Yes, you're dead right, and that's why you wouldn't have to sell the gun. You could similarly rely on the defence of self defence to not sell the gun (since it covers defending others). If you sell the gun, someone is likely to die, so your violation of the law by not selling the gun is justified, and you couldn't be punished.
Of course, as said beforehand, as a matter of practicality I could so see some litigious moron get refused a gun because they wanted to kill their husband, then go off and file suit claiming it was because they were black/asian/female/poor/gay/whatever.
Well, it is true that they're hashes, not encryption methods but they can be used in a quasi-encryption manner. In particular, when it comes to hashing passwords to store an "encrypted" password, it is to a large extent the same as trying to break a known encrypted document where the key is the password. In fact, that's exactly how older unices store passwords, DES encrypting a blank document with the password as a key. So while it's true that MD5 isn't an encryption method, for the purposes of password authentication is it practically identical.
That's correct, but there's no prohibition (generally at least) against reporting factually about what happened in court. Indeed, such reporting is generally given very generous protection by the courts. So by simply framing the newspaper report as "it has been said in documents filed in court that...". In doing so, the newspaper aren't claiming that the facts are true, only making the completely true factual statement that a certain thing was said or submitted in court.
Absolutely right, all of those things are perfectly open to debate. I'm not saying I've proven piracy doesn't help sales (though I very much doubt it does), I'm only saying that the pro-p2p submitter's claims are flawed, being based on incorrect logic.
Personally, I don't really think harm matters, I just think that morally a copyright holder, who has gone to the bother of creating music or other intellectual property (or paid someone else to make it) should have the right to limit the distribution of that work, since were it not for them it wouldn't exist. I don't really see why harm is essential.
If I make an incredibly beautiful painting, and decide that while I'm willing to show it to people, I absolutely can't bear to have photos taken of it (for whatever reason, maybe I'm just an eccentric artist), and I make this wish clear, so everybody knows I don't want photos taken. Given this, is it then okay for someone to take a photo of my paiting? It doesn't hurt me or the painting (it may even publicise it more so I get more viewers, benefiting me), but I just think that morally I, or anyone in a similar position, should be able to place that restriction, and anyone who violates my above wishes is committing a breach of trust, and a wrong against me, regardless of actual harm.
In other words, I don't know if the RIAA are morons or not trying to fight piracy, but I just think they have the right to do so.
Yeah, I'm not denying there's a statistical link, just that the inference drawn from that link is incorrect. The original post, at least from what I can see, is certainly claiming that there is a causative link between piracy and music buying, based on the statistical link. All I'm trying to show is that that inference isn't warranted. Causation is causation, whether you're talking statistics or logic, and no causation has been made out here, only a link (which I assert is via a shared cause).
Well, it would appear I've been deemed flamebait in my GP post for daring point out a logical error, but I'll continue on anyway.
Main difference being that when someone steals alcohol, the physical product is GONE and can no longer be sold. This is not true for downloaded music. Hooray for blatantly incorrect analogies. I'm not debating that point at the moment, I'm attacking the claim that music piracy increases record sales because of a correlation between people who pirate music, and the amount of music they buy. The submitter (and many other people) claim that because there is a correlation, there must be causation. However, this isn't the case, and it is a fallacy to claim that it is. It is IMHO far more plausible, and perfectly logical, that both music piracy and purchasing music have a shared, unrelated cause, which is "liking music". People who like music have a higher propensity to pirate music, and a higher propensity to buy music. So when you look at the population of music pirates, it looks like they buy more music (and they do), but it's only because they are more likely to be members of the population of people who like music that they buy more, it's not the piracy itself having any effect on music purchasing.
Submitter's point was that the sharing of music leads to more sales and thus more money for the RIAA. No, his statement is by no means truth of this assertion, but this is what he was try to suggest...
