Slashdot Mirror

I am very happy that I bought my Mac Book Pro this spring and did not wait for the next version. Both the Mac Book and Mac Book Pro are ugly abysmal steps backwards.

I've seen that keyboard before, it looks like the old TI99-4A keyboard.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/139100-9/the_10_worst_pc_keyboards_of_all_time.html

I'll just upgrade my memory and keep my MBP for a few years until this line of ugly and featureless MBP's continue.

Oh, as far as the fire wire port goes, who the heck uses that? I have never used it. There are very few FW devices and they usually cost more.

The US federal government has successfully used gmail to handle 38,000 accounts, spread across 86 agencies; and saved a substantial amount of money.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/151399/gov_waste_google_apps.html?tk=rss_news

Phillips showed one off back in 2004. A very quick search turns up several good examples with varying features and capability.

That won't stop the Apple fanbois from drooling and going "OMG STEVE'S SUCH A GENIUS!" and acting like Apple invented it, though.

Maybe you could explain this close up image of your campus? (It's from the lower right of the article's image)

For anybody interested in the close up image, wondering where it *actually* is (because it ain't in the article's image), take a gander here:

Google Maps (pops)

The plane's actually sitting in a carpark in the western suburbs of Paris, France.

I had to make sure I was reading the article correctly as Kutztown is not a very large or well known campus. I'm not sure as to why they chose Kutztown for their first pictures. I would be interested if anybody could provide some sort of insight as to what process was used to select the first test location. Was the satellite simply in a convenient orbit to snap pictures of Kutztown?

Maybe you could explain this close up image of your campus? (It's from the lower right of the article's image)

Don't be coy, we all saw the lead up to this in the papers earlier this year. Kutztown's had this coming--it was one thing to invite Putin to talk but when he left those trailers, that was too far.

On a serious note, I'm certain they picked Kutztown based on the following:

Let P denote the number of lawyers a university has on reserve.

Let Q denote the number of lawyers Google has on reserve.

Let R denote said university's reserve resources for emergencies.

Let L be a function such that L(x) = the number of lawyers one can immediately hire with x dollars.

Is P + L(R) Q? Then I think we have a candidate! I found it on Google Scholar.

I believe, that coming into the country, the customs agency should have the right to search you and your belongings. I don't believe that they should have the right to sieze any of your belongins without probable cause.

I spent the last five years traveling around the world, typically taking 2 trips a month out of the U.S. to other places. Outside of Saudi Arabia, I've never even had to open a bag for a quick look, although in Saudi Arabia I was more concerned with having my pony-tail chopped off. The current policy of potentially having a laptop siezed is asinine. However, I don't know anyone who has ever had this happen to them and I know a lot of people who travel in and out of the country on a regular basis.

While it's possible for it to happen to you it is extremely unlikely. If you're that concerned about it then encrypt the contents and be done with it.

I'd be more concerned about the 10,000 laptops lost or stolen every week (more bs about this can be found here: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/147739/laptops_lost_like_hot_cakes_at_us_airports.html) than for a customs agent to have enough interest in me to 1) look at my laptop and 2) to want to keep it.

Amazon has been beta testing running Windows servers on EC2, and from what I've heard from Amazon, one of the challenges is creating a Microsoft license that will allow Microsoft to capture revenue from this and similar projects elsewhere.

I wouldn't be surprised if they used a business model similar to Red Hat's cloud image, where Red Hat gets a tiny payment for every hour the server is running.

It took me a while to find this article, which covers the agreements/demands that Microsoft placed on Netbook manufacturers who want to use XP. It explains why all of the netbooks with Atom processors are using the low-resolution screens.
Granted, some of the requirements have been reduced (namely, the maximum hard-drive capacity), but in general the manufacturers are toeing the Redmond line.

http://ftp.pcworld.com/pub/screencams/mscement2.gif

I think it's important to note that blue-ray disks are still routinely priced 10 dollars more than their full-priced DVD counterparts. Do these movies provide 30% more benefit to the consumer? The difference between DVD and Blu-Ray is more like the difference between VHS and Beta, rather than VHS to DVD. It can be noticeable, but A: only to consumers with theater sized TV's and good eyes and B: assuming there are no technological translations along the way (progressive scan video to interlaced TV, for example). With the exploitive cost difference, the visual difference needs to be large.

