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Slashback: Drives, Errors, Copyright
Spin control for some IBM drives? If you are one ofthe people who have the same results with IBM 75GXP hard drives that Sean Kelly did when he posed a recent Ask Slashdot, you may be interested in this report from legLess, who writes: "Pair Networks is swapping out every IBM 75GXP hard drive they have "[b]ased on an amazingly high failure rate." Pair is a big host: 114,000 sites all running on FreeBSD 4.1.1, including cdrom.com and Tom's Hardware. "We currently use and recommend Maxtor drives" they say. Big black eye for IBM."
GNU isn't Linux, either. Amid the stream of recent and upcoming software releases (Suse 7.3, Red Hat 7.2, Qt 3.0), it's sometimes easy for projects with smaller followings or more esoteric goals to get lost. BorrisYeltsin writes: "The Debian HURD iso images are now available from your local ftp.gnu.org mirror. There are 3 iso's available, so get downloading now!" (And read through the recent months' on the HURD Kernel Cousin too.)
Update: 10/16 14:20 GMT by T : Please note that the GNU Project maintains a list of ftp mirrors -- look for one local to you for best results all around :)
Placing warning signs along the road to consumerism brigc writes: "Good interview in the Chronicle of Higher Education with Jessica Litman about changes in the copyright arena since the publication of her book.
For those who were asleep, Litman's book 'Digital Copyright' does a good job of discussing why the copyright process got handed over to the industry and Congress has failed to protect the rights of the public."
Litman's book got a rave review from Michael a few months back; I suggest you check it out, and better yet ask you local library to put it up on display. Libraries have a strong vested interest in not ceding all control to copyright holders forever and ever amen.
It might pay to have a big fat mouth and ask for a refund on defective merchandise, too. anonicon writes: "Here's a heads up to the web site I'm running at http://www.fatchucks.com. I've started both a Corrupt CDs list for people who wish to report 'copy-protected' CDs or find out which ones they are, and an Indie Rec for people who want to recommend independent artists to the public. Thank you."
I think the ibm hard drive story and the title of the last commentary (the one about the "rip-proof" cd's) pretty much go together. IBM was probably rushed to market on their hard drives, although they usually put out quality product, I.E. deep blue, he he.
I would like to say though, that the book they mentioned is quite excellent. Even though I haven't read it yet, it is one of my favorites.
HURD -- a testament to the never-give-up and never-think-things-through spirit of GNU.
"Linux is nothing, work on the HURD" -- Stallman
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
I was planning on upgrading my own small servers with some of these drives, but have also made the switch to Matrox. I grew up the son of an IBM company man, who had great pride in IBM. This pride was passed down to me, and I've always trusted IBM for quality and dependability when it came to hardware for "Business Machines"... this is not just a black eye for IBM, but an end of an era.
From Tim Baker of Sunrise Records during MusicNotes @ 6 on my local radio station CHTZ-FM, best as I can remember the quote:
"You know the Panasonic or Yamaha CD burners you want to get this Christmas? Well, I've got news for you - save your money. After Christmas all new releases will be encoded and you won't be able to burn your own - and it's about time"
This is really paraphrased, but I have the gist of the quotation. I guess our fair use rights are supposedly forfeited because of the evil Napster. I wish these people would realise it's the price of a CD that was driving the Napster thing, not a willingness to steal. I alomst feel sorry for the record stores, though, since they take orders from the RIAA cabal.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
"Copy protected" CDs are going to be a shambles, good on the owner of that site for starting a list! And even better for compiling ways to, ahem, deal with the problem :).
These CDs will do little to stop online piracy. Everyone knows, if it can be heard it can be copied. Working a line-in jack on a stereo or computer isn't hard. Heck, you probably lose more fidelity in the MP3/OGG/Whatever compression than the digital-to-analog conversion with good audio equipment. All it takes is one good copy to be released and online music piracy will be off again.
Basically, if you want to stop the problem of music piracy, you've got to go back to the root issue -- the users themselves versus the bands in question.
I have a friend who was firmly on Metallica's side during the Lars Ulrich vs. Napster debacle. Why? He respected them as artists, and as a result owns every album they have ever put out.
This is what the RIAA doesn't get. The bands themselves are the only ones who can convince users not to copy, not any fancy technical or legal hurdles -- or have they forgotten that the bands exist apart from phony marketing images?
So here's a plan to decrease piracy. Every band has a back catalogue of covers, garage recordings, and so on that will probably never get released and are next to worthless commerically. All they have to do is say "From now on, we're monitoring KaZaA/Morpheus/Gnutella/etc, and every fortnight where there's an average of less than XYZ files shared from us, we release new material for you to legally download free of charge".
Think about it. Dedicated fans, who already respect the band for their abilities, will start to police these file-sharing services for them. Problem halved.
Does this stand a chance, Slashdot? Ideas?
<!-- DHTML / JavaScript menu, popup tooltip, Ajax scripts -->
The Debian HURD iso images are now available from your local ftp.gnu.org mirror.
Shouldn't that be Debian GNU/HURD, just to be fair?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Does anyone else have any anecdotal evidence of IBM drive problems? For all we know, Pair is just damned unlucky.
Come on you guys, you know you should be calling it Debian GNU/HURD. Can't you get it right?
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
I do not believe this theory put forth will be coming to fruition, even though I do like it. There are not enough true fans to stop kazaa/morpheus (same database), gnutella, limeware, bearshare, wrapster, winmx, oh, and IRC.
Anyone can go to a different country where the copywrites are not in effect, and serve up the music.
The only way to stop it would be to stop the internet, and honestly that won't be happening.
I really, really like this idea. Now, if only we could get it to be tried out in "the wild" :)
I had a defective IBM 75GXP drive. When I contacted IBM to resolve the issue of warranty replacement, the support member on the other end told me that there were some power problems with the 45gb model.
It was replaced with a 60GXP 40gb drive, which although I was happy enough to have a better drive... I was out 5gb.
I have a 30gb 75GXP as well, and it's doing rather well.
yeah the bands themselves do it but the companies and bands have every right to stop piracy any way they know how. I do agree that this is not the best way to do it (creating better music is not going to stop it it will probably just help to spread it).
Personally I believe that the best way to do it is to allow free recording of every show that an artist puts out. A devout fan is more likely to BUY a studio album if they can already get a taste of what the band is capable of on stage.
I hate the idea of copy-protected CDs (and personally I will not buy them) but I have a feeling we won't have a choice. Boycotting them won't work (try boycotting any chain, etc) it is HIGHLY unlikely that numbers of bought CDs will drop in any significant amount. (Just as they haven't dropped due to Napster, Gnutella, whatever).
Individuals will NOT police services themselves. That's fucking ridiculous. People are accustomed to copying music (I know I have been making my own compilations for years why would I stop now).
Support bands that support free music. Don't support bands who are in it only for the money.
Haven't you posted almost the exact same thing on another discussion?
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
The RIAA will never change, ever. Remember when tapes first got easy to record on?
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
How goes the rip CD's from XP thing, or has this been dropped? It looked like a pure publicity exercise to me, it'd be weird to see 'rip with windows' or something on a CD sticker. MS'd have to pay a shedload of money for the privilege I guess, not that they don't have it.
Bah. A few might try. How do you propose they "police" the file-sharing services? Hack the service or its users? Illegal. Threaten other users ("I KILL U IF U SHARE THAT SONG!")? Retarded.
Besides, look at the average person's music taste. Most people base their listening solely on what's popular on the radio. They don't even put much effort into deciding their "favorite" band...what makes you think they're going to put a lot of effort into protecting the band they happen to sorta like this week?
And even if you get a handful of rabid fans, armed with the tools to make a difference, you will have a larger number of bored pricks who will sit there and repost and move and rename and whatever the song constantly...just to fuck with the enforcers.
No, I don't have any faith in humanity...why do you ask?
Yeah, that is a bit of a blow to IBM. However the real question this raises is: Why is pair using consumer level IDE drives in their servers?!
Q.
So here's a plan to decrease piracy. Every band has a back catalogue of covers, garage recordings, and so on that will probably never get released and are next to worthless commerically. All they have to do is say "From now on, we're monitoring KaZaA/Morpheus/Gnutella/etc, and every fortnight where there's an average of less than XYZ files shared from us, we release new material for you to legally download free of charge".
So if I don't like Metallica, I should pirate each of their songs once a day?
The shareholder is always right.
Duh.
The problem is simple, as stated a million times. CD's are too fucking expensive. The obvious solution is "stop buying them" rather than "stop sharing the music". I'm not sure this is possible to achieve since music is such a primal and ingrained part of human nature. It would be like asking people to stop breathing or writing or talking.
I make a sizable income, but the cost of a CD runs about half of an hours pay (if you average out a salary over 40 hours per week). A sixteen year old highschool kid slaving over a grill at a burger joint would have to fork over (after taxes) more than three hours of pay. That's a month of bus fare, groceries for several days (for one person) or fast food meals for a couple days. It's the cost of a residential phone line for a month. It's the cost of a month worth of dial-up internet access or an entire year long magazine subscription.
Shelling out $17 to $22 for a single CD (that will eventually be obsolete, if not lost, damaged, worn out or otherwise rendered useless to the owner) is rediculous. Look how irate people are if gas is raised by two cents per gallon -- yet they bend over and grease up the old ass cheeks for a DVD or CD without complaint.
