No, 'very few' people have astrographics data storage at home and need fibre arrays and tape storage.
The average tech nerd uses more than 200GB storage. The average tech nerd are the ones who buy storage. And by tech nerd I dont mean people with 10 computers or more with different OS's, I mean people with 2-3 computers who sometimes buy new parts for their computers.
The computer email, online shopping and word/excel crowd have never been the ones driving the new hardware market. By that definition of 'very few', very few people need more than 16MB memory and a 100MHz CPU with Windows 3.11 to do those things. Yet, those 'very few' people who need more are actually not so few these days. And of the things that group of people need most, storage appears to be ahead of both CPU, memory, graphics, sound and display for most people I know.
The original dvd's do count as backups (as long as diskspace is cramped, at least) but I prefer having online backups, as it's much faster to recover from a crash with a backup-to-disk than to re-rip from DVD's. Plus, you usually know when your backup medium is hosed when it's on disk, which you might not on optical storage (altho it's more likely for DVD's to remain intact now that the video is on disk and dont need handling all the time).
But, yes, the video volumes tend to have to get along without online backup. Until those terabyte disks arrive at least.
PVR's are simply so useful that the average joe will have them soon enough. Wether they'll buy them as tivo's or as a media pc doesnt really change the fact that it's the same disks and the same needed storage volumes. And if you count non-PC pvr's I'd argue it's getting more than 'very few' already.
Let me tell you, when you start recoring video and storing your DVD's on disk for easy access, not even multiterabyte disks will seem enough.
Add to that storage for backups which doubles or triples your needed space and you start seeing the problem. Then add mirroring and longterm archives...
"but you can never fully rely on them to never fail"
I'd rather say you can fully rely on them to eventually fail. Which is why you need so much space for backups.
"speed is one of the areas which is always welcome"
Welcome, but not essential. For actual system performance you're often better off with more memory for disk caches. If you have some very intensive applications needing very high speed you can improve performance with striping anyway, and in desktop systems it's often a better solution as heat and noise from faster disks make them unsuitable.
"You can't ignore the fact that Monsanto created these crops."
They did? Wow, that's a new take on creationism...
"Why should they be required to allow the free and unlimited spread of the products that they create?"
Because crop improvements is something farmers have been doing since we learned to use fire? So, why the hell should they suddenly get a government given exclusive rights to extort money for a natural process?
"But you can not force a company to give away its product."
Yes, well, on that topic my companys main product is oxygen, so unless you can prove it's not _my_ new-and-improved oxygen you're consuming I'd like my money now. Where should I send the bill?
"Until that gets resolved - I would tell other companies - come up with a different method (doesn't have to be radical, only different) of the one click shopping equiv."
You cant. One click shopping is patented, and any equivalent would infringe on the patent.
"There is more then one way to skin a cat."
There is more than one way to skin a cat but there's no way to skin a cat without being technically legally obliged to pay Amazon. They hold the patent on skinning a cat in this case.
"The idea: 3D engine The patent: ATI's & nVidia's SPECIFIC 3D engine"
Except that's not how software patents work.
Compare with physical world patents; 'Thing to unscrew gizmos' would be the idea. 'My thing to unscrew gizmos' would be the patented thing.
But with software, 'my thing to unscrew virtual gizmos' is _already copyrighted_. The extra protection of the patent is to protect the _idea of unscrewing virtual gizmos_ _in any way possible_.
With software, the process is the idea is the process. '3D engine' becomes patented.
Oh, I agree. Either the power of ministers needs to be more curtailed than it is today (at least in my country), or there needs to be a stronger tie between ministers and voters to strengthen the interest in accurate representation.
Yes, indeed you can. In fact, you can even patent things that someone else has already patented. See for example the LZW patent held by both IBM and Unisys.
You only have to dodge the patent examiner finding something he think is the same thing in the hours he's alotted to examining your patent.
Once you're done you have your own government granted monopoly, ripe for legal extortion. Someone could probably get your patent overturned, but as it will probably be cheaper to give you money than fight the patent that wont be much of a bother for you.
Well, true, I was overly simplifying it. The point is that there isnt any more or less specific way for the voters to influence, or gain more influence over, the appointment to the council than there already is in the local country, as they are the same. The way we the voters have to influence the council membership is to not vote for the local parties appointing ministers who do not represent our interests.
