Posts by Joseph Boren

Seagate customers swamped by Barracuda drive failures

Long time comming

Switched to Seagate back when IBM made all those famous "Deathstar" HDs and I had to replace about half of the IBMs I'd rolled out to clients over the past year. Anyone else remember those? Remember how IBM spun off it's drive unit to Hitatchi 15 minutes later? YOu'd send in defective drives and they'd send back Refurbished defective drives. Cost me a fucking fortune cause you can't replace a brand new HD that died right after you sold it to a customer, with the same broken drive refurbished.

At the time Seagate was impossible to beat, they cost more, but the reliability was better than anything else, especially on SCSI drives. I've been less impressed with their SATA offerings.

Although this particular issue is specific to 1Tb drives, I'd say the average quality across the board is way down. The lowered warranty is the final straw. Unfortunately I"m not sure who's better now.

On a side note anyone considering or using 1Tb drives or larger in a RAID 5 setup might want to read and consider;

http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/information-faster/archive/2008/10/27/the-real-mtbf-the-importance-of-better-raid-levels-in-protecting-your-data-medical-and-otherwise.aspx

I've seen several other discussions of the same issue. Basically If you have a RAID 5 array with 1Tb or larger drives and one fails, it takes so long and works the drives so hard to rebuild the array, that it is statistically likely that you will have a second drive failure before the rebuild is completed.

Joe

Biggles battles Yanks for right to sport tash

Sweet 'stash

Just in case our UK cousins didn't know;

These days in the US only two types of men wear that kind of stash;

Cops and gay porn actors.

You could also add wannabe cowboys, but most of them fall into the second group.

My apologies if there are still any actual cowboys out there sporting a bad-ass handlebar (my grandpa was one), but real cowboys are about as common as honest politicians these days.

Just doing my part to sponsor trans-Atlantic cultural understanding.

Cheers

Joe

London store brews £50-a-poop cat-crap coffee

RE: Budwiser and Cat Piss

If you've seen any of Budweiser's commercials, you'd know how proud they are of the Pure Rocky Mountain water that they make their ahhh....faux-beer beverage.. from.

An interesting fact is that the source of that water is a small river named Clear Creek. The section of this river directly above where Budweiser takes in the water for their brewery is renowned amongst white-water rafters and is heavily floated during the season. The take-out is directly upriver from the Budweiser water intlet and I've been told by several professional river guides that it is traditional - to the point of being a ritual - for Everyone to take a piss in the river at the take-out. Sort of a salute to Budweiser. During the peak of the season, that could be many dozens of people a day. Everyone does it.

So yes, especially in the summer, Budweiser IS made from piss, but it's rafter-piss not cat. So ironically, Bud's made from *recycled* micro-brews and THC.

Enjoy!

Joe

Sheet music site forced offline

@Anonymous Coward

"So you're SUPPORTING the music biz as the rightful profite(e?)rs????"

I'm not sure how you got that out of what i said. My point was only the FACT that if you try to build a business doing what you love(beyond the sole-proprietor level), you will inevitably end up doing more "business" than that thing you love. This is a simple fact of life for EVERYONE, including artists, plumbers, monkey trainers, etc. ad nausem. The other two options are to get hired by someone to do that thing you love, in which case you work at their discretion, or you make your living doing something you don't love and do that thing you love in your spare time (which is what most people do).

"The difference between a plumber and a songwriter (or author) is that a plumber gets paid immediately for his work. Well paid. It takes most songwriters several years to "sell" their first song, but the advance isn't normally a living wage."

That's a good point, and somewhat valid, but it takes a plumber years to "sell" their first toilet install, in the form of learning the trade, probably doing an low-paid apprenticeship, and either getting a job, or starting a plumbing business and convincing customers to hire him. the example you're using here is that of the real traditional model, where the artist who writes a song, then shops it around to the established media outlets to sell for a cash advance and a tiny percentage of future sales. Obviously this puts the artist at a huge disadvantage, since they have to give up all their rights to their work to make any money. You can't enter into that situation and reasonably expect to get anything but screwed. But then the only reason people do it that way is either they don't know anything about the Business they've chosen to attempt to make a living at, or they're not really interested in making a "living" at their work, they want to be a rock star.

The point i'm making is that everyone has to "make a living". If you choose art as your way of doing that, it's your responsibility to know what you're getting into. You have no inherent right as an "artist" to get paid to produce whatever you want, whenever you want, wherever you want, and get paid whether anyone wants it or not. If you write good songs and play your instruments well and I like your style, I'll come see you live and maybe buy the cd. I'm not going to pay to look at the sheet music online 20 years after you're dead.

