If buggy whips were 100% reproducible for a near-zero cost, I suspect that even if there was a demand, the buggy-whippers would go out of business. And while you could re-use the older ones, you'd never get new styles, colors, or new and improved buggy whips, even if there was demand.
I said it was implausible. But face it. If there is no effective way to enforce copyright, then there is, effectively, no copyright.
And around here, that seems to be what people want. They don't like DRM, they don't like privacy-violating call-home solutions, they don't like litigious content owners.... Please tell me your magic solution to enforcing copyright when the three above solutions are so abhorrent to most of the group you're posting to?
Furthermore, in your "reality of electronic distribution" scenario, you say that copyright must be used in different ways. In what ways would that be, exactly? Solely for attribution? That's nearly as useful as throwing copyright away, regarding the purposes of promoting the arts.
Where's the line? You seem to think some digital copying would be ok, but we must preserve "special boxed sets". So will it be illegal to make analog copies of those and sell them? Where's the difference?
I'd suggest that he wouldn't be a hypocrit if all the proceeds of his works were used to try to change the system. Otherwise he's just waxing intellectual about the flaws in the system while extorting it for all it's worth.
Do you think a politian who wants laws requiring more fuel-efficient cars would be hypocritical for driving an H2?
Do you think a person who wants tort reform would be hypocritical if they sought $2m in punitive damages in a lawsuit?
Do you find it hypocritical to argue against the tax loophole that allows you to basically steal money from the American people in order to buy a Hummer H2 after having bought said vehicle?
*shrug*
I happen to, and if Heinlein claimed to hold those beliefs, I consider him hypocritical unless he devoted his earnings from this system to fighting it.
The catch is you can not define the problem as "How will we get the same people to write books in the future?" but instead must define the problem as "Why will people write books in the future?"
There are two main reasons I can think of that a person might write a book right now.
1) He wants to express himself.
2) He wants to make a living, or at a very minimum, some supplemental income.
No one is stopping anyone from doing #1.
For #2 to be viable, there must be some way of ensuring compensation. So I change my question. With digital releases, how can you ensure compensation without DRM?
1.) Make hardware. Make the software that goes with it. Make profit off hardware and give the software away for free or a marginally low price. Example: Apple
Apple software barely costs less than Microsoft software. Going from 10.3->10.4 is like $130. What were the additional features in that fairly minor release, again?
2.) Make software. Make your money selling support. Example: Most Linux Companies
I assume you mean that the software should be open-source, then? 'Cause Microsoft does this, only it's closed. How many of those Linux companies are in the black? I honestly don't know. What happens when someone else can sell better support? Your particular implementation of "copyright" doesn't really seem to do anything in this case.
3.) Make media. Make your money selling items related to media that you make, but not the media itself. You know like giving away your music online, but letting your fans actually buy cds and T-Shirts. Example: Indy Bands (my own label included. see link above)
Does this generally cover the cost of production + living expenses? (Again, a genuinely curious).
DRM is nothing more than a method of making people pay twice for something they already own. It does not prevent piracy.
DRM is a way of protecting the current copyright system in an age where making copies is virtually free. Furthermore, with respect to this specific article, it's not even something you've purchased. It's something you're "borrowing".
It will certainly be interesting to watch the process, one way or another.
Let's talk about a worst-case scenario, even if a fairly unlikely one:
Copyright is totally removed. Authors begin to distribute works themselves because they can't afford the middleman anymore and what's the point of putting out a bound copy when it's just going to get digitized and pirated anyway.
Authors stop being able to eat.
Only extremely popular authors are capable of making any sort of living at all, and even then, the people who are not paying for their works are making more money than they are.
Prices are at what consumers will bear. Consumers get considerably less choice in entertainment, but at least it's free.
*shrug* It's a dark, exagerated future, but it's not as unlikely as you'd think, as long as step 1 (removal of copyright) was completed.
