Sorry, but RAID is *not* a substitute for backups. If you have something that cannot be replaced then put it on multiple pieces of media,store one offsite.
In this case a NAS for backup is fine since chances are good his NAS and machines being backed up aren't likely to fail unless it's a fire or lightning strike issue. That is what I do, an incremental job once a week that backs up to a NAS. My MP3s that took hours and hours to RIP are backed up on another drive that's not powered up.
Actually someone did ask if it was going to be dropped or anything would change due to the legal troubles and accusations. The answer was that the software "worked" and the F/S was fine despite what the individual behind it may or may not have done.
If you want more info the unRAID forums are pretty good for help. You don't have to know your way around Linux to use it but it can be helpful. There's more info on the hardware on the site too. CoolerMaster makes good cases in their Stacker series and that Asus board is a winner IMO. If you can use SATA vs IDE do it, I have one array of each. The SATA array doesn't necessarily spit data out faster but it DOES do internal parity checks WAY faster!
Oh one downside I failed to mention - no UPS support YET. It's linux so I'm sure it can be added but it's not there yet. Tom is adding features as fast as he canthough and I've been happy with this stuff for well over a year.
Judging from the concerns you have I'd seriously suggest looking at Lime-technology.com's unRAID. I won't spam this thread further with all my likes and dislikes of this software again as I've posted it further down but you might find it a better choice for your needs. One thing Tom hasn't done is implement a "trashcan" which would save deleted files but he could and it's been suggested, for that matter you could probably enable it yourself.
Anyway, look for my lengthier more verbose post lower down;-)
First, I'd not heard of Openfiler and will be reading up on it but for now I'm using unRAID from Lime-Technology.com and it's working well. Here's why I like it and why I think it's better than standard RAID:
1) It doesn't stripe and it easy expands to as many as 16 disks. 2) Because it doesn't stripe disks that aren't being used can goto sleep, much less power usage, noise, and heat trust me. 3) One disk is used for Parity and must be as big as or larger than all others but all other disks can be any size you want - they need *not* be identical. JBOD indeed! 4) If you lose a disk you still have access to the data, if you lose TWO disks you will lose data - two disks worth and NOT the whole array! Yes I know RAID can protect against multiple disk failure but only with hot spares or schemes that mean you get to use even LESS of your disks for data. I get to use ALL of my disk space save just one disk. I'm actually running sans a Parity disk right now since I had a hardware failure, I have access to ALL of my data and am hoping a second doesn't die on me while NewEgg ships.:-O 5) It boots from FLASH memory on cheap hardware, you do not lose storage space to an OS. 6) The trial version supports two data disks and a parity disk, perfect for testing. The full version isn't super expensive. The product has decent support. 7) The disks use standard ResiserFS as their F/S. Want to pull one and take it someplace to mount to a Linux box? Sure, go for it. Need to do a data recovery for some odd reason? It's ResierFS so whatever works for that works for this.
Doing this for just $500 won't be easy without some spare hardware around. The Asus P5B V0 M/B runs about $106 at NewEgg and has 8 SATA ports (one is eSATA) and GigE. That and two 4port Promise cards (SATA or IDE) will get you up to 16 drives but obviously I'd start with just the M/B. Buy some cheap memory, no more than a gig. I spent $25 on the RAM I bought and $60 for a 2.4Gig Celeron D and that's WAY more than enough. Slap all that into a case you have laying around with a decent P/S and you're good to go on the cheap sans drives. Spend the rest on drives, I find Seagates work well and their 5yr warranty rocks! Oh you will need a FLASH stick too, 512meg is WAY more than enough so figure $25 here too.
Some things you might NOT like about unRAID:
1) You aren't going to turn this into a NAS\WEB server\Mail server. It's storage stupid, use it for that. To do all of those things you'd need a swap space and out of the box this doesn't have swap - nor is it needed. It can be added but.... 2) Each drive is it's own share. I address them using UNC naming and there are ways to access files across multiple drives as a single share but it's not like RAID with one big fat volume. IMO the advantages outweigh this downside, more details can be found on the unRAID site. 3) It ain't super fast. Yes, it will max out a 100meg NIC pretty good but not the GigE. You're getting the throughput of a single drive with some overhead so there's no aggregation of disks to improve speed. It IS fast enough to stream HD and multiple SD streams are no biggie either. I *do* back my machines up to this without issue using Acronis. Do use a GigE NIC however, it bursts above the 100Meg mark and testing has shown advantages to having it, it just cannot max it out continuously. 4) unRAID doesn't YET support NFS, Tom is working on it. SMB is what I use. 5) The driver is open source but the controlling software is closed source and yup Tom makes some money on it. Source is available for the GPL'd driver software he's modded so you could go around this but frankly I think his pricing is reasonable, zealots might not think so.
