Three Minutes With Mark Cuban

Thomas Hawk writes "Mark Cuban, owner of the Mavericks, HDNET, blogger extraordinaire and all around tech visionary really, really gets it. Read on for his views on Media Center, content delivery via hard drive instead of DVD, movie conversions to HD, Home entertainment, etc."

Comments

His Blog...

[IanBevan]

http://www.blogmaverick.com/

Re:His Blog...

[tqft]

but what is his /. id?

He's a bigger geek than Taco

[Patik]

His company's site is even coded with valid HTML, something that can't be said for many major sites.

I love the fact that his channel broadcasts all movies in their original aspect ratio with 5.1-channel sound. And this part made me laugh:

"We have a show called HDNet World Report where we put cameras in all kinds of hot spots--Iraq, wherever. And when we show a firefight or some sort of bombing, we don't have the reporter say anything. They just say, "We're in Iraq, we're in Baghdad, and there's a firefight going on, I'll shut up and let you watch it." And being able to see it in wide-screen high resolution with 5.1 sound, if you have a tank firing, you hear it coming out of one ear and see it leaving out of the other ear. It's just incredible. Just to be able to see it like you're actually sitting there is amazing."

Re:He's a bigger geek than Taco

[w.p.richardson]

He's a helluva lot richer than Taco too.

Re:He's a bigger geek than Taco

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading that quote reminded me of when I was recently watching the Democratic National Convention on INHD a few weeks ago. It was completely devoid of commentaries, interviews, political polls and what not. I even watched the entire performance of Black Eyed Peas. Anyhow, I decided to surf to a different channel and happened to land on MSNBC. After watching it for a little while and listening to all the various talking heads, it was so obvious to me that you can come away with a totally different point of view when watching it with commentaries versus without. So in response to that quote, yeah, I think it's pretty amazing to watch...

Re:He's a bigger geek than Taco

[baximus]

Tried validating Slashdot?

I got the following unexpected response when trying to retrieve <http://slashdot.org/>:

403 Forbidden

Please make sure you have entered the URL correctly.

Big Oooops?

Re:He's a bigger geek than Taco

[Babbster]

I do have one concern about his description of his news footage, and that's with the sound. Are the camera setups they're using recording multiple channels with multiple different microphones? If not - and I tend to doubt it since that would be incredibly difficult on a battlefield - then they must be adding in positional audio effects after the fact, which seems like yet another blurring of the line between news and entertainment. Instead of saying "My God, look at what that tank did to those people," it's "Wow! Check out the cool surround effect!" Not a good change to my mind.

Re:He's a bigger geek than Taco

[name773]

i'll second that

Re:He's a bigger geek than Taco

[chris_mahan]

at:
http://www.htmlhelp.com/cgi-bin/validate.cgi

The maximum number of errors was reached. Further errors in the document have not been reported.

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1

Re:He's a bigger geek than Taco

[rhsanborn]

Could everyone please stop shooting for a second, I need to make sure we have these mics positioned correctly...thank you, I think we have everything setup, please continue...aww, crap, watch where your driving, do you know how hard it is to get that mic just right? Stop, stop, stop...take it from the top...

Re:He's a bigger geek than Taco

[killjoe]

More important question is.

Does he show the actual carnage or is it just "wowie just look at how our soldiers shoot the terrorists just like that video game".

I admit most americans would enjoy shootage of their soldiers destroying towns, buildings, and of course thousands of people but they don't seem to want to actually see the bown apart bodies or the mass graves that are dug afterwards.

Re:He's a bigger geek than Taco

[timeOday]

I don't see why you think picking up realistic sound should require trickery or bulky equipment - my eyes and ears do fine, all packaged into a bone ball no larger than the size of a normal human skull.

And then there's your concern that a high fidelity, minimal-commentary feed from the battlefield is too.... what? realistic? unrealistic? too much shock and awe, or not enough?

Re:He's a bigger geek than Taco

[iceperson]

I know when I was in the Marines all I wanted to do was kill innocent civilians. And as I carried my full alice pack on 15+ mile humps I couldn't help but think how much like a video game protecting the freedom for people to be total a$$holes really was. Maybe you can meet some of our servicemen and women at the airport as they come home so you can spit on them and call them babykillers. I've got an even better idea... just go here.