And let's not forget what publishing companies actaually/do/ for consumers. They filter out most of the crap. Yes, they must inevitably filter out good stuff, just as they fail to filter out some crap, but overall, the people demand Brittany Spears-like records, and they receive them in abundance. And you don't see shitty fanfic authors (note: there are a very few excellent writers who write fanfic--they are the tiny minority) getting novels published and distributed. Imagine if all publishing was actually completely free, and all stores stocked every book in existence. My goodness, how would you ever find something worth reading?
You probably think I'm missing your point, which is that authors won't *choose* to take a pay cut just to provide us with digital media. I didn't miss it. But the fact is that there is demand for digital media, so some enterprising authors and publishers will begin to take advantage of it.
I understand your point. I think that few, if any authors will abandon the current model if it works for them. That means that it's largely going to be unknowns trying out the new model. It's going to be a steep uphill climb. As it is, it's incredibly difficult to filter out the cruft on the Internet. Imagine trying to find a good author in a sea of crappy fanfic, and imagine that author trying to make a living when they can't get noticed for all the noise around them?
Then I guess there's your problem. There are a/whole/ lot of people who don't think there's anything particularly wrong with the system. And there are a very few people with a whole lot of power who agree.
Frankly, I don't particularly see anything wrong with copyright. I don't see anything wrong with reasonable measures to ensure that copyrights aren't violated. I don't see anything wrong with the capitalism. And certainly, I don't see anything wrong with restricting content you aren't even buying (you're borrowing it from the library).
DRM on things you buy that unduly restrict fair use? Bad. DRM on things you have no particular claim to? No problem.
I do think that the current instant gratification fetish would render this system fairly useless (if people pay out money, they want something for it and they want it NOW). I also think that there's a lot of room for corruption of the "publisher" to cheat people out of money, even if it's just the interest they owe. I highly doubt the publisher is going to give more interest than a savings account should the work go unpublished, and even savings account interest rates are lower than the inflation rate. People will still be losing money if the author doesn't deliver, but it should be negligible in most cases.
I'm having a bit of a problem here, maybe you can help clarify a few things.
In your Spears example, you posit that someone sells their work to a distribution company, and that if it is leaked by someone within the company, they should sue that person for damages. Fine. But how does the distribution company make money? You seem to imply that copies are allowed to be made indiscriminantly (based on your "world that doesn't know copyright) statement. In order to actually profit from this model, then, you suggest that a work not be released until the full amount is recouped. Do you, then, suggest that the distribution company who bought Spears' record demand payment for the work long before anyone is actually allowed to listen to it? With your software project example, no one would receive the results of the project until a cumulative $5000 was accumulated. Do you really expect people to send you $X with no guarantee or even necessarily a liklihood that the project (or, in the case of Mrs. Spears, the CD) will ever actually be released?
As for your later suggestion, that people would still buy physical items to support the artist and for the physical representation of the work..sure they would But I suspect that the profits would be much lower--potentially low enough to eliminate the creation incentive for 99% of the works out there. I firmly believe that a large number of people don't violate copyright because they're afraid they'll get caught. If copyright was removed tomorrow, all those people would stop buying physical copies.
If you read some of my other replies, you'll see why that's a requirement. Put simply, as there is no inherent right to a digital copy, the people in the intellectual "property" creation chain (not ink makers, printers, etc. but the artists and publishers themselves) have a very real stake in maintaining the profits they make. If they can't make the same profits, it's unlikely that they'll change their distribution methods. As such, any new distribution model is going to require, at the minimum, the same amount of money they're used to making. Otherwise, they won't go for it, and being that they get to decide how their works are distributed, that particular mode of distribution simply won't happen.
As others have noted, with a book unavailable if someone else is using it, another demand is created. At our local library, books can be checked out for 3 weeks. It's not uncommon for lazy people to keep the book that long, particularly if it's something they specifically wanted to read (as opposed to the person who continuously has books checked out and basically devours them). If the library only has one copy of that book, and they all keep it out for even only two weeks, then that's 198 weeks before that last person gets to read the book. That's almost 4 years.
