I have a record made in 1915 and it can still be played. That's 94 years.
Also, when it eventually wears out, it will be from my actions (that is playing it too many times and not making a backup copy and playing that) not because of the death or the artists or the bankrupcy of the label (is Zonophone still in business but with a different name?)
Two (VHS+SVHS). I use them to record stuff from TV and cut out the commercials. Looking for a third (better) one.
What about a floppy drive?
I have an LS120 drive (which reads floppies), an USB floppy drive that I use with my laptop and some regular ones.
Laserdisk?
Pioneer CLD-2850. It may not be the best, but was the only one I could afford. It plays CDs too.
5.25"?
One 360KB drive and two 1.2MB ones. All work. The 1.2MB ones are currently in PCs that are in use.
8.5"?
Oops... Don't have any disks too, but would like to get a drive and some disks some time in the future.
10MB HDD?
I have a 20MB HDD, but it does not work (somebody stole a chip before I got the drive). I have a working 100MB 3.5" drive and a 1.2GB 5.25" FH drive. Would like to get a working Microscience HH-725 drive to borrow the chip from it and see what data is hidden in my broken drive.
Also formats you probably forgot to mention: MO (3.5" up to 1.3GB, bought recently because the disks last very long), R2R analog tape recorder, cassette deck, record player (for 33.3 and 45RPM records), radiogramophone made in 1964 (plays all records, but I use it only for 78RPM ones, also to listen to radio).
Also, a cassette, recorded 15 years ago still plays fine, but a CDR recorder 10 years ago does not.
DRM is a fundamentally flawed idea
Yes it is, especially for audio. Even if I cannot break the DRM scheme any other way, there still is that tape recorder...
For the region coding: I have a certain DVD-ROM drive. It does not read recordable DVDs, but I flashed it with a special firmware. No matter how many times I change the region on the drive - there still are 4 changes left:)
Probably this is done with software that works with any drive, but my old drive still works and I still use it to play a DVD. I flashed the drive because some years ago I rented and watched a lot of movies (small hard drive, slow connection, rent for a day was $1.25 in the dollars of that time and the store less than 1km away), however, there were Region 1 and Region 2 DVDs, so without that firmware I would have exhausted the changes pretty quickly. Those DVDs didn't have unskippable ads (IIRC) and had English subtitles so I could understand the movie better (English is not my native language, and reading is easier, though after a lot of movies I no longer need subtitles).
On the other hand, I remember a VHS rental some years before that. That rental could copy any of their tapes for some price , or you could bring your own tape to copy (that is the tape you borrowed from a friend).
Anyway, back to the present: that DVD drive is in another PC, I can access it over network, but guess what? To watch a DVD I have to use iSCSI to connect the drive to my main PC, I can't just share the contents over network. Or, I can rip the DVD and put the vob files in a shared folder...
Also, if I rip the DVD and modify IFO files, I can skip over ads:)
About 50% on all 4 cores. This is 1080p h264 video playing on 2x Opteron 270 (2x2GHz), which is a bit old by current standards.
Anyway, I believe all current video cards can decode HD video, so my CPU usage would lower if I had a better card than my HD2900XT.
64bit coding is useful for big programs (or ones that need to process huge amounts of data, like a video encoder), while a media player can be 32bits, access the video card for video decoding (audio decoding can be done on 32bit CPUs) and stay small.
I wouldn't use a media player or CD/DVD writing program that needed >2GB RAM. Even for buffers, that's too much.
If the company does not have a monopoly, nobody cares, it's their problem if they do not want our money anymore.
However, Microsoft has a monopoly and a lot of companies/people depend on Windows XP, so MS has to make Windows XP available for purchase (or stop crying about piracy). It's the same if the power company, which has a monopoly, stopped supplying power to its customers stating that now everybody has to get new wiring installed, also they will change the voltage and/or frequency so that everyone has to pay for new wires and buy transformers/frequency converters conveniently sold by the same power company. They have the monopoly, get money for the electricity, can change the price of energy once a year (after an approval of the government which sets a limit on how much profit the power company can make) and have to keep supplying power.
Yes, like 64bit OS will stop people from opening that attachment or downloading Antivirus2015 and running it.
Also, people will code 32bit apps, because they are more compatible (runs on both 32bit ant 64bit systems), while 64bits is only useful if your app uses a lot of RAM or CPU. There is no point for a 64bit CD/DVD recording software, media player and browser. 64bits can be useful for games, photoshop and video editing software.