Exactly, the submitter is suggesting, in a totally deceptive way, that P2P increases music sales, by relying on a blatant logical fallacy. Just because music pirates buy more music than non-music pirates doesn't prove a thing, correlation is not causation. The simplest disproof is to simply realise that not everyone listens to music (let's be conservative and say 20% of people don't listen to music). All music pirates listen to music (or close to all), unlike the group of non-music pirates, which include people who don't listen to music, so of course the music pirates will have a higher rate of music listening, and so purchasing.
Perhaps another simple proof is to use an analogy. I'll bet that people who steal alcohol also buy more alcohol than people who don't steal alcohol (since they're probably mostly alcoholics). Does that mean that alcohol theft increases alcohol sales? Of course not. But that doesn't stop the submitter trying to use that kind of deceptive logic to push his opinion. If you're going to propagandise in your submissions, at least make them logical.
Actually, you can in a lot of cases. Yes, I know not all, probably not even a majority, of publishers do it, but many allow you to send in the remains of a broken game media and get a replacement copy (use your old CD key) for a reduced price.
In any case, there's no reason they should be obliged to offer that service. You still have the licence to use the software, even if you are dumb enough to break your game media, so you've got what you paid for, and can keep using it if it's installed. It's just your dumb fault for breaking the physical object linked to that licence.
Umm.. you just go into your BIOS settings and adjust it. Most computers you'll find around these days all have soft overclocking, where you can just set your FSB to a pretty much arbitrary value in BIOS, no replacing crystals or having to change jumpers.
Yeah, I noticed that too. It seems to be the current big trend of spam, as I'm sure people have noticed from all the idiotic "overheardintheuk" spam. If you get a high-moderated comment on slashdot, you're probably guaranteed over 10,000 visitors (I've seen graphs of the impact of "second-level" slashdotting, and there's a hell of a lot of hits), which I'd bet is more than any "normal" spam run would ever net.
If you can do it so much better than the RIAA/MPAA, then feel free to do it, and you'll make a fortune. Otherwise, I suggest you get a new keyboard, your caps lock seems to be broken. Oh, yeah, and please tell me, are you trolling, or do you genuinely believe your crazy rants? You sound like a cross between a nigerian spammer and a hippy fighting "the man"
If a carpenter spent a lot of time and money creating a fancy piece of furniture, and sold it to someone else, they wouldn't expect to be able to control how that buyer (or any future buyers) used that piece of furniture.
I should ask, why not? I know at the moment there's no provision in law for it, but if I was a carpenter who for some strange reason really really didn't want my tables being used for anything other than dining, why shouldn't I be able to make tables and sell them to people who are willing to contractually bind themselves to not use them as anything other than dining tables? As long as people genuinely agree to it, why shouldn't I be able to do that, as a theoretical matter?
But, you see (3) is NOT NEEDED or WANTED by either (1) or (2)........mmmm, that means RIAA / MPAA can fuck off so that customers won't be ripped off anymore (by price-fixing) and artists will receive MORE money (rather than the couple of quarters from each CD sold -- plus, they DON'T have to give the middlemen the MAJORITY of the hard-earned cash from CONCERTS)........ hahaha MPAA / RIAA you SUCK!!!
Umm.. while you appear to have completely discredited yourself at the end there all on your own, I thought I may as well reply anyway. While people don't realise it, they do definitely want the middlemen, for a number of reasons.
Firstly, they provide the music in what is a more useful form (eg CDs), this is the one and only aspect which may be partially obsoleted by MP3s and P2P. Secondly, they see that the music is actually produced to the best quality possible, by helping provide recording and postproduction facilities. After all, music is more than just a guy in front of a microphone. Thirdly, they provide the commercial infrastructure to make sure music is paid for, and artists get paid. Fourthly, they find good (in the sense "popularly demanded", not necessarily "talented") musicians, preventing people having to wade through as much crap as they might. Fifthly, they help cultivate those particular musicians, by ensuring they continue to make music in the way people want. Lastly, and most obviously, they provide the marketing and advertising that commercial success requires. Of course, there's more than just those factors, but they'd be the main ones. Also, I'd love to know how you think the MPAA are anything like that, given that major films are produced and marketed by the same firms.