"If you have a great and revolutionary product that might infringe on someone elses code - you just need to prove that yours is different OR get sued."
A single software product can contain hundreds of patented ideas. The fact that you've got one different one that you think is new in your program doesnt change the fact that you're violating those hundred other patents, and any single one of the owners of those patents can take your entire profit, or, if your product makes their product inferior, prevent you from ever being able to produce and market your software.
If you dont have the resources for a prototype you wont have the resources to file for a patent, and you _definitely_ wont have the resources to enforce it, nor defend yourself against countersuits.
Of course, in the case of software, if you have a GREAT idea for some REVOLUTIONARY program, you'll get sued for violating several hundred different patents, losing the savings and venture capital you'd managed to scrape up, and driven to living on the streets in personal bankrupcy before you've finished your first thousand lines of code.
Personally I'd rather have the legal right to invent without getting sued than the right to sue without inventing.
Not quite. The only way to permanently stop software patents is to rewrite the directive and make it very clearly, in no uncertain terms, state that software is _not patentable_.
Because the patent lobby actually does have one thing right; the current status of the EPO granting dubiously enforcable software patents is not acceptable. The directive needs to put a stake through the heart of that abhorrent practice.
Re:So what do we do?
on
Life Interrupted
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Unfortunately, wanting to does not protect your brain from damage caused by prolonged exposure to stress hormones. Those getting hit by stress burnout are often the ones that want to and enjoy what they do.
The average consumer does care about DRM. They just dont recognize it.
When they 'care about DRM' they're irritated because their VCR recordings look bad off (macrovision) satellite signals. They think their VCR is broken. Or they cant play a dvd (of the wrong region) in their computer. They think their dvd is broken. Or they think a CD that wont play is broken. Etc. For the average consumer, things not working equals broken.
Once you explain to them that their equipment is deliberately screwing with them they tend to get very very angry, and they actually do care. They just dont usually have the time and tenacity to figure out what's wrong with their electronics. They eat the loss instead, or yell a bit at some poor clerk who doesnt understand what's wrong either.
That's the entire problem with patents. They could be good for inventors. In theory. But the theory is wrong and it doesnt work out that way.
Had he had the patent himself he wouldnt have been able to afford to file a lawsuit anyway. He'd be squashed like a bug by some large corp. His only chance would be to sell the patents to a litigation company, in which case he'd get a miniscule amount again...
Patents do not make money for inventors. They make money for lawyers and they protect monopolies and oligopolies against inventors.
"Only the media and those who do not properly understand the existing system of patent litigation expect the USPTO to provide a perfect search of prior art for 2% of the market value of such a search."
It's funny that calling up a buisness and telling them to give you $50000 or you'll burn down their property (worth $100K) is illegal, while calling up a buisness and telling them to give you $50000 or you'll make them pay $100K to challenge a bogus patent is perfectly legal.
When the government hands someone a carte-blanche to perform extortion up to $100K one can damn well expect them to do their research and be a bit restrictive.
"If there's no piracy occurring on p2p networks they're still going to blame their decreased profits on the piracy happening on p2p networks?"
Yes. The statistical data already gathered is woefully unsupportive of correlating decrease in profit with p2p copying, yet the various industries show no hesitation to claim piracy is behind any profit decrease (if there is any).
The incentives to claim p2p is responsible are simply too great. It allows arguments for legislation for unparallelled content control. It clears failed execs of wrongdoing, being a perfect scapegoat when bad decisions reduce sales.
If p2p disappeared overnight I think you'd see the copyright industries revive it themselves to some extent just to have that scapegoat.
"Wouldn't it be a fun spectator sport to see them all befuddled when p2p trading stops and their profits keep going down?"
Oh, indeed. We're just unlikely to get to see that.
"That people are so unwilling to do an actual boycott of Hollywood movies is the main reason I believe that p2p trading of said movies is not about any sort of protest or civil disobedience. It, mostly, is about people being cheap and wanting free entertainment."
Frankly, when it comes to movies (and TV) I'd disagree.
I'd say it's about people wanting entertainment, period. TV shows and movies have some vast advantages compared to the music industry. They already _have_ cheap and/or free distribution available (TV, cable, rental), and most people are willing to pay for that. They also have the advantage of being somewhat ethically justifiable, as a certain part of the cost actually goes to the production of the product.