If I understand correctly, to make a 32bit app from 64bit (or vice versa) you need to recomplie it, it's not like you need to rewrite it.
Honestly if you are buying a unit to make recordings, why would you want to use tape at this stage?
I record a lot from TV and use VHS. My reasons are: 1. VHS tape lasts longer than DVD-R. I had no problems playing a 20 year old tape. 2. Analog tape degrades gradually. Yes, after some time the picture will become more and more fuzzy, however, DVDs with errors either skip or not play at all. 3. If I made a mistake while recording/editing or decided that I didn;t want the recording after all, I can tape over it and save money. I can't do that with DVD-R. 4. I don't know about DVD recorders, but with two VCRs I can easily cut the commercials out of the recording. If I record while watching the program, I can stop the tape and not record commercials in the first place. 5. Tape recording is more durable. While it is easy to mangle the tape, usually that only affects a very small portion of a recording (1m of tape = 21seconds of recording). It is easier to scratch a DVD so that it does not play at all. 6. For the price of the cheapest DVD recorder I can buy a really good VCR (or at least that was the case 1.5 years ago when I bought the VCR).
Those are the main reasons off the top of my head.
Anyway, I have a DVB-C tuner that I use with my VCR (because some channels are broadcast in stereo on digital, but the cable company does not use use NICAM on analog for those channels) and it has a timer that I can set if I want to record something. While that is a bit inconvenient (having to set the timer on both the VCR and the tuner) I only need to do this if I plan to record from different channels, otherwise I could just leave the tuner on. On the other hand, one of my VCRs can start recording as soon as it receives a signal to its SCART port, so I could just set the timer on the tuner and leave the VCR to start recording as soon as the tuner turns on.
because it's almost impossible to google "firefox" or "chrome" or "safari" or "opera" and download a new browser.
What is this "browser" you speak of? A fox? Why would I need it? I don't need a browser, I can just open the internet and go wherever I want.
Sorry, I went to a site that looks really bad, I'm gonna call them and complain that their site is broken. They also want me to use the fox? Ok, I'm taking my business to those, who know how to make good working sites. I don't really care if those sites do not work with the fox, since I don't use it and am part of the majority....
In any case, you have to know there are alternatives before you can google them.
How did I promise to pay for a movie, if it was made before I was born?
keeping taped records of copyrighted materials is also considered piracy where I come from.
I don't know, before we joined the EU, it was legal to share, but was illegal to make money from piracy (i.e. sell pirated CDs). Now this changed, but I don't know about the legality of keeping tapes. Well, at least I don't digitize them and make a torrent out of them (if I ever get a connection with better upload speed, I might start, since the shows I record are not usually available for download on any trackers).
Until, it is a promise made by you, that you will treat copyrighted works like physical goods, that is, either buy it and own it, or don't buy it and don't own it.
And you can share physical goods. In some cases you can modify physical goods (if it's a device for example) and sell the result (I can make a business buying TVs from abroad, modifying so they work in my country and selling them). You can copy physical goods (say my friend bought an amplifier, lent it to me, I took it apart, saw how it was made and made one for myself).
Also, I can buy physical goods in other countries and bring them back (or have them shipped) home. There is no unnatural "region locking" (the worst would be that I would have to buy a frequency changer if the device only operated on 60Hz or a transformer to step down from 220V to 110V for that device). On the other hand, Valve deactivated some accounts that have bought a game in another country and brought it back home, DVDs have region codes (that, if worked as intended, would prevent me from playing a DVD that I bought in another region).
They'll still be paying for the same wires underground. It won't magically increase maintenance costs.
Bandwidth of those wires is limited. So, if I wasn't using it, they could sell my part to other customers. Also, I pay the same amount of money if I download or not, so sometimes my friends ask me to download something for them (because they have a bad connection/no connection at all) and I do it. I still pay the same amount of money...
Money is also limited, well, things money can buy are limited, well, and the prices wouldn't change just because the guy printed some money, he has to use it first (assuming he didn't announce "Hey everybody, I printed some money, adjust your prices accordingly"). Also, it means that other people can buy less using that money (even if they have the same amount of printed paper).
Copies of a movie are not limited. While you can saturate even the fattest wire (or pipe), you can always make another copy of a movie. Since you are not selling your copies (which would actually bring the price down to cost of a blank CD - finite demand, infinite supply), other people can sell their copies for the same amount of money as if piracy didn't exist.