The point is, there's a lot more to mass music than a guy with a guitar and someone who wants to listen, and these "middlemen" provide all those things. Perhaps a good analogy would be stores, should you steal milk because supermarkets pay farmers a fraction of what they sell the milk for? After all, all we need is farmers and people to drink milk, how dare those supermarket assholes get in the way!
If you don't like the RIAA/MPAA, don't buy their stuff, but the fact that so many people do want their product, compared to buying music/movies online, is economically speaking plain proof that they do serve a huge role in the value of their products, otherwise the market would have eliminated them naturally long ago.
Umm... yeah, because only one company makes movies, one company makes music, and one company makes computer games, and they're all using predatory tactics to prevent anyone else from entering the field. For crying out loud, not one of those industries is close to a monopoly, having many players in each in competition. I'm sure it makes you feel warm and fuzzy to be anti-corporation (because it's just so cool and rebellious), but can't you at least try to make it plausible?
I agree with you 100% that it's the infringers who are the crooks. The difference is, in Canada, not all trading of music is defined as copyright infringement.
Yes, but the reason it's legal in many cases is *because* of the levy, which justifies letting basic pirating go, since compensation has already been paid via the levy. It's not that the government have said "pirating music is and has always been okay, but we're going to take a tonne of your money because we can". It's more like "pirating music is bad, but as long as everyone agrees to pay this tax (which will fall disproportionately on those who pirate music) to compensate those who own the rights to the music, we'll let it slide".
Certainly, the monitor does look very impressive overall, but if you look at the page titled "misleading measurements", it shows that for certain transitions response times can exceed 30ms! While the monitor may well in practice be overall quite good, 30ms gives you barely more than 30Hz, and definitely would leave extremely noticeable ghosting. Now, I'm not saying that in practice it'll be very good from the perspective of most users, but ghosting is still a relevant issue, whatever the response times cited on the brochure say.
Yes, but the problem is that, unfortunately, there aren't any 5ms LCDs yet. In fact, there aren't any 8ms ones, regardless of what the brochures tell you. Those figures are extremely optimistic (ie fake) figures for perfect conditions. In reality even an 8ms (or a new 4ms G-G screen) is often >20ms for many transitions. THG (yeah, yeah, spare me the THG bashing) did a good demonstration of this by showing the actual transition times for the monitors they reviewed. Quite simply, nobody comes close to meeting their claimed specs, so the days of response times low enough to eliminate ghosting totally are still far away, especially for TVs which tend to use higher response time screens.
The best part of the the whole Do Not Call registry- Not only are non-profits exempt.... But so are Political candidates! Those self serving a##holes.
Whoa, politicians may be self serving assholes, but that exception makes 100% perfect sense, for legal reasons. Quite simply, it'd almost undoubtably be a huge violation of the first amendment in the US to pass a law which says "you can't phone people and promote your political views", and I can certainly understand it. Yes, politicians are assholes, but banning political speech is a VERY dangerous path to go down, and after all, politicians are dependent on public opinion, unlike telemarketers, so if you don't like it, just vote against the guy, and send a letter in saying why.
The Manahattan Project went ahead with its atomic pile testing before the smarty men had confirmed that the pile would not trigger an unstoppable world-destroying chain reaction.
I can't imagine a better argument against cutting corners than this, and it most certainly doesn't inspire me to think we could make fusion in five minutes if we really wanted to. While I do understand that fusion isn't actually THAT deadly in explosive force on its own (the majority of a H-bomb's power comes from an outer fissionable material, and without this you have a "non-destructive" neutron bomb), I am *not* a fan of putting together a giant fusion reactor, without first making sure it won't kill everyone within 50 kilometers. Sure, we need fusion urgently, but not so urgently to justify such an astronomical risk. Plus, even with cutting corners, I still think you are massively overestimating how much things can just be sped up.
Thank you for the wonderful strawman, by making an analogy using something which was different, by lacking the entirety of what I was trying to point out. Libraries do not reduce revenue for authors, as they do not remove any of an author's rights to control reproduction and distribution of their books. After all, you do realise libraries do actually pay for their books don't you? I'm told in some cases payments are paid for each time a book is borrowed, though in fairness I'm not so sure how true that is.