The TV and movie industries huge problem is their region system for distribution. While people are willing to pay, they're to a far lesser extent willing to wait. And as people are exposed to advertisements on the internet, and know they wont have a local release for months, or even years, if ever, they will resort to obtaining the material in the only way they are able to.
"By the way, don't you lose/. cred by accepting the term piracy?"
Yeah, well, what can I say? I'm not immune to the propaganda machine...
"I'd gladly pay for subscrptions to premium British and Canadian TV services if I could, but I'm not allowed thanks to geographically discriminatory content licensing."
Indeed. What's needed is a few countries writing mandatory licensing clauses forcing media corps to make material available on non-discriminatory terms (cost and time-wise). If they cannot comply with that the material should automatically have its copyright void until such a time as it is made available under non-discriminatory terms.
"How about the money "wasted" on SCRAM jet technology?"
SCRAM jet technology actually has uses. Missile defense systems on the other hand, for all their marketability, are trivial to beat. I can think of at least four methods to render them useless offhand, and I'm not even a rocket scientist.
But while they're useless against an enemy, they're excellent for transferring taxpayer money into desired pockets. Guess why monkeyman and his merry band of chimps like them?
A wasted ICBM is just a christmas bonus for the contractors.
I think the vast majority of TV show downloading that goes on is due to failures in distribution channels. If someone cannot in any reasonable fasion pay for a product it's rather hard to argue lost sales, or lost incentive to create.
And the MPAA can largely blame their own region coding for the popularity of movie piracy.
TV and movie theatres already have the compelling advantages (unlike the music industry) of quality, ease and accessibility that they need to compete favourably with piracy. IF they didnt squander their first-release advantage by artificial barriers like region codes and country targetted cable and satellite.
Slashdot Mirror
"Very few people have a media system."
No, 'very few' people have astrographics data storage at home and need fibre arrays and tape storage.
The average tech nerd uses more than 200GB storage. The average tech nerd are the ones who buy storage. And by tech nerd I dont mean people with 10 computers or more with different OS's, I mean people with 2-3 computers who sometimes buy new parts for their computers.
The computer email, online shopping and word/excel crowd have never been the ones driving the new hardware market. By that definition of 'very few', very few people need more than 16MB memory and a 100MHz CPU with Windows 3.11 to do those things. Yet, those 'very few' people who need more are actually not so few these days. And of the things that group of people need most, storage appears to be ahead of both CPU, memory, graphics, sound and display for most people I know.
The original dvd's do count as backups (as long as diskspace is cramped, at least) but I prefer having online backups, as it's much faster to recover from a crash with a backup-to-disk than to re-rip from DVD's. Plus, you usually know when your backup medium is hosed when it's on disk, which you might not on optical storage (altho it's more likely for DVD's to remain intact now that the video is on disk and dont need handling all the time).
But, yes, the video volumes tend to have to get along without online backup. Until those terabyte disks arrive at least.
PVR's are simply so useful that the average joe will have them soon enough. Wether they'll buy them as tivo's or as a media pc doesnt really change the fact that it's the same disks and the same needed storage volumes. And if you count non-PC pvr's I'd argue it's getting more than 'very few' already.
"very few people would need >160gb"
Dont have a media system yet, eh?
Let me tell you, when you start recoring video and storing your DVD's on disk for easy access, not even multiterabyte disks will seem enough.
Add to that storage for backups which doubles or triples your needed space and you start seeing the problem. Then add mirroring and longterm archives...
"but you can never fully rely on them to never fail"
I'd rather say you can fully rely on them to eventually fail. Which is why you need so much space for backups.
"speed is one of the areas which is always welcome"
Welcome, but not essential. For actual system performance you're often better off with more memory for disk caches. If you have some very intensive applications needing very high speed you can improve performance with striping anyway, and in desktop systems it's often a better solution as heat and noise from faster disks make them unsuitable.
"You can't ignore the fact that Monsanto created these crops."
They did? Wow, that's a new take on creationism...
"Why should they be required to allow the free and unlimited spread of the products that they create?"
Because crop improvements is something farmers have been doing since we learned to use fire? So, why the hell should they suddenly get a government given exclusive rights to extort money for a natural process?
"But you can not force a company to give away its product."
Yes, well, on that topic my companys main product is oxygen, so unless you can prove it's not _my_ new-and-improved oxygen you're consuming I'd like my money now. Where should I send the bill?