Also, when does the artist lose money? When I start searching for a torrent? When I download said torrent? When it starts to download? When it finishes the download? When I start to watch the movie? When I finish to start the movie? When I archive it? At what point the "loss" happens?
The copyright holders should start selling a "right to download" for a price that is smaller then the price of buying it in a store (since they do not have to press the CD/DVD, ship it to the store etc). You pay the money, get the right and then download the product using bittorrent or some FTP server.
No, that is not a reason to call them "imaginary" dollars/losses. Perhaps "projected", "theoretical", or "potential" would be better substitutes. "Imaginary" is simply pollution of language to further a point.
OK, my bad. Still, there is a difference between these losses and the loss if, say, a building burned down.
But, on the same token, 1 download != 0 lost sales = $0 lost...snip... which neglects to consider how someone with such an obvious taste for entertainment would do when they had only those artworks purchased, and nothing else to listen to or watch.
Yes, if downloads were not available, some number of people would have bought it, however, it is probably impossible to determine how many. As for your other point, I can record movies and music from TV and radio (internet or AM/FM). I would like to buy records or CDs of some songs, but they are not available any more. At best I could find a scratched record at some flea market, but that wold have bad audio quality. I sometimes search for these records though. I can find a lot of music on ebay, but not the music from my country. So I record the music from TV, paying money to VHS tape makers, I could record series/movies too. Earlier I recorded a lot of music from radio. Also, if online piracy never happened, I wouldn't have "such an obvious taste for entertainment", I wouldn't have seen a large part of the series I have, because I wouldn't even know about them (since they were never shown on TV in my country AFAIK). Now if piracy would just vanish, I would probably stop searching for new series/movies to watch and instead concentrate at what the TV offers. And would use more tapes, too.
Absolutely. We promise to pay copyright holders what their products are worth in exchange for their weeks/months/years of work. So far, my analogy holds.
Well, I didn't promise anything. Nobody asked me "if I make this movie and you like it, will you pay me?". Also, even if I posted on the internet saying "Even if they made movie x, I would never pay for it" there is a very good chance that the movie would still be made.
As a society, you implicitly approved that if you wanted to watch that movie, you would either pay them what they asked, or go without.
As coming from a country where piracy is above 50% I would say different. On the other hand, music CDs sell here quite well, even if software piracy is huge (well, almost everyone uses Windows and usually not the version/edition their their PC came with).
You can try to campaign to have copyright removed if you care about the $15 that much, but you might find that future movies that you want to watch and not pay for may not exist.
$15 for the disk, $15 for shipping, it adds up... Also, some people can watch series for free just because they live in a certain country... As for new movies/series. Well, I probably wouldn't feel the loss. I could catch up on old movies and series.
And the fact that you've already worked for your employer, and he didn't pay you, shows that there is absolutely, 100% no harm in the situation whatsoever. Am I reading this right?
If I came to your house, painted it (without being asked to do so) and then asked for money, you would be right if you didn't pay me.
There are costs which are not for raw materials. It's naive and, frankly, incredibly stupid to believe that costs come simply from things you can hold in your hand.
Of course. Costs come from raw materials and services (like bandwidth).
And you can go work for another employer.
Sure. If the first employer asked me to write a program or design a webpage and then didn't pay me I would sell the program or the design to another company. I wouldn't have to make it from scratch though.
And this is actually backwards: 1. I was offered a job. The employer promised to pay me before I started working, otherwise I wouldn't have. 2. I really lost those two weeks, because I worked during that time, so I couldn't work in another job (that would have paid).
If I steal a CD/DVD from a store: 1. The store paid money for that CD, they cannot sell it to others. 2. Real materials were used in making that CD. They cannot be reused to make another copy.
With piracy: 1. I did not promise to pay anybody. They still made the movie. 2. The movie has been made, if I download it or don't (and don't watch it) does not change the fact that they made it. The fact that I downloaded it, does not cost them more money, since they used no real materials to make my copy. 3. They can still sell the movie to others.
They are imaginary because you cannot be 100% certain that if there was no internet piracy, people would have bought everything they have pirated. There are a lot of reasons for it, some being: 1. I want to buy that movie, but it is not available in my country or at all (e.g. star wars holiday special). 2. I want to watch that movie, but not so much so as to pay the amount of money it costs. 3. I do not have enough money. 4. I could have copied the movie from my friend, who copied it from his friend who... 5. I could have rented the movie for less money and copied it.