The demand, then, is to have the item now. Most people don't want to wait 4 years to read the latest Harry Potter book. As such, sales of the book will be higher than simply people who want to collect the series. I suspect that if everyone could legally download the book for free, there would be a measurable impact on the sales. Oh, I'm sure JK would still be Rowling in the dough (ha ha) but ultimately, she would be making less money. As such, they want to limit this effect and -- funny thing -- as copyright holders, they get to do so.
Can't pretend to know the context for that quote, but this is no more an artificial restriction on copying than copyright itself, which I assume Heinlein was a proponent of (or at least he used the system itself). It's just as illegal to make a copy of a digital work as it is to photocopy an entire book. The only reason the latter is an issue where the former rarely (if ever) was is that it's extremely cost-efficient and easy to make a digital copy, whereas making a hardcopy of a book will cost almost as much as purchasing it from the publisher.
We'd be having the same problem if mass matter-reproduction coupled with instantaneous matter transportation was easily and cheaply available. It would be just as legal or illegal to make a physical replication of that book, it would just be easier to do.
Since when has the right to a digital form of a book been a fundamental right anywhere in the world.
No author who is writing for a living is going to purposefully take a paycut in order to give you a digital copy. No editor is going to either, nor cover designers, etc. They will expect to make the same amount of money, hence my request. Describe a system where these people will make the same amount of money while allowing digital copies to exist. If no one can do this, it's unlikely that digital copies will become prevalent since, as I said, no one wants a paycut.
(Ok, Stephen King tried it. Anyone know if he considered his efforts a success?)
It's reasonable to assume that those involved in the creation of the work itself (not a physical implementation of the work) would need to receive the same net gain. This is because due to copyright laws currently enacted in the US (and with similar laws in other countries), the owner of a copyrighted work is allowed to fully control the distribution of said work, with a very few minor exceptions. As such, it's reasonable to assume that no one in the supply chain for the creation of the work itself is going to purposefully take a pay cut just to give people a digital copy of the work. You're right that it's unreasonable to expect the printing presses to make the same money, but I foolishly thought that would go without saying.
How, then, would you propose to sell "digital media"? If you don't like the per-copy scheme, describe a scheme that will work and allow all people involved to be making the same amount of money they're making now (not an unreasonable stipulation, I think).
Nah, it's definitely not a specific store in my case. It's just the odd cashier who happens to be extremely efficient. Maybe they came from somewhere where there was an Aldi's (this is a college nearly 1/4 of our population is from out of town/state).
Should be easy enough to put scanners on all the aisles (presumably multiple scanners per aisle) to check the prices for specific items. Ooh, or handheld scanners, that way they could do away with prices on the shelves altogether, which would mean people would be less likely to be turned off by high-price items (as they'll probably be too lazy to scan something they consider essential, so they won't look for cheaper alternatives).
We've already virtually eliminated that need. Around here, most grocery stores and Wal-Mart have self-checkout. It means exactly what it sounds like --you scan and bag your own items, then you pay with any method of payment that the store takes. No muss, no fuss, and people are still a bit afraid of them (or lazy, or deciding to support minimum-wage jobs by going through a manned checkout lane) so they're faster if you're even somewhat competent.
Sometimes there is one person staffing ALL the checkout lanes to make sure people aren't cheating the system (or more likely, to make sure people/think/ they're being watched). But not always.
RFID would make these systems marginally faster. In theory, with a well designed system, you wouldn't even need to take the items out of your cart. More reasonably, the items will need bagging, but you could skip the entire scanning process.
Even with staffed checkout lanes, there would be a speed increase for all but the most skilled scanners. I've seen some people who are really good at their job that can scan faster than the conveyor belt can throw items at them, but most of the time there is hunting for the barcode, trying to scan multiple times, etc. before the item hits the bag. RFID would completely negate this process, with the only delays being if an item was simply unreadable.