Check it out, if nothing the ASUS board is a good base for damned near anything else you might want to build for a NAS and is supported under Linux, it has onboard video on it too. More details about the M/B, HD deals, or other hardware like SATA cages can be found on the unRAID support forums and in the Wiki.
You've spent no time in traffic court have you? A better title for it would be Kangaroo Court. My fave is a friend who was passed by a semi going downhill but pulled over by a radar gun toting officer at the bottom. He argued that the reading was most likely from the larger radar sig, the truck that was PASSING him. The judge reckoned that at some point during his trip he must have been speeding so ergo Guilty, pay the fine! Never mind logic. Never mind that my friend works law enforcement in another state. Throw logic out the window, they wanted their money. I actually caught an officer lying in traffic court once, proved it beyond a doubt, and except for the awkward silence that followed there were no repercussions.
This isn't just small claims or traffic court either, the system is a mess and unless you can afford BIG bux for a lawyer you're in deep poop if you get dragged into it....
It was not a mandatory upgrade. Some later games were encrypted differently but there was nothing "mandatory" about the upgrades that followed. GTA still worked fine even if you did the upgrade. Sure, they tried to stop the exploit - worked out well in the end didn't it?
Again, who is running the stock firmware to begin with? Heck just to do this little "tweak" you have to be running 3rd party firmware. Apparently the mod consists of modifying one file, how exactly is a firmware tweak going to stop that? They do not use individual keys on the games, if they kill the crypto key for this they will kill it for quite a few other games - now there's a reason for folks to upgrade huh? This isn't even an exploit, there's no reason for Sony to step in.
Sony has little control over this platform anymore and I don't think you understand what's going on with it either.
Mandatory PSP upgrade? Tell me that was a poor attempt at sarcasm, please! For starters I wonder how a 3rd party software company would get Sony to do that - even if it were possible. Who runs Sony firmware anyway?
When I was younger I worked in an office and would get headaches, using a small piece of cardboard I was able to trace the source of the pressure I'd feel to a small device on the ceiling. Using the cardboard I could "hear" a difference by placing the cardboard between me and the device - I could barely hear a keening sound without the cardboard. One other young person (sadly it's been years so no longer young) could also hear this. Maintenance was called, the guy promptly rolled over a chair and jammed a sharpened pencil into the device in the ceiling - a motion sensor! He couldn't hear it either but he had responded to calls just like mine in the past and had "learned" how to fix it. (lol) I also have found that I could hear the sonic remote controls that were popular before IRDA became the norm, my girlfriend had one of these TVs but couldn't hear the sounds it emitted - I could and it was fun pressing various buttons to hear the different patterns\tones. Lastly, I used to do computer repair in an office building on older terminal type hardware. These devices had analog video cards with coils in them and when slightly funked they would vibrate - those of you who can "hear" when an old tube TV is on across the room think of that sound tripled. I'd walk into some offices and the sounds from these things were so bad I had to grit my teeth until I could track them down and fix them - even if the service call was for a different system. Often the workers around them weren't aware of the sounds but in more than one case my fixing the machines had folks thanking me afterwards.
I've tried doing test sweeps to see how high I could hear. I'm pretty sure that my hearing range has been reduced slightly but when younger I'm positive it was above the "20KHZ" range so often quoted. One sweep I ran with a simple PC commandline program allowed me to hear noises at 22KHZ or so but I honestly think the speaker may have been a limitation too. No doctor ever tested me above that range, why would they? I've not been to many concerts although in recent years moreso than when I was young. I bring ear plugs just in case, some have been nearly unbearably loud:-)
Anyway, just wanted to let you know that yeah there are some freaks out there that can (or could) hear above 16KHZ, sometimes a good bit above that!
I vote NuFinish as the perfect polisher. Yes, the crap car wax that has petro distillates in it makes an awesome polisher! Smells nasty but it softens the plastic just a touch and allows you to polish out even fairly nasty scratches. A single bottle will go a long long ways too - I must have polished over a 100 CD and DVD with mine before I misplaced it - time for a new bottle:-) Works well on XBOX type games too.
Nice to see that you "get it". I know some folks who have put R&D monies into building various car parts for the aftermarket. As it happens the Chinese are a really cheap place to have castings and things done - some of them have had work done there as a result. The others have spent more to have their work cast here. Guess which group very quickly found their competitors offering THEIR parts at prices that will not allow them to recoup their R&D? Yup, the guys who went to China! How? Well, seems if you know who to ask and especially if you can figure out which foundry it is you can purchase the parts for the SAME cost as the other guy who did the R&D. So, he sweats and works and then these guys sell it to anyone who asks no matter who's patterns it is. To read some of the parts in this thread that's perfectly okay. What they apparently have NEVER done is spend the cash to develop something themselves only to have it stolen from under them.
