As long as it is the content distributors making the devices, this is a problem.
What's needed is for a company that focuses on making hardware and software to make such a box that incorporates a DRM that the content distributors can trust. Decrypting and decoding done in a hardware chip could accomplish that. Then they can get a device key that would enable decrypting the key that comes with the content package. There are other ways to do this, such as the content distributor encrypting the content package key with the single device unique public key (every unit has a different one, so the user has to send it to the content distributor as part of the purchase).
All this can be done without the OS itself ever handling any decrypted content. So it would be safe to not only run Linux, but even let users load their own custom OS (not necessarily Linux... NetBSD might be fun, too). The DRM application would simply feed the keys into the hardware chip, and if the response to that is positive, feed the encrypted A/V stream into the hardware chip.
To be truly open, this device needs to also be able to handle non-DRM content. When in the non-DRM mode the hardware chip would not be doing any decryption. It would only be doing codec decoding. That way you can play your own movies and music, too. In the non-DRM mode, all outputs need to work (DRM protected content may not allow the analog output to work).
A user loadable OS would promote innovation. Geeks can experiment with new ideas. The manufacturer could then adopt them when it's done with GPL software such as Linux, if the creators publish it (since GPL means they have to provide source).
Really good hardware will include algorithms to decode all the major proprietary and non-proprietary formats, including DIRAC, OGG {Theora,Vorbis}, FLAC, MP3, MPEG2, MPEG4, H.264, DVB-{C,S,T}, ATSC, and anything else I didn't think of (there are too many minor ones). The box should also include Firewire {400,800}, USB, and eSATA-II jacks (all with support for flash sticks, hard drives, optical drives, cameras, camcorders, and phones), along with an RJ-45 ethernet 10/100/1000, an SMA wireless antenna jack (B/G/etc), dual antenna jack with built in DVB/ATSC/QAM tuner, cable-card slot, and an RJ-11 phone jack with a modem to dial up to buy authentication keys for those without broadband. The best box will have them all. Better boxes would at least allow all of them as options.
The first hardware manufacturer to do this and make sure it's fully open source, including the driver that passes the key package and content streams to the decoder hardware (the sealed part), would get a LOT of free publicity by the open source community raves. Although a lot of people do hate DRM, a market in transient products (e.g. movie rentals) would not function very well without it. By including such DRM capability, the manufacturer that makes such a device would have market potential for it well beyond just hackers. That would mean lower mass production pricing.
The movie distribution services could arrange to develop their own DRM, or choose some other DRM besides the one from Redmond. But corporate executives tend to no like that idea. They just want to buy it from some other corporation. It's that "in the same bed" thing.
I think the main difference between experienced an not is a better understanding of people.
...
What do you think is the hardest thing about programming? If they say algorithms, beginner. If they say people, expert.
Which to a large degree means better understanding of manangement, since management is usually the channel of the requirement, even if there are other people hidden from view that will be using the application (staff in another department, or customers). And management does the hiring. So anyone wanting to spell this out needs to spin it positively ("translating people-driven business models into proper data schemas and user interfaces") rather than negatively ("trying to figure out what management really wants").
Why is COBOL a tag for this Ask Slashdot? Most older technology workers do keep up their skills and can do newer technologies while including the wisdom of experience applying technology to the application and business. And some of us never did COBOL.
One possible legal risk in performing this vague takedown is that it would establish a precedent specific to this website that the site operator makes a judgment about content of each user submission. This could have the effect of nullifying the protections of the DMCA for the website (a provider with respect to user submissions) with regard to future postings under the expectation that the website operator is making decisions of what is, or is not, posted. Normally, the DMCA protects internet providers (such as a user provided content website) from liability by providing them with a safe harbor in the form of the takedown process. If a copyright owner identifies content that infringes on his rights, the provider avoids liability by removing the content per the DMCA requirements.