IBM's response to their dismal failure with the 75GXP is the 60GXP which has an incredibly LOW failure rate. It's also a wonderfully fast drive and very much on par with the Maxtor equivalents.
Actually, IIRC, Metallica does exactly that; they allow (and I think even encourage) their fans to make and trade concert recordings. They felt (reasonably, IMO) that they had a fan-friendly view of copying and trading songs, and really exploded only when they found out that one of their works in progress was being traded online. That's why they phrased so many of their complaints in terms of protecting their artistic integrity; they felt that the public trading of a song that they hadn't finished yet got in the way of their ability to change it further.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
IBM drives are on the whole very good. Yes the 75GXPs are crap. On the other hand the 40GXPs and 60GXPs are some of the best consumer level drives on the market right now. If you're trying to avoid a faulty drive don't go to a slightly less faulty alternative like Maxtor (I have seen too many Maxtors (of varying generations) fail, I will never trust them again) rather than one of the products that gave IBM their previous reputation for reliability.
P.S. No I don't work for or are in any way affiliated with IBM. I'm just a sysadmin thats run a lot of hardware into the ground over the years, and am a happy owner of a 60GXP.
ad4: 39266MB <IC35L040AVER07-0> [79780/16/63] at ata2-master tagged UDMA100
ad6: 29314MB <IBM-DTLA-307030> [59560/16/63] at ata3-master tagged UDMA100
Should I expect any of these drives to burst in to flames soon? Which models are affected?
How the hell long is it going to take for people to grow some spine and not buy a single CD from any artist from any RIAA member? It isn't that bad, folks. The only chance for us to break this racket is to not buy the product from the racket's participants.
The American Dream went to hell in a handbasket when someone decided that "The Customer" was King, and the customer beli
How the hell is this supposed to stop piracy? So these bands will just play thier little tunes while the pirates are our raping and pilliaging on the high seas? How will this help? The ONLY way to stop pirates is to protect every convoy with armed naval ships!
...um, wait a second... Wha? Since when did pirates copy music anyway?
:)
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Well then I am going to have to agree w/what Metallica did. OTOH I don't agree w/the rest of the shit that is going on. Most artists do NOT allow this sort of trading and are attempting to stop it.
Or perhaps, it's drawing development time away from the linux kernel that let's face it, as great as it is (hmm I've been using since the DAY 2.2.0 came out...and it hasn't once crashed, it uses less cpu et cetera...) needs work! Maybe the HURD developers could help out in linux drivers area...talk about work needed! I'm sure the Xine people wouldn't mind someone making more dvd decoder card output plug-ins for them that's for sure! And my God...3d accelerators...period! But wait, Linux isn't good enough for them, they need to go work on an kernel that virtually no one uses. Call me flame-bait if you like, but logically their work could be put to better use elsewhere!
Derek Greene
Derek Greene
Check out The record industry's newest copy protection scheme. ;)
The great part of this is that it cuts out the middle man for the band, they get to decide how much money to make (within reason), and everyone wins, really. (Stephen King already did this with his e-book (so they never worked, but anyway...); he would not relesae the next chapter until Y amount of people had donated a dollar.)
Someone, anyone, please tell me one single flaw in this system. I can't seem to find one.
Security through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
I wonder if Pair Networks runs AMD on VIA boards with that quirky chipset problem. Someone pointed out the last time this IBM Deathstar issue came up that a lot of the people affected have VIA boards. I have one of these drives with a VIA board and my machine when screech screech screech .... clickety, clickety, clickety too 8^(
Anyone running AMD on VIA with the GXP?
This is not a troll post, or a flamebait post, or any of that. I'm making a serious point here.
I also state that IANAL here.
IIRC, isn't there some type of implied warrenty given with everything sold, unless explicitly disclaimed (like many open source software packages that I have seen) that the product is going to be fit for the purpose for which it was sold? (e.g. you sell a hard drive with the expectation that it will store data on it for at least a year or so, and that it won't die of a hardware failure until it is obsolete) When things aren't fit for their intended purpose, that's when a class-action lawsuit gets started.
I don't know specifics behind the stories, but if these hard drives are failing at a significantly higher rate than drives of similar sizes and RPM ratings from other companies, there is a problem. It's not a software problem, caused by the OS, where IBM could blame MS/Linus/Apple/whoever for writing a bad driver. A bad driver won't cause a mechanical failure in the disk.
Maybe someone should look into this? I remember one story of a drive failing, being replaced, the replacement faling, repeat, at least twice, before he got Maxtor drives. He should be getting some money back.
JKoebel
My own 307030 died. It's alright though, because it only took them 3 weeks to get me a refurbished replacement (not counting the time it took my drive to get back to them).
At least they were careful to never send me a tracking number. The hours I spent on hold attempting to eke out some sort of information were quite soothing.
there's more than one way to do it, but your way is wrong
Actually it shouldn't be hard to get PERFECT digital copies. Most component CD players have digital audio outputs. Just run that to a digital input on a sound card...
There\'s no place like ~
IBM drives have always treated me really well in the past (and when I did have a problem I was impressed by their replacement policy and speed) so I unhesitatingly bought two 76.8 gig 75gxps a few months ago... now we have all this nonsense coming out... Do I just keep good backups and wait for the failure or what? I'm way past the 30 days on the drives...
I must burn in hell, suffer and pay for my sins
But Gods the one who's losing, Satan always wins!
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
If I could get X running in the Hurd decently, I'd switch to it from Linux in a second, purely for translators, despite the other shortcomings the Hurd has. They're just too incredibly cool.
- "Why work on the Hurd? Go help Linux development"
- "Why work on GNOME? Go help KDE"
- "Why develop Mono? Get Bonobo running."
- "Why another program of this sort. Go help those others."
These people all don't understand two important things:1. These things are actually different. It's as different as your portable cd player to your car cd player. "Hey, why develop another car player? Use a portable instead." And if somebody sometime finds out that microkernels are indeed better for a given task then there actually is a microkernel to use and you don't have to rewrite Linux.
2. It's about choice. You all like to chose which car you buy and go around saying "Why are there Dodges and Chryslers and Volkswagens? They should all go help Mazda." You actually like that. But when somebody presents you with choice here, you all don't want it? I mean, Linux shouldn't have been developed, should it? There was already an OS available and Linus Torvalds should better have written Windows drivers, shouldn't he?
Or perhaps, it's drawing development time away from the Windows kernel that let's face it, as great as it is (hmm I've been using since the DAY Win 95 came out...and it hasn't once crashed, it uses less cpu et cetera...) needs work! Maybe the Linux developers could help out in Windows drivers area...talk about work needed! I'm sure the Media Player people wouldn't mind someone making more dvd decoder card output plug-ins for them that's for sure! And my God...3d accelerators...period! But wait, Windows isn't good enough for them, they need to go work on an kernel that virtually no one uses. Call me flame-bait if you like, but logically their work could be put to better use elsewhere!
You'd be right to bring a class-action suit, except that IBM is fulfilling their warranty in a speedy fashion.
The notion of a good being saleable for the purpose it was intended isn't separate from the warranty that's provided on the condition that the item fails before it's life expectancy.
Now, if IBM had failed to honor the warranty, and the alleged large number of drives had failed, then there'd be room for legal action. EXCEPT, IBM has acted honorably.
I'm still not a lawyer.
In other news, 95% of vehicles involved in crashes attributed to Wilderness A/Ts WERE RUNNING ON GAS. Clearly gas is the problem here, folks.
My DTLA died on (get this) a 440 bx. If you're looking for contributing factors in that particular instance, I'd be more inclined to point at the vibrations caused by the two global wins on my bp6 (grep your favorite physics text for beat phenomena). Not a little vibration is excuse for a part to up and die.
there's more than one way to do it, but your way is wrong
They're going to get sued a lot on this. And juries hate 'em now.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
Personally I believe that the best way to do it is to allow free recording of every show that an artist puts out. A devout fan is more likely to BUY a studio album if they can already get a taste of what the band is capable of on stage.
:) There are many other artists like this, Dave is just one of them.
Dave Matthews does exactly that. He allows recorders at his shows and allows his music to be freely traded/swapped/copied/etc. He's ok with people making CD's out of his shows and selling them (including those shows he makes into albums). He's ok with people making MP3s (and other formats) out of his albums and shows and then placing them on p2p services.
Why does he do this? His philosophy is that of a Jazz musician (his music has an element of Jazz to it, btw) (i shouldnt really be singling out jazz, a lot of other types of musicians are the same way). They like their music to be listened to and enjoyed, not the monetary value they get in return. That philosophy is very similar to programmers who contribute to Open Source projects.
You are correct by saying a devout fan buys music - I have all of Dave's CDs
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
For obvious reasons, I am not going to identify myself...but this is the truth as I have heard it. I am not an anti-Japanese hysterical patriot.
A few years ago, a new manager was put in charge of the storage division of IBM. This was back in like 1998... Seagate stumbled and IBM made a killing on server-class hard drives. The new manager decided to cut costs by moving the drive manufacturing to IBM Japan, where costs could be slid off of the right ledgers to make it look as if he had managed a cost-cutting coup.
Unfortunately, as is apparently often the case, some IBM Japan engineers forgot the first word in their company's name... The quality team in San Jose had problems with the drives produced by Japan from day one, and two projects later the manufacturing has been moved out of Japan and back to the bay area again...