At least when it's cast here the guy who copies it actually has to copy it and not just buy from the manufacturer skipping the whole R&D part - you have that whole first to market thing at least that some of these twits want to quote. Here you have a snowball's chance of suing if the guy backdoors your stuff, not so in China. Not yet anyway, if they want to really get anywhere they will begin stopping this process. Sink $30K+ into dyno time and pattern making and then find out that the speciality part, with it's already limited market, is being sold so low you will *never* get the development monies back. Think you'd do that more than once?
Not going to change in our lifetime? Hard to change? The hell you say!
I'm old enough to remember when such advertisements were NOT allowed. Heck I remember when alcohol was much more freely advertised and I think I even have dim memories of cigarettes being advertised on TV! If it wasn't done before and is now then certainly it can be stopped. things that were done aren't now - no different.
Unfortunatly the drug reps will still attemtp to sway doctors to prescribe their drugs and offer "incentives". Once upon a time when I was young I worked in a drugstore and I worked with the pharmacy counter. I'll never forget the drug reps coming in to peddle their wares with the pharmacist. The most outrageous thing? Trying to get them to cough up lists of local doctors prescribing their competitor's drugs! Sleazy as all hell and I still see these scumbags sneaking in the door when I visit my local Dr. - talk about crap.:-(
Good point! Perhaps it should have been pondered prior to using someone else's tech?
Mind you I only support that if indeed this was something non-obvious and not a submarine sort of patent or something stupid ala one-click. It's also not yet determined that this DOES infringe. But if someone has indeed worked hard and followed the rules in an above board fashion only to have their work stolen then yeah the drive manufacturers should reap what they have sown...
In a word? YES! They invented it they get to set the price. If it's a valid innovation that's so valuable that everyone copied it then obviously it should be well rewarded. If it was something obvious then it should never have received the patent.
What did these companies do prior to this technology? Did these companies get the technology from these people or discover it separately on their own? It's not cut and dry but if these folks discovered this on their own, patent it, and then have the technology co-opted then yeah they need to be reimbursed for it and the companies spanked. It's not like the rules for IP theft were somehow not understood. The big question becomes, is their claim valid....
As for progress of science and arts, if this process is fenced off and unavailable then these companies will have to come up with something else or license the technology. That's a part of doing business. If it's not a terribly innovative idea it will be worked around - that's an advance. Stealing technology isn't something we ought to encourage or allow.
Yes because it's so much better to sink piles of money into R&D only to have some other company copy the technology and sell it for less due to their not having to recoup the R&D costs.
Get a clue.
This is how China is taking many American companies (and others) to the cleaners. Why bother to innovate or invent something when you can simply copy what someone else has done at little to no cost? Done often enough and the folks who do the innovative things are going to find themselves bankrupt - then what? I'm all for patent reform and I think software patents need to be rethought but you make it sound as if ALL patents are somehow "bad" and that's just naive. Yes, a limited monopoly can be had with the right patent and this is why they need to eventually expire - and do! The drug industry, abusive as it is, is a good example of this. If you've EVER bought a generic drug than you've seen this process at work. Sadly the drug companies have combated this not by striving for better research but my making minor changes to existing drugs and re-patenting and by spending more on advertisement than they do R&d. Why do we allow them to advertise prescription only drugs to the public exactly?
Where exactly was it reported that she had the drive repaired AFTER she received notice? Since she had a BestBuy employee brought in to report on the drive's state I find it pretty unlikely that she didn't also expect that he would be asked about the DATE that the repair was done and attempted to lie about it. I believe she was confused as to the date but saw nothing to point to it being after he had been informed of th einvestigation.
For lying in court? Why yes, yes I would. Sadly the judges here, even when PROVEN an officer is lying, refuse to do anything about it. Been there, done that.
Serious enough, apparently, that this woman's financial life has been ruined. $200K+ added to her legal costs for a single mother? I'm betting she won't be purchasing music for quite a long time, if ever again.
I'd point out that her hard drive was confirmed as damaged, Toast I think was the word used, by a Geek Squad employee. I'd also point out that this occurred PRIOR to her being informed that she was under any sort of investigation. To penalize her for this, as apparently occurred, seems wrong to me. The jurors comments about her benig stupid for not accepting a deal for a few K also appear to show some prejudice, I look at it as she could've gotten off cheap but fought instead which to me shows a tendency to believe that she might have been innocent not to think her stupid. Lastly, the woman was also an avid music purchaser according to her BestBuy purchase records. Someone who has the mentality to purchase that much music (hundreds of CDs was it?) was downloading and sharing freely? I wonder if that's really so likely. I find it interesting too that they claim to have some sort of fingerprint from her cable modem, what might that be? Surely not a MAC address unless it was provided by the cable company and I'd bet that their record keeping deserves a good looking over - particularly if they're a small one. I'd like to read over the transcripts of this, I'm not convinced, yet, that it's really so cut and dry based on at least some of the evidence quoted in a previous/. story.