I like some of the other projects on the site a bit more, like the LCD Window casemod. I could see real potential for that with a touch screen and IR as a dual-head media PC. Information about what you're viewing in the actual case (along with browsable directories while you're watching something else) while the video displays on your TV.
That's known cases. The symptoms of CJD are close enough to alzheimers that some percentage of alzheimers patients could easily have had CJD and were simply never tested posthumously. Then there are people who may have contracted CJD but died before manifesting any symptoms. The numbers could easily be scarier than are reported.
2. Assuming failure was caused by dropped laptop: Minor chance that second drive would have survived when first one didn't.
Although drives from the same manufacturer tend to have similar tolerances, this doesn't necessarily hold since the drives will be placed in different locations. The bottommost drive in the fall would absorb a fair amount of the shock, meaning that there's a better than "minor" chance that the topmost drive would survive.
3. Assuming failure was caused by spilled beverage burning out the drive: Again, minor chance that second drive wouldn't have been affected as well.
Again, placement is key. If the drives are far apart on the notebook, a spill is very likely to only damage one. Of course, this scenario is more of a straw-man anyway because most case designs are such that the liquid wouldn't get to the drive. Then, the drives are such that the tiny amount of liquid that touches them won't likely cause a failure.
4. Assuming failure was caused by overheating of machine: If both drives are the same model their tolerances would similar, so again there's a minor chance the second drive would have survived.
Heat varies considerably across the laptop. The drive nearest the battery would be the most likely to fail. If they're equidistant, then yeah, you're probably right.
5. Assuming failure was due to drive just going bad: Very good chance second drive would have survived, assuming this was some kind of manufacturing defect/bad component, and not brought about by usage & environmental conditions.
Unless it's a defect in the entire line. The IBM Deathstar debacle springs to mind. In fact, in general, you'd expect drives by the same manufacturer with similar serial numbers to fail within a close amount of time to each other, assuming similar conditions. This reinforces your heat argument if they're equidistant from all sources of heat in the notebook. If they're not equidistant, though, barring a manufacturer defect that affects only a single drive in the line, then yes, you're correct here.
Of course, you're also talking about IDE RAID (presumably) which in-and-of itself has some issues. For the price, I definitely agree that a USB drive or some other backup means is preferable. What I found most interesting is the GP poster said that they had a $1900 data recovery bill, and that most people don't have access to good backup procedures. That just threw me for a loop--most people don't have $1900 to drop on data recovery. A USB drive and regular backups, even manual ones, would have been so much cheaper than that $1900. Further, I'm sure you can find decent backup solutions for less than that.
But since civil suits are based on a preponderance of evidence..... I don't think a single juror in the world, given adequate and correct information on Bittorrent and how it works, would assume that someone is collecting.torrent files based on the logs of a webserver. They're going to assume that you're using the.torrents for the intended purpose, and the MPAA doesn't have to prove that in order to win a court case (nevermind that everyone's just going to settle anyway)
Logs help them target the biggest offenders easily. Or at least, the IPs that offended the most (but with always-on connections and ISPs that don't force new IPs with each dhcp request, it amounts to the same thing).
Of course, if you got a list of movies you allegedly pirated and you knew that you hadn't pirated one, it might be possible to get the case thrown out if you got your ISP logs and saw that you weren't the leasor of that IP at that time, but more likely, they would just reopen the case and refuse to settle.
It's not stealing, no matter how much they want you to think that it is. It's copyright infringement. You did not have the RIGHT to COPY the file.
Of course, until Bittorrent, it was unreasonable to target downloaders. With Bittorrent, if you download, you also upload. What they're suing you for, then, is the uploading of the file. It just so happens that you were uploading it so you could download it (strange as that may sound).
Slashdot Mirror
If buggy whips were 100% reproducible for a near-zero cost, I suspect that even if there was a demand, the buggy-whippers would go out of business. And while you could re-use the older ones, you'd never get new styles, colors, or new and improved buggy whips, even if there was demand.