"Do we want to discourage songwriters, authors, scriptwriters etc etc ad nauseum?"

Nope, i like all that stuff too. That wasn't my point. My point was that Artist's should be able to make a living from their work (if it's good, just like anyone else), but extending copyright 70 years beyond their death doesnt' help with that. Fixing the current business model, so that artist's don't have to sign away all their rights to their life's work to make any money at all, might help.

"The problem in this case is a really tricky one."

Unless they were serving stuff from currently living artists, I beg to differ. Again, those extended copyrights exist to benefit huge multi-national publishers/distribution co's. Dead artist's don't care about that stuff. Maybe Illegal in (or not) in different jurisdictions. I'm firmly on the "law exists to ensure individual freedom" side of that argument.

"However, if sites get closed for serving material that they have every right to serve... well..."

Not sure what Your point is here, but I'm going to guess we agree and that it's Bad?

"I only see one solution, and that's for people like the UK's National Library and the US's Library of Congress to take responsibility for publishing their own country's expired works free of charge."

That is a brilliant idea,.... seriously.

Best,

Joe

still hate the icons.

RE: Francis Vaughan

"a very curious form of the harshest possible death duties. One that no other profession would be subject to"

Actually, it's not. Let's look at it a little closer.

Bob is a plumber.

Dave is a musician/writer/painter/some other artistic profession.

Bob spends his 'working hours' installing toilets, and thru hard, honest, quality work he builds a small business based on his reputation for being a reliable honest businessman who does really good work. During his lifetime he purchases and pays off a modest house, and saves enough to help pay college tuition for his children, and has a few bucks left in the bank at the end of his life to leave to them, along with the house, the business, and any possessions he gathered along the way.

Dave spends his 'working hours' practicing his craft, performing privately and publicly, and composing and publishing his works. Thru hard, honest, quality work he builds a reputation as a talented composer/musician/writer/whatever and he creates a small business producing, publishing and performing his own works. During his lifetime he purchases and pays off a modest house, and saves enough to help pay college tuition for his children, and has a few bucks left in the bank at the end of his life to leave to them, along with the house, the business, and any possessions he gathered along the way.

"If you build up a business you can leave it to your kids, leave your house to them too. But if your life's work is not in dollars, or bricks and mortar, but based upon artistic works, the state would simply be appropriating them and dispersing the value"

A plumbers life work (or any service professionals') is in the value his work has provided to his clients. If he has a business/house/inheritance to leave to his children, it's because he accumulated those things during his lifetime by saving. Those toilets don't go on paying him for lifetime +70 years. His "life's work" is every bit as ethereal as an artists.

And the fact is, in order to build a business, you have to hire and manage other people. If you're a plumber, who owns a plumbing business, you won't be doing much plumbing yourself. You'll be managing the people who do and doing administrative stuff. Same rule applies to artists. This is a sad fact of life for anyone who wants to make a living doing something they love. If you do it all yourself, your income potential will be strictly limited. If you want to build a business out of it, you will end up not doing "it" very much, cause you'll be busy running the business.

What you have to leave to your children at the end of your life is a function of how much you have accumulated during your lifetime, which is a function of how much of your "life's work" you focused on accumulating stuff. If a man is a great plumber and installs many, many perfect toilets during his career, and makes lots of money, but never saves a penny, and so has nothing to leave his children, it's not my responsibility to give his children $0.10 every time i take a crap. Likewise, if a man is a great musician/actor/painter/writer and produces many great works of art during his lifetime, but never saves a penny to leave to his children.............you can finish the logic yourself.

And ask anyone without a working toilet who's more valuable to society - plumbers or artists ;-).

I'm not against copyright during the PRODUCERS lifetime, nor for some short period after death to minimize the the situation you describe where an artist's IP value declines sharply towards the end of their life, as purchasers wait for them (and their copyright) to expire. But the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of IP is owned almost wholly buy the publisher, not the artist who created the value, and the reason it's all but impossible to make a living as an artist is that you only get a tiny amount of the revenue generated by your "life's work", while the publisher/distributor gets most of it. The current copyright situation exists to benefit them, not the individuals who actually produced the IP, which is NOT what the whole concept of Copyright is about.

I also don't think you can make a reasonable argument that a person's offspring should automatically be supported after that person's death by whatever work that person did during their lifetime. that really is something that's not true in any other profession, and isn't true for artists' either. You make money, you save some of it, you leave that to your kids. Your "life's work" doesn't do it automagically for you.