Easy. Go find some RoundUp resistant weeds and spread them around.
"while the lawsuit will be thrown out of court"
No, it wont. You need to get the patent overturned, and to do that you need up to about $1M.
As it is so expensive to get the bogus patent thrown out, they can easily get many companies to pay them lesser amounts to get rid of them.
"Until that gets resolved - I would tell other companies - come up with a different method (doesn't have to be radical, only different) of the one click shopping equiv."
You cant. One click shopping is patented, and any equivalent would infringe on the patent.
"There is more then one way to skin a cat."
There is more than one way to skin a cat but there's no way to skin a cat without being technically legally obliged to pay Amazon. They hold the patent on skinning a cat in this case.
"The idea: 3D engine
The patent: ATI's & nVidia's SPECIFIC 3D engine"
Except that's not how software patents work.
Compare with physical world patents; 'Thing to unscrew gizmos' would be the idea. 'My thing to unscrew gizmos' would be the patented thing.
But with software, 'my thing to unscrew virtual gizmos' is _already copyrighted_. The extra protection of the patent is to protect the _idea of unscrewing virtual gizmos_ _in any way possible_.
With software, the process is the idea is the process. '3D engine' becomes patented.
Oh, I agree. Either the power of ministers needs to be more curtailed than it is today (at least in my country), or there needs to be a stronger tie between ministers and voters to strengthen the interest in accurate representation.
Yes, indeed you can. In fact, you can even patent things that someone else has already patented. See for example the LZW patent held by both IBM and Unisys.
You only have to dodge the patent examiner finding something he think is the same thing in the hours he's alotted to examining your patent.
Once you're done you have your own government granted monopoly, ripe for legal extortion. Someone could probably get your patent overturned, but as it will probably be cheaper to give you money than fight the patent that wont be much of a bother for you.
Well, true, I was overly simplifying it. The point is that there isnt any more or less specific way for the voters to influence, or gain more influence over, the appointment to the council than there already is in the local country, as they are the same. The way we the voters have to influence the council membership is to not vote for the local parties appointing ministers who do not represent our interests.
"If you have a great and revolutionary product that might infringe on someone elses code - you just need to prove that yours is different OR get sued."
A single software product can contain hundreds of patented ideas. The fact that you've got one different one that you think is new in your program doesnt change the fact that you're violating those hundred other patents, and any single one of the owners of those patents can take your entire profit, or, if your product makes their product inferior, prevent you from ever being able to produce and market your software.
"Now if only we (as in we, the people) could get more direct say in EU minister appointments"
You do. They're the same ministers that you vote into your own countries government.
The same ones who commonly use "the EU" as a scapegoat for what they themselves push through in the council of ministers.
The 'local powers', in this case, are not on the side of the voters.
If you dont have the resources for a prototype you wont have the resources to file for a patent, and you _definitely_ wont have the resources to enforce it, nor defend yourself against countersuits.
Of course, in the case of software, if you have a GREAT idea for some REVOLUTIONARY program, you'll get sued for violating several hundred different patents, losing the savings and venture capital you'd managed to scrape up, and driven to living on the streets in personal bankrupcy before you've finished your first thousand lines of code.
Personally I'd rather have the legal right to invent without getting sued than the right to sue without inventing.
Not quite. The only way to permanently stop software patents is to rewrite the directive and make it very clearly, in no uncertain terms, state that software is _not patentable_.
Because the patent lobby actually does have one thing right; the current status of the EPO granting dubiously enforcable software patents is not acceptable. The directive needs to put a stake through the heart of that abhorrent practice.
Unfortunately, wanting to does not protect your brain from damage caused by prolonged exposure to stress hormones. Those getting hit by stress burnout are often the ones that want to and enjoy what they do.
The average consumer does care about DRM. They just dont recognize it.
When they 'care about DRM' they're irritated because their VCR recordings look bad off (macrovision) satellite signals. They think their VCR is broken. Or they cant play a dvd (of the wrong region) in their computer. They think their dvd is broken. Or they think a CD that wont play is broken. Etc. For the average consumer, things not working equals broken.
Once you explain to them that their equipment is deliberately screwing with them they tend to get very very angry, and they actually do care. They just dont usually have the time and tenacity to figure out what's wrong with their electronics. They eat the loss instead, or yell a bit at some poor clerk who doesnt understand what's wrong either.