There is likely many other pieces to the tale, but this is the inside line that I heard from someone at the San Jose facility.
One heartening aspect to the whole thing... IBM is doing a good job of letting its internal divisions stand or fall on their lonesome. The new Shark software that has been released uses Seagate server-class drives in their customer deployments-- they were smart enough not to try the latest IBM drives.
M o n o - s p a c e d f o n t s r e a l l y i r k m e . Q u i t i t !
-
GNU/HURD should indeed be called just GNU, since it's the GNU OS proper; RMS said recently in a mailing-list that although this is the case one should use GNU/HURD whenever there is need to differenciate (e.g. "Debian GNU" would be awkward and misleading, hence GNU/Linux and GNU/HURD). Apart from that, the HURD is indeed GNU (since the kernel is part of the GNU system there is no need to use GNU/HURD, unlike GNU/Linux where there is such a need).
-
Usability: how many people have actually tried installing and running GNU/HURD? From the comments, not a lot... Sure, there are still several things missing, but the concept of the HURD is elegant and interesting enough to make it worthwhile... the fundamental servers are already done, many interesting translators are done and others being developed (think for example of the ftp translator... that give system wide transparent FTP, with no modification on any user program...). All the gnu shell and text utils are there, and so is Emacs and hundrends of other programs, including XFree. I wouldn't call this 'useless'...
-
Some limitations and shortcomings are still there, and some of them probably give the appearance of a slowdown in development (threads, the 1GB limit for the partitions that the it can handle and the ppp code); this will be hopefully soon solved (I would say very soon). The truth is that, apart from the hardware support - that will be greatly improved with oskit-mach - and some programs that depend on libs that are hard to port everything is available. I can browse the web on GNU/HURD; I can program in GNU/HURD; I can do huge ammounts of important stuff while using GNU/HURD, and all this without even going for HURD specific features that are very intriging and useful (again, servers and translators come to mind... check the GNU/HURD website for info on all this.
Instalation and packaging is pure Debian, so nobody should have major problems (always keeping in mind that it's still being developed).All in all I'm very pleased with the status of it and the possibilities it gives (and the ones that are to follow).
Try it; get involved; you could just come to like it.
What's so bad about socialism?
OK, I probably will be flamed again, but still, GNU's Not Linux
Thanks for clarifying that for me. Moderators, mod up firewort's post.
JKoebel
I wish this shortsightedness were limited to slashdotters.. It's amazing the number of times that people don't understand the importance of actually being *interested* in what you're doing. =)
I couldn't have said it better.
There are parts of the Linux OS (eg. Nvidia binary module) which would NEVER be allowed in a GNU operating system
- therefore GNU does not have control of the development or implementation of the operating system
- therefore it is not a GNU operating sytem.
"Sheer mass of code" is not a valid argument in this case, things like gcc are not part of the OS, they are applications - they happen in userspace.
Okay this is totally off topic but what the hell: comics
* Can you really say most come with digital audio outputs? I thought that was generally just the higher end models.
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
I work for a start up with many ex-IBM'ers, we decided in the begining to use the above mentioned IBM harddrives. For me, I could care less about quality of warranty, or past reliability. What I care about is that I have to swap 100's of IBM drives, full of data. I have had this drive fail 3 times in a 6 month period on my mail server, each time requiring me to take time out of my evenings to rebuild a busy machine. I'm busy enough without crappy hardware. My users are yelling for replacement drives from a diffrent manufacturer.
We went with drives from Western Digital. My my time and companies money is wasted.
www.bleepyou.com
Having been an active user of debian for at least 3 or 4 years now what are the good reasons to use the system as of yet? Are there sets of packages that are always compiled for the hurd platform or is it still largely buggy and application poor?
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
"I've got a IBM 20G and it's given me no end of problems. Until recently I was unemployed and try using Linux with a broken HDD (so I used Windows 98, which is far quicker at getting back on its feet). "
interesting I have heard that windows will operate with things like this and cruddy error prone ram? Is this an advantage? Why is Linux picky in this regard then?
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
"HURD -- a testament to the never-give-up and never-think-things-through spirit of GNU."
could you elaborate on this theory please?
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
My company pumps out quite a few systems per month, and we have been using Seagate HD's for the past two years UNTIL now. For some reason for a period of 2 months we were getting back almost 2 in 3 of the Seagate 20Gig 5400rpm drives (cant remember model number) in our systems. That lasted for two months, until changed to Fujitsu.
:( But none of the other Seagate drives has any similar problem, not even the 20Gig 7200rpm. So i would say its very much like the IBM problem, and alike also in that it hasnt been fixed quickly enough! :(
The drives would just completly fail anywhere between 1 hour and 1 month from purchase.
/rant...
I had a IBM 20gig fail on me just two weeks ago--right after my brother lost two Maxtors. IBM was very good about filling the warranty--much better than Maxtor! The 20gig had been running smoothly for about a year.
In reality, all hard drives are made pretty much the same way. (For some GREAT information on everything harddrive related, check out this site.) For some reason IBM appears to be in a bit of a slump, but I remember a few years ago everyone was saying "don't buy a maxtor--they're cheap trash." Whatever you buy, just remember that your precious data resides on ferroceramic disks spinning at 5200-10000 rpm with the means of destruction--the read head--floating mere microns above. Back up often!
-s
- - - - - - - -
Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
In Slashdotland, SCSI is for wimps and striping buggy ATA-100 disks using buggy ATA drivers and untested software is not only standard practice, but is considered best practice.
And Linux is the best Unix ever, as evidenced by IBM's not-at-all-sarcastic comment that they'll switch to it as soon as it can handle load as well as AIX.
Snicker.
(down mod ho!)
--saint
"We currently use and recommend Maxtor drives"
Shit, Maxtor drives? Those are at the very bottom of my list of reliable drives, trying hard for a place next to Western Digital. Seriously, couldn't they have picked a better drive? Fujitsu still makes some good quality drives. They're very quite, too.
OTOH, maybe Maxtor's gotten better since they incorporated Quantum... but I dunno. It doesn't seem terribly likely to me.
I'm sure the industry would love that. Nobody could prove how many songs were traded online so they'd release a couple songs to get people's attention and then claim rampant copying when they felt like quitting.
They'd come out looking like the good guys, after all, it was the users who didn't do the right thing... Just like Stephen King and his bullshit with "The Plant". He ran out of time so he stopped writing it (leaving everyone who had bought the first parts in the lurch) and blamed it on piracy. What an ass.
I really never cared about MP3s until now, but I'll definately encourage people to download MP3s from copy protected discs instead of paying for them. It's getting to the point where we need to fight this shit instead of sitting and taking it.
Close.. from the DMB site:
All recordings must be used for personal use or trading only. Selling or commercializing any recording is illegal and will jeopardize taping privileges for everyone. Please read our Bootleg Statement for more information.
So sure they let you trade amongst your friends but not commercializing it. Their goal is to foster interaction in their community, NOT commercilization of their community there is a world of difference.
There are also rules for tape authorized shows and how you can tape their shows.
How about this:
Commercial bootleg's are not only excessively priced and of inferior quality, but primarily, they are an illegal use that threaten the taping privileges of everyone. Due to the efforts of a few unscrupulous tapers the privilege of recording live performances has been jeopardized. Those of you who have passed along information about commercialized recordings have been very instrumental in our fight against these bootleggers. They are obviously against commercial trading, and that doesnt even touch their regular albums.
I agree with them they have one of the best policies out there but you still cant rape them blind. He is NOT okay with you taking his album and ripping it and putting it on a p2p service without his permission.
Nice try... nothins free
so you are limited to live recordings only and I will end with
Any method of trading that does not involve personal fan interaction defeats the spirit of this goal of the taping policy and is not authorized.
Jeremy
That makes absolutely no sense what so ever. Not to mention it lacks logic.
Derek Greene
Derek Greene
But hurd and linux are not all that different, their target consumers are the same! Gnome and KDE both have advantages and disadvantages over each other...that's why I use both depending on what I am doing. But who uses hurd and linux on the same machine? Who uses hurd?!
And btw, windows was not an OS unto itself when Linux development began. There was DOS which was never intended to be the permanent OS of the PC.
It's one thing to give a choice whent he choices have clear pros and cons but what are the pros of hurd? Considering the rather lacking driver support it is going to have, et cetera et cetera.
Explain this to me and I'll concede your point.
Derek Greene
Derek Greene
I don't think the RIAA is too worried about it. As to date, My dad still hasn't been able to successfully burn a single cd from his machine that's running XP. The RIAA doesn't worry about software that doesn't work.
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
Take the example of my best friend. He owns TWO copies of every Metallica CD up to the Napster fiasco. One copy of every cassette tape up to then. 4 or 5 posters, up to then. 5 or 6 T-shirts. A baseball cap. He was The World's Biggest Metallica Fan, all caps, in stereo. He was also the second-biggest Napster user I ever met. Then came the Napster Fiasco, and he got banned for an mp3 of No-Leaf Clover, found on his machine, *ripped off his own legitimate CD and not available for downloads*. Result?
;-) Second, he dropped Metallica cold, and hates their guts today, Lars in particular. He gets a grim satisfaction from anti-metallica sites like killmetallica.com. He is now one of the biggest Metallica HATERS I know. There is no evidence that his Napster use ever cost them a dime, and he must have spent hundreds on them over the years. Would have spent hundreds more if he'd remained a fan. Now, nothing.