HDTV has been a cock-up from the beginning. Supporting both interlaced signals and progressive scan was a huge mistake, one which ensures that content looks awful 50% of the time. In modern televisions, interlaced is a marketing tool to say that your set displays at a higher resolution than it actually does, while degrading image quality. Consumers are now used to horribly jaggy and obviously compressed HDTV broadcast signals, frequently no better than a standard-resolution television. Add in the blur inherent in dealing with resolution / interlaced / phase of moon conflicts, and you get an ecosystem that is utterly baffling, underperforms, and is really only needed for video gaming and displaying computer output.

Oh, and when Eraser, is in your top 20, you need to get more titles. Seriously guys, Eraser? Was Jingle All The Way not available?

you can boot into dos from a usb drive formatted fat 32, all it requires is bios support. download the HP USB disk storage format tool http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,64963-order,4-page,1-c,peripherals/description.html have a dos boot floppy handy for the necessary dos files. run the format tool, and then tell it where your dos files are. then install whatever dos tools you want from http://www.unet.univie.ac.at/~a0503736/php/drdoswiki/index.php?n=Main.Links it should run on any computer that can boot from usb.

I'm holding out for a 12 core processor.

So is AMD

I've been following the news of this 6-core processor for a while, and the news articles about it in the past say that it is the last of the Penryn line for Intel. So, what ever happened to the Penryn V8 (8 cores)?

Has Google actually failed at anything yet?

http://www.pcworld.com/article/146101/top_10_google_flubs_flops_and_failures.html

• At least one other "old" news story made it to Google News yesterday. At about 7AM PDT on Sept 8, 2008, the headlining link for the RealNetworks DVD ripping story was to a 3-year old PCWorld article entitled DVD Ripping Flourishes. That old article had a correctly dated byline and appears to have been scooped up by Google at about the same time as the United Airlines Bankruptcy article (10:30pm PDT the night before).
• Also on Sep 8, Google news introduced a new feature that returns old archived news stories to be returned in news searches. Is that a coincidence or what?

Google's official answer on the subject avoids any sort of culpability. Did anyone else come across new "old" news on Monday Sep 8 on Google News?

I understand what you're saying. I don't think it's analogous to LCD. Just the way I am reading it perhaps. My understanding is the screen doesn't need to be fundamentally changed to produced an active matrix display at the level of a pixel.

http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/007371.html

link above is reading the esquire article the same as me. Could take the display and turn it into something else like "a dirt cheap e-book reader."

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/149792/intel_launches_smaller_ssd_for_netbooks_minidesktops.html

intel appears to have actually jumped into the SSD foray before this.

unfortunately, reviews have been lackluster.

They want to make an example of McKinnon. Mess with the government and you'll spend the rest of your life in prison. Screwing with banks? Cause financial damage? Yeah, we'll give you hell for it. But screw with the government. Oh, you are SO going down. Nevermind that it's already been established that security on U.S. government systems is horribly inept to the point of being almost ridiculous.

I'm assuming they get by the legality of selling it by stating it is for use for the single copy you are allowed to make. Still, I'm sure they'll see some pressure from the content providers.

Most "average" users I know play they're dvds on their tvs, not their computers. I hope they explicitly state only plays on a computer on the label, or a lot of average customers will be rather annoyed.

Finally, I remember something about dvd shrink (which is extremely easy for average users when used with dvd-decrypter, though not legal in the us) may be actually legal in the EU since CSS does not effectively protect the content. Here is a link to one of the articles. Any way we can push this through in the US?

Read, learn... http://www.pcworld.com/article/118404/techgov_paying_for_piracy_in_advance.html Besides, just because it's not specifically stated anywhere that there are fees given to intellectual property holders of independent works on data CD media, you can bet some of the purchase price of the hardware goes to them. They lost the battle way back in the 70's anyway, if not earlier.

No, Google states that the change should be considered retroactive.