It does not mean, that 1 download = 1 lost sale = $x lost. And that's why those companies lose only imaginary money. Also, it's hard to lose something you did not have before.
As for the small developers - did you really plan your business that, say, you needed to sell 100 copies, but sold 99 and went out of business. Do you know that that one guy who downloaded wasn't me (since I wouldn't have bought it anyway) or somebody like me?
People are committed to mental institutions for saying that they talk to invisible men in the sky.
Actually, no. People can talk to an invisible man in the sky and tell others about it. They will be called "religious". On the other hand, if someone claims that the invisible man in the sky answered him or initiated the conversation, then he either gets committed to a mental institution or gets followers (these two options are not mutually exclusive). Sometimes the followers wage wars against those, who do not believe the man actually got an answer for the invisible man in the sky.
And that means, that piracy does not "hurt" small developers more. If big companies "lose" millions of imaginary dollars, the small developer will "lose" tens or hundreds or thousands (depending on how small).
If your company hangs on the edge of bankruptcy because you "lost" $300 then you could go out of business even without piracy, because not all pirates would have bought your program (for example me - if I do not find it for download, I search for an alternative, sometimes because the developers want ~$1000 for a traffic shaping program - I built my router for way less and if I had $1000 I could get a better connection and not need the shaper at all).
Except that the amount of pirated copies is proportional to the amount of purchased copies. If a game or application is very popular, it will be pirated more, but more copies will be sold also, because everyone likes/wants/needs it. Some people download, some buy.
If almost nobody knows about your product or wants it (since you are a small company, you probably do not advertise much), then it stands to reason that it will sell less copies. Also, only a small number of people will download it (or it may not be available for download anywhere). I know how hard it is to find some not-so-popular application.
About RAM: I have never had any problem with RAM voltage. I had to buy registered DDR1 for my newest PC, but that was marked on the RAM (not to mention the module looks different with the additional chips). One old PC can only support 64MB per side of the module (SDR), but for all other newer PCs I can go to a store and buy RAM knowing the type (SDR or DDR1) and the size I want to buy.
Maybe this thing with voltages is new to DDR2. I do not have a PC that uses them, so I can't say...
there's no risk of them getting it wrong and buying the wrong item.
But there is a risk that they might say that you bought a too expensive part, since there were some cheaper ones available. While the employees at my local store do not know how a SCSI 80pin68pin adapter looks like, they can give useful advice to a novice regarding which hard drive to buy and so on. Especially if I give my friend the old part.
I don't see a problem. Turn on your UPS and PC or laptop, connect to the internet (using a cell phone for example if your main connection needs 220V and you do not have a UPS or inverter), go to the website. Well, I did that when there was a power outage (I actually went to the website to find a telephone number that I could call and ask if the outage was planned or not).
For me, going to a store is faster than ordering stuff from Amazon or ebay. In the store you get the item immediately or have to wait for a day or week if they do not have it. If I buy something from ebay, I have to wait at least two weeks (if I bought it from the EU) or a month (if I bought it from the USA).
Well, when I wrote my original post, I assumed that my friend brought me the computer, I ran some tests and found out that the HDD is broken, so I can open the case and see what interface/size the drive is and tell my friend to go buy a new one.
And no, if my friend did not know how to run mhdd, I would ask him to bring the computer to me.
Placing a value on time is even harder than placing a value on gas (well, I could measure how much gas I use and multiply that by current gas price, there is no way for me to calculate how much my time is worth). Also, my friend should learn to at least buy things for himself, because that does not take a lot of knowledge in computers (go to a store, show the bad device and say that you need a new one).
Actually, when I was learning how to drive a car (to get the driver's license) I had to name some of the components - where is the engine, the spark plugs, battery and so on. They didn't ask me to fix anything, but I had to know how a spark plug looks like and what it does. Or how to check the level of oil and add some if it's too low.
Sometimes I wish that the users of computers should go through basic training, so they can fix common, but minor problems (the same difficulty as changing a tire).
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I have a record made in 1915 and it can still be played. That's 94 years.
Also, when it eventually wears out, it will be from my actions (that is playing it too many times and not making a backup copy and playing that) not because of the death or the artists or the bankrupcy of the label (is Zonophone still in business but with a different name?)