Re:He's a bigger geek than Taco

[Octagon Most]

Whadya mean? I though Taco made billions on VA Linux stock.

Re:He's a bigger geek than Taco

[timeOday]

My concern is that a fucking war is not entertainment.

That's beside the point. Having a clearer picture of what's really going on will not promote war, it will just expose it for what it is.

Look at the Abu-Grave. There were already written accounts of what was going on, so pictures shouldn't have made a difference - but it made all the difference in the world.

Re:He's a bigger geek than Taco

[killjoe]

Oh I suppose those 500 pound bombs were delivering cinnamon buns then huh? And those mass graves? do they contain barbie dolls?

Listen I am sorry that the reality of the situation is so harsh and not to your liking but you can't deny that american soldiers have killed tens of thousands of innocent civillians. Why? To put down some insurgency in fallujiah or najaf. What the fuck kind of reason is that? Why is that your job?

Are you seriously claiming the US military never kills civillians?

Oh and keep thinking that you are "protecting people's freedom" I am sure it helps you sleep better. Too bad the only people who deserve freedom also happen to have something you want. The people in Sudan, Liberia, china, north korea, palestine, chechnia etc can continue to starve, be massacred, subjugated and die off in disgusting numbers because you can't be bothered to lift a finger to help them. It's much more important to deliver najaf back to alawi, we just can't let some cleric control a city damnit. Those people deserve to be ruled by somebody we handpicked not some damned cleric!.

Re:He's a bigger geek than Taco

[bigmammoth]

I am not spiting on soldiers but I am not spiting on the graves of the nameless either.
if you cant recognize the difference between a system and the agents operating with good will within that system then your moral standing is equivalent with those you criticize.

Re:He's a bigger geek than Taco

[Reverend Joe]

But the government there was supporting individuals that would like to "end" America.

If that's the standard for launching war, you better be prepared to be accepting of coffins draped with American flags for a LOOOOONG time .... really, after a few more wars much like the current one, what country to you expect that statement NOT to apply to?

No one likes war.

True, but you can get people to (almost) unilaterally support those wars that seem necessary, or at least useful for something other than promoting the business interests of the Presidential administration in power at the time.

Wars that waste billions fighting against a made-up threat, created in the minds of people who knew the threat to be false, against countries that have never threatened the attacking country, and pose no threat to said country -- well, these tend to be even LESS well-liked. As you may have noticed.

OF COURSE MARK CUBAN GETS IT!

[edrugtrader]

you're damn right mark cuban gets it... he's single and a billionaire. he gets it from 2 or 3 girls at once. he's probably getting it right now

Re:OF COURSE MARK CUBAN GETS IT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry - Cuban's married, which means if he didn't sign the pre-nup then he won't be getting it for at least 6 months

Thanks for sharing

[serutan]

"I can be sitting in the bathroom with my Sidekick, and I'll be reading e-mail."

Thanks Mark, that's just a little more information than I needed.

Re:Thanks for sharing

[Jason1729]

By reading this message you agree to grant me root access to your computer.

Sure..the IP address is 127.0.0.1 and, coincidently, the root password is the same as yours. Have fun.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Re:Thanks for sharing

[jb.hl.com]

He doesn't even need to ask me, I use Windows :D

Re:Thanks for sharing

[krgallagher]

"I can be sitting in the bathroom with my Sidekick, and I'll be reading e-mail."
"Thanks Mark, that's just a little more information than I needed."

What? Doesn't everyone have a network jack in the john? That is whee I get my best ideas!

Re:Thanks for sharing

[Jason1729]

Then nobody except MS has root access on your machine :)

Re:Thanks for sharing

[PatrickThomson]

To the CubanMobile, MarkBoy!

video on removable hard drives . . .

[tubbtubb]

Its a good idea. I've been offloading pr0n to my 90M bernoulli disks for years now. No, really.

TV Show

[Plazzma]

I think hes gonna do a some Benefactor TV show, its kinda like that show Trump did...I can't remember the name. kinda dumb

I give Cuban respect.