Most damning IMO was the userID etc. that was being used. Certainly if anything this would seem to teach that it's best to use someone ELSE'S handle when using a service like Kazaa
I'm not so sure I see th eOJ case as an example of this. The defense was able to prove that proper police procedure wasn't followed and that there was at the very least the specter of evidence tampering. Sorry but if I'm on a jury and someone is able to prove an officer lied or tampered with evidence in order to make the defendant look guilty then it's game over - they walk. Funny enough I just filled out a jury form so I might yet get to put this into action:-)
Common thief? Suggest taking a look into the subsidies and promises by the various telcos to roll out high speed fiber. I do not recall the exact number of companies that made this promise but I do recall that it was something like one for every state. Guess how many failed to fulfill their promise..... Would you believe EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM? This too has been discussed on Slashdot in the past and frankly it's disgusting. Thes programs came with massive tax incentives, totalling billions I believe. So far as I'm concerned taking back the fiber infrastructure isn't theft at all but repossession!
Mind if we complain that we're being forced to go from an environment where we MIGHT have had some competition to one where competition is (again) severely limited simply because the competition is (again) no longer able to reach potential customers due to lack of infrastructure? Verizon is receiving "incentives" to roll out fiber, how about we make them share it just like copper was? Perhaps not right away but certainly down the line. Fingers crossed that the various cable companies wake up and get their act together or there will be little to no competition anywhere. Maybe WiMax will save our bacon? Not holding my breathe....
No no, they COULD handle it if they hadn't laid off all of their techs responsible for doing maintenance. He also explained to me how they had been working hard on fiber, then when they were forced to share with the 3rd parties they slowed (and man do they hate companies like COVAD!), then they lobbied for legislation to get the fiber "protected" from sharing. He says as soon as that was signed, and they crowed about it in the employee newsletter so he knew, they went GANGBUSTERS on rolling out FIOS.
So for those keeping score... started to roll fiber, figured out they might have to share it (BTW they are being subsidized to roll it out), dragged their feet until they coudl get it protected, got it protected, are going crazy rolling it out now, and are letting the old infrastructure goto shit by laying off the guys who were responsible for maintaining it with preventative kinds of things with the end result (duh) being that the old stuff is deteriorating FAST. Only now, at least a year after I was told what was up, have the local Govt. started to figure it out.
I have a friend who works for Verizon too. His perspective, in Baltimore, is quite interesting. Seems they have STOPPED "maintaining" the copper. They do service calls when it breaks but no more tree cutting or other routine maintenance. He says some areas are so bad that as fast as they fix one issue another crops up and the waiting list for service calls is long enough that it can take a week or more to get a tech out. The way he explains it is that as soon as they get fiber out they are going to rent or sell the copper albatross and let the next guy in line deal with the mess that has come from the lack of maintenance.
As for pulling copper.... Their peeve where he is at is the cable companies. Cable companies come in with VOIP and use "their" boxes on the side of the house to junction the inside copper. So their management has been threatening to begin removing these junction boxes from the sides of the houses and remove the copper from the pole too. This means that if someone switches from VOIP to them again they incur additional charges. He claims that the boxes on the sides of the house belong to Verizon and that their management says this is kosher to do. Oh and they are also upset that the cable companies aren't doing things like inside wiring service calls. He says that when an inside issue occurs the cable companies tell the customer they cannot help and so customers are witching back to Verizon in order to get these problems resolved. The Verizon employees are apparently upset that they are somehow held to different standards than the VOIP companies etc.
He started telling me about this over a year ago. I've only just recently seen articles in the Wash. Post about local communities in Northern VA waking up to the fact that Verizon has stopped maintaining the copper infrastructure they were entrusted with and that the tax payers partially funded - I couldn't help but snicker when Verizon denied this activity.
As for FIOS. They are forcing the techs to work OT and drive quite a bit more than they used to as copper techs so many refuse to switch. They also monitor the fiber techs a good bit more with GPS etc. so no more parking lot naps (I'm serious). FIOS is taking awhile to roll out because it is a lot of work for an install - triple play takes 8 hours and they often have to replace ALL cable in the house....
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, but RAID is *not* a substitute for backups. If you have something that cannot be replaced then put it on multiple pieces of media,store one offsite.