Do you still have a VCR that works?
Two (VHS+SVHS). I use them to record stuff from TV and cut out the commercials. Looking for a third (better) one.
What about a floppy drive?
I have an LS120 drive (which reads floppies), an USB floppy drive that I use with my laptop and some regular ones.
Laserdisk?
Pioneer CLD-2850. It may not be the best, but was the only one I could afford. It plays CDs too.
5.25"?
One 360KB drive and two 1.2MB ones. All work. The 1.2MB ones are currently in PCs that are in use.
8.5"?
Oops... Don't have any disks too, but would like to get a drive and some disks some time in the future.
10MB HDD?
I have a 20MB HDD, but it does not work (somebody stole a chip before I got the drive). I have a working 100MB 3.5" drive and a 1.2GB 5.25" FH drive. Would like to get a working Microscience HH-725 drive to borrow the chip from it and see what data is hidden in my broken drive.
Also formats you probably forgot to mention:
MO (3.5" up to 1.3GB, bought recently because the disks last very long), R2R analog tape recorder, cassette deck, record player (for 33.3 and 45RPM records), radiogramophone made in 1964 (plays all records, but I use it only for 78RPM ones, also to listen to radio).
Also, a cassette, recorded 15 years ago still plays fine, but a CDR recorder 10 years ago does not.
DRM is a fundamentally flawed idea
Yes it is, especially for audio. Even if I cannot break the DRM scheme any other way, there still is that tape recorder...
For the region coding: I have a certain DVD-ROM drive. It does not read recordable DVDs, but I flashed it with a special firmware. No matter how many times I change the region on the drive - there still are 4 changes left :)
Probably this is done with software that works with any drive, but my old drive still works and I still use it to play a DVD. I flashed the drive because some years ago I rented and watched a lot of movies (small hard drive, slow connection, rent for a day was $1.25 in the dollars of that time and the store less than 1km away), however, there were Region 1 and Region 2 DVDs, so without that firmware I would have exhausted the changes pretty quickly. Those DVDs didn't have unskippable ads (IIRC) and had English subtitles so I could understand the movie better (English is not my native language, and reading is easier, though after a lot of movies I no longer need subtitles).
On the other hand, I remember a VHS rental some years before that. That rental could copy any of their tapes for some price , or you could bring your own tape to copy (that is the tape you borrowed from a friend).
Anyway, back to the present: that DVD drive is in another PC, I can access it over network, but guess what? To watch a DVD I have to use iSCSI to connect the drive to my main PC, I can't just share the contents over network. Or, I can rip the DVD and put the vob files in a shared folder...
Also, if I rip the DVD and modify IFO files, I can skip over ads :)
About 50% on all 4 cores. This is 1080p h264 video playing on 2x Opteron 270 (2x2GHz), which is a bit old by current standards.
Anyway, I believe all current video cards can decode HD video, so my CPU usage would lower if I had a better card than my HD2900XT.
64bit coding is useful for big programs (or ones that need to process huge amounts of data, like a video encoder), while a media player can be 32bits, access the video card for video decoding (audio decoding can be done on 32bit CPUs) and stay small.
I wouldn't use a media player or CD/DVD writing program that needed >2GB RAM. Even for buffers, that's too much.
If the company does not have a monopoly, nobody cares, it's their problem if they do not want our money anymore.
However, Microsoft has a monopoly and a lot of companies/people depend on Windows XP, so MS has to make Windows XP available for purchase (or stop crying about piracy). It's the same if the power company, which has a monopoly, stopped supplying power to its customers stating that now everybody has to get new wiring installed, also they will change the voltage and/or frequency so that everyone has to pay for new wires and buy transformers/frequency converters conveniently sold by the same power company. They have the monopoly, get money for the electricity, can change the price of energy once a year (after an approval of the government which sets a limit on how much profit the power company can make) and have to keep supplying power.
Yes, like 64bit OS will stop people from opening that attachment or downloading Antivirus2015 and running it.
Also, people will code 32bit apps, because they are more compatible (runs on both 32bit ant 64bit systems), while 64bits is only useful if your app uses a lot of RAM or CPU. There is no point for a 64bit CD/DVD recording software, media player and browser. 64bits can be useful for games, photoshop and video editing software.
If I understand correctly, to make a 32bit app from 64bit (or vice versa) you need to recomplie it, it's not like you need to rewrite it.