Well, first he hacked his way out of the ban like any self-respecting music fan.
Talk about your Operation: Footbullets.
This is not about fan's respect. A fan who likes a band is MORE likely to share its music. Metallica was all in favor of tape trading back in the day, when they were little. We haven't forgotten, Lars, even if fame has made you forget. Face it - this is about money, and about destroying those fair-use rights that cut in on corporate profit. Nothing more, nothing less.
-Kasreyn
P.S. Doubly ironic, they banned him for a reallu sUxx0r song like No Leaf Clover, when there were also mp3's of Master of Puppets, Orion, One, etc...
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Well, actually, it's impossible to get a perfect digital copy, because, as I understand it, the CD is unreadable at a few points to foil windblows-based rippers (even have a cd that won't rip under windbows, then it rips perfectly under linux, or a disk that windblows can't read or write to, but linux mounts it perfecty, or... anyway). In fact, I'd almost like to buy one of the copy-protected cds and give it a whirl on linux to see whether or not it is truely copy-protected.
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
I've found that letting your drives run CONTINUOUSLY 24/7 is key to reliability.
IE: Turn OFF all power down power management nonsense on your PC. In doze, you go to display/properties/screensaver and click on the PM button thingie, then set your drives to 'never' spin down.
Since I did that on our doze boxen, and leaving them on 24/7, I haven't had a single drive failure, after RMA'ing 3 out of 5 WD drives in under one year previously, plus 1 Conner.
Two years and counting.
The linux maschinen are always on, too, and are rock solid.
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
In recent years, I owned 2 Fujitsu drives, a 2gb and a 6gb both of which were toast in about 2 years. I switched to Western Digital, own a 20gb that's been running smooth for 3 years now, a 30 gb for 1 year. I just got the WD 7200rpm 80gb a few weeks ago so I can't vouch for that one.
So until I have some major catastrophy with all these WD drives I'm gonna be loyal to them - with the except that I'm gonna try the Seagate Barricuda 4 soon for it's low-noise characterstic.
all the way since 2.2, huh? lol - you are so fucking l33t
hmm..... must be some other artist i was thinking of.... now that you say it i do recall he did have something against explicit bootlegging
the philosophy still holds though, some musicians prefer good music over money, much like how OSS programmers prefer good software over profiting off it. But there are some musicians (ie Metallica) who want all the bucks they can get, much like Bill Gates is to software.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Play the cd through a nice SAE, Audio Research, Dynaco, or Mark Levinson tube amp, into a sweet set of electrostatic speakers (some old Quads would do quite nicely), mike'm up into some classic Neumanns, dub onto a 70's Revox, Studer, or Nagra reel to reel, and rip from a high resolution digitization of THAT.
The copy would sound MUCH better than the original!
Suck on THAT, RIAA!
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
"Lacking of driver support?" It supports virtually anything Linux does, maybe because it's really easy to port Linux drivers over. The underlying drivers are used from Mach, anyway.
Should no-one bother with working on the BSDs, either?
That is ridiculous. Sorry,but Linux is shit, really. If you want something based off of 30-year old technology, I'd not go for a cheap Finnish ripoff -- written by stark amateurs.
The same could have been said just two years ago - "Who uses Linux?"
If you think HURD and Linux are "not all that different", you have NIWYATA (No Idea What You Are Talking About). Does the word "microkernel" mean anything to you? Didn't think so.
Why don't you take this precious time that you are wasting writing comments on Slashdot, and go write the device drivers you pointed out?
Oh, that's right, you're not a programmer, you're just a troll. Never mind. I bet you're a communist, too.
Disclaimer: I've used Linux since SLS about 10 years ago, QNX for much longer than that FreeBSD on my own computer for about a month, and most other UNIXs in between.
Phish has been doing this for years; ever since their second show tapes have existed. They sell special taping tickets to every show and even have a rider in their contract that states that every venue they play at has to allow taping. As far as I know, the Further festival is one of the few places where they were not able to be taped.
The time of day is 29:33.
In additon, here's a taping FAQ: http://www.phish.net/PhishFAQ/tape-qs.html
The time of day is 29:33.
I also respected Metallica.
Ireally liked the non commercial stuff the put out in the early part of last decade.
But; I heard the track they did for the mission impossible soundtrack, and thought "Is this the most commercial metallica rip off I've ever heard.
The next day, I found out it WAS metallica.
THEN I saw an interview of the anti-napster bullshit lars was putting out.
Respect went to Zero real fast.
I've bought my last Metallica anything, Until I see Lars get down on his Knees and Kiss ALL his fans' Ass.
It was OUR money that put him where he is today anyway.
I WON'T Buy Anything Copy Protected.
I will buy older music i like at the used cd shops, where the RIAA doesn't get a dime.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
What the f...?
My machine crashed while writing this the first time. RIAA killbots??
Seriously; The Copy protection thing will go the way of the DiVX debacle several years ago.
I own all of Metallica's albums up to the point Lars came out against Napster.
Thought the song for the mission impossible album was a knockoff of a metallica sound; Imagine my surprise to find that it WAS metallica...
You can really tell when the money became more important than the music...
I will be buying all my music at the used Cd stores till the record companies get their shit together.
The RIAA doesn't get a dime off the resales...
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
I've been trying to think of something along the lines of a "Boston Tea Party" to protest the dismantling of consumer rights.
Trashing a bunch of CDs would only be to the RIAA's benefit since we'd have to pay for all those CDs. Unless we steal them, but I doubt breaking into record stores would be good PR.
So my idea is to distribute copies of "corrupted" CDs for free. We do it standing outside the stores, too. Now, we could say that we're only providing computer-readable copies for people who have legally bought the CD, but it's such a hassle to have to ask every single person to show a receipt.
Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Gods.
or have they forgotten that the bands exist apart from phony marketing images?
In 1981 or therabouts, the Record Industry almost lost it all to MTV. Why? They suddenly lost control of the promotional media. For the first time all the payola and underhanded promoting meant nothing in the face of artists who could not only be seen, but heard.
Then the record company learned their lesson, and signed all the unpopular bands that MTV 'made', and promptly ruined them. Almost all of the really good 80's bands that didn't understand how the record industry worked are now lucky to show up on Vh1's 'Behind the Music' or 'Where are they Now?'. God, I really had a crush on Belinda Carlisle when I was a kid, too.
Now, the record industry pumps an 'Artist'-- and I do use that term loosely-- as much on their visual image as they do on their sound.
What, you think Britney got those new cookies because she particularly wanted them? Or do you think some fork-tounged record-executive/producer told her that they would boost her popularity and sales enough times that she started to beleive him?
Real good example of the way this works. Look at the Monkees. Crap band with some charismatic, but not really good-looking members. They were made up out of whole cloth. Pete, Peter, Mickey, and Davey were the winners of an audition. They were just barely good enough to get a TV show as part of their promotion package.
Let's contrast and compare with O-town, yet another group that was manufactured by the Hollywood machine. They *started* with a TV show *about* the audtions, because the record industry now understands that video is an important part of the 'image'.
Remember, it has *always* been about the perception of pop music stars, be it 'Sound' or 'Image', and *never* about their musical talents.
If it was about talent, there never would have been Disco.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Seriously, though, do you not realize that these people are doing what they want to do because, perhaps, *that's what they want to do*? You're not paying them; you have absolutely no right to tell them what is or is not the best use of their time. If they don't *like* Linux, and want to create something better in a way that is fundamentally incompatible with Linux's design, then what the hell is wrong with that? Why should they drop what they want to do because something they're not interested in needs a couple more drivers? Why do you expect them to care, much less work for free to remedy that?
Under the Corrupt CD's is a banned book area, very interesting. He has them in areas by banned on political, religious, sexual and social reasons. I think I'll use this as a must read list. Been wanting to read 1984.
-
"The worst part of censorship is XXXXXXXXXXX." -- Unknown
...
Books Banned for Social Reasons
...
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
...
The onboard hpt366 scoffs at any drive I bring near it; the controller is renowned for its uselessness. In my machine, its sole function has always been to slow down the boot process and then sit unused (kudos to abit for not providing a way to turn it off in bios).
The drive is currently on a Siig CMD 649u part, which I'm fighting to get working in Debian. Unfortunately, the latest release of Debian, 2.2r3, comes with the old 2.2.17 kernel, which doesn't support it. My (few) attempts to recompile have rendered the fs unmountable.
Either way, I seriously doubt the bp6 is attributing to mechanical failure in another part. If strange systems are often connected to ailing 75gxps, it is due the fact that these drives are largely used by hardware aficionados (when I purchased it, it had only the reputation of being the fastest IDE drive around). Unfortunately, apparently due to corner-cutting in product testing, the 75gxp has proved to be a lemon.
there's more than one way to do it, but your way is wrong
How can someone not comment on THAT? ... You need mental help.
Yeah, I went and got a IBM 75GXP, the 45gig one, model DTLA-307045, and it just failed last thursday. Very sad about that. I talked with the tech support guy who insisted that it was "just a coincidence" that the drive failed and that all sorts of other people I know have had theirs fail. My co-worker had a raid 5 running with 5 of the drives, and 2 of them have failed already. On that remark the IBM guy told me about the instabilities of a raid and how that was a coincidence. Then I told him about how I had seen some at work fail, and he told me that was just a coincidence. Oh, and somewhere along the line he blamed microsoft too.