In this case a NAS for backup is fine since chances are good his NAS and machines being backed up aren't likely to fail unless it's a fire or lightning strike issue. That is what I do, an incremental job once a week that backs up to a NAS. My MP3s that took hours and hours to RIP are backed up on another drive that's not powered up.
LOL!
Actually someone did ask if it was going to be dropped or anything would change due to the legal troubles and accusations. The answer was that the software "worked" and the F/S was fine despite what the individual behind it may or may not have done.
No worries, Karma maxxed ;-)
If you want more info the unRAID forums are pretty good for help. You don't have to know your way around Linux to use it but it can be helpful. There's more info on the hardware on the site too. CoolerMaster makes good cases in their Stacker series and that Asus board is a winner IMO. If you can use SATA vs IDE do it, I have one array of each. The SATA array doesn't necessarily spit data out faster but it DOES do internal parity checks WAY faster!
Oh one downside I failed to mention - no UPS support YET. It's linux so I'm sure it can be added but it's not there yet. Tom is adding features as fast as he canthough and I've been happy with this stuff for well over a year.
Judging from the concerns you have I'd seriously suggest looking at Lime-technology.com's unRAID. I won't spam this thread further with all my likes and dislikes of this software again as I've posted it further down but you might find it a better choice for your needs. One thing Tom hasn't done is implement a "trashcan" which would save deleted files but he could and it's been suggested, for that matter you could probably enable it yourself.
;-)
Anyway, look for my lengthier more verbose post lower down
First, I'd not heard of Openfiler and will be reading up on it but for now I'm using unRAID from Lime-Technology.com and it's working well. Here's why I like it and why I think it's better than standard RAID:
:-O
1) It doesn't stripe and it easy expands to as many as 16 disks.
2) Because it doesn't stripe disks that aren't being used can goto sleep, much less power usage, noise, and heat trust me.
3) One disk is used for Parity and must be as big as or larger than all others but all other disks can be any size you want - they need *not* be identical. JBOD indeed!
4) If you lose a disk you still have access to the data, if you lose TWO disks you will lose data - two disks worth and NOT the whole array! Yes I know RAID can protect against multiple disk failure but only with hot spares or schemes that mean you get to use even LESS of your disks for data. I get to use ALL of my disk space save just one disk. I'm actually running sans a Parity disk right now since I had a hardware failure, I have access to ALL of my data and am hoping a second doesn't die on me while NewEgg ships.
5) It boots from FLASH memory on cheap hardware, you do not lose storage space to an OS.
6) The trial version supports two data disks and a parity disk, perfect for testing. The full version isn't super expensive. The product has decent support.
7) The disks use standard ResiserFS as their F/S. Want to pull one and take it someplace to mount to a Linux box? Sure, go for it. Need to do a data recovery for some odd reason? It's ResierFS so whatever works for that works for this.
Doing this for just $500 won't be easy without some spare hardware around. The Asus P5B V0 M/B runs about $106 at NewEgg and has 8 SATA ports (one is eSATA) and GigE. That and two 4port Promise cards (SATA or IDE) will get you up to 16 drives but obviously I'd start with just the M/B. Buy some cheap memory, no more than a gig. I spent $25 on the RAM I bought and $60 for a 2.4Gig Celeron D and that's WAY more than enough. Slap all that into a case you have laying around with a decent P/S and you're good to go on the cheap sans drives. Spend the rest on drives, I find Seagates work well and their 5yr warranty rocks! Oh you will need a FLASH stick too, 512meg is WAY more than enough so figure $25 here too.
Some things you might NOT like about unRAID:
1) You aren't going to turn this into a NAS\WEB server\Mail server. It's storage stupid, use it for that. To do all of those things you'd need a swap space and out of the box this doesn't have swap - nor is it needed. It can be added but....
2) Each drive is it's own share. I address them using UNC naming and there are ways to access files across multiple drives as a single share but it's not like RAID with one big fat volume. IMO the advantages outweigh this downside, more details can be found on the unRAID site.
3) It ain't super fast. Yes, it will max out a 100meg NIC pretty good but not the GigE. You're getting the throughput of a single drive with some overhead so there's no aggregation of disks to improve speed. It IS fast enough to stream HD and multiple SD streams are no biggie either. I *do* back my machines up to this without issue using Acronis. Do use a GigE NIC however, it bursts above the 100Meg mark and testing has shown advantages to having it, it just cannot max it out continuously.
4) unRAID doesn't YET support NFS, Tom is working on it. SMB is what I use.
5) The driver is open source but the controlling software is closed source and yup Tom makes some money on it. Source is available for the GPL'd driver software he's modded so you could go around this but frankly I think his pricing is reasonable, zealots might not think so.