Indeed, it even wants IE to perform well with Gmail and the rest. It's just that it has very limited control over this. That's why Google's been frustrated and it is launching this Chrome browser.

Did I call it, or what? ;-)

For those of you who are interested, Chrome is supposed to be launching later today. Apparently around 11 AM PDT to coincide with the press conference. (Any moment now...) For those of you who can't wait, PCWorld seems to have figured out how to finagle screenshots out of Google's 404 page.

For those of you who didn't get to see it, the comic book is now available for viewing.

What the UK needs is for the government to get the bill for breaches ;-)

Seriously, the Information Commissioner has actually served enforcement notices on the most incompetent departments and the Conservative opposition has called for prosecutions.

PC World has a decent summary of Intel Remote Wake Technology.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/149863/2008/08/.html

Then there's also the actual Intel site
http://www.intel.com/technology/chipset/remotewake.htm

battery life? As far as I know the iPhone pretty much beats all other 3G phones on battery life (whoops, scratch that. 3 Blackberrys beat the iPhone by a couple minutes.)

the percentage of Blu-Ray that is PS3 is high. I don't know how high, but it's high, dropping a bit now though.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080118-new-nlu-ray-2-0-spec-makes-ps3-the-most-future-proof-player.html

At CES, the Blu-ray Disc Association announced that 3.5 million Blu-ray players had been sold to date. Of those, 3 million were PlayStation 3s, the most future-proof Blu-ray player on the market.

As for quality, the PS3 is one of the top blu-ray players, It may not have the highest picture quality, that award usually goes to samsung in the writeups, but with all the other features BD-Live,gaming etc.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/147209/the_best_bluray_players.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9874808-7.html

http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/03/blu-ray-sony-tech-personal-cx_mji_0403blu.html

http://buy.blorge.com/2008/07/15/buyers-guide-to-blu-ray-players-help-clear-up-the-confusion/

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10005897-1.html

a quote:

If you've been following CNET's Blu-ray coverage, it shouldn't be shocking that standalones are struggling. The PS3 holds the top spot on our best Blu-ray players list, and every time we review a new Blu-ray player we use the PS3 as our reference. It's the best Blu-ray player we've tested so far, plus you get a high-def gaming console and a well-featured media streamer for $400. Yes, there are a few reasons why you may not want to use a PS3 as your Blu-ray player, but for the vast majority of people the PS3 is just a better value. And with standalone players at current price levels, it seems like consumers agree with us.

They're even saying forgo the dedicated video streamers like the AppleTV for PS3's and Xboxes, because you can rent and download HD content on them via PSN and XBoxLive

And even this article on six reasons NOT to use a PS3 as your blu-ray player still says it's the best one out there:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9941740-1.html

And a recent firmware update fixed some of the issues listed in that article.

And here's another thing. I'm responding to your post with Firefox 3.0.1 running on a PS3 with a Yellow Dog Linux install.

Like the PS2 Linux kit was the best $200 gaming related purchase I made all those years ago, because it increased the functionality of my PS2 even further beyond PS1 games, PS2 games and DVD's The PS3 trumps it.

MOD PARENT UP.

Nvidia is managing badly in other ways, also, than supplying poor quality software; this Slashdot story is not an isolated occurrence. For example, All Nvidia G84 and G86s are bad. Or see All Nvidia G84 and G86 chips faulty?. Or, Nvidia Likely to Confirm Scale of Chip Troubles Soon.

Because this is not a copyright issue, there is no sixty year timeframe involved.

I'm just going by what the various articles have said. Like this one, which says "News wire service Reuters is reporting Hasbro and Mattel are demanding that Facebook remove the popular Facebook application Scrabulous due to copyright infringement." Or this one, which says "Hasbro on Thursday filed a copyright and trademark lawsuit in New York against the creators of the ad-supported Scrabulous application, which boasts an astonishing half-million daily users." Or this one, which says "Hasbro, the Rhode Island company that owns the trademark to the 60-year-old board game, Scrabble, on which Scrabulous is closely based, has also asked Facebook to remove the game under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ..."