Whatever the case, libraries do not allow you to make entire copies of a book/cd/video to keep, as removing copyright would, they only allow you to possess something for a limited amount of time (heck, think of it like shareware software), leaving a huge incentive to buy a copy. So seriously, next time, at least try to make a reasonable analogy, or at least one which isn't so blatantly inappropriate.
I love how everyone thinks their opinion is "common sense", as if that claim somehow adds some authority to it. I don't have any strong reason to see why being exposed to creative works makes people all that much more creative themselves, and there's already more works out there than any one person could ever sample. Also, even if you're right, and it somehow increases the creativity of the populace, removing copyright would MASSIVELY decrease the incentive to actually use that creativity to make works, by making it more profitable to do something else, like, say, flip burgers, due to the massively reduced revenue possibilities, and overall lead to less works, which by your own logic means less creativity long term too. So quite simply, your "common sense" view, while a great attempt to karma whore by appealing to the ever-popular "free stuff for all!" politics, it's a massively shortsighted and oversimplified view.
Yeah, but the thing is that the storage is spread out between lots of different 1U units, each with either 1 or 1.6Tb. So to make a RAID5 over 1.6Tb in size, you'd have to cross over multiple machines, adding a serious overhead, especially when you have to calculate parity for the parity drive. On the other hand, if you only did RAID 5 in the individual units, it'd be pretty pointless, because with that many units you'd be crazy to rely on no entire machine failures.
So, while yes, if it really was just one giant supercomputer with a bajillion hard drives in it, RAID 50 would be an ideal solution (as long as the stripes were large enough to prevent too many accesses crossing too many drives, the one big advantage of JBOD here), but that's not what's really in use here.
Well, while to be fair I may be mistaken, I really get the impression here that things are not so obvious or simple as to justify calling this patent unreasonable. Software patents by their nature lend themselves to succesful creation of frivilous patents for the most general concepts, since you can just patent "do *verb* on a computerised system" with no real technical innovation, and especially when it comes to the internet, as a new technology there's often no prior art, simply because nobody bothered doing it yet, not because it's not obvious. However, given that the patent here from my reading seems to suggest this radio technique allows a fivefold increase in bandwidth, given that wireless data transmission has been around for yonks in various forms (it's not like 802.11a was the first ever), then if it was so obvious, wouldn't it have already been implemented, or at least demonstrated *somewhere*? Heck, if it delivers such an advantage, and is so simple, who in the world wouldn't use it in all wireless networking, from the first implementation?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, you're dead right, and that's why you wouldn't have to sell the gun. You could similarly rely on the defence of self defence to not sell the gun (since it covers defending others). If you sell the gun, someone is likely to die, so your violation of the law by not selling the gun is justified, and you couldn't be punished.
Of course, as said beforehand, as a matter of practicality I could so see some litigious moron get refused a gun because they wanted to kill their husband, then go off and file suit claiming it was because they were black/asian/female/poor/gay/whatever.
Well, it is true that they're hashes, not encryption methods but they can be used in a quasi-encryption manner. In particular, when it comes to hashing passwords to store an "encrypted" password, it is to a large extent the same as trying to break a known encrypted document where the key is the password. In fact, that's exactly how older unices store passwords, DES encrypting a blank document with the password as a key. So while it's true that MD5 isn't an encryption method, for the purposes of password authentication is it practically identical.
That's correct, but there's no prohibition (generally at least) against reporting factually about what happened in court. Indeed, such reporting is generally given very generous protection by the courts. So by simply framing the newspaper report as "it has been said in documents filed in court that...". In doing so, the newspaper aren't claiming that the facts are true, only making the completely true factual statement that a certain thing was said or submitted in court.
Absolutely right, all of those things are perfectly open to debate. I'm not saying I've proven piracy doesn't help sales (though I very much doubt it does), I'm only saying that the pro-p2p submitter's claims are flawed, being based on incorrect logic.