I said it was implausible. But face it. If there is no effective way to enforce copyright, then there is, effectively, no copyright.
And around here, that seems to be what people want. They don't like DRM, they don't like privacy-violating call-home solutions, they don't like litigious content owners.... Please tell me your magic solution to enforcing copyright when the three above solutions are so abhorrent to most of the group you're posting to?
Furthermore, in your "reality of electronic distribution" scenario, you say that copyright must be used in different ways. In what ways would that be, exactly? Solely for attribution? That's nearly as useful as throwing copyright away, regarding the purposes of promoting the arts.
Where's the line? You seem to think some digital copying would be ok, but we must preserve "special boxed sets". So will it be illegal to make analog copies of those and sell them? Where's the difference?
I'd suggest that he wouldn't be a hypocrit if all the proceeds of his works were used to try to change the system. Otherwise he's just waxing intellectual about the flaws in the system while extorting it for all it's worth.
Do you think a politian who wants laws requiring more fuel-efficient cars would be hypocritical for driving an H2?
Do you think a person who wants tort reform would be hypocritical if they sought $2m in punitive damages in a lawsuit?
Do you find it hypocritical to argue against the tax loophole that allows you to basically steal money from the American people in order to buy a Hummer H2 after having bought said vehicle?
*shrug*
I happen to, and if Heinlein claimed to hold those beliefs, I consider him hypocritical unless he devoted his earnings from this system to fighting it.
The catch is you can not define the problem as "How will we get the same people to write books in the future?" but instead must define the problem as "Why will people write books in the future?"
There are two main reasons I can think of that a person might write a book right now.
1) He wants to express himself.
2) He wants to make a living, or at a very minimum, some supplemental income.
No one is stopping anyone from doing #1.
For #2 to be viable, there must be some way of ensuring compensation. So I change my question. With digital releases, how can you ensure compensation without DRM?
1.) Make hardware. Make the software that goes with it. Make profit off hardware and give the software away for free or a marginally low price. Example: Apple
Apple software barely costs less than Microsoft software. Going from 10.3->10.4 is like $130. What were the additional features in that fairly minor release, again?
2.) Make software. Make your money selling support. Example: Most Linux Companies
I assume you mean that the software should be open-source, then? 'Cause Microsoft does this, only it's closed.
How many of those Linux companies are in the black? I honestly don't know.
What happens when someone else can sell better support? Your particular implementation of "copyright" doesn't really seem to do anything in this case.
3.) Make media. Make your money selling items related to media that you make, but not the media itself. You know like giving away your music online, but letting your fans actually buy cds and T-Shirts. Example: Indy Bands (my own label included. see link above)
Does this generally cover the cost of production + living expenses? (Again, a genuinely curious).
DRM is nothing more than a method of making people pay twice for something they already own. It does not prevent piracy.
DRM is a way of protecting the current copyright system in an age where making copies is virtually free. Furthermore, with respect to this specific article, it's not even something you've purchased. It's something you're "borrowing".
It will certainly be interesting to watch the process, one way or another.
/do/ for consumers. They filter out most of the crap. Yes, they must inevitably filter out good stuff, just as they fail to filter out some crap, but overall, the people demand Brittany Spears-like records, and they receive them in abundance. And you don't see shitty fanfic authors (note: there are a very few excellent writers who write fanfic--they are the tiny minority) getting novels published and distributed. Imagine if all publishing was actually completely free, and all stores stocked every book in existence. My goodness, how would you ever find something worth reading?
Let's talk about a worst-case scenario, even if a fairly unlikely one:
Copyright is totally removed. Authors begin to distribute works themselves because they can't afford the middleman anymore and what's the point of putting out a bound copy when it's just going to get digitized and pirated anyway.
Authors stop being able to eat.