But, hey, some random stranger on Slasdot assures me this has nothing to do with copyright, so I guess I'll just go with that.

As a game designer, I would like to remind you that in the eyes of the law, for a very good reason, game designs are not art.

As an intelligent human being who has actually looked around and noticed what happens in the real world, I would like to remind you that a can of Campbell's soup can be art. Art is not a thing, it is the act of creation and appreciation. I've even taken some pretty artistic dumps in my day.

Spend less time worrying about what should or should not be, and more time understanding the situation correctly.

Spend more time actually reading up on the subject we are commenting on, and less dispensing unsolicited advise to people who didn't ask for it.

If you ask me, the major battle between Microsoft and Open Source is the upcoming battle for dominance of our social organization. I mean no less than our very systems of governance. From Microsoft, we have Facebook (and of course, there is MySpace). From open source, we have metagovernment. I really have no idea who might win that one.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/149136/dns_attack_writer_a_victim_of_his_own_creation.html

The reporter has published a correction, which is also reflected on the Metasploit Blog.

The problem is that this tech leads to this: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/148370/cctv_camera_identifies_people_by_race.html - a proof of concept art piece that identifies people's race via CCTV images. The creator's done this precisely to point out to people the logical end point of this tech.

Back in 2001, I bought a Toshiba 5105-s607 laptop (I'm still using it). It has a glass touchpad, with a second display (and a controllable EL backlight!). It's even completely supported by Linux, as well as Windows. I use it to display messages while my display is idle and powered off (e.g., new email, small animations, etc.).

So, what's the Apple innovation again?

Though I'd google for citations and ran into this PCWorld article. Quoting the article

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration confirmed Thursday that it built a special chip used in a disputed demonstration of quantum computing in February.

NASA engineers used their experience with sub-micrometer dimensions and ultra-low temperatures to build a quantum processor for Canadian startup D-Wave Systems Inc., said Alan Kleinsasser, principal investigator in the quantum chip program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

To judge the veracity of that article, I googled nasa + d-wave, and found a lot of articles corroborating the opposite conclusion: it appears a good number of people in the QC field take these guys seriously.

Well after looking at this article, maybe he was off:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/148824/parts_of_san_francisco_network_still_locked_out.html

According to the "confirmed" post by Thomas Dullien aka Halvar Flake (found via this PCWorld article), the problem might be even simpler than that. He issues requests for some non-existent domain in .com, instead of a non-existent subdomain in the domain you're attacking. Can anyone confirm, or must it be subdomains?

(1) Microsoft doesn't sue

Oh really?

http://www.pcworld.com/article/118767/microsoft_sues_alleged_software_pirates.html/

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcworld.com%2Farticle%2F128014%2Fmicrosoft_sues_phishers.html&ei=EGyESJv0JonysAPC2NnDCQ&usg=AFQjCNFPm_ruNzNNECI8DMuzt3--hohOWw&sig2=V298uGQk4lHzfjyvw2vpNQ/

infozerk.com/averyblog/microsoft-sues-boy-boy-sues-back/

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.cnet.com%2FMicrosoft-sues-over-source-code-theft%2F2100-1025_3-6119892.html&ei=EGyESJv0JonysAPC2NnDCQ&usg=AFQjCNHnn_gq19jJUeJ_pR0ko8_xmlTzUg&sig2=4dntiLvBSko5_9-3aU5oAA/

news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9730964-7.html/

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=6&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.engadget.com%2F2006%2F09%2F26%2Fmicrosoft-sues-viodenta-for-copyright-infringement%2F&ei=EGyESJv0JonysAPC2NnDCQ&usg=AFQjCNGxflq-OCfC4rXs5VZP48Y5ME3Jmg&sig2=onjW3qJ9und85seO-HY8hQ/

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=7&url=http%3A%2F%2Farstechnica.com%2Fnews.ars%2Fpost%2F20060718-7284.html&ei=EGyESJv0JonysAPC2NnDCQ&usg=AFQjCNFAlxjyBDZLVaFCSwrdoRlIFvCjuA&sig2=_Hk7P4D8oWI5t2kIeldAfA/