Personally, I don't really think harm matters, I just think that morally a copyright holder, who has gone to the bother of creating music or other intellectual property (or paid someone else to make it) should have the right to limit the distribution of that work, since were it not for them it wouldn't exist. I don't really see why harm is essential.
If I make an incredibly beautiful painting, and decide that while I'm willing to show it to people, I absolutely can't bear to have photos taken of it (for whatever reason, maybe I'm just an eccentric artist), and I make this wish clear, so everybody knows I don't want photos taken. Given this, is it then okay for someone to take a photo of my paiting? It doesn't hurt me or the painting (it may even publicise it more so I get more viewers, benefiting me), but I just think that morally I, or anyone in a similar position, should be able to place that restriction, and anyone who violates my above wishes is committing a breach of trust, and a wrong against me, regardless of actual harm.
In other words, I don't know if the RIAA are morons or not trying to fight piracy, but I just think they have the right to do so.
Yeah, I'm not denying there's a statistical link, just that the inference drawn from that link is incorrect. The original post, at least from what I can see, is certainly claiming that there is a causative link between piracy and music buying, based on the statistical link. All I'm trying to show is that that inference isn't warranted. Causation is causation, whether you're talking statistics or logic, and no causation has been made out here, only a link (which I assert is via a shared cause).
Well, it would appear I've been deemed flamebait in my GP post for daring point out a logical error, but I'll continue on anyway.
Main difference being that when someone steals alcohol, the physical product is GONE and can no longer be sold. This is not true for downloaded music. Hooray for blatantly incorrect analogies.
I'm not debating that point at the moment, I'm attacking the claim that music piracy increases record sales because of a correlation between people who pirate music, and the amount of music they buy. The submitter (and many other people) claim that because there is a correlation, there must be causation. However, this isn't the case, and it is a fallacy to claim that it is. It is IMHO far more plausible, and perfectly logical, that both music piracy and purchasing music have a shared, unrelated cause, which is "liking music". People who like music have a higher propensity to pirate music, and a higher propensity to buy music. So when you look at the population of music pirates, it looks like they buy more music (and they do), but it's only because they are more likely to be members of the population of people who like music that they buy more, it's not the piracy itself having any effect on music purchasing.
Submitter's point was that the sharing of music leads to more sales and thus more money for the RIAA. No, his statement is by no means truth of this assertion, but this is what he was try to suggest...
Exactly, the submitter is suggesting, in a totally deceptive way, that P2P increases music sales, by relying on a blatant logical fallacy. Just because music pirates buy more music than non-music pirates doesn't prove a thing, correlation is not causation. The simplest disproof is to simply realise that not everyone listens to music (let's be conservative and say 20% of people don't listen to music). All music pirates listen to music (or close to all), unlike the group of non-music pirates, which include people who don't listen to music, so of course the music pirates will have a higher rate of music listening, and so purchasing.
Perhaps another simple proof is to use an analogy. I'll bet that people who steal alcohol also buy more alcohol than people who don't steal alcohol (since they're probably mostly alcoholics). Does that mean that alcohol theft increases alcohol sales? Of course not. But that doesn't stop the submitter trying to use that kind of deceptive logic to push his opinion. If you're going to propagandise in your submissions, at least make them logical.
Actually, you can in a lot of cases. Yes, I know not all, probably not even a majority, of publishers do it, but many allow you to send in the remains of a broken game media and get a replacement copy (use your old CD key) for a reduced price.
In any case, there's no reason they should be obliged to offer that service. You still have the licence to use the software, even if you are dumb enough to break your game media, so you've got what you paid for, and can keep using it if it's installed. It's just your dumb fault for breaking the physical object linked to that licence.
Get with the times, man. Only old people use that joke, in South Korea...
So in Communist North Korea, does that joke use old people?
Umm.. you just go into your BIOS settings and adjust it. Most computers you'll find around these days all have soft overclocking, where you can just set your FSB to a pretty much arbitrary value in BIOS, no replacing crystals or having to change jumpers.