What Toyota is effectively asking DesktopNexus to do is to give up the safe harbor and to make decisions about what is, or is not, a copyright violation. Instead, the decision of what images are actual infringements should be made by Toyota itself (or its lawyers). Then if Toyota makes the decisions incorrectly, Toyota becomes liable (with respect to the user whose posting was removed).
My guess here is that Toyota's lawyers know that many, maybe most, and perhaps all, of these images do not actually cause them any harm and are not genuine infringements. But they are taking this approach as a means to shed any liability for takedowns they know would be improper and cause them legal headaches.
As much as we hate the DMCA takedown provisions, it does serve the useful purpose of providing a safe harbor for providers like web site operators (and the more general web hosting providers). Although the procedures for takedown are rather draconian (for example, even if the user claims he has permission from the real copyright owner, which may even be himself, the takedown stays in force for at least 2 weeks), it is an essential part of providing the safe harbor. It is essential to protect this safe harbor to avoid the even more draconian situation where everything anyone puts up has to be thoroughly vetted in advance with the associated extreme costs. What is needed to fix the DMCA is to tweak the procedures (shorten the mandatory time frame and provide for some stiff penalties for inappropriate takedowns).
(A) To be effective under this subsection, a notification of claimed infringement must be a written communication provided to the designated agent of a service provider that includes substantially the following:
(i) A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
(ii) Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that site.
(iii) Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material.
(iv) Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address at which the complaining party may be contacted.
(v) A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
It is FAR less costly to ignore DMCA takedowns and let the burden of proof remain with the plaintiff than to blindly obey requests and make it the burden of the recipient.
Ignoring a properly formed DMCA takedown request means you lose the ISP safe harbor that ISPs (including websites hosting user postings like pictures). That's a HUGE gamble. The risks include liability for any and all damages, as well as the legal fees. And while it is unlikely Toyota has much damage, if any, for the pictures on Nexus, their lawyers could potentially spin this any way they want. And if Nexus doesn't also hire high priced lawyers to argue against these spinnings, they'd lose by default and the court would end up ordering a judgement against them by however much Toyota demanded whether it was real or not.
And that's what makes the legal system in this country so screwed up. Plaintiffs can make any crazy demand they want and the courts are not generally even allowed to consider if those demands are valid or warranted unless the defendant argues against those demands.
The big question in this case is if the takedown is properly formed. The argument is that without specific references it is not. The 2nd part of the question is whether Nexus can afford to deal with the fallout of arguing that the takedown request is not properly formed.
This is one of the things wrong with the DMCA. Had it required a judge to sign off on it, issues like this might not be happening.
What you describe is something that existed in copyright law even before the DMCA. If you are the one making the decision about what to put up, then you are responsible for making sure you don't put up anything that infringes on any copyright. While the DMCA can be applied even to such cases, it doesn't even have to. The copyright owner can use the traditional legal methods against you.
What this part of the DMCA is for is to deal with cases where the web site does NOT make the decisions. When user postings are involved, the DMCA included a provision to protect internet access providers (and this includes web sites hosting user submitted material, not just an ISP running a hosting service for user web sites)... provided the ISP does certain things spelled out in the law to gain this safe harbor (register their agent, do the takedown, etc). As long as the ISP does these things, the DMCA protects them from liability.
So if you as a webmaster put up copyrighted content, the ISP hosting your website would be protected if they follow the DMCA, but you would not be protected. The copyright owner could still pursue you for the past damages even if the site stays down. Having it taken down may be enough to make many copyright owners happy enough not to pursue you, but that option is open to them.
... if Toyota sues Nexus and Nexus hires some high priced lawyers to fight against Toyota's high priced lawyers. But this is a case of legal bullying because Nexus cannot afford such lawyers.
Businesses like Headline News don't cover "little things" like this due to the risk of losing advertising. It would have to actually go to court for a news media like that to gain any interest. One possible exception would be if we managed to trigger a widespread public boycott of Toyota, like pickets in front of every Toyota dealer in the country on the same day.