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=8&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.microsoft.com%2Fpresspass%2Fpress%2F2004%2Fdec04%2F12-02BrownPaperPR.mspx&ei=EGyESJv0JonysAPC2NnDCQ&usg=AFQjCNGLytgdgGZ_moIESURFUlgkHLyGzA&sig2=iW-iFvb7cEkhuOYDHAUazA/

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=9&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theinquirer.net%2Fen%2Finquirer%2Fnews%2F2006%2F03%2F19%2Fmicrosoft-sues-firm-for-re-selling--spyware-beta&ei=EGyESJv0JonysAPC2NnDCQ&usg=AFQjCNHyzBuJiL7bBT5XcFlFJpDBFxfcWA&sig2=PjSTg-PAhCM5wZyAltCPCw/

There. Proved you wrong with lieterally 5 seconds of Googling.

Oh no! Jailbreak your phone and the MAN will come to your house! He knows you are reading this post and is waiting outside your door!!

Please. APPLE doesn't even know you've jailbroken the phone, if you don't update it after you jailbreak it - and why would you since you are traveling down that parallel path I mentioned?

Plus, there's this problem with your whole argument:

5. Computer programs in the form of firmware that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network.

One word - Jailbreak (running custom Apps on the phone having nothing to do with the phone network you connect to other than using the EXISTING CONNECTION as a transport). As in, not Unlock (using T-Mobile from the iPhone). Can't you tell the differences Chuckles? More Apple hater complete misunderstanding mixed with hilarious FUD.

IANAL

Believe me, that was the least surprising disclaimer ever disclaimed in the history of mankind.

Lastly:

I'm not even going to argue about how "great" a glass phone with crippled bluetooth and no MMS

You say glass like it's easy to break or scratch. Oops, your bad.

The bluetooth works for hands free talking... stereo bluetooth that sucks battery life is not enough of a missing feature to make skipping the whole device make any sense.

As for MMS - here in the modern world we use email to send photos. MMS is from a time when cell phones had no real network, and needs to die.

I'll feed the troll a bit.

Firefox usage is mandated in some places for security reasons, preinstalled on a lot of machines, and also anecdotally preferred by a fair number of users for the neat plugins and extensible pieces.

I don't think that between 18.43 to 29.03% of web users are all considered "technical" users, either.

I have my cell phone on my Facebook. But it's not like anyone can pull up my profile and check. If they're not my "friend" then they can't see it. If I get random friend requests from people, they don't get accepted. It's simple.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/148527/

Oop.

But hey, that's not likely to happen *again*, right?

I mean, of course you can trust them. After all, you pay them good mon-
Oh. Well... I mean. I'm *sure* they can be trusted with your personal details.

Get your cell phone off the internet, you twit.
If your other vapid and clueless friends want to call you and discuss shoe shopping, give them the number on a case by case basis, if and when they ask for it.

native support for video (in the form of the tag and a Free codec such as Ogg Theora). The latter is actually already written, but Mozilla isn't going live with it yet because of patent fears from certain large companies.

I thought that was because it just wasn't finished in time for Firefox 3.0, hence why they're implementing it in Firefox 3.1 instead. If Mozilla are worried about submarine patents, they've kept that very quiet. Apple have been quite vocal of their worries about submarine patents in Theora, while Nokia seem to have objected without knowing quite what it is they're objecting to, but Mozilla supported making it a part of the HTML 5 spec.

My current keyboard, and by far my favorite of all that I've used or owned, is the Microsoft Natural Ergo Keyboard 4000.

I know, I know. It has a hideously long name and it's from Microsoft. Ignore these things as best you can, it's really quite a nice keyboard. Obviously it is a split design, which doesn't work for a lot of people, but it's more friendly than any other split design I've tried. It's got an interesting set of ergonomics which I won't explain here because Microsoft's product page (http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/productdetails.aspx?pid=043) does a good job of explaining.