Yeah, I noticed that too. It seems to be the current big trend of spam, as I'm sure people have noticed from all the idiotic "overheardintheuk" spam. If you get a high-moderated comment on slashdot, you're probably guaranteed over 10,000 visitors (I've seen graphs of the impact of "second-level" slashdotting, and there's a hell of a lot of hits), which I'd bet is more than any "normal" spam run would ever net.
If you can do it so much better than the RIAA/MPAA, then feel free to do it, and you'll make a fortune. Otherwise, I suggest you get a new keyboard, your caps lock seems to be broken. Oh, yeah, and please tell me, are you trolling, or do you genuinely believe your crazy rants? You sound like a cross between a nigerian spammer and a hippy fighting "the man"
I should ask, why not? I know at the moment there's no provision in law for it, but if I was a carpenter who for some strange reason really really didn't want my tables being used for anything other than dining, why shouldn't I be able to make tables and sell them to people who are willing to contractually bind themselves to not use them as anything other than dining tables? As long as people genuinely agree to it, why shouldn't I be able to do that, as a theoretical matter?
Umm.. while you appear to have completely discredited yourself at the end there all on your own, I thought I may as well reply anyway. While people don't realise it, they do definitely want the middlemen, for a number of reasons.
Firstly, they provide the music in what is a more useful form (eg CDs), this is the one and only aspect which may be partially obsoleted by MP3s and P2P. Secondly, they see that the music is actually produced to the best quality possible, by helping provide recording and postproduction facilities. After all, music is more than just a guy in front of a microphone. Thirdly, they provide the commercial infrastructure to make sure music is paid for, and artists get paid. Fourthly, they find good (in the sense "popularly demanded", not necessarily "talented") musicians, preventing people having to wade through as much crap as they might. Fifthly, they help cultivate those particular musicians, by ensuring they continue to make music in the way people want. Lastly, and most obviously, they provide the marketing and advertising that commercial success requires. Of course, there's more than just those factors, but they'd be the main ones. Also, I'd love to know how you think the MPAA are anything like that, given that major films are produced and marketed by the same firms.
The point is, there's a lot more to mass music than a guy with a guitar and someone who wants to listen, and these "middlemen" provide all those things. Perhaps a good analogy would be stores, should you steal milk because supermarkets pay farmers a fraction of what they sell the milk for? After all, all we need is farmers and people to drink milk, how dare those supermarket assholes get in the way!
If you don't like the RIAA/MPAA, don't buy their stuff, but the fact that so many people do want their product, compared to buying music/movies online, is economically speaking plain proof that they do serve a huge role in the value of their products, otherwise the market would have eliminated them naturally long ago.
Umm... yeah, because only one company makes movies, one company makes music, and one company makes computer games, and they're all using predatory tactics to prevent anyone else from entering the field. For crying out loud, not one of those industries is close to a monopoly, having many players in each in competition. I'm sure it makes you feel warm and fuzzy to be anti-corporation (because it's just so cool and rebellious), but can't you at least try to make it plausible?
Yes, but the reason it's legal in many cases is *because* of the levy, which justifies letting basic pirating go, since compensation has already been paid via the levy. It's not that the government have said "pirating music is and has always been okay, but we're going to take a tonne of your money because we can". It's more like "pirating music is bad, but as long as everyone agrees to pay this tax (which will fall disproportionately on those who pirate music) to compensate those who own the rights to the music, we'll let it slide".
Certainly, the monitor does look very impressive overall, but if you look at the page titled "misleading measurements", it shows that for certain transitions response times can exceed 30ms! While the monitor may well in practice be overall quite good, 30ms gives you barely more than 30Hz, and definitely would leave extremely noticeable ghosting. Now, I'm not saying that in practice it'll be very good from the perspective of most users, but ghosting is still a relevant issue, whatever the response times cited on the brochure say.