... it is not binding on the manufacturer, since the car dealer is not an agent of the manufacturer with respect to anything other than what the relation between the manufacturer and dealer spells out. That relationship won't include any rights to contract away the right the manufacturer has. While there are potential arguments against the manufacturer claiming a copyright ownership of any pictures taken of a sold car, this kind of contract is not the kind of thing that would work that way.
Now if you could get the manufacturer to agree, that would be something else. My bet is even in an economy like this, that would never happen.
DC at these higher voltages (340V to 500V) is more difficult to work with than the corresponding AC. As a result, the initial installation costs, and some maintenance costs, are higher. For example, a circuit breaker that can safely shut off a short circuit fault current at 120V AC is more limited at DC. The maximum voltage they are rated for in DC is 48V. Breakers for higher AC voltages can do relatively higher DC voltages. But you'll need breakers of a class for well over 1000V AC in order for them to be able to handle 500V DC. It is harder to extinguish an arc in DC because there is no zero crossover times that happen at 100 or 120 times a second for AC.
The higher voltage AC needs to be considered at least as a reference point. Then if the savings the higher voltage DC offers (such as simpler PSUs) can exceed the extra costs involved of HVDC distribution, it could be viable. Otherwise I suggest someone putting in a large data center in North America special order their power at the 416Y/240 service voltage (uncommon, but doable with 3x 240V transformers), and just plug each computer into a 240V circuit (1 hot, 1 neutral, 1 ground) much like already done in Europe (except in North America it will be 60 Hz which is irrelevant to switching mode PSUs).
That paper was written by the CTO of APC. And yet, APC won't actually manufacture any UPS or surge protection devices that function correctly on the 240V single phase electrical system in North America. Lots of people could change even their small home computer systems, as well as the computer rooms of small businesses (a great many of which do not get any three phase power, and most that do get less than 240V) in the USA. Their competition won't manufacture these products, either. Chicken. Egg. I guess the only business they want are the giant data centers and they don't give a damn about power efficiency in many tens of millions of homes and small businesses.
The North American single phase power system is a dual-voltage system. There are 2 hot "phases" that are 120V relative to neutral/ground of opposing polarity (180 degrees). Between them it's 240V. This is unlike the electrical system in most of Europe, UK, Australia, India, etc., in which single phase power is around 230V relative to neutral/ground. This difference requires a different UPS design if a bypass relay is included (though a continuous online dual conversion type without a bypass relay could convert either electrical system to DC and then convert the DC back to one of the systems without problems). Surge protectors also have an issue because the MOVs between hot and ground (the neutral won't be used) need to be the type for 120V or they won't provide as good protection.
Disabling spindown, by whatever means, defeats the purpose and the drive overheats. Having to execute a command to spin back up isn't viable unless you can teach the kernel to do it when it next needs to use the drive after it spins down. Neither of these issues is a problem for my 5 Western Digital drives. Seagate should just fix their firmware.
... so I don't buy stuff made by Seagate, anymore.
One might expect this issue would be management just not wanting to pay extra for their support people to be trained in how to help Linux users (although what Linux users really want is something that just does the right thing like other hard drive makers are able to do).
Their older external drives they marketed as "push button" series in the gray and black enclosure work just fine. But the newer models freeze up a lot. It appears they don't handle the USB commands consistently when the drive spins down. The next command then gets an error instead of spinning the drive back up. Once it has spun down, the only way to get it to spin back up is power cycle it. But that messes up a mounted filesystem. One workaround is to hit it about every 20 or 30 seconds (some drives spin down after 1 minute of idle) with a direct (bypass cache) read command to keep it from spinning down. But then the drive gets rather hot (and for the USB power ones it can run down a laptop faster).
So this is some kind of engineering problem, probably in their firmware. But there is still a real possibility that it is management interference in the engineering design process. Or it may be some fundamental issue with their engineering development process.
That's why we also need competition in internet access services. And I don't mean just a 2nd provider. We need enough providers to be sure at least one will be innovative in a technology way (not just innovative in a marketing way). We need enough providers to be sure at least one will do things right. I believe that means we need at least 6 such providers. Unfortunately, that is not a practical number of infrastructure overbuilds. So we need some kind of shared, neutral, "last mile" facility that all providers can use. And that should be individual fiber all the way from the central office to the home (or business).