Honestly if you are buying a unit to make recordings, why would you want to use tape at this stage?
I record a lot from TV and use VHS. My reasons are:
1. VHS tape lasts longer than DVD-R. I had no problems playing a 20 year old tape.
2. Analog tape degrades gradually. Yes, after some time the picture will become more and more fuzzy, however, DVDs with errors either skip or not play at all.
3. If I made a mistake while recording/editing or decided that I didn;t want the recording after all, I can tape over it and save money. I can't do that with DVD-R.
4. I don't know about DVD recorders, but with two VCRs I can easily cut the commercials out of the recording. If I record while watching the program, I can stop the tape and not record commercials in the first place.
5. Tape recording is more durable. While it is easy to mangle the tape, usually that only affects a very small portion of a recording (1m of tape = 21seconds of recording). It is easier to scratch a DVD so that it does not play at all.
6. For the price of the cheapest DVD recorder I can buy a really good VCR (or at least that was the case 1.5 years ago when I bought the VCR).
Those are the main reasons off the top of my head.
Anyway, I have a DVB-C tuner that I use with my VCR (because some channels are broadcast in stereo on digital, but the cable company does not use use NICAM on analog for those channels) and it has a timer that I can set if I want to record something. While that is a bit inconvenient (having to set the timer on both the VCR and the tuner) I only need to do this if I plan to record from different channels, otherwise I could just leave the tuner on. On the other hand, one of my VCRs can start recording as soon as it receives a signal to its SCART port, so I could just set the timer on the tuner and leave the VCR to start recording as soon as the tuner turns on.
Well, 1:1000000 odds are really small. Unless that one is you or your relative/friend/etc.
because it's almost impossible to google "firefox" or "chrome" or "safari" or "opera" and download a new browser.
What is this "browser" you speak of? A fox? Why would I need it? I don't need a browser, I can just open the internet and go wherever I want.
Sorry, I went to a site that looks really bad, I'm gonna call them and complain that their site is broken. They also want me to use the fox? Ok, I'm taking my business to those, who know how to make good working sites. I don't really care if those sites do not work with the fox, since I don't use it and am part of the majority. ...
In any case, you have to know there are alternatives before you can google them.
the EU has an entire subset of the law which applies only to Microsoft
Yes, that subset has to do with them having a monopoly or something. Oh, and that subset applies to Intel too.
How did I promise to pay for a movie, if it was made before I was born?
keeping taped records of copyrighted materials is also considered piracy where I come from.
I don't know, before we joined the EU, it was legal to share, but was illegal to make money from piracy (i.e. sell pirated CDs). Now this changed, but I don't know about the legality of keeping tapes. Well, at least I don't digitize them and make a torrent out of them (if I ever get a connection with better upload speed, I might start, since the shows I record are not usually available for download on any trackers).
Until, it is a promise made by you, that you will treat copyrighted works like physical goods, that is, either buy it and own it, or don't buy it and don't own it.
And you can share physical goods. In some cases you can modify physical goods (if it's a device for example) and sell the result (I can make a business buying TVs from abroad, modifying so they work in my country and selling them). You can copy physical goods (say my friend bought an amplifier, lent it to me, I took it apart, saw how it was made and made one for myself).
Also, I can buy physical goods in other countries and bring them back (or have them shipped) home. There is no unnatural "region locking" (the worst would be that I would have to buy a frequency changer if the device only operated on 60Hz or a transformer to step down from 220V to 110V for that device). On the other hand, Valve deactivated some accounts that have bought a game in another country and brought it back home, DVDs have region codes (that, if worked as intended, would prevent me from playing a DVD that I bought in another region).
They'll still be paying for the same wires underground. It won't magically increase maintenance costs.
Bandwidth of those wires is limited. So, if I wasn't using it, they could sell my part to other customers. Also, I pay the same amount of money if I download or not, so sometimes my friends ask me to download something for them (because they have a bad connection/no connection at all) and I do it. I still pay the same amount of money...
Money is also limited, well, things money can buy are limited, well, and the prices wouldn't change just because the guy printed some money, he has to use it first (assuming he didn't announce "Hey everybody, I printed some money, adjust your prices accordingly"). Also, it means that other people can buy less using that money (even if they have the same amount of printed paper).