The worst part is that when they replace the drive they replace it with the same model. So when I return this defective drive, I get the same bad model in return. I was thinking about just selling it on e-bay when I get it, but then felt sorry for whoever would buy it.
This was my very first IBM drive, all others are Maxtor. Of all the maxtor drives I've used, none have had any problems. I'm not gonna put any more of a plug on it than that, but yeah, the IBM 75GXP DTLA-307045 are crap. Supposedly it's that model that has all (or most) the problems.
Question everything that you've accepted without thinking.
How long is it going to take for you and those who put forth the same arguments to realize that IT WILL NOT WORK and as a bonus IT HURTS ARTISTS YOU LIKE.
/. stopped buying DVD's and CD's, the simple fact is that they wouldn't even notice! We are a small minority buying a (relativley) small amount of music/movies, especially compared to the army of nSync fans ready to buy at the drop of a hat.
I like Cake, Ivy, and a number of other arists quite a bit. When I buy those CD's, sure I'm giving some money to RIAA but I'm also supporting the arists I like (I also support local artists too, I just happed to like some signed bands).
Even if everyone reading
In fact, what would really happen are that for a few bands that a lot of people around here like (Daft Punk? Cake?) that the sales numbers would be put off as we're a larger percentage of that sub-market - so they'd still have almost as much money as before, but would think your favorite band was dropping in popularity fast and it would be a damn long time before you see another CD from them!! You'd be saying "Hey, wasn't that my favorite lead singer in Dark Days II?"
What we can do here is use something we have proportionally more of - money - than the population at large to fight against them. Donate to the EFF!! They are the ones fighting the battles that will get the laws we hate overturned, if they are going to be overturned at all. They are, to paraphrase, our last hope.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This Sony page tells us that any CD carrying the "compact disc digital audio" logo is compliant to the IEC 908 standard and/or the Philips-Sony Compact Disc Digital Audio System Description (the RED Book). Any way to get the labels in for wrongfully using that logo (if they do) ?
I think the root issue is rather more simple. When a friend of mine purchased this 'brand new cd player thingie' and showed it to me, he also bought 3 CDs for $16 a pop; part of a package deal at the store where he got the player.
Today I walk into a store and the average price of a cd not on sale is...$16. The price of the media has dropped dramatically, the price of production has dropped dramatically and yet the price of the cd is still about the same as it was when players were first being mass-produced. Something stinks here, folks, and I'm willing to bet that I'm not the only person who wonders why the price of a cd hasn't fallen over the years.
Add to this the bloom of personal computing combined with the mp3 and people suddenly realize that they can get *just the parts of the cd they like*. If the RIAA were a smart organization they'd offer this service themselves; the combination of computing technology and robotics advances means that burning custom cds isn't prohibitively expensive anymore. In fact, it's so cheap you can do it yourself at home with equipment that doesn't cost more than $150.
If the RIAA wasn't so desperately set on trying to force the world back into the 1980's, they could offer an internet-based solution where you could order a custom cd over the web and have it shipped to you in a week. Make the price $1.00 a track and guarrantee that the quality will be better than any mp3 you'll get off of the net and people would be much more like to pay $16 for 16 songs if they knew they'd like every single song on the cd. Offer it at $0.50/track plus shipping and I bet most people would jump at the chance ($8.00 for 16 songs *you* pick out; it certainly be worth it just in the time it'd save me to find and download lower-grade mp3s. Perhaps the average college student doesn't have the money and does have the time, but for the average working stiff with a family it's the other way around.)
Yet the music industry doesn't offer this service. They insist that you pretend it's still 1985 and that you keep on paying through the nose for cds where you *might* like all the tracks, but in reality (as most of us have no doubt experienced) you actually really enjoy 2 or 3 and don't care for the rest.
There are people who throw a hissy fit and scream "it's the law! Don't complain!" but the fact is that mp3 piracy isn't just a kiddie phenomena. Alot of working adults, a fair chunk of the adult American population, have flagrantly violated the law in this regard to get mp3s they want. Are you going to tell me that they're all morally bankrupt and deserve to be shot? Perhaps you're extreme enough, or morally pure enough, to sit on a high horse and dish out judgements in this regard, but I suspect that the reason people who could otherwise afford the cds do this is because 1) they're rather pissed off at getting screwed one time too many after buying a new cd at rates that haven't gone down over the years, and 2) there aren't any alternatives such as the one I listed above (custom cds at $.50/track).
If the music industry lowered prices to something more reasonable *and* provided the custom cd service I'd make a sizable bet on the prediction that mp3 piracy would decline markedly, becoming in actual fact a 'little boy' phenomena prevalent only among high school and college kids. Eight bucks for a custom cd and I'll be one of the first to go get a dozen of the suckers with music I want.
I'll *still* rip them to my computer so I can mix 'n match while I work without having to change out the cds, but you won't see me on the Gnutella network any time soon. And at $8.00 per custom cd you can be damned sure I won't be offering up my purchased music for piracy just so some college kid can spend the money on beer on a Saturday night.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I hate the idea of copy-protected CDs (and personally I will not buy them) but I have a feeling we won't have a choice. Boycotting them won't work (try boycotting any chain, etc) it is HIGHLY unlikely that numbers of bought CDs will drop in any significant amount. (Just as they haven't dropped due to Napster, Gnutella, whatever).
Actually....
So quickly we forget the details. It's kinda sad in a way.
I remember seeing something on CNN in early 2000 right when the Napster lawsuits were filed and/or aired to the general public as a whole. The news went something like this:
"The RIAA has filed a lawsuit against Napster, the online music-sharing service, due to it's ability to facilitate piracy of music and potential to cripple sales.
"In other news, CD sales this quarter are up almost 20%, a near-record quarter for the music industry."
The teeny little smirk of irony that the guy let slip through spoke volumes for those that saw it.
Very shortly afterwards, hundreds of people started boycotting the RIAA by refusing to purchase CDs released by RIAA member labels. Everyone was outraged by the total ridiculousness of the charges in the lawsuit and by God they were going to DO something about it!
And you know what? It worked. Unfortunately, because it was such a grassroots and spontaneous choice by hundreds and even thousands of individuals, nobody bothered to tell the MEDIA that people were boycotting the RIAA. And so it backfired on us.
Whatsernutz, the RIAA's Head Hatchetwoman... er... spokeswoman, that is, pointed to CD sales in 2001 being down even further than usual to points much lower than in the past two to three years as proof that Napster and other music-sharing services ARE hurting the industry. Never mind the fact that the major player - Napster - has been stopped cold, with no way to trade anything over it. Never mind that online music piracy has been reduced, effectively, to that of pre-Napster levels. CD sales are slipping. They know why, and can even truthfully say that it's because of Napster. They just haven't bothered to tell anyone that, hey, it's because we SUED Napster that they're slipping. The cause is Napster, but not in the way that they want everyone to think.
And nobody's bothered to point this out to the Media, the courts, or the world at large.
So you say that it's highly unlikely that a boycott would do any good. I say that you're right, but not for the same reasons. Boycotts are USELESS if the public isn't made aware of them. The number of CDs purchased in the past year HAS dropped significantly, and as of right now, it's only filling their ammo bins. We need someone to step up and tell people that the reason CD sales are slipping is because the people who buy the majority of music aren't buying anymore in protest. And it needs to be someone famous - or at least vaguely well-known - and respected.
Just some food for thought for all of ya.
You thought that this sig was what you think that I thought you wanted me to think. I think.
At work, some of the music critics are already mad at the (still few) record companies that publish CDs that can't be played on CD ROM stations. Reason: They actually use the CD ROM drives to listen to new records! Who would have thought of that... With a couple of hot-ass headphones, there isn't a need for CD players on every desk in the critics department, but this is the way it will end, I guess.
our company had a batch of 10 pc's all containing 10 gig fujitsu drives. every single one failed over a period of about 6 weeks.
update comments set karma=-1, reason='offtopic' where sid=26315
Case in point: Piraters shell out the extra $200 (or whatever) for the Spiffy Anti-Copy CD Player(tm) and then proceed to hook it up to an optical/digital receiver, where the song can then be ripped straight to mp3.
"Haha!" cackles RIAA, "that requires a lot of expensive equipment!" ... Umm, no.. true, there is initial funding to buy the Spiffy(tm), but most sound cards nowadays have digital inputs to read the stream as if it were copied directly from CD.
Thus, CD Burners will still have a use.
-d
SELECT * FROM USERS WHERE A_WINNER = "YUO";
It shouldn't be called GNU/HURD or anything because GNU was originally the name of the entire OS, "GNU is Not Unix". Not the name of a software group, that name is "the Free Software Foundation".
Linux was used in GNU because the GNU people made an almost OS, the only thing they where missing was a kernel, which Linus made.
So there are 2 names possible here: just plain old "GNU" or maybe "DEBIAN GNU" (as the in SuSE Linux)
To top this all off : a quote from the GNU homepage : Welcome to the GNU Project web server, www.gnu.org. The GNU Project was launched in 1984 to develop a complete Unix-like operating system which is free software: the GNU system. (GNU is a recursive acronym for ``GNU's Not Unix''; it is pronounced "guh-NEW".) Variants of the GNU operating system, which use the kernel Linux, are now widely used; though these systems are often referred to as ``Linux'', they are more accurately called GNU/Linux systems.