I usually see about a 30% to 40% failure rate (immediate ability to read back) on CD-Rs. DVD+Rs are doing much better, at less than 3% failure rate. Just a couple years ago that failure rate for DVD+Rs was less than 1% (and back then we were recording on the order of 60 to 80 per day).
So far, I've had ZERO failure for flash memory technology in USB, CF, and SDHC forms. But I haven't done very many (about 2 dozen) of those. And I don't know how well they work leaving them just sitting for 10 years. OTOH, I do see failure rates going high for leaving hard drives just sitting, as well as tape (which I've long abandoned).
BTW, if those drives with the 5-year warranty die and become unreadable in 4.9 years, you get new drives. You don't get your data back.
First CD and DVD, including BlueRay, HD, are very different. The CD hardware layer is hugely redundant with each 8-bit byte being written as a 14-bit forward ECC block and each 2048 bit sector is protected by a Cross-interleaved Reed-Solomon code in 304/2048 bits ie hugely redundant. See the Sony/Philips rainbow books.
And today's CD-R manufacturers take advantage of that error recovery by making the cheapest CD-Rs they possibly can. Likely, there are already many errors right after writing, that are fully correctable. But in the future, or even with very little damage, the errors can become gross enough to not be recoverable.
Thus unreadability means gross damage, dye decay, scratches or thick dirt. Physical scratches/dirt can often be recovered with very fine metal polish and wash. DVDs are _much_ more iffy. A few readers let you read all the 2352 mode 2 data bits of a data CD but most dont and you cannot detect 14 2 8 bit correction which is the first indication of the dye degrading. If you store the CDs in the dark, in scratch resistant envelopes in a strong box you have a good chance of 20+ years. I wrote the one of the first Philips writer drivers and have CDs that old.
CD-Rs of many years ago were actually of better quality. Less was known about things like consistency of manufacturing, and the market was less competitive on price. So they made the CD-Rs of better quality, at a higher cost. I remember buying a box of 10 CD-Rs for $60. What I can get today is a box of 10 CD-Rs for under or close to one dollar. But they will be junk. There's very little dye, and a cheaper type, resulting in lower contrast, and thus more likely to have errors. Manufacturers are under cost pressure in today's very competitive market to go as cheap as possible. Why buy 10 barrels of dye for a production run when you can get by with just 3 given that you now have the technology to spread it very thin and uniformly (which was not so perfected in the early years of CD-Rs).
So those old CDs that you have... copy them verbatim to one of today's new blanks. See which one still works in 10 years even under ideal storage conditions. I bet your 30 year old ones will beat the 10 year old ones.
Otherwise you are down to replication and data washing, but dont throw the washed CDs out!
I don't know what to recommend for the future. I've had hard drives die just because I let them sit on a shelf for a few years, though my oldest 170 MB drive... yes MB... still worked a couple years ago when I tried it. Several middle era (4GB to 30GB) drives have died from non-use.
I'm hoping flash memory (USB keys, SDHC cards, etc) will work better. But it will still be a while to see for sure. They are also expensive, although I worry even these are doomed to the fate of CD-Rs... that when they become dirty cheap, that's what they will be worth.
If the amount of data for long term retention is small, I'd recommend combination storage methods, using CD-R, DVD+/-R, flash keys/cards, and hard drives (perhaps external ones), and checking/exercising/duplicating them yearly. If the amount of data is large, some compromises will be needed.
I have sat on my USB keys a few times (in my back pocket) and they have never broken. I might try that on an SD card some day. I suspect they could more easily break than a USB key, but still less easily than a CD-R or DVD+/-R.
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As long as it is the content distributors making the devices, this is a problem.