Check it out, if nothing the ASUS board is a good base for damned near anything else you might want to build for a NAS and is supported under Linux, it has onboard video on it too. More details about the M/B, HD deals, or other hardware like SATA cages can be found on the unRAID support forums and in the Wiki.
You've spent no time in traffic court have you? A better title for it would be Kangaroo Court. My fave is a friend who was passed by a semi going downhill but pulled over by a radar gun toting officer at the bottom. He argued that the reading was most likely from the larger radar sig, the truck that was PASSING him. The judge reckoned that at some point during his trip he must have been speeding so ergo Guilty, pay the fine! Never mind logic. Never mind that my friend works law enforcement in another state. Throw logic out the window, they wanted their money. I actually caught an officer lying in traffic court once, proved it beyond a doubt, and except for the awkward silence that followed there were no repercussions.
This isn't just small claims or traffic court either, the system is a mess and unless you can afford BIG bux for a lawyer you're in deep poop if you get dragged into it....
It was not a mandatory upgrade. Some later games were encrypted differently but there was nothing "mandatory" about the upgrades that followed. GTA still worked fine even if you did the upgrade. Sure, they tried to stop the exploit - worked out well in the end didn't it?
Again, who is running the stock firmware to begin with? Heck just to do this little "tweak" you have to be running 3rd party firmware. Apparently the mod consists of modifying one file, how exactly is a firmware tweak going to stop that? They do not use individual keys on the games, if they kill the crypto key for this they will kill it for quite a few other games - now there's a reason for folks to upgrade huh? This isn't even an exploit, there's no reason for Sony to step in.
Sony has little control over this platform anymore and I don't think you understand what's going on with it either.
Mandatory PSP upgrade? Tell me that was a poor attempt at sarcasm, please! For starters I wonder how a 3rd party software company would get Sony to do that - even if it were possible. Who runs Sony firmware anyway?
When I was younger I worked in an office and would get headaches, using a small piece of cardboard I was able to trace the source of the pressure I'd feel to a small device on the ceiling. Using the cardboard I could "hear" a difference by placing the cardboard between me and the device - I could barely hear a keening sound without the cardboard. One other young person (sadly it's been years so no longer young) could also hear this. Maintenance was called, the guy promptly rolled over a chair and jammed a sharpened pencil into the device in the ceiling - a motion sensor! He couldn't hear it either but he had responded to calls just like mine in the past and had "learned" how to fix it. (lol) I also have found that I could hear the sonic remote controls that were popular before IRDA became the norm, my girlfriend had one of these TVs but couldn't hear the sounds it emitted - I could and it was fun pressing various buttons to hear the different patterns\tones. Lastly, I used to do computer repair in an office building on older terminal type hardware. These devices had analog video cards with coils in them and when slightly funked they would vibrate - those of you who can "hear" when an old tube TV is on across the room think of that sound tripled. I'd walk into some offices and the sounds from these things were so bad I had to grit my teeth until I could track them down and fix them - even if the service call was for a different system. Often the workers around them weren't aware of the sounds but in more than one case my fixing the machines had folks thanking me afterwards.
:-)
I've tried doing test sweeps to see how high I could hear. I'm pretty sure that my hearing range has been reduced slightly but when younger I'm positive it was above the "20KHZ" range so often quoted. One sweep I ran with a simple PC commandline program allowed me to hear noises at 22KHZ or so but I honestly think the speaker may have been a limitation too. No doctor ever tested me above that range, why would they? I've not been to many concerts although in recent years moreso than when I was young. I bring ear plugs just in case, some have been nearly unbearably loud
Anyway, just wanted to let you know that yeah there are some freaks out there that can (or could) hear above 16KHZ, sometimes a good bit above that!
I vote NuFinish as the perfect polisher. Yes, the crap car wax that has petro distillates in it makes an awesome polisher! Smells nasty but it softens the plastic just a touch and allows you to polish out even fairly nasty scratches. A single bottle will go a long long ways too - I must have polished over a 100 CD and DVD with mine before I misplaced it - time for a new bottle :-) Works well on XBOX type games too.
Don't like HMOs? Don't use one, I don't. My Dr. is beholden to no one. Yeah, my insurance company might not cover a treatment but it IS offered to me.
Nice to see that you "get it". I know some folks who have put R&D monies into building various car parts for the aftermarket. As it happens the Chinese are a really cheap place to have castings and things done - some of them have had work done there as a result. The others have spent more to have their work cast here. Guess which group very quickly found their competitors offering THEIR parts at prices that will not allow them to recoup their R&D? Yup, the guys who went to China! How? Well, seems if you know who to ask and especially if you can figure out which foundry it is you can purchase the parts for the SAME cost as the other guy who did the R&D. So, he sweats and works and then these guys sell it to anyone who asks no matter who's patterns it is. To read some of the parts in this thread that's perfectly okay. What they apparently have NEVER done is spend the cash to develop something themselves only to have it stolen from under them.