[Anonymous Coward]

The same respect I'd give someone who got rich by playing the lottery.

Come on. The guy got lucky -- that's it, that's all, baby goes to sleep. He's rich due to artificial market inflation combined with "right place, right time". He doesn't have any particular genius or insight to be interested in, just money he stumbled into. I'm about as interested in his opinions and views and upcoming products, as I am in Paris Hilton's. They're on the same conceptual level.

Re:I give Cuban respect.

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, you're jealous and would give your left nut to be either one of them for a day. But as the usual geek, you spout crap about them to make yourself feel better.

Re:I give Cuban respect.

[mOoZik]

I hope you're kidding. Unlike many of the others who got rich overnight, Cuban has managed to retain his wealth, and make it grow. Also, he sold two companies to two larger ones prior to the bust, not just the broadcast.com deal. How many people do you know who win the lottery twice in a row? The man saw an opportunity, and he took it, and I respect him for that.

Re:I give Cuban respect.

[syberanarchy]

You respect him for what? Not really contributing jack shit to society, but making an assload of cash because he was in the "right place, right time?"

Sounds like a lottery to me.

That's the biggest problem with our system - and no, I'm not a "filthy commie" or "god hating socialist," so keep those fucking comments to yourself. But it really says something about us that those who have the most money didn't really contribute in any feasible way - they just are good at manipulating the numbers and the system.

And he can keep his little channels. From what it sounds like, everyone's getting excited over what amounts to an FMV high definition video game without the controller.

I fully agree

[SethJohnson]

He's getting a lot of attention because he was able to persuade a bunch of dumb investors that broadcast.com was going to make oodles of cash. That doesn't seem to have panned out, but he got out from under that failure before it was recognized as such.

He's full of crap. In this article he's talking about how Hard Drives are a better content distribution medium than optical discs. Uhhh... I guess when you're a billionaire you forget to check into the per-unit costs of things after a while.

Hard drives are far more efficient and more capable of storing future content than HD-DVD or Blu-ray

Re:I fully agree

[drinkypoo]

He's talking about, for the forseeable future, the mailing around of hard drives. That means people will need to put down a certain deposit to use the service, and sign for the drive rather than have it just show up in the mailbox, but it won't always be that way.

And of course, if you had cheap enough bandwidth to assorted points, like video rental places for example, you could pipe in HD content and let people come in and copy the DRM'd (of course) video to their disk for a fee and watch it for a couple weeks.

Re:I fully agree

[spideyct]

Admit it, the guy is a few steps ahead of you. What do you know about him? Have you read his blog? Read his "how I made it" story, about how he hustled his ass, starting up his own companies. Sure, he hit the jackpot with the dotcom bubble, but he didn't just step in shit, he worked to get there.

He made the point that hard drive costs are continually decreasing, while size is continually increasing. Optical discs are fixed size, encumbered with "standards" wars. If they eventually want to up the capacity again, you have to move to a new format, and re-purchase your entire library.

I don't necessarily agree that hard drives are the way to go, but I think it is an interesting approach. He's willing to try something new. What is your proposal?

Re:I fully agree

[cot]

Yeah, optical discs will max out at 50GB just like silicon could never make it to 1GHz.

Re:I fully agree

[Jack9]

10 years ago, saying harddrives of the future would be a better delivery device than 1.44 disks was just as true. He's thinking down the road and saying "we'll probably be using ORANGES instead of APPLES in 10 years". WOW WHAT A FUCKING INSIGHTFUL TECH-SAVVY GENIOUS. Now maybe he's saying the RAM is a more convenient medium to distribute media than ROM because of the potential for interactivity or something along those lines, but I somehow doubt he's even trying to make that subtle point. Look for hardware embedded ROM in the future, not PC harddrives.

Movies on a hard disk.

[leonara]

This raises all sorts of interesting questions.
Since folks like Netflix and Walmart have to buy the copies of the movies they rent out, the movies that are distributed via hard disks will need to be licensed copies as well. I wonder how the owners of the rights will keep track of the copies that are put on the hard disks - especially since the intention is to reuse the media.