What's needed is for a company that focuses on making hardware and software to make such a box that incorporates a DRM that the content distributors can trust. Decrypting and decoding done in a hardware chip could accomplish that. Then they can get a device key that would enable decrypting the key that comes with the content package. There are other ways to do this, such as the content distributor encrypting the content package key with the single device unique public key (every unit has a different one, so the user has to send it to the content distributor as part of the purchase).
All this can be done without the OS itself ever handling any decrypted content. So it would be safe to not only run Linux, but even let users load their own custom OS (not necessarily Linux ... NetBSD might be fun, too). The DRM application would simply feed the keys into the hardware chip, and if the response to that is positive, feed the encrypted A/V stream into the hardware chip.
To be truly open, this device needs to also be able to handle non-DRM content. When in the non-DRM mode the hardware chip would not be doing any decryption. It would only be doing codec decoding. That way you can play your own movies and music, too. In the non-DRM mode, all outputs need to work (DRM protected content may not allow the analog output to work).
A user loadable OS would promote innovation. Geeks can experiment with new ideas. The manufacturer could then adopt them when it's done with GPL software such as Linux, if the creators publish it (since GPL means they have to provide source).
Really good hardware will include algorithms to decode all the major proprietary and non-proprietary formats, including DIRAC, OGG {Theora,Vorbis}, FLAC, MP3, MPEG2, MPEG4, H.264, DVB-{C,S,T}, ATSC, and anything else I didn't think of (there are too many minor ones). The box should also include Firewire {400,800}, USB, and eSATA-II jacks (all with support for flash sticks, hard drives, optical drives, cameras, camcorders, and phones), along with an RJ-45 ethernet 10/100/1000, an SMA wireless antenna jack (B/G/etc), dual antenna jack with built in DVB/ATSC/QAM tuner, cable-card slot, and an RJ-11 phone jack with a modem to dial up to buy authentication keys for those without broadband. The best box will have them all. Better boxes would at least allow all of them as options.
The first hardware manufacturer to do this and make sure it's fully open source, including the driver that passes the key package and content streams to the decoder hardware (the sealed part), would get a LOT of free publicity by the open source community raves. Although a lot of people do hate DRM, a market in transient products (e.g. movie rentals) would not function very well without it. By including such DRM capability, the manufacturer that makes such a device would have market potential for it well beyond just hackers. That would mean lower mass production pricing.
The movie distribution services could arrange to develop their own DRM, or choose some other DRM besides the one from Redmond. But corporate executives tend to no like that idea. They just want to buy it from some other corporation. It's that "in the same bed" thing.
So find a forum somewhere else that can be used for all the legal/moral/ethical/boycott/etc issues. If there isn't one, make one (rent a server).
I think the main difference between experienced an not is a better understanding of people.
...
What do you think is the hardest thing about programming? If they say algorithms, beginner. If they say people, expert.
Which to a large degree means better understanding of manangement, since management is usually the channel of the requirement, even if there are other people hidden from view that will be using the application (staff in another department, or customers). And management does the hiring. So anyone wanting to spell this out needs to spin it positively ("translating people-driven business models into proper data schemas and user interfaces") rather than negatively ("trying to figure out what management really wants").
Why is COBOL a tag for this Ask Slashdot? Most older technology workers do keep up their skills and can do newer technologies while including the wisdom of experience applying technology to the application and business. And some of us never did COBOL.
... and celebrate the departure of our former spammer overlords. It is a small incremental improvement, but an improvement none the less.
One possible legal risk in performing this vague takedown is that it would establish a precedent specific to this website that the site operator makes a judgment about content of each user submission. This could have the effect of nullifying the protections of the DMCA for the website (a provider with respect to user submissions) with regard to future postings under the expectation that the website operator is making decisions of what is, or is not, posted. Normally, the DMCA protects internet providers (such as a user provided content website) from liability by providing them with a safe harbor in the form of the takedown process. If a copyright owner identifies content that infringes on his rights, the provider avoids liability by removing the content per the DMCA requirements.
