[sdiy] Conjob report (Award!)

[Batz Goodfortune]

Y-ellow Mike 'n' all.

At 11:10 AM 1/4/07 +0000, Mike wrote:
> > .........Personally I feel that anyone charging money for data-sheets,
>service
> > manuals, and programming information should be summarily rounded up and
> > bulldozed off the nearest cliff........
>
>And this year's first Oscar for Heartfelt Rant goes to:

         First of all I'd like to thank my make up artist for whom I owe my 
career. My Agent for whom all my hard work has paid off. And my violin 
teacher for the facts of life.

Since Mason asked and out of succinctness, the PDF contained the service 
information for some of it's matching boxes. Cassette deck, equalizer CD 
player. That kind of thing. It DID NOT contain other peripherals such as 
the remote control or the somewhat interestingly special, remote 
controlled, tri-amped speakers.

This is one of those Japanese Christmas tree specials. The more boxes you 
put on it, the more it lights up like a Christmas tree. The Amp has 2 of 
those SANYO STK triple 25watt amps in it. And I only know that because the 
data sheets for them are freely available. It's more computer than 
amplifier. Piles of unrecognizable Japanese parts and unfathomable design 
logic. Combined with a chassis that means you have to break it down into 
it's component molecules just to change a fuse. (No it's not the fuses I 
checked)

There is main bus power. There is (what I assume to be) standby bus power. 
There's no power anywhere else. There's no switch-on relay either. I have 
no idea what device switches on and powers up. Without a road-map it's a 
massive job to trace out. And like I said, you have to pull the whole thing 
apart to get at anything on the motherboard. Then you have to put the whole 
thing back together again to test out your latest clue. The whole thing has 
been severely shoe-horned into the smallest space possible, then folded and 
bent till there's not internal space left. So they had to put a fan on the 
back to keep it all cool. Subsequently it looks like someone literally 
shoved a rocket up it's arse.

><<Massive applause>>
>
>I've with you all the way there Batz - the like vampires who want a $60
>'subscription' for PDF's you can get off the manufacturers site for free, or
>in my case, the ebay pondlife that sent me PDF's for all the acessories and
>add-ons for a photocopier, but somehow forgot the actual useful part - the
>copier manual itself.

At least with EvilBaby, you go in with your eyes open to some extent. You 
know that they're mostly pond scum and you act accordingly. Contrary to 
anything EvilBaby or PreyPal may say, there's virtually no protection 
against fraud so you know you're taking your chances when dealing with any 
given user. No matter how many brownie points they might have on their 
feedback page. There is nothing that Evilbaby is willing to do to address 
the core problems so you live with it or leave it well alone.

A mate of mine got ripped off 10 grand on evilbaby and there wasn't a whole 
lot he could do about it. All up the same scammer ripped people off to the 
tune of 400 grand US in one go. A classic Evilbaby scam MO. IT's happened 
before and it'll happen again. Rumor has it that this same person (A rare 
record collector from Germany supposedly) has done this exact same thing 
before. German police weren't interested because it was only 10 grand. Even 
though collectively it was 400. However word has it that one of the people 
he ripped off was a US, shall we say "Businessman." Ripped him off 
something over a 100 grand in one swoop. He apparently flew to Germany 
about a year later, tracked this guy down and well, you don't wanna know 
the rest.

Except to say that this guy had it all sewn up and was gearing up to run 
the same sort of scam again. His sister apparently worked in the bank which 
handled the funds. His friend or partner worked in the postal service 
somewhere so was able to scam shipping dockets etc. But I take it they 
don't work anywhere anymore.

There's an old hacker's credo which most of you would no doubt be familiar 
with. "Information Wants to be Free." I've been using the net long enough 
to remember that the whole thing was based on this credo. Commercial 
interests were restricted to the exchange of information only. The whole 
net seemed to work on a currency of karma in a way. That is; Everyone puts 
up a web site or other net entity and contributes what they can. In return 
we get a rich variety of information and experience to exchange.

If I make music I tend to place it on my web site so that you or anyone 
else can listen to it. And likewise I get to listen to the music that you 
and other's make. This is the real music as opposed to the polished turds 
that drop from the anus of the music industry at large. It is bad enough 
then that the RIAA goes round suing it's customers for promoting their 
music sales for them but the IP in these data sheets and service manuals 
don't even belong to the ass clowns holding them to ransom. They simply 
scoop them up wherever they find them, turn them into PDFs if they're not 
in that format already, and charge money for them.

What I would like to see is an open data-sheet collective that does the 
same thing but for free. No strings attached. Not because I think the work 
involved should be done entirely for free but because once such a 
repository had reached critical mass, it would shut these extortionists down.

And I think there just might be the beginnings of such a thing.
http://fileshare.eshop.bg/
So if anyone has any opinion of whether this thing deserves our support, 
I'd be most interested in hearing it.

OK. one last apology. Sorry for ranting but as you might appreciate, it's 
probably healthier than banging my head against an amp chassis. And having 
said that, I'd better clean the blood off.

In the mean time, by all means. Please pirate my music. Pirate hard and 
fast. Every time you pirate my music my communits, pinko, subversive, evil 
satanic power grows. :)

Be absolutely Icebox.

  _ __        _    __International Pain-in-the-Ass and prophet of doom__
| "_ \      | |
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|  _ \ / _` | __|___ |Your source of Armageddon in a musically crass world
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Goodfortune    |_____| Cult  -----> http://www.subgenius.com