At least when it's cast here the guy who copies it actually has to copy it and not just buy from the manufacturer skipping the whole R&D part - you have that whole first to market thing at least that some of these twits want to quote. Here you have a snowball's chance of suing if the guy backdoors your stuff, not so in China. Not yet anyway, if they want to really get anywhere they will begin stopping this process. Sink $30K+ into dyno time and pattern making and then find out that the speciality part, with it's already limited market, is being sold so low you will *never* get the development monies back. Think you'd do that more than once?
Not going to change in our lifetime? Hard to change? The hell you say!
:-(
I'm old enough to remember when such advertisements were NOT allowed. Heck I remember when alcohol was much more freely advertised and I think I even have dim memories of cigarettes being advertised on TV! If it wasn't done before and is now then certainly it can be stopped. things that were done aren't now - no different.
Unfortunatly the drug reps will still attemtp to sway doctors to prescribe their drugs and offer "incentives". Once upon a time when I was young I worked in a drugstore and I worked with the pharmacy counter. I'll never forget the drug reps coming in to peddle their wares with the pharmacist. The most outrageous thing? Trying to get them to cough up lists of local doctors prescribing their competitor's drugs! Sleazy as all hell and I still see these scumbags sneaking in the door when I visit my local Dr. - talk about crap.
Good point! Perhaps it should have been pondered prior to using someone else's tech?
Mind you I only support that if indeed this was something non-obvious and not a submarine sort of patent or something stupid ala one-click. It's also not yet determined that this DOES infringe. But if someone has indeed worked hard and followed the rules in an above board fashion only to have their work stolen then yeah the drive manufacturers should reap what they have sown...
In a word? YES! They invented it they get to set the price. If it's a valid innovation that's so valuable that everyone copied it then obviously it should be well rewarded. If it was something obvious then it should never have received the patent.
What did these companies do prior to this technology? Did these companies get the technology from these people or discover it separately on their own? It's not cut and dry but if these folks discovered this on their own, patent it, and then have the technology co-opted then yeah they need to be reimbursed for it and the companies spanked. It's not like the rules for IP theft were somehow not understood. The big question becomes, is their claim valid....
As for progress of science and arts, if this process is fenced off and unavailable then these companies will have to come up with something else or license the technology. That's a part of doing business. If it's not a terribly innovative idea it will be worked around - that's an advance. Stealing technology isn't something we ought to encourage or allow.
Yes because it's so much better to sink piles of money into R&D only to have some other company copy the technology and sell it for less due to their not having to recoup the R&D costs.
Get a clue.
This is how China is taking many American companies (and others) to the cleaners. Why bother to innovate or invent something when you can simply copy what someone else has done at little to no cost? Done often enough and the folks who do the innovative things are going to find themselves bankrupt - then what? I'm all for patent reform and I think software patents need to be rethought but you make it sound as if ALL patents are somehow "bad" and that's just naive. Yes, a limited monopoly can be had with the right patent and this is why they need to eventually expire - and do! The drug industry, abusive as it is, is a good example of this. If you've EVER bought a generic drug than you've seen this process at work. Sadly the drug companies have combated this not by striving for better research but my making minor changes to existing drugs and re-patenting and by spending more on advertisement than they do R&d. Why do we allow them to advertise prescription only drugs to the public exactly?
Where exactly was it reported that she had the drive repaired AFTER she received notice? Since she had a BestBuy employee brought in to report on the drive's state I find it pretty unlikely that she didn't also expect that he would be asked about the DATE that the repair was done and attempted to lie about it. I believe she was confused as to the date but saw nothing to point to it being after he had been informed of th einvestigation.
For lying in court? Why yes, yes I would. Sadly the judges here, even when PROVEN an officer is lying, refuse to do anything about it. Been there, done that.
Serious enough, apparently, that this woman's financial life has been ruined. $200K+ added to her legal costs for a single mother? I'm betting she won't be purchasing music for quite a long time, if ever again.