What Toyota is effectively asking DesktopNexus to do is to give up the safe harbor and to make decisions about what is, or is not, a copyright violation. Instead, the decision of what images are actual infringements should be made by Toyota itself (or its lawyers). Then if Toyota makes the decisions incorrectly, Toyota becomes liable (with respect to the user whose posting was removed).
My guess here is that Toyota's lawyers know that many, maybe most, and perhaps all, of these images do not actually cause them any harm and are not genuine infringements. But they are taking this approach as a means to shed any liability for takedowns they know would be improper and cause them legal headaches.
As much as we hate the DMCA takedown provisions, it does serve the useful purpose of providing a safe harbor for providers like web site operators (and the more general web hosting providers). Although the procedures for takedown are rather draconian (for example, even if the user claims he has permission from the real copyright owner, which may even be himself, the takedown stays in force for at least 2 weeks), it is an essential part of providing the safe harbor. It is essential to protect this safe harbor to avoid the even more draconian situation where everything anyone puts up has to be thoroughly vetted in advance with the associated extreme costs. What is needed to fix the DMCA is to tweak the procedures (shorten the mandatory time frame and provide for some stiff penalties for inappropriate takedowns).
The DMCA does include this:
It is FAR less costly to ignore DMCA takedowns and let the burden of proof remain with the plaintiff than to blindly obey requests and make it the burden of the recipient.
Ignoring a properly formed DMCA takedown request means you lose the ISP safe harbor that ISPs (including websites hosting user postings like pictures). That's a HUGE gamble. The risks include liability for any and all damages, as well as the legal fees. And while it is unlikely Toyota has much damage, if any, for the pictures on Nexus, their lawyers could potentially spin this any way they want. And if Nexus doesn't also hire high priced lawyers to argue against these spinnings, they'd lose by default and the court would end up ordering a judgement against them by however much Toyota demanded whether it was real or not.
And that's what makes the legal system in this country so screwed up. Plaintiffs can make any crazy demand they want and the courts are not generally even allowed to consider if those demands are valid or warranted unless the defendant argues against those demands.
The big question in this case is if the takedown is properly formed. The argument is that without specific references it is not. The 2nd part of the question is whether Nexus can afford to deal with the fallout of arguing that the takedown request is not properly formed.
This is one of the things wrong with the DMCA. Had it required a judge to sign off on it, issues like this might not be happening.
What you describe is something that existed in copyright law even before the DMCA. If you are the one making the decision about what to put up, then you are responsible for making sure you don't put up anything that infringes on any copyright. While the DMCA can be applied even to such cases, it doesn't even have to. The copyright owner can use the traditional legal methods against you.
What this part of the DMCA is for is to deal with cases where the web site does NOT make the decisions. When user postings are involved, the DMCA included a provision to protect internet access providers (and this includes web sites hosting user submitted material, not just an ISP running a hosting service for user web sites) ... provided the ISP does certain things spelled out in the law to gain this safe harbor (register their agent, do the takedown, etc). As long as the ISP does these things, the DMCA protects them from liability.
So if you as a webmaster put up copyrighted content, the ISP hosting your website would be protected if they follow the DMCA, but you would not be protected. The copyright owner could still pursue you for the past damages even if the site stays down. Having it taken down may be enough to make many copyright owners happy enough not to pursue you, but that option is open to them.
... if Toyota sues Nexus and Nexus hires some high priced lawyers to fight against Toyota's high priced lawyers. But this is a case of legal bullying because Nexus cannot afford such lawyers.
Businesses like Headline News don't cover "little things" like this due to the risk of losing advertising. It would have to actually go to court for a news media like that to gain any interest. One possible exception would be if we managed to trigger a widespread public boycott of Toyota, like pickets in front of every Toyota dealer in the country on the same day.
... it is not binding on the manufacturer, since the car dealer is not an agent of the manufacturer with respect to anything other than what the relation between the manufacturer and dealer spells out. That relationship won't include any rights to contract away the right the manufacturer has. While there are potential arguments against the manufacturer claiming a copyright ownership of any pictures taken of a sold car, this kind of contract is not the kind of thing that would work that way.