Only extremely popular authors are capable of making any sort of living at all, and even then, the people who are not paying for their works are making more money than they are.
Prices are at what consumers will bear. Consumers get considerably less choice in entertainment, but at least it's free.
*shrug* It's a dark, exagerated future, but it's not as unlikely as you'd think, as long as step 1 (removal of copyright) was completed.
And let's not forget what publishing companies actaually
You probably think I'm missing your point, which is that authors won't *choose* to take a pay cut just to provide us with digital media. I didn't miss it. But the fact is that there is demand for digital media, so some enterprising authors and publishers will begin to take advantage of it.
I understand your point. I think that few, if any authors will abandon the current model if it works for them. That means that it's largely going to be unknowns trying out the new model. It's going to be a steep uphill climb. As it is, it's incredibly difficult to filter out the cruft on the Internet. Imagine trying to find a good author in a sea of crappy fanfic, and imagine that author trying to make a living when they can't get noticed for all the noise around them?
I keep hearing that, but the various entertainment industries keep making profits.
So I don't know who's wrong, them or the people who say their business model doesn't work.
But I've got a good idea.
Then I guess there's your problem. There are a /whole/ lot of people who don't think there's anything particularly wrong with the system. And there are a very few people with a whole lot of power who agree.
Frankly, I don't particularly see anything wrong with copyright. I don't see anything wrong with reasonable measures to ensure that copyrights aren't violated. I don't see anything wrong with the capitalism. And certainly, I don't see anything wrong with restricting content you aren't even buying (you're borrowing it from the library).
DRM on things you buy that unduly restrict fair use? Bad. DRM on things you have no particular claim to? No problem.
Ok, I have to admit. That's pretty cool.
I do think that the current instant gratification fetish would render this system fairly useless (if people pay out money, they want something for it and they want it NOW). I also think that there's a lot of room for corruption of the "publisher" to cheat people out of money, even if it's just the interest they owe. I highly doubt the publisher is going to give more interest than a savings account should the work go unpublished, and even savings account interest rates are lower than the inflation rate. People will still be losing money if the author doesn't deliver, but it should be negligible in most cases.
I'm having a bit of a problem here, maybe you can help clarify a few things.
In your Spears example, you posit that someone sells their work to a distribution company, and that if it is leaked by someone within the company, they should sue that person for damages. Fine. But how does the distribution company make money? You seem to imply that copies are allowed to be made indiscriminantly (based on your "world that doesn't know copyright) statement. In order to actually profit from this model, then, you suggest that a work not be released until the full amount is recouped. Do you, then, suggest that the distribution company who bought Spears' record demand payment for the work long before anyone is actually allowed to listen to it? With your software project example, no one would receive the results of the project until a cumulative $5000 was accumulated. Do you really expect people to send you $X with no guarantee or even necessarily a liklihood that the project (or, in the case of Mrs. Spears, the CD) will ever actually be released?
As for your later suggestion, that people would still buy physical items to support the artist and for the physical representation of the work..sure they would But I suspect that the profits would be much lower--potentially low enough to eliminate the creation incentive for 99% of the works out there. I firmly believe that a large number of people don't violate copyright because they're afraid they'll get caught. If copyright was removed tomorrow, all those people would stop buying physical copies.
If you read some of my other replies, you'll see why that's a requirement. Put simply, as there is no inherent right to a digital copy, the people in the intellectual "property" creation chain (not ink makers, printers, etc. but the artists and publishers themselves) have a very real stake in maintaining the profits they make. If they can't make the same profits, it's unlikely that they'll change their distribution methods. As such, any new distribution model is going to require, at the minimum, the same amount of money they're used to making. Otherwise, they won't go for it, and being that they get to decide how their works are distributed, that particular mode of distribution simply won't happen.
