Slashdot Mirror
Dutch Court Lifts PlayStation 3 Seizure Order
An anonymous reader writes "The recent European import ban against the PlayStation 3 has been lifted. Reportedly, LG had already succeeded in seizing about 300,000 PlayStations, but a court in the Dutch city of The Hague overturned the prejudgment seizure order and told LG to return all PS3s to Sony. Sony uses the Netherlands as its main entry point for all European PlayStation sales, and can now return to normal. While the temporary ban has been lifted, LG can still assert its Blu-ray patents against Sony in a regular proceeding, which will go to trial on November 18. LG asks for patent royalties of $2.50 per Blu-ray device and believes Sony already owes it $150-180 million."
This is why I wish HD-DVD would have won. Bluray is patent encumbered, has mandatory DRM and is controlled by todays most evil firm Sony. Now it's too late and there is no competition anymore.. Say what you will, but Microsoft was fighting for the greater good with HD-DVD. Now we get all this shit from Sony.
This is what happens when we let money talk and assholes win.
The one issue I had with BluRay from day one is that too many of the distributors put required ADs for other movies on the disc which play without your intervention and do their best to prevent you from skipping them. HDDVD did not allow this, it required discs to proceed to the menu or just play. I think this one of the bigger reasons Sony used to convince the other distributors to switch to their model.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
A Korean company is suing and got an import injunction against a Japanese country in the Netherlands. Strange thing, this flat world.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Yeah, great I can backup my server with only 100 discs instead of 167. Oh Wait, I have RAID. I am having a bit of déjà vu to the VHS vs Beta war when capacity also won over other considerations.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Problem is, blank media is very difficult to find and expensive. I bought a Blu-ray burner when prices dropped to a reasonable level a couple years ago, but it died as a backup medium before I even got started because blank media were extremely rare. Even today, where I live, blank media is not easy to find. Sure, you go to the store and you can see stacks of blank CD and DVD media... but no blank Blu-ray discs to be found. Typically, you have to order online and the prices are ridiculous. I believe this was done intentionally to discourage the situation that became of DVD, where the DRM was cracked relatively quickly and creating copies became trivially easy to make. I believe they restrict the quantity and keep the prices high in case a full compromise of Blu-ray DRM is eventually made making copies trivial, but due to limited quantities of media it makes it easier to control unlike DVD where media is cheap and broadly available.
I do have a Blu-ray player at home that I use for movies. I buy Blu-ray vs. DVD when the price difference is nominal and I rarely buy first-release. I enjoy the vastly superior sound quality of DTS Master HD and Dolby TrueHD audio since I have a fairly high-end home theater setup. Sure the picture quality is also a big improvement over DVD when you have a good setup, but as an audio and music junkie it's the sound that I bought Blu-ray for, not the picture.
http://serverfault.com/questions/2888/why-is-raid-not-a-backup
What are these better ways? Really. At 50GB per disc, my bluray collection is already larger than all of my local computer storage combined. A single season of television is larger than most bandwidth caps. There's not an ISP in my country that can offer a connection speed that could handle a continuous stream of BluRay qualtiy, and even if there was, this wouldn't help much when I'm on the move. As a pressed optical medium, if handled properly, it is likely that the media will last most of my lifetime. So... what's this better way of moving it around?
Valid points - good link; no fluff. I actually run timed backups in addition to the RAID because of the issues noted. You are correct, and I should have said "timed backups to hard drives" instead of "RAID". Use of Blu-Ray for backup would present its own set of problems - a backup that isn't done correctly and often is of little value.
The point was that the difference in storage capacity is more of a marketing point than a practical one.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Amazon shows dozens of different choices for 25GB BD-R packs, some for as low as about $1/disk.
quite interesting catch there. these are absurd first posts. apparently this guy is running some scheme.
Read radical news here
Moreover, most of this local computer storage is also in the form of spinning disks, albeit in closed containers.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Jerry: Holland *is* a province in the Netherlands.
FTFY. Calling the Netherlands Holland is like calling Canada "Ontario" or the USA "Washington".
Evolution - Est. 4500000000 B.C. Don't piss in the gene pool.
So how exactly does your theory distinguish between "shills" and people who hold less hostile views of Microsoft of their own volition?
This is the fifth time in three days that he writes a relatively long first post defending Microsoft.
FYI, the other four are:
1
2
3
4
The headline says "Dutch Court Lifts PlayStation 3 Seizure Order". This is not true. It is a European court that happens to be physically located in Den Haag, which is in the province of South Holland. It is in South Holland, but is not Dutch.
Barack Obama lives in Washington, but he is not Washingtonian, he is Hawai'ian.
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
You've got to remember that Seinfeld doesn't know the difference between his own country and the two-continent-wide landmass it is located in....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I saw this post, which links to my blog, and then the comment above from Half-pint HAL claiming it's a European court that happens to be based in the Netherlands. However, Half-pint HAL is Full-scale WRONG on this one. It was a purely Dutch proceeding. A ruling issued in Breda, Netherlands, was appealed to the next higher Dutch instance in The Hague.
No European court is based in The Hague. The European courts are based in Luxembourg (Court of Justice of the EU, General Court of the EU) and Strasbourg (the European Court of Human Rights, which is not an EU institution but connected to the Council of Europe, which includes non-EU countries like Russia).
There are international courts in The Hague, such as the International Criminal Court and the Permanent Court of Arbitration. Those aren't European courts, however. Neither EU nor otherwise European.
He said sea level. not sea. He is correct. I live below sea level.