Copies of a movie are not limited. While you can saturate even the fattest wire (or pipe), you can always make another copy of a movie. Since you are not selling your copies (which would actually bring the price down to cost of a blank CD - finite demand, infinite supply), other people can sell their copies for the same amount of money as if piracy didn't exist.
Also, when does the artist lose money? When I start searching for a torrent? When I download said torrent? When it starts to download? When it finishes the download? When I start to watch the movie? When I finish to start the movie? When I archive it? At what point the "loss" happens?
The copyright holders should start selling a "right to download" for a price that is smaller then the price of buying it in a store (since they do not have to press the CD/DVD, ship it to the store etc). You pay the money, get the right and then download the product using bittorrent or some FTP server.
No, that is not a reason to call them "imaginary" dollars/losses. Perhaps "projected", "theoretical", or "potential" would be better substitutes. "Imaginary" is simply pollution of language to further a point.
OK, my bad. Still, there is a difference between these losses and the loss if, say, a building burned down.
But, on the same token, 1 download != 0 lost sales = $0 lost ...snip... which neglects to consider how someone with such an obvious taste for entertainment would do when they had only those artworks purchased, and nothing else to listen to or watch.
Yes, if downloads were not available, some number of people would have bought it, however, it is probably impossible to determine how many. As for your other point, I can record movies and music from TV and radio (internet or AM/FM). I would like to buy records or CDs of some songs, but they are not available any more. At best I could find a scratched record at some flea market, but that wold have bad audio quality. I sometimes search for these records though. I can find a lot of music on ebay, but not the music from my country. So I record the music from TV, paying money to VHS tape makers, I could record series/movies too.
Earlier I recorded a lot of music from radio. Also, if online piracy never happened, I wouldn't have "such an obvious taste for entertainment", I wouldn't have seen a large part of the series I have, because I wouldn't even know about them (since they were never shown on TV in my country AFAIK).
Now if piracy would just vanish, I would probably stop searching for new series/movies to watch and instead concentrate at what the TV offers. And would use more tapes, too.
Absolutely. We promise to pay copyright holders what their products are worth in exchange for their weeks/months/years of work. So far, my analogy holds.
Well, I didn't promise anything. Nobody asked me "if I make this movie and you like it, will you pay me?". Also, even if I posted on the internet saying "Even if they made movie x, I would never pay for it" there is a very good chance that the movie would still be made.
As a society, you implicitly approved that if you wanted to watch that movie, you would either pay them what they asked, or go without.
As coming from a country where piracy is above 50% I would say different. On the other hand, music CDs sell here quite well, even if software piracy is huge (well, almost everyone uses Windows and usually not the version/edition their their PC came with).
You can try to campaign to have copyright removed if you care about the $15 that much, but you might find that future movies that you want to watch and not pay for may not exist.
$15 for the disk, $15 for shipping, it adds up... Also, some people can watch series for free just because they live in a certain country...
As for new movies/series. Well, I probably wouldn't feel the loss. I could catch up on old movies and series.
And the fact that you've already worked for your employer, and he didn't pay you, shows that there is absolutely, 100% no harm in the situation whatsoever. Am I reading this right?
If I came to your house, painted it (without being asked to do so) and then asked for money, you would be right if you didn't pay me.
There are costs which are not for raw materials. It's naive and, frankly, incredibly stupid to believe that costs come simply from things you can hold in your hand.
Of course. Costs come from raw materials and services (like bandwidth).
And you can go work for another employer.
Sure. If the first employer asked me to write a program or design a webpage and then didn't pay me I would sell the program or the design to another company. I wouldn't have to make it from scratch though.
What I am different from t
And this is actually backwards:
1. I was offered a job. The employer promised to pay me before I started working, otherwise I wouldn't have.
2. I really lost those two weeks, because I worked during that time, so I couldn't work in another job (that would have paid).
If I steal a CD/DVD from a store:
1. The store paid money for that CD, they cannot sell it to others.
2. Real materials were used in making that CD. They cannot be reused to make another copy.
With piracy:
1. I did not promise to pay anybody. They still made the movie.
2. The movie has been made, if I download it or don't (and don't watch it) does not change the fact that they made it. The fact that I downloaded it, does not cost them more money, since they used no real materials to make my copy.
