17PM (#6756256)
    http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/67_War.ht ml
  • Re:Yup (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jonner ( 189691 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @01:41PM (#6756500)
    Some of your money still gets back to the publishers and the RIAA. In particular, the seller will probably buy more new CDs. Obviously, buying used CDs is a good idea and I've bought a number of them. I've bought several because I already had copies of the songs on them. In that case, it would have been acceptible even if the CD was unreadable, since I was just buying a license to use the songs. They were all in good condition, however.
  • Re:Yup (Score:3, Informative)

    by foo fighter ( 151863 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @01:45PM (#6756531) Homepage
    b) Don't send money to the RIAA

    Not from your purchase of a used CD. But the RIAA already got their money from the original purchaser.

    You've kept your money from them, but it's not like they didn't get anything from your purchase.
  • by macdaddy357 ( 582412 ) <macdaddy357@hotmail.com> on Thursday August 21, 2003 @01:47PM (#6756549)
    Yes. They dropped prices by about 1/3, making the price fair. People are very willing to buy when they aren't being ripped off. Here's the link. [bbc.co.uk] They are still boo-hooing that profits are down 2%, but if you are making a profit, stop your crabbing! It's not like you are operating in the red.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 21, 2003 @01:51PM (#6756613)
    Maybe if you stop watching CNN as your main source of news, and instead read the Independent, the Observer or Gush Shalom(which is an Israeli peace organization), you would find plenty cases of Israel trempling on many Palestinians' rights. These include, but are not limited to:

    - the demolition of homes due to the lack of a "permit". However, Palestinians have almost zero chance of obtaining this permit from the Israeli government, so they can't even build homes on their own land. (Note that this doesn't include the demolition of homes of families of suicide bombers)
    http://gush-shalom.org/archives/btselem. html

    - Restriction of drinking water to Palestinians, since most wells are in the Israeli controlled territories. http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=our WorldNews&storyID=3209807

    - Building the "Fence" throgh the middle of a Palestinian house, so that its residents will have to seek a permit in order to step out of the house.
    http://www.gush-shalom.org/english/index.h tml

    - Shooting of a child

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,100705 1, 00.html

    This, in no way, is a justification for the killing of innocent Israelis!! But it gives an excuse to the fanatical organizations, like Hamas, who have their own political agenda. The region needs more people with the ideals of Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
  • by superyooser ( 100462 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @01:57PM (#6756667) Homepage Journal
    Palestine has been recognized by the UN as an occupied territory, with Israel as the occupying power.
    "The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity... In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism. It has also been a "conceptual" war for the ownership of the term "Palestinian" which has been transferred over to the Arabs, whereas before 1967, 'Palestine' has always been synonomous with the land of Israel."
    - Zahir Muhsein, PLO Executive Committee member, to Dutch newspaper Trouw, March 31, 1977
  • by srvivn21 ( 410280 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @02:16PM (#6756847)
    [me polymorph]# dig download.es5.com

    download.es5.com. 10m36s IN A 213.152.119.5

    [me polymorph]# dig -x 213.152.119.5 ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
    213.in-addr.arpa. 2H IN SOA ns.ripe.net. ops-213.ripe.net.

    In other words, download.es5.com's IP address is "owned" by ripe.net. http://www.ripe.net/ripencc/about/ [ripe.net] states in part:
    The RIPE Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) is one of Four Regional Internet Registries (RIR) that exist in the world today, providing allocation and registration services that support the operation of the Internet globally.

    The RIPE NCC performs activities primarily for the benefit of the membership in Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and African countries located north of the equator. These are mainly activities that its members need to organise as a group, even though they may compete in other areas.

    The services provided by the RIPE NCC ensure the fair distribution of global Internet resources in the RIPE NCC service region required for the stable and reliable operation of the Internet. This includes the allocation of Internet (IP) address space, autonomous system numbers and the management of reverse domain name space.


    A traceroute from my desk shows (again, in part)...