What's really at issue is the fact that modern technology is rapidly making RECORDED art valueless. This is already true of music, books and film, and is becoming more true of other art forms also. It is so cheap, easy, and effortless to copy and distribute these things electronically that what the market is willing to pay for "Copies" is rapidly approaching nothing. this is causing severe pain for the existing established industries, because their entire revenue models are built around iron-fisted control of distribution, which gives them power over both the consumer and the producer. They are simply trying their best to push that pain off on whoever they can.

Artist's should be able to copyright their own works for lifetime + a short period. Nobody should be able to copyright someone else's work, particularly after the end of the artist's lifetime. The original article here is about Universal AG (who've never Produced a single peice of art ever, they're just a distributor) bullying someone in another country for posting sheet music composed by people who died long ago. This situation doesn't fit into the concept of Copyright.

Thanks,

Joe

PS. really hate the new icons. please make them go away. My $0.02.

Broadbandit nabbed in Wi-Fi bust

Better analogy

The "open front door" analogy really doesn't work in this situation. Even if the door is wide open you have to physically move your carcass onto Private property thereby committing the crime of Trespass. It's not like that with WIFI.

Now, IANAL but, an open access point that is broadcasting it's SID is BROADCASTING an open invitation to connect, over PUBLIC frequencies, and at least in this case, well beyond the Physical boundries of the Private property, onto PUBLIC property.

Broadcast;

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=broadcast&x=0&y=0

NOT

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_(band) :-)

The act of broadcasting the SID of an open access point could be considered an invitation to join the network and the DHCP process could be considered the act of asking for and receiving permission to join the network. Remember even if you connect to the access point, you can't use the internet connection without the IP information supplied by DHCP. Using the internet connection is the "theft of services", right? Not just connecting to the AP and doing nothing.

In US law (roughly based on UK law, right?) there is a concept called "attractive nuisance". This basically means that if you have something on your private property that is visible from public property and everyone who sees it is going to want to use and you make no effort to secure it or prevent access to it, you give up to some degree, some of your property rights to that thing and possibly the piece of property it is on. Here's an example; you are a single person with no children and you live alone in a house with a large unfenced backyard that borders a public park. One day you build a children's playset at the back of your property, easily visible from the park. some children playing in the park notice your new playset and wander over and start using it. One of the children falls off the slide and breaks his arm. His parents sue you. They will probably win even though the child trespassed and used your property without permission. You intentionally created an "attractive nuisaunce" and made no attempt to control access to it. You could have built a fence, you could have posted signs that said "Private Property - keep off - this means you little brats" But you didn't, so you accept some responsibility. It's probably different in the UK so somebody correct me if i'm wrong. But there are ridiculous laws like this in the US that need knocked down too.

The best analogy i could come up with in this situation is this;

I'm walking down the sidewalk to work one morning. I walk by the front of your house and notice that your garden hose is hanging over your fence spouting water onto the Public sidewalk. Since I'm thirsty, i lean over and *without physically touching your hose* (that's garden hose, pervs) i take a drink of water.

Now have i tresspassed? No. Have i stolen your water? Maybe, would it matter if I had let the water hit the sidewalk first and then lapped it up from there? The water was going down the gutter anyway, at what point does it change from private to public property?

As previous posters have mentioned, the guy made a huge mistake admitting to anything. The proper response when the Neighborhood Nazis walked up and asked what he was doing would have been either to say something like "I'm sitting in my private car, legally parked in public place working on my private laptop, not that it's any of your business - now fuck off", or, simply winding up the window and ignoring them. If/when an actual cop shows up you have to deal with him but the same rule applies. "My name is so and so, I live at x address, I'm sitting in my car working on my laptop. Period. If you have any more questions i'm going to need my lawyer present."

It seems to me that these kind of laws have only existed so far because they've only been applied to the uneducated. The first time someone tries this on a reasonably well funded IT professional, with a bad attitude about authority, I can't see it holding up. All it's going to require is the right expert witnesses to explain the situation in layman's terms to the jury in a way they can understand and no reasonable person would convict. And at least in the US these laws are pretty vulnerable to constitutional challenges, the problem is that it's so very expensive to take a case far enough on constitutional grounds, that it's going to take someone with a ton of money, a professional understanding of the subject, lots of endurance, and a strong enough feeling of Civic responsibility to not just take the settlement and make the whole thing go away.

Begin mini-rant:

At least in the US, it's government OF the People, BY the People, not just For the people. If you don't like the way things are going in your govt, Get your fat asses off the couch and DO something. Just voting for the lesser of two evils ain't enough. They're both obviously in the pocket of the global corps. If you're not willing to fight and suffer for your freedom, you don't deserve it. Maybe start by learning your actual rights under the constitution and federal and local laws and the proper way to deal with law enforcement, so you don't make it so goddamn easy to take away those rights.

End rant:

Best,

Joe