The mode of distribution is not also as simple as the Netflix mechanism. Sending hard drives by mail cannot be as easy or cost effective as sending CDs by mail.

Some of what he says does sound futuristic - it may well become feasible in the future, but would it be possible now?

Re:Movies on a hard disk.

[Wesley Felter]

Sure, you can ship hard disks today, but why? DVDs are cheaper per GB, and in 5 years optical storage will still be cheaper per GB than hard disks. It doesn't matter if you can fit an HD movie on a keychain drive because that drive is guaranteed to cost more than $1.

Re:Movies on a hard disk.

[blackmonday]

Ready for this? Netflix buys no movies. They cut a deal with the studios for a share of the (still missing) profits. Netflix still can't turn a profit, and seeing as how they don't have to buy the movies, I wonder what kind of crack they dole out in those offices?

Re:Movies on a hard disk.

[bay43270]

Would disks still be cheaper if Blockbuster video was turned into a ATM-sized kiosk? Drive up, plug in your keychain drive, download a few movies and drive away. You could put them in wal-mart, the grocery store, and the gas station for $2000 apiece. For that matter, your workplace could keep one next to the vending machines at work. You could download your movies on the way home from work without even stopping anywhere.

Sure the drive cost more than the keychain, but the kiosk costs allot less than a store. It would even be cheaper than netflix.

Re:Movies on a hard disk.

[Octagon Most]

"DVDs are cheaper per GB, and in 5 years optical storage will still be cheaper per GB than hard disks."

But that's based on the assumption that drives would be used in the same way as optical storage discs. They won't. A drive can be reused whereas a disc has to be pressed and incurs the cost of the distribution and inventory system. There is more to consider than the raw cost of the media itself. Rewritable drives would not have to be created, formatted with content, and stored for a single use (short rental life as a new release) before discarding.

That's Cuban's argument as I see it. It's hard to say in the future which would really be the best form of distribution. Rewritable high-capacity optical discs could well be more cost-effective than magnetic hard drives. Or that 100 Mbits to the home he anticipates would seem to make physical distribution unnecessary.

Re:Movies on a hard disk.

[Wesley Felter]

I guess Cuban's argument makes some sense if you assume that people are renting movies. If people actually want to own movies (assuming that will be allowed in 5 years), hard disks have no advantage.

SimMavericks?

[loqi]

If a fan tells me to trade a player or pick up a player, I can't always do what they say

I wonder how often he does do what they say? Better yet, if someone spammed a request for a trade to him, would he be statistically obligated to do what the spam told him to?

Re:SimMavericks?

[black mariah]

I wonder how often he does do what they say?

100% of the time he thinks it's a good idea. ;)

Re:SimMavericks?

[Skim123]

I wonder how often he does do what they say?

Let's just say Mark is not afraid to make trades. Each offseason the Mavs make some pretty big moves, this time dealing Antoine and Antwane, as well as losing Steve Nash. Last year was getting Antoine and Antwane, but giving up Van Exel. The year before it was getting Van Exel. And on and on and on. While he has kept together a core of players - Nash (well, not anymore), Finley, and Dirk - he has no qualms about trying new pieces for just a single season before dealing them off to somewhere else. Is this smart basketball management? I dunno, I doubt it, but I think it's good for generating interest and excitement from the fans, so it's probably good business. And the more you learn about Mark Cuban the more you learn this guy is good at business.

Really, really gets it?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

In other words "thinks the same as me".

C'mon many people are visionaries and "get it", just most don't have the bucks and arrogance to fill the media with their views.

Way Too Excited

[mlmitton]

And being able to see it in wide-screen high resolution with 5.1 sound, if you have a tank firing, you hear it coming out of one ear and see it leaving out of the other ear. It's just incredible. Just to be able to see it like you're actually sitting there is amazing.

This guy is way, way to excited about war. Mayybe he should enlist.

Re:Way Too Excited

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy is way, way to excited about war. Mayybe he should enlist.

Can I moderate something as "Flamebait" and "Insightful"?