    11 bpr1-so-0-0-0.sanjoseequinix.cw.net (208.173.54.65) 50.889 ms 51.496 ms 55.282 ms
    12 208.173.54.74 (208.173.54.74) 55.430 ms 51.065 ms 50.517 ms
    13 so-5-0-0.gar1.sanjose1.level3.net (209.244.3.137) 51.761 ms 52.379 ms 55.816 ms
    14 so-7-0-0.mp1.sanjose1.level3.net (64.159.1.73) 62.741 ms 58.862 ms 51.160 ms
    15 unknown.level3.net (64.159.3.254) 114.017 ms 113.364 ms 111.183 ms
    16 so-2-0-0.mp1.london2.level3.net (212.187.128.137) 188.881 ms 189.685 ms 188.827 ms
    17 so-2-0-0.mp1.amsterdam1.level3.net (212.187.128.26) 195.189 ms 193.874 ms 194.465 ms
    18 gige10-2.ipcolo1.amsterdam1.level3.net (213.244.165.99) 191.791 ms 192.253 ms 195.587 ms
    19 unknown.level3.net (213.244.164.18) 192.521 ms 193.254 ms 192.870 ms
    20 213.152.119.253 (213.152.119.253) 193.077 ms 192.419 ms 193.005 ms
    21 213.152.119.5 (213.152.119.5) 193.729 ms 192.124 ms 194.005 ms

    So download.es5.com looks to be housed in Amsterdam (gige10-2.ipcolo1.amsterdam1.level3.net).

    Just my take on the situation.
  • by zootread ( 569199 ) <zootread@NOsPaM.yahoo.com> on Thursday August 21, 2003 @02:28PM (#6756949)
    "Idiot Son Of An Asshole [nofxofficialwebsite.com]" by NOFX [nofxofficialwebsite.com]

    He's not smart, a C student
    And that's after buying his way into school
    Beady eyes, and he's kinda dyslexic
    Can he read? No one's really quite sure
    He signs stuff and he executes people
    Maybe that's why, he doesn't have any friends
    Cocaine and a little drunk driving
    Doesn't matter, when you're the Commander in Chief.

    Idiot son of an asshole
    He's the idiot son of an asshole
    Idiot son of an asshole
    He's the idiot son of an asshole

    Put on some make-up, turn on the 8-Track,
    I'm putting a week back on the shelf,
    Suddenly I'm the President, of the United States,
    But then I woke up, and realized I'm still me.

    He's too dumb, to eat pretzels, apparently smart enough to fix an election.
    Moved boldly into the White House,
    but most people voted against him.
    He likes naps, He really likes naptime, A couple of naps and then a nap and then he's ready for bed,
    He may be from Bush decent, but he's always gonna be the unpresident.

    Idiot son of an asshole
    He's the idiot son of an asshole
    Idiot son of an asshole
    He's the idiot son of an asshole
    Idiot son of an asshole
    He's the idiot son of an asshole

    He's our president!
  • by jghiloni ( 697980 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @02:56PM (#6757235)
    The reason you can purchase them much cheaper at places like Best Buy and Target is because they're actually losing money on CD sales. Their philosophy is simple, and in my opnion, genius: if we offer a hot commodity (cheap tunes), they will purchase other crap from us, too.

    I have a friend that is purchasing manager for the local branch of a chain record store. He told me that dreck like Eminem and 50 Cent cost the STORES approximately $15 per disc.

    So you can see how big chains lose money on CD sales, and why they are willing to do so. Well, from everything I've heard, *were* willing to do. I've heard rumors (granted, nothing more, but from trusted sources) that Best Buy (and one can extrapolate other chains from this argument) are worried that they're losing SO much money, that they're going to stop selling CDs. Again, that is just rumor mills.

    It doesn't affect me, personally, because I refuse to purchase music from any band on an RIAA label because a) I disagree with their litigation process, and b) they put out shit in CD form. Pure, unfiltered, still-steaming-fresh-from-the-cow's-asshole-to-you r-plate fecal matter.
  • by 2short ( 466733 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @03:32PM (#6757706)


    "5 times more children die of backyard-pool drowning then gun accidents"

    An Informative for one probably made up statistic with no source? I'll show you informative.