As others have noted, with a book unavailable if someone else is using it, another demand is created. At our local library, books can be checked out for 3 weeks. It's not uncommon for lazy people to keep the book that long, particularly if it's something they specifically wanted to read (as opposed to the person who continuously has books checked out and basically devours them). If the library only has one copy of that book, and they all keep it out for even only two weeks, then that's 198 weeks before that last person gets to read the book. That's almost 4 years.
The demand, then, is to have the item now. Most people don't want to wait 4 years to read the latest Harry Potter book. As such, sales of the book will be higher than simply people who want to collect the series. I suspect that if everyone could legally download the book for free, there would be a measurable impact on the sales. Oh, I'm sure JK would still be Rowling in the dough (ha ha) but ultimately, she would be making less money. As such, they want to limit this effect and -- funny thing -- as copyright holders, they get to do so.
Can't pretend to know the context for that quote, but this is no more an artificial restriction on copying than copyright itself, which I assume Heinlein was a proponent of (or at least he used the system itself). It's just as illegal to make a copy of a digital work as it is to photocopy an entire book. The only reason the latter is an issue where the former rarely (if ever) was is that it's extremely cost-efficient and easy to make a digital copy, whereas making a hardcopy of a book will cost almost as much as purchasing it from the publisher.
We'd be having the same problem if mass matter-reproduction coupled with instantaneous matter transportation was easily and cheaply available. It would be just as legal or illegal to make a physical replication of that book, it would just be easier to do.
Since when has the right to a digital form of a book been a fundamental right anywhere in the world.
No author who is writing for a living is going to purposefully take a paycut in order to give you a digital copy. No editor is going to either, nor cover designers, etc. They will expect to make the same amount of money, hence my request. Describe a system where these people will make the same amount of money while allowing digital copies to exist. If no one can do this, it's unlikely that digital copies will become prevalent since, as I said, no one wants a paycut.
(Ok, Stephen King tried it. Anyone know if he considered his efforts a success?)
You're right, I mis-worded things.
It's reasonable to assume that those involved in the creation of the work itself (not a physical implementation of the work) would need to receive the same net gain. This is because due to copyright laws currently enacted in the US (and with similar laws in other countries), the owner of a copyrighted work is allowed to fully control the distribution of said work, with a very few minor exceptions. As such, it's reasonable to assume that no one in the supply chain for the creation of the work itself is going to purposefully take a pay cut just to give people a digital copy of the work. You're right that it's unreasonable to expect the printing presses to make the same money, but I foolishly thought that would go without saying.
How, then, would you propose to sell "digital media"? If you don't like the per-copy scheme, describe a scheme that will work and allow all people involved to be making the same amount of money they're making now (not an unreasonable stipulation, I think).
Nah, it's definitely not a specific store in my case. It's just the odd cashier who happens to be extremely efficient. Maybe they came from somewhere where there was an Aldi's (this is a college nearly 1/4 of our population is from out of town/state).
Should be easy enough to put scanners on all the aisles (presumably multiple scanners per aisle) to check the prices for specific items. Ooh, or handheld scanners, that way they could do away with prices on the shelves altogether, which would mean people would be less likely to be turned off by high-price items (as they'll probably be too lazy to scan something they consider essential, so they won't look for cheaper alternatives).
We've already virtually eliminated that need. Around here, most grocery stores and Wal-Mart have self-checkout. It means exactly what it sounds like --you scan and bag your own items, then you pay with any method of payment that the store takes. No muss, no fuss, and people are still a bit afraid of them (or lazy, or deciding to support minimum-wage jobs by going through a manned checkout lane) so they're faster if you're even somewhat competent.
/think/ they're being watched). But not always.
Sometimes there is one person staffing ALL the checkout lanes to make sure people aren't cheating the system (or more likely, to make sure people
RFID would make these systems marginally faster. In theory, with a well designed system, you wouldn't even need to take the items out of your cart. More reasonably, the items will need bagging, but you could skip the entire scanning process.