I'd point out that her hard drive was confirmed as damaged, Toast I think was the word used, by a Geek Squad employee. I'd also point out that this occurred PRIOR to her being informed that she was under any sort of investigation. To penalize her for this, as apparently occurred, seems wrong to me. The jurors comments about her benig stupid for not accepting a deal for a few K also appear to show some prejudice, I look at it as she could've gotten off cheap but fought instead which to me shows a tendency to believe that she might have been innocent not to think her stupid. Lastly, the woman was also an avid music purchaser according to her BestBuy purchase records. Someone who has the mentality to purchase that much music (hundreds of CDs was it?) was downloading and sharing freely? I wonder if that's really so likely. I find it interesting too that they claim to have some sort of fingerprint from her cable modem, what might that be? Surely not a MAC address unless it was provided by the cable company and I'd bet that their record keeping deserves a good looking over - particularly if they're a small one. I'd like to read over the transcripts of this, I'm not convinced, yet, that it's really so cut and dry based on at least some of the evidence quoted in a previous /. story.
Most damning IMO was the userID etc. that was being used. Certainly if anything this would seem to teach that it's best to use someone ELSE'S handle when using a service like Kazaa
I'm not so sure I see th eOJ case as an example of this. The defense was able to prove that proper police procedure wasn't followed and that there was at the very least the specter of evidence tampering. Sorry but if I'm on a jury and someone is able to prove an officer lied or tampered with evidence in order to make the defendant look guilty then it's game over - they walk. Funny enough I just filled out a jury form so I might yet get to put this into action :-)
Common thief? Suggest taking a look into the subsidies and promises by the various telcos to roll out high speed fiber. I do not recall the exact number of companies that made this promise but I do recall that it was something like one for every state. Guess how many failed to fulfill their promise..... Would you believe EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM? This too has been discussed on Slashdot in the past and frankly it's disgusting. Thes programs came with massive tax incentives, totalling billions I believe. So far as I'm concerned taking back the fiber infrastructure isn't theft at all but repossession!
Mind if we complain that we're being forced to go from an environment where we MIGHT have had some competition to one where competition is (again) severely limited simply because the competition is (again) no longer able to reach potential customers due to lack of infrastructure? Verizon is receiving "incentives" to roll out fiber, how about we make them share it just like copper was? Perhaps not right away but certainly down the line. Fingers crossed that the various cable companies wake up and get their act together or there will be little to no competition anywhere. Maybe WiMax will save our bacon? Not holding my breathe....
No no, they COULD handle it if they hadn't laid off all of their techs responsible for doing maintenance. He also explained to me how they had been working hard on fiber, then when they were forced to share with the 3rd parties they slowed (and man do they hate companies like COVAD!), then they lobbied for legislation to get the fiber "protected" from sharing. He says as soon as that was signed, and they crowed about it in the employee newsletter so he knew, they went GANGBUSTERS on rolling out FIOS.
So for those keeping score... started to roll fiber, figured out they might have to share it (BTW they are being subsidized to roll it out), dragged their feet until they coudl get it protected, got it protected, are going crazy rolling it out now, and are letting the old infrastructure goto shit by laying off the guys who were responsible for maintaining it with preventative kinds of things with the end result (duh) being that the old stuff is deteriorating FAST. Only now, at least a year after I was told what was up, have the local Govt. started to figure it out.
I have a friend who works for Verizon too. His perspective, in Baltimore, is quite interesting. Seems they have STOPPED "maintaining" the copper. They do service calls when it breaks but no more tree cutting or other routine maintenance. He says some areas are so bad that as fast as they fix one issue another crops up and the waiting list for service calls is long enough that it can take a week or more to get a tech out. The way he explains it is that as soon as they get fiber out they are going to rent or sell the copper albatross and let the next guy in line deal with the mess that has come from the lack of maintenance.
As for pulling copper.... Their peeve where he is at is the cable companies. Cable companies come in with VOIP and use "their" boxes on the side of the house to junction the inside copper. So their management has been threatening to begin removing these junction boxes from the sides of the houses and remove the copper from the pole too. This means that if someone switches from VOIP to them again they incur additional charges. He claims that the boxes on the sides of the house belong to Verizon and that their management says this is kosher to do. Oh and they are also upset that the cable companies aren't doing things like inside wiring service calls. He says that when an inside issue occurs the cable companies tell the customer they cannot help and so customers are witching back to Verizon in order to get these problems resolved. The Verizon employees are apparently upset that they are somehow held to different standards than the VOIP companies etc.
He started telling me about this over a year ago. I've only just recently seen articles in the Wash. Post about local communities in Northern VA waking up to the fact that Verizon has stopped maintaining the copper infrastructure they were entrusted with and that the tax payers partially funded - I couldn't help but snicker when Verizon denied this activity.
As for FIOS. They are forcing the techs to work OT and drive quite a bit more than they used to as copper techs so many refuse to switch. They also monitor the fiber techs a good bit more with GPS etc. so no more parking lot naps (I'm serious). FIOS is taking awhile to roll out because it is a lot of work for an install - triple play takes 8 hours and they often have to replace ALL cable in the house....