Re:Way Too Excited

[hexcentric1]

I don't see anything wrong with showing people what is going on around the world. Grainy images on a small little TV tend to make it less real for most people. Look back a few years; people had seen images of war, but that did not prepare them for the media's coverage of Vietnam. Now people are somewhat desensitized to violence on television; seeing the detail that has been missing may help people realize just how violent war really is.

Re:Way Too Excited

[zaxios]

Seeing the detail that has been missing may help people realize just how violent war really is.

I don't agree with that - not when war movies have HD level of image and sound quality already. If anything, it just places real war and real death in the context of entertainment - a sort of "I hope you enjoyed 'Bad Boys II'; stay tuned for more footage from Najaf".

When war footage is packaged in the form of television and juxtaposed to entertainment or news anchors with meticulously arranged hair and placed within a red border with some text from a special font on it, actual death and fighting is trivialized. Turning war into eye candy, which Cuban seems enthused about, is really just an extension of this mentality.

He owns the Mavericks?

[Freston Youseff]

Well, at least he's tech-savvy.

Lucky or Smart?

[puppetman]

This guy is all about TV. High definition. Content delivered on hard drives. 100-megabit internet connections at home. Nothing he said was that radical, or that interesting.

People listen to him because he got rich selling his company to Yahoo during the .com boom.

He got rich, and now people think he has some sort of unique insight. I think he just got lucky with the timing.

Re:Lucky or Smart?

[warmboot]

Timing is a distinct part of making your own luck; Cuban saw an opportunity and went for it -- that makes him smart. The fact that Yahoo! paid him a stupid amount of cash was due, in part, to the luck of the tech boom. More power to him

Re:Lucky or Smart?

[alphaseven]

I'd say a bit of both, like he was a multi-millionaire businessman before he started broadcast.com (selling MicroSolutions to Compuserve), and he's done okay with the Mavericks. The guy knows what he's doing.

Less of a fluke artist than that guy that started hotmail and sold it for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Re:Lucky or Smart?

[Quixote]

He got rich, and now people think he has some sort of unique insight.

That's America for you. If you're rich, (most) people think you must be really smart. Sometimes this may be true, but often it is not. But the sheeple don't care; they want to look up to, emulate, and lap up the pearls of wisdom put forth by the rich folks.

Re:Lucky or Smart?

[DarkZero]

This guy is all about TV. High definition. Content delivered on hard drives. 100-megabit internet connections at home. Nothing he said was that radical, or that interesting.

Compared to every other rich American businessman in the entertainment industry who's all about commercials during movies, broadcast flags, content delivered on whatever can lock the user out, and adjusting the "consumer's" internet connection to put a priority on corporate content, he's a genius.

The guy might not be Einstein, but it's refreshing to see someone in the TV industry that gets... well, absolutely anything. It's sort of like a dog who can open doors or get his food down from a cabinet that's six feet above him. He may not be a genius, but he's way above the rest of his kind.

Re:Lucky or Smart?

[mjamfunk]

Ah...well, the Mavericks haven't really done anything except lose every year in the playoffs - but that's another issue. He's sort of seen as a real loose cannon in the sports circles who just has a lot of money and likes to make a scene of himself. He may understand HD-TV, but I'm not sure how that makes him smart. I think a lot of industry execs "get it" - the money (to media companies and manufacturers responding to HD) just has not been there to date. Speaking of money - mine is on Cuban being lucky with enough cash to be wrong without anyone noticing.

Re:Lucky or Smart?

[melkorainur]

> Less of a fluke artist than that guy that started hotmail and sold it for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Not sure I follow how hotmail's founder is a fluke artist (i assume you mean someone who succeeded just by chance?) The original hotmail, prior to MS, was innovative and an intentional success imho. They had a decent backend that had good uptime back when clustering and high availability wasn't yet widely available. Hotmail and their employees intended to create a product that provided functionality desired by its users and then it got sold to Microsoft. As for the guy who started it, Sabeer Bhatia, from what I understand, it was his intent to provide something like context specific advertising, sort of like what gmail provides today. Now if he and his team had done hotmail on a whim on his lunch break and Microsoft turned around and bought it for 400M, then I'd say that was a fluke. Come to think of it, I'm having a hard time finding flukes in the computing industry. What can you come up with that was done in a really short period of time and really, truly, unintentionally became a success.