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity
And when a drive gets a block error just back it up and do the eras disk thing and see how it turns out.
Its a messed up problem, but it seems quite survivable. I've been hit by it several times before I did these adjustments, and I haven't been up long enough to tell if its working well now. But its worht a shot me thinks.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
My IBM 60GXP is fine.
You want to see failing hard disks? How about Western Digital? They produce nothing but crap, I've seen five of their disks fail. And it wasn't a batch, the disks were bought in a staggered manner.
Black eye, hah. All computer hardware is crappy nowadays.. Pentium = Overpriced, Athlon = Absolutely no heat protection.. Hard drives = crash..
Is this really mechanical? In my case its nothing a lowlevel format can't (temporarily at least) fix.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
I was required to take 30 "humanities" credits, and this is the first opportunity I've had to put this "valuable" knowledge to use, so please excuse me.
I seem to vaguely remember something in Psychology 101 about how people would prefer something that was reliably unreliable to an alternative that seemed to violate a their conception of how reliable it was. In short: a system of unreliable reward modifies behavior with greater effect than a system of reliable reward.
That said I've had my share of HD's, only the Maxtors have failed under their listed mean time before failure (my bad luck YMMV). But they've always replaced them, of course I fell asleep while on hold waiting for a person once.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
I work for a non-open source company. We want money for every piece of software we sell.
Many moons ago, we used to copy protect our software in the most sophisticated way. Guess what? It was a lot of work and did not really help, thus we abandoned it.
I think we sell good software at reasonable prices, and we are making good revenues. The software industry knows for years that there is piracy, and most of us learned to live with it one way or the other.
Excuse me, but the music labels do not get it...
Alex
Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder
Welcome to the Atlas Steel/Empire State Building in the Sumerian United States of America! :) :) :)
Without the steel the building wouldn't stand up, and large proportion of the total mass is steel presumably from a single supplier, but they don't have naming rights to the building.
It's part of the software layer between the hardware and the application layer. What else can it be called? Uncompress the tarfile of the source code for the kernel module that talks to it and compile. For a while there was no support for 2.4.*, but it's there now. If you want support for other than intel*86 hardware, then you have some source code to look at in the kernel module.Everyone that was using linux before the RMS bandwagon renaming thing had heard of gnu, and most had read the GPL, if only out of curiousity. The FSF is a very fine organisation, but they don't "own" linux, so why should they be able to force a new name down everyones throats? It's the sort of behavior you expect from rich annoying tourists, and not from the professional organisation that they have shown themselves to be.
And the RIAA are buisly trying to make surre the next generation of sound cards don't allow such things. I'm fairly confident they'll fail, since the asians don't give a shit about the RIAA, and asia's a big market for the HW manufacturers, but it'll mean the parts will have to be smuggled into the U.S. on the grey market.
Oops, you're comparing the uncomparable; the CD player that became cheaper is mainly a product and the CD (music) you play on it is largely a service
These two have a vastly different basis for valuation in our economy, just look at the average wages (labour is a service) over those same years.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
They usually have an area at their gigs reserved for the bootleggers.
John Coltrane is up to 120 RPM in his grave.
-- Support Ometz le-Serev.
I don't think the RIAA is too worried about it. As to date, My dad still hasn't been able to successfully burn a single cd from his machine that's running XP. The RIAA doesn't worry about software that doesn't work.
I'm surprised. I do that all the time on my XP box with zero problems to date.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
According to the threads at Storage Review. This is as of 9 months ago.
The 45MB drives are particularly prone to failure.
Current data might indicate otherwise.
Online trading has dropped? Well, maybe a little but I doubt it! Ever heard of Morpheus? Kazaa? Bearshare? Gnutella? Sure it's not in a nice shiny package like Napster was. It's not totally Music either. Personally, I might download a MP3 when I want to here something then delete it. I may also download clips from TV shows as well on Morpheous.
I would BUY every CD I wanted if it was only about 5 bucks. The RIAA and music agents steal from artists. Take a look at artists like TLC and a few others. Yeah yeah they may have been lame one hit wonders, but I don't know anyone who doesn't know their songs and they went totally broke right about the time they were the most popular and selling lots of CD's. Then, all of a sudden, noone listened to TLC anymore and/or someone started to wondered what happened to them. Watch any beyond the music or behind the music or whatever and lots of artists have a similar story. Very few reach the heights of bands and musicians like Aerosmith, Eric Clapton, Mariah Carey (ok her new one sucks be she had way more hits then most of the current musicians) or heck even Metallica has done extremely well and held on for a while.
If the music industry wants to increase sales, they need to make the purchase worth it. Enhanced CD's while cool, are usually poorly executed. They want to install 3-4 year old software like Quicktime 2.0 and even old versions of flash. They don't recognize that PC owners have there stuff already installed. Where am I going with this? Fans will buy regardless, but if you give that new listener something other then 10 other songs that don't get airplay, they may be more apt to buy future CD's. A real well done enhanced CD could go further towards that. Include some professional Winamp skins or Windows Media Player skins and things such as wallpaper and professional Windows and Mac skins and themes. Ditch the auto launching flash presentations, or if you have one, don't go too crazy with it. Include a link in the flash presentation that will launch a file explorer. Real fans will eat em up and new users may get more then the song they hear on the radio 15 times a day.
Gorkman
You'd be right to bring a class-action suit, except that IBM is fulfilling their warranty in a speedy fashion.
Replacing the failed drive is nothing like meeting a full warranty. Your system is down (if single-drive) or crippled (if multiple-drive) for days while waiting for the new drive. Then you've got to spend hours installing it, formatting it, and reloading from backup. (No backup? THAT is your own fault.) Is IBM re-imbursing people for the down time and labor?
The electronics & software industries have gotten used to quality levels and warranties far more limited than would be acceptable anywhere else. This is of dubious legality, it holds back the progress of the industry (imagine if half of the people now employed in tech support were free to develop new uses for the computers, instead of running around restoring them after crashes), and it deters businesses and people from investing more into hardware and software.
Imagine if the steering linkage broke on a new car while going down the freeway at 70mph, and the manufacturer would only send out a new steering linkage? (1) Would you buy a car from that company after hearing about this? (2) Under the laws in most states, the courts would toss out that "limited warranty" and allow the victims' estates to sue for wrongful death, the value of the car, etc. This might have been unreasonable in 1910, when few engineers could design a car that would make it out of the driveway on it's own power, let alone hold together through a long high-speed trip. But two decades later, you could drive a good car across the USA without stopping for repairs... The computer and software industries have had more than 50 years to learn how to make reliable products. Why don't they?
This 'friend' of yours (it's virtually certain you're talking about yourself) wasn't a Metallica fan, he was an obsessive compulsive who happened to fixate on them.
I doubt he even listened to any of those CDs as it obviously isn't the music he was interested in.
Did the Lars/Napster fiasco suddenly change all their songs, new and old into crap?
Obviously not.
So why did he act so irrationally?
Tell him (yourself) to get psychiatric help before it's too late (gets fixated on a boy band).
OpenBSD can run anything Linux can that's not Linux-specific
Hey, just out of curiosity, does OpenBSD have the same Linux compatibility engine that Free and NetBSD do? I haven't run it myself, but I know that the Linux-compiled version of Opera runs like a champ on my NetBSD box.
--saint
One of mine crapped out yesterday.....after a reboot (Win2k...I know but hey, I work for the gov't). Made a funky noise and couldn't find the registry. Froze up at 9% in scandisk (never seen that before). Froze up at 9% in a format. Fortunately, it's a FAT32 partition, so I was able to copy my critical files over. Even though they're still under warranty, DOD policy is that the drive be destroyed rather than sent back in for replacement.
Looks like I am off today to buy not just one but 2 60GB non-IBM drives.
sine puella vita suget
It is still a liberal policy, the recordings are allowed on services like Napster, people can still hear the music while supporting the artist all legally.
I agree the philosophy does still hold.
Jeremy
>>Whatsernutz, the RIAA's Head Hatchetwoman... er... spokeswoman
Maybe that should read "Whatsernutz, the RIAA's
Head Terrorist... er... spokeswoman"
I'd just like to say that I think the KCDH is good stuff. Interesting, critical and sometimes funny, it's a worthwhile read. A bit too Debian-influenced for my liking to be ideal, but the articles about the kernel proper are certainly worthy of attention (as is Kernel Threads, of course).
Actually, microkernel does mean something to me, I AM a programmer, and the BSDs are very much different than linux, IMHO. In turn, their uses being very different, deserve their development efforts. I've used BSD personally.
The communist remark deserves no response other than beating you to a bloody pulp were I ever to meet you on the street. Have a nice day.
Derek Greene
I'm in the same boat. I mean, I wasn't that obsessive, but Metallica was one of my absolute favorites. For guys that grew up in the 80s and early ninties, they were our fuckin Beatles.
They got NO radio play. NO MTV play. You heard about them by word of mouth, from your friend who got this tape from his brother or something. You got a bootleg copy and fell in love, started buying all the Metallica you could get your hands on. They were a band of the people - no hairspray or makeup, just long haired guys in jeans and t shirts playing kickass metal.