For reviews, in case you don't want to bother doing a quick search, there are the following:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,123241-page,1/article.html
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000400.html
http://reviews.cnet.com/keyboards/microsoft-natural-ergonomic-keyboard/4505-3134_7-31485240.html
http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Natural-Ergo-Keyboard-4000/dp/B000A6PPOK

Anyway, just my little bit of input on the topic. It also should be noted that I have no experience in using this keyboard on OS X, so I suppose that this keyboard's usefulness in that context is something that those who use that OS will need to look at a bit more closely, since I can offer no input in that regard; although, it should be compatible in general as it connects via USB.

Back in 1997 http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,5230/www.idgconnect.com/ Amazon filed a lawsuit alleging that the wholly-owned subsidiary relationship between Barnesandnoble.com and the brick-and-mortar Barnes & Noble, Inc. bookseller was not sufficient to allow Barnesandnoble.com to avoid collecting sales taxes in states where Barnes & Noble, Inc. had a business presence.

Although they eventually settled that case without a court ruling, Barnesandnoble.com eventually lost the issue over the wholly-owned subsidiary claim in the California court case.

Other than "bad for me" vs. "good for me", what does Amazon claim has changed since they filed that 1997 case to make a wholly-owned subsidiary's business presence represent a presence by the parent company?

Not that I *want* Amazon to have to go back to having warehouses in only one state, but...

I second that - when you think that somewhere like LA is a thousand square miles (20 x 50 miles?) of urban/suburban development and that 60% of that space will be roof tiles, that's 600 square miles of something that could be collecting solar energy.

In the UK there are bus stops, parking meters and hazard warning signs that are LED illuminated and use solar panels to charge batteries.

The only problem would be if someone decided to build a new office block or condominium South of the location. Then they would suffer a loss of revenue - a new meaning to the phrase "Right to light".

Sharp has a factory roof with solar panels. The system generates 18 megawatts, which is 5% of the plants energy needs.

A different article I read about this said that he had no interest in ever working for or having any dealings with this company ever again.

In fact, his attorney referred to his former employers as "buffoons".

From the article:

But he is unlikely to take his old job back, even if the DIA were to offer it, [attorney Timothy] Bradl said. "I would think that theoretically he'd be entitled to his job back with back-pay, however he would never want to go back to work with such buffoons," he said.

Really? I would consider it spyware myself. They have spied on their customers too many times for me to ever put Realplayer anywhere near my network. For examples see here which is for 10.5 and their latest 11, and here is PC World's Steve Bass advising folks to grab the BBC version of Realplayer as it is a "spyware free" version. Personally, I just avoid anything in Realplayer formats like the plague. I had to fix enough Realplayer infected machines in the late 90's and early 00's for me to ever touch that crap. But that is my 02c,YMMV

Was there ever a USB Godzilla Hub? I think not.

Firewire rules!

Agreed. I would take this one step further to suggest that it would only be a matter of time before the cryptographic key would get broken, unless we're talking about installing 2048-bit+ encryption keys (1024 isn't safe anymore...PC World Article).

Since we're big on talking about terrorism in the US, I think that one of the biggest concerns would be a massive denial of service attack against cell phone providers to place the phones in their network in "Please turn off your cell phone during the movie" mode.

Verizon is building out its network to support the iPhone. My understanding is that EV-DO is a 3G flavor of GSM so it should be compatible with the iPhone. Verizon is also opening up its network so you can use non-Verizon devices, such as the iPhone. Be patient, grasshopper.

Seriously - any business worth a damn is going to have backups (the ones that don't? they kinda deserve it IMHO...)

This doesn't just affect businesses with IT departments, it also affects individuals and small businesses that can't afford IT. I've talked to a number of people who didn't understand that they needed backups, and some were otherwise intelligent.

Home users have CD/DVD-R's, external disk backups, stuff stashed across multiple machines

CD/DVD media can fail, I've bought some movies on DVD I had to return because they would not play. Some movies played once but wouldn't play again, not even in a second player. Here's a discussion on Photo.net about "gold" archival DVDs, which are specifically made to last a long tyme. Here's an article by PC World asking "Do Burned CDs Have a Short Life Span?" I doubt many people have networks at home either. External HDDs are ok if you copy your backups, store 2 or more disks in different places, then test and replace them occasionally. Actually that what some people use their iPods for, external backups.