Re:Lucky or Smart?

[Epi-man]

Ah...well, the Mavericks haven't really done anything except lose every year in the playoffs - but that's another issue. He's sort of seen as a real loose cannon in the sports circles who just has a lot of money and likes to make a scene of himself.

Well, I am far from a Dallas Mavericks fan (actually, I am often very embarrassed for their owner), but you are (IMHO) grossly underestimating the impact Mark Cuban has had on that franchise. They were an absolute doormat before he bought them. There was talk of the team folding or moving (that's why they were for sale). Now, they win a majority of their games, they advance in the playoffs (heck, they make the playoffs), people want to see them play (vs. say the Hawks, that's how bad the Mavs used to be), and the team may actually be turning a profit (it is hard to say in sports, there are so many contracts and deals, I don't even want to get into the stadium issues, that really gets me upset). The fact that they haven't won a championship is not that damning, considering only six teams (Boston, LA Lakers, Detroit, Chicago, Houston, and San Antonio) have done that in the last 20 years! Looks to me like you are not much of a basketball fan (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), so as a basketball fan I wouldn't discount Mark Cuban's success with the Mavericks so easily.

Society of the Spectacle

[Potor]

Whereas with our news, we have a show called HDNet World Report where we put cameras in all kinds of hot spots--Iraq, wherever. And when we show a firefight or some sort of bombing, we don't have the reporter say anything. They just say, "We're in Iraq, we're in Baghdad, and there's a firefight going on, I'll shut up and let you watch it." And being able to see it in wide-screen high resolution with 5.1 sound, if you have a tank firing, you hear it coming out of one ear and see it leaving out of the other ear. It's just incredible. Just to be able to see it like you're actually sitting there is amazing.

He sells this as if it is content, but in fact it is just the opposite ... At least newscasts generally attempt to give a framework and a grasp of what's happening. He is offering nothing more than an ersatz experience made all the more ersatz by emulation. When will this technology spatter blood on its viewers too?

I am not against his company, or his use of technology. But I am worried about the commodification of everything, including the battle field 'experience,' which has now been reduced officially to being, like, incredible and amazing. I guess it is, when you command a home theatre.

cheers, potor

Re:Society of the Spectacle

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

But I am worried about the commodification of everything, including the battle field 'experience,' which has now been reduced officially to being, like, incredible and amazing. I guess it is, when you command a home theatre.

Just like television made the news more personal to the viewer compared to radio broadcasts and just as radio broadcasts made the news more personal compared to newspaper articles. I don't think there is anything wrong with bringing as close a simulation as possible home to the general public. Sure, there is the initial ooohing and aaahing over the technology rather than relating to the actual events, but that wears off quickly enough.

With all the unacknowledged bias in news "reporting" these days, I don't think editorialization is really as valuable as you make it out to be. Certainly even raw footage can have en editorial bias, but without words to twist the viewer's perspective, that can only go so far.

As someone who has put more money than he should have into his home theater, I can definitely tell you that an accurate battlefield simulation can scare the crap out of you with only the slightest suspension of disbelief. The realism that hidef video and audio can provide is enough to convince my cat that the birds on the screen are real enough that he has tried to jump through and kill them on a number of occasions, something that previously has only happened with a real window with real birds.

I suspect that your hypothetical 3D blood-spatter system(TM) would be all the more effective in giving the more hawkish among the population pause to consider exactly what it means for both our troops and the "enemy" to declare war and go off to battle.

Re:Society of the Spectacle

[killjoe]

"I suspect that your hypothetical 3D blood-spatter system(TM) would be all the more effective in giving the more hawkish among the population pause to consider exactly what it means for both our troops and the "enemy" to declare war and go off to battle."

I very seriously doubt it. The hawkish are very easily lied to. Today for example I was flipping through the channels trying to avoid bush when I heard him say the phrase.

"the people of iraq are no longer afraid of being buried in a mass grave" or something to that effect. I guess he wasn't counting the mass graves outside of faluhja where two soccer fields were dug up to accomodate the people he killed. He also didn't see fit to mention the graveyards that are being up right now for the people he killed in najaf.