I first heard of Napster one of the first tracks I downloaded was Fade to Black. Why? Because Metallica one of my favorite bands! I had the album, and therefore could rightfully have the mp3. I didn't get banned, but dropped them after the lawsuit, deleted all the metallica mp3s off my hard drive. You don't want me listening to your music? Fine.
In fact, fuck you. I listened to you when you were nobody, when you loved the bootleggers. Now all you seem to care about is your fucking money. If that's all its about you can go fuck yourself. I might as well be listening to Britney Spears or N*sync. Why does it matter? Because I thought I was listening to an ARTIST
-- When a fool hears of the Tao, he will laugh out loud.
if my hard drive fails i am inconvenienced for a few days.
if my steering linkage breaks while i'm on the interstate, i die.
you have a knack for shitty analogies.
a better comparison would be if the interior lights in a certain car had a tendency to burn out. would you expect people to file a class action suit over that?
think before you post.
This is drifting off topic, but this is not a troll. Just honest thinking about it. Questions to ponder. More questions than answers. But one conclusion at the end.
Shouldn't it really be called: GNU/Linux/XFree/ALSA/Qt/KDE? I mean, that's what I run. Honest. And my system wouldn't be usable (to me at least) without these.
In all honesty and complete candor, my system really wouldn't be usable if I didn't call it...
GNU / Linux / XFree / ALSA / Qt / KDE / StarOffice / XMMS / LAME / Apache / Java / Python / PHP / PostgreSQL / htdig / et. all.
Now in my progression of names, you might argue that some of them are merely "packages" that enable specific functionality. But there are two good counter arguments to that which are seperate and distinct.
1. Isn't GNU just a collection (or package) of software that enables specific functionality? Is it really more necessary in order to have an operational system, than say, Apache?
2. Isn't what constitutes a "usable" system dependent on the user and intended use?
For instance, one might argue that Apache isn't necessary. But if the system's intended use is a webserver, then Apache might be necessary, and GNU tools might be unnecessary. For instance, can't you replace most GNU tools with perl scripts? (In fact, I remember a project once to replace most of the tools with perl scripts.) Imagine a web server appliance. It might have a Linux kernel, an Init program, a web server, a scripting language, and NO GNU tools. No command line. No compilers, etc. It seems clear that this hypothetical system would not properly be called GNU/anything.
And on my system, I have lots of GNU tools installed. I don't think about them any more than I give any special thought to Qt, KDE, XFree, Apache, Python, etc., etc. or other major projects which are the product of major effort. I don't mean to downplay the effort that has been put into GNU. So should my system be called GNU/Linux? Shouldn't the other important major projects which make all the difference to my system being usable get a place in the name? Why should going from my hypothetical embedded webserver appliance to a desktop system where GNU tools are added, mandate a prefix of GNU?
Maybe the people who package my system should choose the name? The box says "SuSE Linux 7.2 Professional". What if they wanted to call it the "Aardvark" operating system which includes and is based on lots of software works including Linux, GNU, KDE, etc., etc.?
I'm not suggesting that GNU should not receive credit. I also don't want to fail to recognize the wonderful work of untold thousands in many other major software projects that I make use of daily and take for granted, with hardly a second thought.
Imagine a system geared for end users. Not stupid people. Just non-geeks who want to do useful work. They never use the command line, compilers, etc. How hard would it be for such a system to be GNU free? Even if GNU parts were installed on the system as part of the distribution, does GNU play a big or even any part of making the system usable to them in any significant way? Doesn't Linux and (let's suppose) KDE, XFree and StarOffice play the bigger roles of making this system operational and usable?
Suppose Apple were to include GNU tools as an optional install in Mac OS X? What part do those tools play in the overall system? Should they call it GNU/Mac OS X? How much does this system resemble the non-Mac system of the previous paragraph?
Like I said, I have a lot more questions than answers. I'm not ooposed to using GNU/Linux in a lot of contexts. But in the end, the real problem I have is that I think RMS is a control freaque. I applaud the many good things he has done. But I don't worship him as much as I do some others. And as I read more and more articles I find myself more and more pissed at RMS as time goes on. (I should use the term alienated, but I'm more in the "pissed" mindset at this moment.) Just as a longtime Apple user (20+ years, predating Macintosh and even IBM PC) I find myself very pissed at Steve Jobs as I've read more accounts of behind the scenes.
This is a rant. Not intended as a troll or flame or to draw flames. An opinion for sure. Questions. No definite answers. Blowing off steam.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I'm not going to insult your analogy.
Your reply gave me pause, and an opportunity to think about where I stand on limited warranties.
My best answer at this moment is,
Any law that exists for any reason other than to protect citizens and their property is generally bad.
In the specific example, a hard drive fails, we have to determine the value of the loss. How I value my Master's Dissertation and research may not be the same monetary value that you assign to it. Rather than engage in court proceedings to determine value each time data is lost, we have come to accept that our self-created IP is not valued by others, and that the hard drive itself will be replaced. The time and work for installing it isn't any greater than the first time the drive was purchased.
You may not like it, but unless we can come up with an easy way to work out value... The only other possibility is take out data loss insurance that could be used to pay for data recovery services.
Thanks
The cost to produce and market an artist has stayed more or less constant - and the cost of the medium has gone down . It's cheaper to burn CDs than make tapes, for example. So, CD prices could be the same as tape prices, and the music labels would still make MORE profit off a CD than they do off a tape.
nt fuckers
Anyway, my understanding is that reparse points are made for virtual files (or symlinks and the like), and that it would be very difficult (or impossible?) to make full virtual filesystems like you do with translators. e.g. could I do e:\ftp_sites\www.foo.com\pub\pr0n\britney_spears.
I'm hoping the answer is "yes", but all descriptions I've read of reparse points make it sound like symlink+code.
Two failed 307060 75GXP drives in months two and three of light use. Was backing up first drive to second drive. Lost thousands of hours of work. Runaround from IBM. Bought Maxtors during runaround, now running in a Raid 5 setup. Keeping my fingers crossed.
Maxtor site says less than 1% drive failure rate. Western Digital drive technology is based on IBM drive. 60 GXPs also failing. Interesting to see Tom's Hardware uses IBM drives, since they are SILENT on the issue, even after many emails sent to them. Don't wanna bite the hand that feeds them. Like to see how many of their drives are failing.
Someone should subpoena IBM records to get their failure rate. Or someone inside IBM should make the records available. Someone in there has to have some integrity.
Will never buy another IBM product, regardless of how great they are. There must be consequences to their actions. Sears once caused me problems on parts for a compressor I bought from them for my company. Had to fix it myself with plumbing parts. Have not been back to Sears in 13 years. Still remember the name of their regional manager 13 years later.
I think you're mistaken about what the law says. I'd appreciate a quote from Title 17 that equates copyright infringement with theft, if you're going to claim that it does in fact say that.
"Seagate IDE drives have uniformly sucked donkey balls for over a decade." --delong
We really need your help
http://www.gofundme.com/help-sherry
"They got NO radio play. NO MTV play. You heard about them by word of mouth, from your friend who got this tape from his brother or something. You got a bootleg copy and fell in love, started buying all the Metallica you could get your hands on. They were a band of the people - no hairspray or makeup, just long haired guys in jeans and t shirts playing kickass metal."
Oh, yeah, well, the Napster thing isn't the first instance of Metallica hypocrisy. Remember when they SWORE they would never make videos and pander to the MTV crowd? Well, they made "One" which I could forgive, since it was pretty revolutionary at the time, but before long they were churning out crap, just like every other MTV video they had previously condemned. I guess the $$ tasted too sweet. I used to like Metallica, but after the Napster debacle, they just leave a bad taste in my mouth.
I don't begrudge the artist wanting to make a buck, and I don't damn automatically for being greedy, but when you compare the generosity of Dave Matthews (as mentioned by other slashdotters) to Metallica, and Joe Lansdale (who offers a free story every week at http://www.joerlansdale.com/stories.shtml) to Stephen King (I guess The Plant didn't make as much money as he thought it would), it's interesting to see who the money grabbing dragons are.
Christina! Bring me an axe!
yeah... and some of us have all-digital mixing facilities, so there will be no degradation whatsoever (and any funky signals can be processed right out, dammit). i hereby vow to *only* distribute high-quality mp3's of material which disallows fair use through "protection".
[|]
But the Net copyright laws eliminate fair use..there's really no such thing under the DMCA..offline, fair use still applies..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
If I make 1 tenth as much as you, I am therefore entitled to 10 times as much help as you
That is so wrong in so many ways.
I know I must be uncommon, but I actually have to have a little respect for who I'm listening to if I want to really enjoy the music. First, I notice the music and how the voice sounds and what feeling this gives me. Then, I try to figure out the lyrics. If they're bad, or if I see interviews with the artist and they're an idiot, I lose a lot of respect for the music. (But I never liked Metallica in the first place.) If you thought Charles Manson's music was actually decent, would you still listen to it based on who he is? :)
BTW, I used to buy a LOT of CDs (close to 1,000). I saw that during the Napster period, record sales went UP!!! After seeing how the RIAA acted, I'm still protesting by not buying new stuff nearly as much unless it's my favorite band and I NEED it. I suspect this is a major reason why their sales are hurting. Who wants to buy from a bully?
I'm pretty certain I heard a news bite a couple years ago about Dave Matthews going after several street-side dealers for selling bootlegs of his music. He got them completely shut down with crippling fines.