There isn't a Blu-Ray device in my house. Or at work. I don't own one, and I'm not going to own one. It's really pretty simple. If Sony couldn't sell Blu-Ray to chumps, they would stop producing them. As long as chumps are willing to pay for Blu-Ray, Sony will keep producing them!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Translation glitch, or reading comprehension problem? I can't decide. Maybe if I were multi-lingual, I would be better equipped to deal with a post that looks stupid. Damn, why couldn't I have gotten the multi-lingual gene, instead of the good-looks gene?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
You seem to assume that real broadband is available to everyone, everywhere. If my operating system and data files all fit on the same 40MB hard drive that I was using ~1995, then yes, I could make backups to onlne servers. But, for me to make a backup of my real operating system and data files today would take several days. Even if I used a backup solution that only backs things up that have actually changed, I'm still looking at several hours upload time each week.
Besides which - call me paranoid, but I'm not willing to make backups to servers owned by strangers who may or may not be honest, and may or may not have my best interests at heart. I happen to like Google, but I wouldn't even back up all my data to a Google server!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Yes, but many, many people make the same mistake. It's one of those things that perpetuates itself because the majority (or at least those that you hear) don't know much better.
Evolution - Est. 4500000000 B.C. Don't piss in the gene pool.
America! Fuck yeah!
Amazon shows dozens of different choices for 25GB BD-R packs, some for as low as about $1/disk.
I'm I the only one that finds it mildly pathetic that, especially when you factor in the cost of swapping disks, it'd be cheaper for consumers to back to up to LTO-5 media in spite of how long Blu-Ray has been on the market?
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
Amazon shows dozens of different choices for 25GB BD-R packs, some for as low as about $1/disk.
I'm I the only one that finds it mildly pathetic that, especially when you factor in the cost of swapping disks, it'd be cheaper for consumers to back to up to LTO-5 media in spite of how long Blu-Ray has been on the market?
Well, the 1.5TB LTO-5 tape cartridges for $70-ish each are similar in price per GB to the 25GB BD-R disks at $1-ish each, and possibly needing only a single tape would avoid a lot of disk swapping. Unfortunately, the $2500-ish price for the LTO-5 drive is a bit of an impediment for home use. So is the need for a SAS interface on the PC (or backup server).
Even more pathetic is the fact that 2TB USB drives also cost $80-ish nowadays, and a USB interface has been fairly standard for a while. So the cheapest archival per GB is to buy a fresh 2TB USB disk each time instead of the LTO-5 tape or pile of BD-R disks. For rolling backups (i.e. not archived), a handful of USB drives can be cycled for each 2TB of backup space needed.
I recall starting out with tapes, when I used a QIC-80 tape drive to back up my home PC-XT in the 1980s. It was cheaper per MB than the alternatives of the day (Iomega zip drives and suchlike), and a whole backup would easily fit on a single 80MB tape. The advent of CDs, rapid growth in fixed disk capacity, and the incompatibility of the QIC's ISA-bus SCSI card with later PC hardware led to it being dumped. It was replaced first by CD-R, then by DVD-R, and now by multi-TB USB drives.
Backups of the home systems (server, 3 PCs) are still done three times weekly, and automated.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Unfortunately, the $2500-ish price for the LTO-5 drive is a bit of an impediment for home use. So is the need for a SAS interface on the PC (or backup server).
Of course. I was pointing out the irony that the excessive disk swapping, in my opinion, could justify the cost of the drive! Of course, the cost of those damned tape drives isn't really justified by anything other than the corporate expense accounts they're usually purchased with...
:P. The tapes themselves will last longer too. I just wish I could find a convenient backup mechanism for my home storage (~10 TB of space) that doesn't come with an enterprise price or a shitload of USB disks. Without resorting to online backup, anyway. I throw around hundreds of gigs of data on a whim when I back up a client's computers or move around some of my VM's.
You're right about the USB disks though. I much prefer the idea of using tape to run backups as opposed to using external hard disks though. It's hard to use tape for much of anything else, whereas most people I know couldn't even begin to resist the temptation to store yet more shit on their external drives
I back up all my important stuff to my online storage arrays, but that data sits alongside my media collection and tons of important documents and so on. How would you back up that much stuff easily and reliably? My experience [unfortunately] makes it difficult to think of something that isn't marketed at the enterprise sector. I hate the idea of implementing something for my own data that I wouldn't even think of presenting to upper management because of how hacked together it would be.
Maybe that would make a decent "Ask Slashdot."
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
Using USB disks for backup seems pretty interesting at current prices.
If you run some kind of unix you can make backup-like copies using rsync so you'll only need to buy a new disk when you want an off-line archive backup.
Not quite. A dutch/english friend of mine told me that "Holland" is really the largest part, and only people from a few, small, rural areas get pissed off when you confuse the two.
I guess like 80%(ish) of the British are English and aren't going to care that much when you confuse the two. But the Scots, oh the Scots get angry!
I've been trying to find some way to play blu ray disks on my new PC build without having to buy PowerDVD 10 (why should I have to buy some software I don't want in the first place just to play a disk I already own? Not happening). I know these disks are loaded with DRM, but Is there any free alternative out there? I know of libbluray http://www.videolan.org/developers/libbluray.html , but to be honest I'm not sure how to get it working. Does anyone out there know how to A) get this to work, or B) know of a different opensource/free solution to play blu ray disks? Feel free to note me if the method would make the MPAA go into a conniption fit. ;)
Isn't it cheaper to backup to 2 terrabyte hard drives? $1 for 25 gigs is 4 cents a gig, while they are selling 2 terrabyte hard drives for $70 on amazon today with free shipping. That's 2000 gigs for $70, or 3.5 cents a gig. Ok, ok, it's more like 1900 gigs but my point remains.
And the hard drives are ridiculously more convenient to back up to - just put in the drive in a hot - swap sata bay, and swap disks 76 times less often. And they are faster for recovery, and so on.