3. They can still sell the movie to others.
They are imaginary because you cannot be 100% certain that if there was no internet piracy, people would have bought everything they have pirated. There are a lot of reasons for it, some being:
1. I want to buy that movie, but it is not available in my country or at all (e.g. star wars holiday special).
2. I want to watch that movie, but not so much so as to pay the amount of money it costs.
3. I do not have enough money.
4. I could have copied the movie from my friend, who copied it from his friend who...
5. I could have rented the movie for less money and copied it.
It does not mean, that 1 download = 1 lost sale = $x lost. And that's why those companies lose only imaginary money. Also, it's hard to lose something you did not have before.
As for the small developers - did you really plan your business that, say, you needed to sell 100 copies, but sold 99 and went out of business. Do you know that that one guy who downloaded wasn't me (since I wouldn't have bought it anyway) or somebody like me?
People are committed to mental institutions for saying that they talk to invisible men in the sky.
Actually, no. People can talk to an invisible man in the sky and tell others about it. They will be called "religious". On the other hand, if someone claims that the invisible man in the sky answered him or initiated the conversation, then he either gets committed to a mental institution or gets followers (these two options are not mutually exclusive). Sometimes the followers wage wars against those, who do not believe the man actually got an answer for the invisible man in the sky.
And that means, that piracy does not "hurt" small developers more. If big companies "lose" millions of imaginary dollars, the small developer will "lose" tens or hundreds or thousands (depending on how small).
If your company hangs on the edge of bankruptcy because you "lost" $300 then you could go out of business even without piracy, because not all pirates would have bought your program (for example me - if I do not find it for download, I search for an alternative, sometimes because the developers want ~$1000 for a traffic shaping program - I built my router for way less and if I had $1000 I could get a better connection and not need the shaper at all).
Except that the amount of pirated copies is proportional to the amount of purchased copies. If a game or application is very popular, it will be pirated more, but more copies will be sold also, because everyone likes/wants/needs it. Some people download, some buy.
If almost nobody knows about your product or wants it (since you are a small company, you probably do not advertise much), then it stands to reason that it will sell less copies. Also, only a small number of people will download it (or it may not be available for download anywhere). I know how hard it is to find some not-so-popular application.
About RAM:
I have never had any problem with RAM voltage. I had to buy registered DDR1 for my newest PC, but that was marked on the RAM (not to mention the module looks different with the additional chips). One old PC can only support 64MB per side of the module (SDR), but for all other newer PCs I can go to a store and buy RAM knowing the type (SDR or DDR1) and the size I want to buy.
Maybe this thing with voltages is new to DDR2. I do not have a PC that uses them, so I can't say...
there's no risk of them getting it wrong and buying the wrong item.
But there is a risk that they might say that you bought a too expensive part, since there were some cheaper ones available. While the employees at my local store do not know how a SCSI 80pin68pin adapter looks like, they can give useful advice to a novice regarding which hard drive to buy and so on. Especially if I give my friend the old part.
I don't see a problem. Turn on your UPS and PC or laptop, connect to the internet (using a cell phone for example if your main connection needs 220V and you do not have a UPS or inverter), go to the website. Well, I did that when there was a power outage (I actually went to the website to find a telephone number that I could call and ask if the outage was planned or not).
Didn't check much, but it looks like Amazon is available in Germany, France and UK. No mention of my country.
For me, going to a store is faster than ordering stuff from Amazon or ebay. In the store you get the item immediately or have to wait for a day or week if they do not have it. If I buy something from ebay, I have to wait at least two weeks (if I bought it from the EU) or a month (if I bought it from the USA).
Well, when I wrote my original post, I assumed that my friend brought me the computer, I ran some tests and found out that the HDD is broken, so I can open the case and see what interface/size the drive is and tell my friend to go buy a new one.
And no, if my friend did not know how to run mhdd, I would ask him to bring the computer to me.
Placing a value on time is even harder than placing a value on gas (well, I could measure how much gas I use and multiply that by current gas price, there is no way for me to calculate how much my time is worth). Also, my friend should learn to at least buy things for himself, because that does not take a lot of knowledge in computers (go to a store, show the bad device and say that you need a new one).
Actually, when I was learning how to drive a car (to get the driver's license) I had to name some of the components - where is the engine, the spark plugs, battery and so on. They didn't ask me to fix anything, but I had to know how a spark plug looks like and what it does. Or how to check the level of oil and add some if it's too low.
Sometimes I wish that the users of computers should go through basic training, so they can fix common, but minor problems (the same difficulty as changing a tire).