Slashback: Drives, Errors, Copyright

Slashback brings you updates tonight on book reviews past, intentionally defective CDs, failing disk drives, and joining the HURD. Enjoy!

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."

Comments

GNU HURD

[s20451]

HURD -- a testament to the never-give-up and never-think-things-through spirit of GNU.

"Linux is nothing, work on the HURD" -- Stallman

Re:GNU HURD

[jbailey999]

Well, there are a couple of benefits to using Hurd:

1) Hack value. It's fun to play.
2) Secure infrastructure that permits to user to do quite reasonable things.

In the Hurd, any user can create a secure chroot jail. Any user can mount a remote file system off of their home directory. Any user could mount a file (ISO or whatever) as a filesystem.

3) Translators

The concept of a translator is the "Everything is a file" taken a step further. If you imbed a program in an inode, it can then deal with filesystem calls to that inode as it sees fit.

This means that things like the Linux "proc" file system are easy to write, and could trivially show things like SQL data, or an FTP-fs.

Device drivers can either be colocated in the kernel (Which they generally are now, similar to Linux), or can be emulated in user space (Like an implementation of /dev/random that I've seen based on EGD)

This means that implementing PPPoE is going to be very simple for us, since we just need to write a simple translator the reads from the Ethernet card, and pushes those packets into the IP stack.

These are just beginning sort of examples of what's possible. Other clever stuff is doable if you're willing to think a little bit outside of the typical "unix" box.

Copy protection is the wrong way to stop piracy.

[gusnz]

"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?

Oh No! Did RIAA Forget About Microsoft?

[mutantcamel]

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.

Re:Heard on the radio tonite....

[garcia]

b/c of Napster? lol. It is b/c of the artists and the companies believing that these services (and CDRs) are taking away their percious fucking money. WRONG. It is poor business practices, bad pricing, and the fact that no one wants to buy a fucking CD for 3 or 4 good songs...

Make a CD in which EVERY song is as good as the title track and then there will be less of a chance that it will not be bought. That's how it worked before and that's how it will always work.

Enjoy your freedom of music and support those that allow it.

So pair is swapping out IBM 75GXP drives...

[Quikah]

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?!

I'll ask again

[Obliqueness]

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.

Re:I'll ask again

[mls]

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?

Well, you may wish to preach that message to the teeny-boppers that buy CDs in volume and feed the monster that is RIAA. If you can't communicate your message to that crowd, your approach is doomed to fail.

On a side note, how many of you remember the copy protection computer software used to attempt to use in the late 80s, early 90s? The more I see of this new scheme by RIAA members, the more I am reminded of that failed attempt by software vendors. In the end it was the laziness of the end consumer that seemed to break that cycle. They didn't want to have to do the secret dance and jump through hurdles to use their software - they just wanted it to work. People hacked ways around those protections, and eventually the vendors just gave up as it wasn't cost effective to alienate their market segment to keep the few from copying their product.

Re:Copy protection is the wrong way to stop piracy

[garcia]

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.

The VIA SouthBridge and IBM 75GXP Connection

[KidSock]

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?

IBM Japan Responsible.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

IBM makes my job hard

[louissypher]

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.

GNU/everything

[DickBreath]

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.