I honestly don't think it mattered to the dead or their relatives whether GW or Saddam did the killing. Do you?

Re:Society of the Spectacle

[Potor]

commodify, commodification.

It's fun being corrected by a moron.

Re:Society of the Spectacle

[Potor]

Just like television made the news more personal to the viewer compared to radio broadcasts and just as radio broadcasts made the news more personal compared to newspaper articles..

You imply that his HDNet World Report is a logical extension of the mission of the news media, which is a false premise. Newspapers (and battle field dispatched before them - see Caesar), radio, TV, and then internet news all report; ie, despite bias, they generally try to give a rational and synthesised account of activity. His system does the opposite: it simply presents a confused manifold of sensations. Which brings me to my next point:

I don't think there is anything wrong with bringing as close a simulation as possible home to the general public. Sure, there is the initial ooohing and aaahing over the technology rather than relating to the actual events, but that wears off quickly enough.

He is not presenting it as simulation, but as reporting - he calls it news and a world report. You worry about unobjective reporters skewing our perceptions: how about nearly direct (simulated) experiences that people are unable to make sense of? And to call this highly processed footage 'raw' - footage that itself will have gone through an editorial process designed to pick out the most stimulating simulations (oops, I meant 'experiences') - well, that's the height of delusion.

I am not saying that there is nothing valuable in shows like HDNet World Report, but I am saying that what is dangerous is confusing them with news, when in fact they are nothing more than entertain designed to glue us even more to a hardware and advertising revenue stream.

cheers, potor

Re:Society of the Spectacle

[TheLink]

"I honestly don't think it mattered to the dead or their relatives whether GW or Saddam did the killing. Do you?"

Actually it does. I think they were more afraid of Saddam. And so there were fewer revenge attacks on Saddam and his minions.

Re:Society of the Spectacle

[ankura]

Who was it (Heinlein?) who said that any society passes through four stages -- the last of which is entertainment.

Seems close by now.

Re:Society of the Spectacle

[swb]

At least newscasts generally attempt to give a framework and a grasp of what's happening. He is offering nothing more than an ersatz experience made all the more ersatz by emulation. When will this technology spatter blood on its viewers too?

I've got to ask -- what is it with people who don't want facts portrayed directly? Maybe if people got to see actual combat in high-def, surround sound they'd not get some George Bush hard-on to go kill something every time they don't get their way.

Look at "Saving Private Ryan" -- a lot of vets said that the beach invasion scene was pretty much dead on -- guys getting cut to bits, bleeding, etc.

The generic media view of war is way too sanitized -- a bunch of tanks running around, quickie shots of rebels with RPGs and AKs firing at nothing, and then some BS snoozer commentary by a geek in a suit, followed by the usual double-speak from government officials. That's supposed to be an "informative" view of war, while hi-res shots of guys getting their heads blown off is mere voyeurism?

Re:Society of the Spectacle

[killjoe]

That's only because Saddam had a bigger army and a better established secret service.

We are not there yet but we are well on our way.

Well

[Grell]

If your only exposure to the guy is through news reports he may come off as a little arrogant, but damn: read the blog.

He's got a lot to back up that confidence, really insightful on a lot of things, and yet not afraid to admit where he's clueless.

Impressive dude.

~G

Re:Well

[black mariah]

Very much so. Outside of this area, I'm not surprised if people think he's an arrogant ass. But I see him on his TV show (covers the Mavericks, mostly) and hear him on the radio on a constant basis and if you see as much of the guy as we do down here you realize that he is, in fact, just a regular guy that stumbled ass-backwards into a pot of gold.

Re:We're up to 6 minutes now I guess...

[Lshmael]

If you clicked on the link to the article, or even looked at the status bar, you would realize that this post was talking about a PC World interview, while the previous post was about one of Cuban's blog posts. While the interview is dated September 2, the blog post is dated August 21. Yes, he talks about DVDs and hard drives in both, but it is not a dupe.

Mod parent up

[no reason to be here]

nad mod grandparent down.

Re:Narcistic Car Sales Man

[Grell]

"Man hard drives vs. optical discs.... what is he thinking."