    Best I could find was for all ages, total accidental deaths in 2000:

    Drowning and submersion while in or falling into swimming-pool: 567

    Firearms discharge: 776

    I suppose it's probable children are a larger percent of the drownings than the gun accidents, but your 5 times number is seeming improbable. On the other hand, I don't see why child vs. adult matters. And of course, we could add in the non-accidental deaths by assault with a firearm: 10,801, which pretty much dwarfs the other numbers. Yes, I know, some of those people might well have been killed by other means if their assailant didn't have a gun. But total deaths from assault was only 16,765 (i.e. 64% of people killed by assault were shot.) I think it's safe to say some fraction of those would have survived if their assailant didn't have a gun. Probably an even more significant fraction of the 270 killed by "Legal intervention involving firearm discharge" would have survived if the deceased hadn't had a gun, because the police wouldn't have felt the need to shoot him.

    More debateable is what fraction of the 16,586
    killed by "intentional self-harm by firearm" would have found another way to do themselves in. Probably quite a few, but firearm was more than half the intentional self harm deaths.

    In short, I think that cutting the number of firearms in the country by (for example) half would clearly save more lives than cutting the number of swimming-pools by half.

    And lest I forget, source:
    http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm

  • Re:It's a HOAX!!! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Kneo24 ( 688412 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @03:49PM (#6757951)

    I've helped beta test for them (they have public beta testing). It does what it says it does. You can go to their forums [htttp] and ask people about it all. Is it a hoax? It certainly could end up being one, but so could all of the other p2p programs out there.

    I don't help in the beta testing anymore though. A few of the developers who are regulars on the board acted moronic any time I submitted a bug to them. I had to tell them what my problem was quite a few times before they finally understood what I was talking about. I'd show my bug report to friends who hadn't used the program before and they perfectly understood what problem I was having.

    I really don't like using the program either. For me, it's a memory hog (uses 16 MB), and I don't have the money to upgrade from 128 MB. Plus, it looks really bulky. Though, if I want a more secure p2p app, I know where to look.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 21, 2003 @03:50PM (#6757962)
    ES5 *IS* actually TROJAN SPYWARE proof!!! DANGER

    "DN" wrote in message
    news:4H%Ka.6750$v71.3255@nwrddc01.gnilink .net...
    : The Earthstation 5 (ES5) P2P app, which boasts anonymous sharing
    : and security, is actually software designed by contractors hired
    : by the RIAA! The "Dating" feature was designed to trick users
    : into entering their personal info, which makes it easier for the
    : RIAA to compile statistics and track down users. All traffic
    : statistics are routed through proxies operated by agencies
    : working for the RIAA, most notably BayTSP and MediaForce. The
    : cheesy outerspace theme was designed to appeal to newbies while
    : appearing to have a feeling of security to it without scaring
    : away the non-techies. Company info for ES5 is very vague, ...
    : can you guess why?
    :
    : ES5 is just one of the many projects in effect by the RIAA. The
    : MPAA is staying somewhat neutral at the moment, but has similiar
    : plans in store.
    :
    : BOTTOM LINE: DO NOT USE ES5!
    :

    does anyone here want to refute this!!! this has been known for over a month.

  • by SydShamino ( 547793 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @05:47PM (#6759312)
    One of my coworkers is from Lebanon (he's been a US citizen and a Republican for 10+ years, but he goes back home every summer).

    A year or so ago, he said that Lebanon was ready to toss out Hamas. They live in the southern part of the country and steal their food and electricity from the country as they need it. The people were getting sick of a leech on their system.

    Then, Israel decided to attack Lebanon again. They killed some Hamas leader with a missle strike, and in the process killed a few civilians and a few kids. The Lebanese were outraged, but of course the Lebanese government and military can do nothing, because Israel would ignore them, laugh at them, or just invade them again. The only group that can stand up to Israel are those leech Hamas. Thus, the Lebanese people stopped complaining about Hamas for a while again...

    So that at least helps to explain how a terrorist group can find support.
  • by admbws ( 600017 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @09:58PM (#6761309) Homepage Journal
    What the hell are these peoples living in Palestine in a refugee camp and have BroadBand Connections.

    Several companies have laid fibre there. The West Bank and Gaza has around 8 ISP's.
  • More NOFX for ya (Score:2, Informative)

    by zootread ( 569199 ) <zootread@NOsPaM.yahoo.com> on Friday August 22, 2003 @02:11PM (#6767105)
    "I see no world peace 'cause of zealous armed forces
    I eat no breath-mints 'cause their from de-hoofed horses
    Now I can't believe; what an absolute failure
    The president's laughing 'cause we voted for Nader"

    -NOFX, "Franco Un-American"

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