If I ever find a rootkit on my system stemming from a company that thinks they can do stuff like this, and it is legal, it is to a demonstration that the law is not worthy of any respect any more, and that it is time for war. And given the resource discrepancy, the only way of fighting back against companies like this would be to cause vastly disproportionate amounts of damage. I'm sure getting rootkits into their networks wouldn't be all that hard.

If I ever find a rootkit on my system, that OS gets binned permanently, no questions asked. I have a zero tolerance policy for who's system my computer is: it's mine. Not the US's, not Law Enforcement's, not the MPAA's, not MS's. If it achieves sentience, fine, it can be it's own; until then, any OS which fails to understand this arrangement (that a secure OS means that only I and system services (Windows Update, various package managers and their delegates) install software...third parties are not allowed), will be binned. If I can't trust my machine to have my singular best interests at heart, I cannot work with it; multiple tethers, trojan rootkits, superseding accounts with permissions higher than my own...these run contrary to my designs, and make it difficult, in the very least, to know when a problem is being caused by them, or by me. Plus I despise being spied on; if I'm going to put on a show, I'm going to get paid for it (no freebies).

I am more and more disturbed with the way OSs are going in general. They are...slowly removing usefulness from themselves, making it hard for admins to work with them, and adding on crap, like Windows Store...which is not needed. It's starting to feel like the computers I work with are...owned by someone else...which means I will start caring for them a lot less. The least of things which currently bothers me are the cross-threading errors which seem to appear in Windows 7...why have these not been fixed?

This is a big part of the reason I moved entirely over to Linux and don't even have a token windows box anymore. When I absolutely need to run a windows app (Photoshop, or some MS Office crap that doesn't render properly in LibreOffice) I run (licensed) Windows 7 in a VM, where it is contained and constrained.

All the windows only applications I used to use for fun and hobbies (games, music apps) I've either found Linux replacements for (I basically buy the Humble Bundle whenever it looks good), or I simply do without. I would buy Linux applications for these functions if they were available AND the applications were sane, cross-platform developers sometimes try to treat your Linux box like its an MS box (wanting to put files all over the place etc) which is unacceptable.

We simply cannot trust MS or Apple. At least in the Linux community there is a strong culture of transparency, privacy, security, and freedom.

It's not down to the OS or OS vendor. Most rootkits are exploiting bugs, not intentional backdoors, and many of them are exploiting bugs that are not in the OS but in third party applications.

E.g. a common approach is to look for common third party applications that require admin/root privileges for some part of their functionality, and look for ways of tricking them into executing your code (via e.g. buffer overflows, or by finding ways of modifying the configuration with lower privileges).

So unless you never install third party software, you are potentially vulnerable even if the OS is flawless (and it isn't - no matter which OS you pick).

Sony's network has been a fertile testing ground for third-party rootkits for the past few years.

They tried it, and it seems to go pretty well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_root_kit

> Then the entertainment industry has enemies actively trying to destroy their systems.

so to be fair this is actually where we are today, if you remember the efforts of anonymous and sony, etc...

To be fair:

1) Anonymous/Lulzsec aren't necessarily a best-of-the-best of the 'hacker world.' Do they want to raise the ire of even more skilled people?

2) Anonymous/Lulzsec are/were in it mostly for the publicity, and 'cheap thrills.' I'm sure that they could have done a lot more damage had they been focused on being as malicious as possible.

> mostly for the publicity, and 'cheap thrills.

You mean... for the lulz?

I purposely expanded 'for the lulz' into something a bit more succinct.

You actually expanded it into something that by definition is less succinct.

Lulz may be brief, but it is hardly clear.

Number 1 is a very good point and something those companies should keep in mind. Anonymous/Lulzsec are basically like children in terms of what they could do. Very skilled people could do substantially more disruption and damage.

Being actively targeted would certainly encourage membership.

I want to watch Game of Thrones and pay for it. I also want it available within a day of it's original airing and without having to buy cable or a TV. Charge me for HBO. Just don't make me wait a year before I can buy the video. You can even make me buy the HD version when I only want to pay for standard definition.

It's out on itunes the same day in HD for $3.5 an episode (unless you are in australia).

Season 3 isn't out on itunes in Canada at all yet. The only way for me to watch Season 3 is to subscribe to the $100/month + $20/month cable package that carries HBO.

I've not bothered to pirate it, yet.

There's a way to trick your iTunes into thinking you're not in Canada. All you need is a second account and a gift card situated in the US. (I've seen people in the US use this trick in reverse to get BBC shows in America without pirating them.) Granted, it's retarded (and potentially still illegal) that people should have to do this in order to pay for content rather than pirate...but the option is there.

Seems like a lot of effort to pay people that seem to go out of their way to stop you from buying their merchandise

I'm not setting up umpteen different itunes accounts to try to give you my money. The whole point of paying for something is that I provide the money in exchange for the product. Why should I jump through hoops in addition to that?

There are easier options if I care. But to be honest, right now I don't.

I just checked. You can't buy Game of Thrones season 3 via iTunes in the USA, but it looks like you could buy it in Australia. I tried buying an episode from the Australian iTunes store, but no luck.

Ah, I thought they offered that for everywhere, not just australia (and they're cancelling it in australia). Sorry to get your hopes up.

I read there was something coming in next season to prevent same time iTunes release in Australia? Is this currently the case as well?

Yes, Foxtel is moving to block the itunes episodes from getting a speedy release. Not until next season though so we'll see if they succeed.

It is interesting, I don't think it will actually help them much. If you have Foxtel already you can likely get the whole of showtime for around the same price your paying on itunes for Game of Thrones. (While the season is going and there are day 4 eps a month.)

Not sure they are going to convince people that don't have Foxtel that they should pay $60+ a month for the service purely on the back of Game of Thrones.

Especially since the only part of the market they can hope to capture with this move is "people who already pay for game of thrones legally over itunes". I would think that most of those people also know how to torrent but choose not to and foxtel just pissed them off, I doubt they happily switch services.

Thanks. I didn't realize that! Will check it out.

> Right now their enemies are just pirates wanting to watch Game Of Thrones for free. A business threat, certainly, but one they're generally handling well.

A reasonable point, but I think their argument about "we won't allow seeing GoT without a cable subscription" still is incredibly short sighted.

It lets them make money in a way they understand now. I would very happily pay them money straight up, but since I'm not in the US, it's not really about wanting access to free stuff - it's about access to stuff in the first place. They would lose money on setting up such a system in the short term, sure, but they are only delaying the inevitable - that such a system is what is required if they want to compete with bittorrent in the long term.

The problem is, it's the short-term that matters on quaterly reports and that moves you up the corporate label. Long-term changes take too long to benefit those who introduced them.