Now if you could get the manufacturer to agree, that would be something else. My bet is even in an economy like this, that would never happen.
... after the picture owners refute the takedown, per the DMCA.
DC at these higher voltages (340V to 500V) is more difficult to work with than the corresponding AC. As a result, the initial installation costs, and some maintenance costs, are higher. For example, a circuit breaker that can safely shut off a short circuit fault current at 120V AC is more limited at DC. The maximum voltage they are rated for in DC is 48V. Breakers for higher AC voltages can do relatively higher DC voltages. But you'll need breakers of a class for well over 1000V AC in order for them to be able to handle 500V DC. It is harder to extinguish an arc in DC because there is no zero crossover times that happen at 100 or 120 times a second for AC.
The higher voltage AC needs to be considered at least as a reference point. Then if the savings the higher voltage DC offers (such as simpler PSUs) can exceed the extra costs involved of HVDC distribution, it could be viable. Otherwise I suggest someone putting in a large data center in North America special order their power at the 416Y/240 service voltage (uncommon, but doable with 3x 240V transformers), and just plug each computer into a 240V circuit (1 hot, 1 neutral, 1 ground) much like already done in Europe (except in North America it will be 60 Hz which is irrelevant to switching mode PSUs).
That paper was written by the CTO of APC. And yet, APC won't actually manufacture any UPS or surge protection devices that function correctly on the 240V single phase electrical system in North America. Lots of people could change even their small home computer systems, as well as the computer rooms of small businesses (a great many of which do not get any three phase power, and most that do get less than 240V) in the USA. Their competition won't manufacture these products, either. Chicken. Egg. I guess the only business they want are the giant data centers and they don't give a damn about power efficiency in many tens of millions of homes and small businesses.
The North American single phase power system is a dual-voltage system. There are 2 hot "phases" that are 120V relative to neutral/ground of opposing polarity (180 degrees). Between them it's 240V. This is unlike the electrical system in most of Europe, UK, Australia, India, etc., in which single phase power is around 230V relative to neutral/ground. This difference requires a different UPS design if a bypass relay is included (though a continuous online dual conversion type without a bypass relay could convert either electrical system to DC and then convert the DC back to one of the systems without problems). Surge protectors also have an issue because the MOVs between hot and ground (the neutral won't be used) need to be the type for 120V or they won't provide as good protection.
Disabling spindown, by whatever means, defeats the purpose and the drive overheats. Having to execute a command to spin back up isn't viable unless you can teach the kernel to do it when it next needs to use the drive after it spins down. Neither of these issues is a problem for my 5 Western Digital drives. Seagate should just fix their firmware.
... so I don't buy stuff made by Seagate, anymore.
One might expect this issue would be management just not wanting to pay extra for their support people to be trained in how to help Linux users (although what Linux users really want is something that just does the right thing like other hard drive makers are able to do).
Their older external drives they marketed as "push button" series in the gray and black enclosure work just fine. But the newer models freeze up a lot. It appears they don't handle the USB commands consistently when the drive spins down. The next command then gets an error instead of spinning the drive back up. Once it has spun down, the only way to get it to spin back up is power cycle it. But that messes up a mounted filesystem. One workaround is to hit it about every 20 or 30 seconds (some drives spin down after 1 minute of idle) with a direct (bypass cache) read command to keep it from spinning down. But then the drive gets rather hot (and for the USB power ones it can run down a laptop faster).
So this is some kind of engineering problem, probably in their firmware. But there is still a real possibility that it is management interference in the engineering design process. Or it may be some fundamental issue with their engineering development process.
No mention of what browser you are using? Something makes me think it's one that would require lots of emulation to get it to run on my system.
... XP?
That's why we also need competition in internet access services. And I don't mean just a 2nd provider. We need enough providers to be sure at least one will be innovative in a technology way (not just innovative in a marketing way). We need enough providers to be sure at least one will do things right. I believe that means we need at least 6 such providers. Unfortunately, that is not a practical number of infrastructure overbuilds. So we need some kind of shared, neutral, "last mile" facility that all providers can use. And that should be individual fiber all the way from the central office to the home (or business).