That's the entire problem with patents. They could be good for inventors. In theory. But the theory is wrong and it doesnt work out that way.
Had he had the patent himself he wouldnt have been able to afford to file a lawsuit anyway. He'd be squashed like a bug by some large corp. His only chance would be to sell the patents to a litigation company, in which case he'd get a miniscule amount again...
Patents do not make money for inventors. They make money for lawyers and they protect monopolies and oligopolies against inventors.
"Only the media and those who do not properly understand the existing system of patent litigation expect the USPTO to provide a perfect search of prior art for 2% of the market value of such a search."
It's funny that calling up a buisness and telling them to give you $50000 or you'll burn down their property (worth $100K) is illegal, while calling up a buisness and telling them to give you $50000 or you'll make them pay $100K to challenge a bogus patent is perfectly legal.
When the government hands someone a carte-blanche to perform extortion up to $100K one can damn well expect them to do their research and be a bit restrictive.
"If there's no piracy occurring on p2p networks they're still going to blame their decreased profits on the piracy happening on p2p networks?"
/. cred by accepting the term piracy?"
Yes. The statistical data already gathered is woefully unsupportive of correlating decrease in profit with p2p copying, yet the various industries show no hesitation to claim piracy is behind any profit decrease (if there is any).
The incentives to claim p2p is responsible are simply too great. It allows arguments for legislation for unparallelled content control. It clears failed execs of wrongdoing, being a perfect scapegoat when bad decisions reduce sales.
If p2p disappeared overnight I think you'd see the copyright industries revive it themselves to some extent just to have that scapegoat.
"Wouldn't it be a fun spectator sport to see them all befuddled when p2p trading stops and their profits keep going down?"
Oh, indeed. We're just unlikely to get to see that.
"That people are so unwilling to do an actual boycott of Hollywood movies is the main reason I believe that p2p trading of said movies is not about any sort of protest or civil disobedience. It, mostly, is about people being cheap and wanting free entertainment."
Frankly, when it comes to movies (and TV) I'd disagree.
I'd say it's about people wanting entertainment, period. TV shows and movies have some vast advantages compared to the music industry. They already _have_ cheap and/or free distribution available (TV, cable, rental), and most people are willing to pay for that. They also have the advantage of being somewhat ethically justifiable, as a certain part of the cost actually goes to the production of the product.
The TV and movie industries huge problem is their region system for distribution. While people are willing to pay, they're to a far lesser extent willing to wait. And as people are exposed to advertisements on the internet, and know they wont have a local release for months, or even years, if ever, they will resort to obtaining the material in the only way they are able to.
"By the way, don't you lose
Yeah, well, what can I say? I'm not immune to the propaganda machine...
"To make the point that their product is unacceptable you have to give it up all together. No trading. No buying DVDs. No going to the theater."
It doesn't matter. They'll count your boycott as piracy anyway, as _obviously_ you cannot resist watching/listening to the crap put out.
"I'd gladly pay for subscrptions to premium British and Canadian TV services if I could, but I'm not allowed thanks to geographically discriminatory content licensing."
Indeed. What's needed is a few countries writing mandatory licensing clauses forcing media corps to make material available on non-discriminatory terms (cost and time-wise). If they cannot comply with that the material should automatically have its copyright void until such a time as it is made available under non-discriminatory terms.
"How about the money "wasted" on SCRAM jet technology?"
SCRAM jet technology actually has uses. Missile defense systems on the other hand, for all their marketability, are trivial to beat. I can think of at least four methods to render them useless offhand, and I'm not even a rocket scientist.
But while they're useless against an enemy, they're excellent for transferring taxpayer money into desired pockets. Guess why monkeyman and his merry band of chimps like them?
A wasted ICBM is just a christmas bonus for the contractors.
I think the vast majority of TV show downloading that goes on is due to failures in distribution channels. If someone cannot in any reasonable fasion pay for a product it's rather hard to argue lost sales, or lost incentive to create.
And the MPAA can largely blame their own region coding for the popularity of movie piracy.
TV and movie theatres already have the compelling advantages (unlike the music industry) of quality, ease and accessibility that they need to compete favourably with piracy. IF they didnt squander their first-release advantage by artificial barriers like region codes and country targetted cable and satellite.