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Inventor of Optical Storage Gets Little Reward
Thu Anon Coward writes "This poor guy invented optical storage (CDs, DVDs) and never made a dime. Another case of an idea before its time and cheating a man of his due. To quote the article, 'Consumers will spend billions this holiday season on CDs, DVDs and machines to record and play the ubiquitous silver discs. But the inventor of the underlying technology won't make a cent. Today, Russell does consulting from a lab in the basement of his Bellevue home to keep in the game and supplement a modest pension from Battelle.'"
If he had sold the rights to Microsoft, /. would curse him.
Just look at this poor fellow. He lives at Bellevue! (Mental hospital)
Now the RIAA knows who to blame(sue) for all of the evil evil CDs/DVDs that have enabled high-quality (digital) copying. He even admits to having downloaded (off the air) television shows (wonder if he skipped the commercials?) and also having ripped music.
Note to the humor impared: the above was intended to be humorous.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
My favorite paragraph:
"Back in the 1950s and early 1960s, music aficionados went to extreme lengths to get high-quality sound from records. Russell was the sort who used cactus needles on his record player; they had to be hand-sharpened after each use, but the sound was better and they wouldn't wear out albums as fast as metal needles."
That's what I'd call extreme lengths, alright.
Okay okay, my math somehow got all fucked up. Sorry...
No, he's just ahead of his time using the open source model. Why should a great contribution be rewarded financially when you can always hand it off to big business and have them reap the profits?
You sure figured me out in a hurry <rolls eyes>. As you're thinking about retraining, might I suggest an English course...
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan