Ah Sony Music is involved.

Remember the time Sony Music installed a rootkit on peoples' computers via commercially purchased CDs because hacking paying customers' computers seemed like a good way to combat piracy?

Pepperidge Farm Remembers.

There you go. It was all OK until it impacted $$. Glad they finally did something, but wish it would have been based on an actual ethical concern.

So, like usual, DRM only fucked the people trying to play by the rules.

“You go on the metro, and people stare at you because you wear a uniform. Again, I didn't go voluntarily, I received a summons and came to the military enlistment office.

At this point I had some sympathy.

I didn't run away or hide like you. I acted like a law-abiding citizen. But when I come on holiday, they point fingers at me,” the soldier said.

And then he lost my sympathy.

It's like certain problems we have in the US, just with different players.

When "law abiding" is placed before basic ethics, problems like these arise. It's also, sometimes (maybe not here) a smokescreen people use to justify their unethical behavior.

I swear to god I've heard that the telemarketer/robocaller problem is finally solved like ten times over the course of my life.

https://jacobin.com/2023/09/big-pharma-research-and-development-new-drugs-buybacks-biden-medicare-negotiation

Last year, the three largest US-listed pharmaceutical companies by revenues, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Merck, spent a combined $39.6 billion on R&D. That is, admittedly, a lot of money. But less than Medicare is currently paying on just ten drugs

While Big Pharma holds vast portfolios of existing patents for prescription drugs, the innovation pipeline for new drugs actually has very little to do with Big Pharma. In reality, public sources — especially the NIH — fund the basic research that makes scientific breakthroughs. Then small, boutique biotech and pharmaceutical firms take that publicly generated knowledge and do the final stages of research, like running clinical trials, that get the drugs to market. The share of small companies in the supply of new drugs is huge, and it’s still growing. Fully two-thirds of new drugs now come from these small companies, up from one-third twenty years ago. It is not the research labs of Pfizer that are developing new drugs.

Please folks, especially those of you who like to push the "both sides" narrative. Recognize that while Democrats are not perfect, they are not these batshit insane Republicans that have wormed their way into power.

I want more choices, too. But until we have them - Republicans have been telling us exactly who they are since about 2016. Believe them. And do not vote them into power. Not locally, not at the state level, and for sure not at the federal level.

They have proven that they are incapable of seeing laws as anything more than tools to be leveraged against those not like them, and that they will skip right to violence when that fails.

I told one senator... we've got to put our heads together and figure this out. We need to be taking action right now. Because if we don't, our constituencies are gonna be fighting it in the streets. Do you want a civil war? I don't want a civil war. I don't want to have to draw my rifle. I want to make this problem go away with my legislative means of doing so,"

Translation: "Just do what I say so I don't have to get violent."

Sounds a lot like an abuser explaining how if only you hadn't made him angry, he wouldn't have had to beat you.

Fuck these people. Get them out of power.

DING DING DING. They can "get away with" hating trans women more easily, but it's just a stepping stone on the way to Gilead for them.

Just this image alone made me LOL!

Stochastic Terrorism

https://presswatchers.org/2022/08/the-phrase-youre-looking-for-is-stochastic-terrorism/

Reminder that the Uvalde police wanted this covered up so badly they threatened a local mother with violation of her probation if she continued to speak out about it.

https://www.newsweek.com/uvalde-mom-who-saved-kids-school-shooting-says-police-threatened-her-1712842

Yeah, it's the kind of article you write when you want to be sure Apple comes out looking good.

And he will face no consequence for it.

Check this bit from the end:

In a brief submitted by the State of Florida in support of Escambia, Attorney General Ashley Moody argued that the school board could ban books for any reason because the purpose of public school libraries is to "convey the government’s message," and that can be accomplished through "the removal of speech that the government disapproves."

How many years did they spend sweeping the ground ahead of Trump and his cronies to support them and bring us to where we are today - only to act like they are taking some principled stand in quitting now?

They made this bed.

I think a lot of them do see it, but he pisses off the libs and seems to be promising to hurt the people they want to be hurt, so they are OK with that.

While I agree with the overall point, these courtroom examples are highlighting for me how thoroughly different the justice system experience is if you are the right sort of person moreso than fanning the flames of my Trump hatred.

The entire apparatus of the United States justice department and executive branch has so far not succeeded in doing more than pissing him off about Jan 06 and election fraud, but this one woman has bloodied his nose repeatedly. Bravo I say!

Maybe this is going to be the one thing he sees actual consequences for.

