Vital Pixel

XP’s End of Life

“XP will hit an end-of-life. We have announced one. If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter, but right now, we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments.” (Microsoft CEO - Steve Ballmer)

There is a June 30th deadline, for when xp’s life will be ended :(.  Anyways, many PC vendors are trying to get Microsoft to think a little bit harder about what they’re doing.  Many people are still downgrading their pcs to XP because they don’t like Vista, so I doubt many of the general public will be happy that the option won’t be available anymore.  HP, Dell, and Lenova say that they would downgrade from vista to XP on customer request until 2009.  Many other companies might include an xp disc with the computer you purchase.

The deadline for Microsoft to stop selling XP is June 30th of this year.  Of course, they could end up changing their minds if the they get enough complaints from customers.

Tags: downgrade, microsoft, OS, vista, xp

Are Anime Streaming Sites Legal?

It’s been brought to my attention recently the growing controversy over sites that stream anime. I don’t mean sites like youtube, veoh, or etc… I mean sites like Otaku Theater which embed the videos on the site, so people can watch withing having to search for the videos. Many people don’t have any problems at all with these kinds of sites, but there are those who question the legality.

Many of these sites have disclaimers, stating that since the content is hosted on another web server, they aren’t at fault for showing it to other people. I immediately agreed with that theory because it seemed perfectly reasonable. I know that sites like youtube are responsible for finding user submitted copyright infringing material, and the general public isn’t responsible for knowing exactly what is wrong and right. Many kids browse the internet and have no idea that they are taking away from the profits of the original creators of the cartoons.

Plus this is the internet after all, many websites that do allow the viewing of anime are hosted in countries where there are no laws against it. So if the creators ask them to take down their show, the owner of the website can just tell them off.

I don’t have any problem with people grouping together anime they’ve found on other websites and showing other people. Since the sites that host the videos are responsible, and quite good at removing anime and other copyrighted material from their sites, streaming video site owners have plenty of work replacing broken links and non-working videos. So, I think that streaming sites are fine, video hosting websites should keep on removing copyrighted content, or

anime owners should somehow insert ads into their shows, and release them via the web in the first place!

This could probably work, and save them a bunch of money. Since people are always going to host download, and streaming websites… might as well make those have commercials. (this is just a suggestion though… not dictating what people should do. )

Tags: anime, cartoon, hosting, Legal, manga, Sites, streaming, video