Do I need a larger hard drive?
... so we can easily see when a real job ever gets posted.
I usually see about a 30% to 40% failure rate (immediate ability to read back) on CD-Rs. DVD+Rs are doing much better, at less than 3% failure rate. Just a couple years ago that failure rate for DVD+Rs was less than 1% (and back then we were recording on the order of 60 to 80 per day).
So far, I've had ZERO failure for flash memory technology in USB, CF, and SDHC forms. But I haven't done very many (about 2 dozen) of those. And I don't know how well they work leaving them just sitting for 10 years. OTOH, I do see failure rates going high for leaving hard drives just sitting, as well as tape (which I've long abandoned).
BTW, if those drives with the 5-year warranty die and become unreadable in 4.9 years, you get new drives. You don't get your data back.
First CD and DVD, including BlueRay, HD, are very different. The CD hardware layer is hugely redundant with each 8-bit byte being written as a 14-bit forward ECC block and each 2048 bit sector is protected by a Cross-interleaved Reed-Solomon code in 304/2048 bits ie hugely redundant. See the Sony/Philips rainbow books.
And today's CD-R manufacturers take advantage of that error recovery by making the cheapest CD-Rs they possibly can. Likely, there are already many errors right after writing, that are fully correctable. But in the future, or even with very little damage, the errors can become gross enough to not be recoverable.
Thus unreadability means gross damage, dye decay, scratches or thick dirt. Physical scratches/dirt can often be recovered with very fine metal polish and wash. DVDs are _much_ more iffy. A few readers let you read all the 2352 mode 2 data bits of a data CD but most dont and you cannot detect 14 2 8 bit correction which is the first indication of the dye degrading. If you store the CDs in the dark, in scratch resistant envelopes in a strong box you have a good chance of 20+ years. I wrote the one of the first Philips writer drivers and have CDs that old.
CD-Rs of many years ago were actually of better quality. Less was known about things like consistency of manufacturing, and the market was less competitive on price. So they made the CD-Rs of better quality, at a higher cost. I remember buying a box of 10 CD-Rs for $60. What I can get today is a box of 10 CD-Rs for under or close to one dollar. But they will be junk. There's very little dye, and a cheaper type, resulting in lower contrast, and thus more likely to have errors. Manufacturers are under cost pressure in today's very competitive market to go as cheap as possible. Why buy 10 barrels of dye for a production run when you can get by with just 3 given that you now have the technology to spread it very thin and uniformly (which was not so perfected in the early years of CD-Rs).
So those old CDs that you have ... copy them verbatim to one of today's new blanks. See which one still works in 10 years even under ideal storage conditions. I bet your 30 year old ones will beat the 10 year old ones.
Otherwise you are down to replication and data washing, but dont throw the washed CDs out!
I don't know what to recommend for the future. I've had hard drives die just because I let them sit on a shelf for a few years, though my oldest 170 MB drive ... yes MB ... still worked a couple years ago when I tried it. Several middle era (4GB to 30GB) drives have died from non-use.
I'm hoping flash memory (USB keys, SDHC cards, etc) will work better. But it will still be a while to see for sure. They are also expensive, although I worry even these are doomed to the fate of CD-Rs ... that when they become dirty cheap, that's what they will be worth.
If the amount of data for long term retention is small, I'd recommend combination storage methods, using CD-R, DVD+/-R, flash keys/cards, and hard drives (perhaps external ones), and checking/exercising/duplicating them yearly. If the amount of data is large, some compromises will be needed.
... and easily lost or pilfered. CDs and DVDs are larger and not so easy.
I have sat on my USB keys a few times (in my back pocket) and they have never broken. I might try that on an SD card some day. I suspect they could more easily break than a USB key, but still less easily than a CD-R or DVD+/-R.