For a long time after that happened, I didn't want to buy any more of his music, even though I really liked it. I guess the guy has a philosophy that "it's ok to copy it for free, but don't make money off it unless you go through my official record company".
I have personally had to replace over 30 of those WD AC31600's drives at work because they just die for no reason at random. We have had numerous problems with different model WD hard drives dropping like flies and it's usually done in groups. Right now all the pc's with the WD AC12100 (2.1 gig udma33) and WD AC36400 (6.4 gig udma33) are dying faster than we can replace them. By the way, they are the same exact drive but the 6.4 gig model has a few more platters. This might explain the failure rate of both drives at the same time. Western Digital has had so many recalls over the years it's pathetic. I think the latest round of drive failures at work are the family of WD drives that had a firmware bug that allowed the heads to move off the parking zone before the platters had spun up 100%. Without the platters being fully up to speed, there is not enough air lift to keep the heads up so they scuff the platters a little bit on power up every time, eventually causing potholes.
Should I even bring up the Linux kernel thread about several model WD drives that decided to ignore the crc error checking part of the ultradma33 specification, and as a result allowed the drive to just write any old corrupted data that came down the cable?
I HATE WESTERN DIGITAL!!!
I had considered getting a IBM 60GXP but after doing months of research on FLUID DYANMIC BEARINGS and reading that they are so good the biggest maker of hard drive motors, seiko, has stopped producing ball bearing motors, I have decided to wait off or buy a hard drive with FDB's from another company. FDB's may have helped the overheat problems with the IBM 75GXP line. You all should really read the article on Fluid Dynamic Bearings by Seagate, it's very simple but cool technology.
Xnull
um, bad example. first of all, its Mike, Peter, Mickey, and Davey, and second, go over to Hollywood video *right now* and rent the movie "Head" (in the music video section IIRC). It's written my Jack Nicholson and stars the Monkees and addresses the very issue of which you speak. It may change your mind about the monkees.
I have two 40 GB 60GXP drives in a RAID-0 array, and they nearly compete with that $700 36GB Seagate Cheatah SCSI drive that everyone raves about. I've benchmarked mine, and my bax burst rates for reading are about 15 MBps higher and only 10 MBps lower on writing. They are very fast drives and I personally find them to be quite reliable and very well priced.
I love my IBM drives. I have read countless other reviews from other consumers than can say the same things. I also have owned Maxtor and Western Digital drives, and over time, those have even died on me.
Some products are going to fail for some people. You have to expect that. Don't buy into the overexagerated claims that people make just because they don't know what they are doing. I am willing to bet that a lot of drive failures aren't even really failed drives, but rather sectors that need to be repaired.
One thing about Maxtor though is their warranty exhange program. You just can't beat it. They don't dick you around at all.
Since when does Atlas Steel have a political agenda and need volunteers to help shore up the building?
They don't, and they knowingly left any verbiage out of the license that would empower anyone to. By their own arguments, software shouldn't have owners at all, and the only "new" issue is some vague public awareness of the original name from before history was rewritten.
I've had to explain the goals behind the GNU System to people who were already running it, because of others who reject their ethical (not legal) responsibility of advocating volunteer projects they benefit from.
Just buy whatever suits your need. I like the IBM drives because they perform well and are only marginally more expensive. I have also use Maxtor and Western Digital drives at home. I have had failures with both, but Maxtor's replacement system is awesome.
Look guys, all hard drives fail at some point. they are mechanical devices. Besides that, a lot of computer parts aren't manufactured to last as long. They use cheaper parts to cut costs. Just buy whatever you need. I want inexpensive speed, so I run two IBM 40GB 60GXPs in a RAID-0 array. It smokes everything aside from SCSI RAID.
OK, the broken steering linkage is a rather extreme example of "incidental and consequential" damages. However, I think that cases like that -- and finding such limitations in the warranties issued by _all_ competing manufacturers -- was the inspiration for the UCC (adopted by most state legislatures) to provide that incidental and consequential damages cannot be excluded from warranty on consumer products. And it doesn't distinguish serious and trivial cases. E.g., your starter motor in a new car fails due to a defect in it's manufacture, resulting in tow charges, loss of a few hours of your time, and labor putting in a new solenoid. GM cannot just send you a new starter and leave the rest up to you. They will probably pay for the tow and certainly pay for the labor. If they can't get the car back on the road promptly, they should also provide transportation until it is fixed.
As I understand the laws, you could also sue for the time you lost -- but since you'd spend days in court and pay your lawyer in five or six figures, it's hardly worthwhile.
If the car was bought for and used in business, then the mfg is allowed to exclude incidental and consequential damages -- corporate buyers should be able to read and understand that limited warranty, and negotiate a better one if needed, or find another mfg willing to stand behind it's products before buying a fleet of cars. Nor can any manufacturer afford to cover alleged consequential damages such as "My car broke down, I missed my sales appointment and lost a $100M contract." So a reasonable warranty for business use is generally somewhere in between "parts only" and full coverage. But consumers hardly ever have the ability to negotiate over the warranty, so the law provides a minimum warranty for them. And this causes most mfgs to maintain a certain minimum quality level so they aren't flooded in lawsuits -- which also benefits businesses that need to buy a reliable car without paying cadillac prices, for instance.
Yes, it would be better if everyone could negotiate a price & warranty to best suit their particular needs. E.g., gamers can get lowest price and "parts only" warranties, corporations buy high-quality servers with warranties that pay $10,000/hour for downtime (and OS and hardware such that they aren't likely to have _any_ downtime), and people that use a single computer for serious business get appropriate in-between price, quality, and warranty. So go right ahead, call up Bill Gates and tell him that because you use your home computer for financial records and work, you are willing to pay three times as much for an OS more stable than Windows and a guarantee of $100/hour for any downtime... 8-)
I think that the difference between the starter failing and the drive failing, and specifically being reimbursed for installation costs is this:
On the car, you don't buy your starter in a box, you buy it installed. You buy it installed, and the warranty is such that they pay for installation at the dealer.
A better comparison is this:
Your car is out of warranty, you buy a starter at AutoZone and install the starter while laying on your back in the driveway. The starter is under a warranty from AutoZone.
The starter fails, you take it out, go back to AutoZone, and they give you another boxed unit.
We're getting down to silly details, I agree it would be better if we could negotiate our own warranties- not that it'll happen anytime soon.
Do you mean you get any better warranty by buying a complete system with a pre-loaded OS? Not bloody likely. All you avoid is MS and the hardware makers pointing fingers at each other -- because MS won't talk to you at all!
By the way, I've installed a couple of starters and one fuel pump while laying on my back in parking lots or beside the road. I long ago lost track of how many starters I've changed in the driveway... But when the car is new and under warranty, it had better work right.
You can't count on that with computers, and that's what I'm complaining about. Software crashes cost nothing to the vendor, and you've got to be NASA or something to get even moderate reliability in your software; hardware crashes the vendor replacement parts, and it's usually reasonably reliable even in the bargain brands, but you still get top-rated brands mass-producing lemons now and then. (If you can forgive another analogy -- Chevy could produce the Vega and survive, Cadillac never would.)
No drive company is without its lemons. What do you expect? When a large capacity drive sells for so little money, they have to scrimp somewhere.
There are also fewer and fewer companies actually making this stuff. I wouldn't be supprised if IBM stops selling IBM drives in their own equipment.
Would IBM make more money if they started selling everyone elses drives with their sticker on top? Hard to say.
Some of you may recall the suggestion to call it "LiGNuX" proir to that.
"Transcript of Chat With Linus Torvalds", Linus Torvalds, 5/5/99, ABCNEWS.com
To read the whole thing in context go here.The only difference I see with the "gnu/linux" renaming is that the name isn't as silly or difficult to type.
Do I mean that you get a better warranty by buying the computer? Not often- depends on the vendor.
If your drive fails in a computer bought as a whole, the either the goofy kits shop has to replace it and install it for you. Or IBM will, if you've bought their kit. Gateway, HP, anything bought from a reseller like Best Buy, CompUSA, Time, Tiny, etc..., you're out of luck, unless you're loud.
My thought was, that if you've bought boxed goods originally, and knew that you were going to pay someone to install them or install them yourself, the warranty doesn't pay you for your time to install it a second time, same as in auto repair.
When the new car is under warranty, it had better work, and you can't always count on that: Hyundai Excel, Ford Pinto, Fiat, anything with Lucas electrics, etc.... With computers, the case is much the same, it had better work, but you can't count on it 100%, and we're far more accepting of the dregs of computers than we are of automobiles.
I installed an alternator in my co-op's car in the IBM parking lot two weeks ago.
Cadillac sold the Cimarron and now sells the Catera, both lesser machines, one a Chevy relabelled, and the other, an Opel. The Opel seems pretty good so far, but the Cimarron was a piece of yellow citrus if there ever were one.
Because we began this discussion by talking solely about hardware, I've avoided bringing MS into it. You're absolutely right when you imply that most problems are caused by software and you can't get a hardware manufacturer to recognise it until you've fdisk'ed your hard drive-
I'm finding that we're really in agreement here. Do you see anything left to argue over?
Whatever you buy, just remember that your precious data resides on ferroceramic disks spinning at 5200-10000 rpm with the means of destruction--the read head--floating mere microns above. Back up often!
It's always been this way. Hohum, karma whoring I go...whee!