Side note - pretty sure losing cases like these would have killed anyone else's political career and presidential aspirations. It's a real shame we already used up the Teflon Don nickname.

I feel awful for the involved kids, but look forward to what should be a slam dunk lawsuit.

Same paper that just ran the "Women should stop shunning Trump supporters in their dating pool" article. I guess that's so they'll be less likely to abused under the pending dictatorship?

I'll never stop mourning the loss of the like a boss stickman.

And the alleged ‘good cops’ are out here confused why no one respects them.

Until I start running across evidence that some police are angrier about the bad cops than they are about everyone else being angry about the bad cops, I refuse to believe they exist.

Cops: Why do people hate us?

Also Cops: OP

You mean the guy who is still the expected Republican nominee for 2024, and at whose urging stochastic terrorism is on the rise, but who has yet to see any consequences for his actions nor any legal consequences that would bar him from holding office? That dumb ex-President?

Maybe because it's a wise investment to encourage knowledge workers gain additional experience working on things they enjoy even if you might not be able to pick up one of those things and directly make another revenue stream out of it.

OK OK there are like 10 posts about that already, let us have our marijuana thread. 😉

Swift’s life had been orchestrated as part of a sinister plot to encourage her fans to vote.

Reminds me of the time Republicans in some local election had sent out a mailer smearing the Dem candidate. There was a big box on one part of the card, in a large font against a dark background proclaiming that the Dem candidate wanted to "Educate and Transform you!"

Well, I thought, do your donors know you are campaigning for the Democrat?

Citing data showing that Democratic voters generally refuse to date Trump voters, the Post editors argue that people should be more willing to date across party lines, and learn to appreciate "alternative perspectives that may at first seem odd or offensive."

You've got major media outlets (the post article was only the most recent) telling women essentially that they owe it to the country to fuck and marry these assholes. How is that not bullying of a sort?

Sounds about white.

Guess I just need to keep using firefox. shrug

Unless you have very specialized requirements (and quite possibly you do) the solution is usually to unhook yourself from thinking of needing specific programs and to instead focus on needing to perform specific tasks. (Then finding the Linux way to perform that task.)

Barring that, the codeweavers suggestion is a good one. I used it in my early days when I thought I couldn't live without particular pieces of Windows software and although that was several years ago, even then it was pretty good about being able to easily run arbitrary Windows software. IMO it's cheap enough to be worth the investment.

If you truly have bespoke requirements that just can't be satisfied by either of the above, staying on Windows may legitimately be your best option.

More generally - if you decide to take this step, expect to have to learn to use a computer substantially differently than you have in the past. It's not harder; in many ways it's easier. But if you are very experienced and comfortable with Windows, a lot of concepts are going to feel foreign to you. Tackle one task at a time and your experiences will build upon each other. Go into it expecting to have to learn, and you'll do fine. Bizarrely I find the least tech-savvy folks sometimes have the easiest time transitioning.

But new records show that investigators allowed police misstatements to stand, despite having body-camera video to disprove them.

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!

Wayland does not work properly on Intel hardware: Again, I’m using AMD, so I can’t confirm or deny this, but considering the Intel drivers are open source, and I’ve heard about many, many improvements made on the Intel side of things, I think it would be reasonable to assume it has been fixed.

Posting this from Plasma Wayland on Intel right now. If something is broken, it's something not apparent to me.

My rage wouldn't let me finish the article. Fuck these fuckers, fuck everyone who votes for these fuckers, and fuck everyone who keeps trying to tell me we should just try to "understand" how Republicans got to where they are.

How the hell did they elect a cop as Mayor immediately after 2020? Good on them for defying him, good on them for the ban.

Still, many continue to spend more and save less.

That's what happens when literally everything costs more than it used to.

They are fruity, rainbow colored, AND they let kids read things that haven't been vetted by MTG and the leader of the Proud Boys?

Holy shit how has the offense to our freedoms, the danger to our children, and the disdain for proper god-fearing Americans perpetuated by Froot Loops been allowed to continue for so long!!??

As of about a year ago he still wouldn't say "No" regarding whether Trump would get his vote if nominated, when directly asked.

He also helped put Trump in power.

So, yeah.

I don't think whataboutism is required to argue with someone having a hard time disliking Christie, unless you define whataboutism in some interesting and unusual way.

At best he's realized they need to try stuffing the monster back in the box, after he helped bust it open.

You know you've sold your soul when your career choices require you to compose this line, and to do so pejoratively.

"Internet Archive unabashedly seeks to provide free and unlimited access to music for everyone"

Hey Buddy, most of us don't have wealth, either.