Yes, but the problem is that, unfortunately, there aren't any 5ms LCDs yet. In fact, there aren't any 8ms ones, regardless of what the brochures tell you. Those figures are extremely optimistic (ie fake) figures for perfect conditions. In reality even an 8ms (or a new 4ms G-G screen) is often >20ms for many transitions. THG (yeah, yeah, spare me the THG bashing) did a good demonstration of this by showing the actual transition times for the monitors they reviewed. Quite simply, nobody comes close to meeting their claimed specs, so the days of response times low enough to eliminate ghosting totally are still far away, especially for TVs which tend to use higher response time screens.
Whoa, politicians may be self serving assholes, but that exception makes 100% perfect sense, for legal reasons. Quite simply, it'd almost undoubtably be a huge violation of the first amendment in the US to pass a law which says "you can't phone people and promote your political views", and I can certainly understand it. Yes, politicians are assholes, but banning political speech is a VERY dangerous path to go down, and after all, politicians are dependent on public opinion, unlike telemarketers, so if you don't like it, just vote against the guy, and send a letter in saying why.
Easy, they'd do it by flying it in a plane with a red and white flag, and say something about hiding it in the Alps.
I can't imagine a better argument against cutting corners than this, and it most certainly doesn't inspire me to think we could make fusion in five minutes if we really wanted to. While I do understand that fusion isn't actually THAT deadly in explosive force on its own (the majority of a H-bomb's power comes from an outer fissionable material, and without this you have a "non-destructive" neutron bomb), I am *not* a fan of putting together a giant fusion reactor, without first making sure it won't kill everyone within 50 kilometers. Sure, we need fusion urgently, but not so urgently to justify such an astronomical risk. Plus, even with cutting corners, I still think you are massively overestimating how much things can just be sped up.
Whatever the case, libraries do not allow you to make entire copies of a book/cd/video to keep, as removing copyright would, they only allow you to possess something for a limited amount of time (heck, think of it like shareware software), leaving a huge incentive to buy a copy. So seriously, next time, at least try to make a reasonable analogy, or at least one which isn't so blatantly inappropriate.
I love how everyone thinks their opinion is "common sense", as if that claim somehow adds some authority to it. I don't have any strong reason to see why being exposed to creative works makes people all that much more creative themselves, and there's already more works out there than any one person could ever sample. Also, even if you're right, and it somehow increases the creativity of the populace, removing copyright would MASSIVELY decrease the incentive to actually use that creativity to make works, by making it more profitable to do something else, like, say, flip burgers, due to the massively reduced revenue possibilities, and overall lead to less works, which by your own logic means less creativity long term too. So quite simply, your "common sense" view, while a great attempt to karma whore by appealing to the ever-popular "free stuff for all!" politics, it's a massively shortsighted and oversimplified view.
Yeah, but the thing is that the storage is spread out between lots of different 1U units, each with either 1 or 1.6Tb. So to make a RAID5 over 1.6Tb in size, you'd have to cross over multiple machines, adding a serious overhead, especially when you have to calculate parity for the parity drive. On the other hand, if you only did RAID 5 in the individual units, it'd be pretty pointless, because with that many units you'd be crazy to rely on no entire machine failures.
So, while yes, if it really was just one giant supercomputer with a bajillion hard drives in it, RAID 50 would be an ideal solution (as long as the stripes were large enough to prevent too many accesses crossing too many drives, the one big advantage of JBOD here), but that's not what's really in use here.
Well, while to be fair I may be mistaken, I really get the impression here that things are not so obvious or simple as to justify calling this patent unreasonable. Software patents by their nature lend themselves to succesful creation of frivilous patents for the most general concepts, since you can just patent "do *verb* on a computerised system" with no real technical innovation, and especially when it comes to the internet, as a new technology there's often no prior art, simply because nobody bothered doing it yet, not because it's not obvious. However, given that the patent here from my reading seems to suggest this radio technique allows a fivefold increase in bandwidth, given that wireless data transmission has been around for yonks in various forms (it's not like 802.11a was the first ever), then if it was so obvious, wouldn't it have already been implemented, or at least demonstrated *somewhere*? Heck, if it delivers such an advantage, and is so simple, who in the world wouldn't use it in all wireless networking, from the first implementation?