Even with staffed checkout lanes, there would be a speed increase for all but the most skilled scanners. I've seen some people who are really good at their job that can scan faster than the conveyor belt can throw items at them, but most of the time there is hunting for the barcode, trying to scan multiple times, etc. before the item hits the bag. RFID would completely negate this process, with the only delays being if an item was simply unreadable.
I like some of the other projects on the site a bit more, like the LCD Window casemod. I could see real potential for that with a touch screen and IR as a dual-head media PC. Information about what you're viewing in the actual case (along with browsable directories while you're watching something else) while the video displays on your TV.
That's known cases.
The symptoms of CJD are close enough to alzheimers that some percentage of alzheimers patients could easily have had CJD and were simply never tested posthumously. Then there are people who may have contracted CJD but died before manifesting any symptoms. The numbers could easily be scarier than are reported.
2. Assuming failure was caused by dropped laptop: Minor chance that second drive would have survived when first one didn't.
Although drives from the same manufacturer tend to have similar tolerances, this doesn't necessarily hold since the drives will be placed in different locations. The bottommost drive in the fall would absorb a fair amount of the shock, meaning that there's a better than "minor" chance that the topmost drive would survive.
3. Assuming failure was caused by spilled beverage burning out the drive: Again, minor chance that second drive wouldn't have been affected as well.
Again, placement is key. If the drives are far apart on the notebook, a spill is very likely to only damage one. Of course, this scenario is more of a straw-man anyway because most case designs are such that the liquid wouldn't get to the drive. Then, the drives are such that the tiny amount of liquid that touches them won't likely cause a failure.
4. Assuming failure was caused by overheating of machine: If both drives are the same model their tolerances would similar, so again there's a minor chance the second drive would have survived.
Heat varies considerably across the laptop. The drive nearest the battery would be the most likely to fail. If they're equidistant, then yeah, you're probably right.
5. Assuming failure was due to drive just going bad: Very good chance second drive would have survived, assuming this was some kind of manufacturing defect/bad component, and not brought about by usage & environmental conditions.
Unless it's a defect in the entire line. The IBM Deathstar debacle springs to mind. In fact, in general, you'd expect drives by the same manufacturer with similar serial numbers to fail within a close amount of time to each other, assuming similar conditions. This reinforces your heat argument if they're equidistant from all sources of heat in the notebook. If they're not equidistant, though, barring a manufacturer defect that affects only a single drive in the line, then yes, you're correct here.
Of course, you're also talking about IDE RAID (presumably) which in-and-of itself has some issues. For the price, I definitely agree that a USB drive or some other backup means is preferable. What I found most interesting is the GP poster said that they had a $1900 data recovery bill, and that most people don't have access to good backup procedures. That just threw me for a loop--most people don't have $1900 to drop on data recovery. A USB drive and regular backups, even manual ones, would have been so much cheaper than that $1900. Further, I'm sure you can find decent backup solutions for less than that.
But since civil suits are based on a preponderance of evidence..... I don't think a single juror in the world, given adequate and correct information on Bittorrent and how it works, would assume that someone is collecting .torrent files based on the logs of a webserver. They're going to assume that you're using the .torrents for the intended purpose, and the MPAA doesn't have to prove that in order to win a court case (nevermind that everyone's just going to settle anyway)
Logs help them target the biggest offenders easily. Or at least, the IPs that offended the most (but with always-on connections and ISPs that don't force new IPs with each dhcp request, it amounts to the same thing).
Of course, if you got a list of movies you allegedly pirated and you knew that you hadn't pirated one, it might be possible to get the case thrown out if you got your ISP logs and saw that you weren't the leasor of that IP at that time, but more likely, they would just reopen the case and refuse to settle.
It's not stealing, no matter how much they want you to think that it is. It's copyright infringement. You did not have the RIGHT to COPY the file.
Of course, until Bittorrent, it was unreasonable to target downloaders. With Bittorrent, if you download, you also upload. What they're suing you for, then, is the uploading of the file. It just so happens that you were uploading it so you could download it (strange as that may sound).