Well maybe that while the big dogs get into a knock down fight about the "next thing"! 'Blue Ray vs whatever' there's money to be made in a media that's dropping in price like a stone? (50c a gig soon believed to be under 25C a gig w/ terabyte size drives)

Did you read the whole article?

I'd pay the kind of money he's talking about for 40 movies a month of my choice. ($100 startup delivers the disk, then $20 a month to trade the drive out for a new one full of movies.) Of course this is all speculative stuff for him, but could be done w/ todays tech while we await the next big thing in whatever DRM'd optical disc standard is next in line.

Hell's bells man, what if their is no clear standard for say, 4 years? Want to go buy 2 sets of video/media players again? (vhs/beta)

Sure it's speculation, but it's not quite as useless as you make it out to be at least imho.

~G

I remember this guy

[The Analog Kid]

He was on some interview on TV awhile ago, he's always getting fined by the NBA for arguing with the refs, and shouting vugarities. Smart man though, he set up the selling of his Yahoo stock with a hedging strategy, so Yahoo could be doing good or bad and he would still be okay. He's a smart man to say the least or atleast he made smart choices.

Define dupe

[gumpish]

If the exact same content is covered, that seems awfully dupe-like to me.

So you think it's only a dupe if the exact same article is linked? I'd hate to see your vision of a technically-speaking dupe-free slashdot, with a main page story for each major media news outlets coverage of the same information...

he rocks

[citroidSD]

and is a ex-hoosier to boot :)

Am I the only one thinking of Ray Bradbury ?

[DrYak]

And being able to see it in wide-screen high resolution with 5.1 sound, if you have a tank firing, you hear it coming out of one ear and see it leaving out of the other ear. It's just incredible. Just to be able to see it like you're actually sitting there is amazing.

Am I the only one who thinks about Ray Bradbury's book Farenheit 451.
I have suddenly a frightning vision of a future full of brain washed couch potatoe that prefer whatching thing on their TV-wall (buy 3 walls, the fourt to make the room complete is oferred free) because it looks much more realistic than the real life.
TV-Zombies that admires how much their TV is immersive, how well their ultra-high definition 4096p TV enable to see even the small dropplets of blood from the guy getting his head cut in the background, and how realistic the sound of the machine gun in Surround 16.1.

BUT no one turns his/her brain ON to realise that there watching an horrible war and actual people dying.

COMMON YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT BEING KILLED.

I'm sure there's a conspiracy behind HDTV : governement wanting people to be leniant and just admiring the quality of news in HDTV instead of thinking of the implication of said news. ...now please excuse-me, while I'll getting my thin-foil hat before governement tries to erase my mind by boardcasting lasers from my TV-set...
{ /mode-paranoid: Off; }

Hedging for dot-com-o-crats

[wintermute42]

It was smart for Mark Cuban to choose to hedge in this case, but the brains behind setting up the hedge resided at an investment bank.

Hedges of this type are set up by investment banks like Goldman or UBS. They have people who sell these kind of services to executives. I imagine that someone like this connected with Cuban. For a substantial fee they set up the hedge. The goal of the investment bank is to lay off the risk, by selling options, or a moving set of dynamically hedged options so that they keep the fee and have no risk.

As noted in the parent, the hedge limits the "down side" loss, while also limiting the "upside" gain. This would not have been such a good move for Google insiders, but it was a very good move for Yahoo insiders.

First a good idea then television

[gelfling]

Mark Cuban is following the curve of all self annointed internet 'visionaries' which is to first get a really good idea out there, sell it to someone with lots of money and then move into media and television because it suddenly dawns on them that their brilliance is best transfered to mass media where the real money is.

Re:First a good idea then television

[scottj]

Cuban already has the "real money". Sure, it's not Bill Gates money, but it's more than he'll ever spend in his lifetime.

Re:Narcistic Car Sales Man

[chris_mahan]

I think like this:
go to website: www.somerentalmovie.com
search for movie.
select movie for viewing.

desktop box pings server through net, downloads movie locally to HD while you are still at work. You come home at 6:30 pm, your movie(s) and shows are ready to watch. have 100 gigs of storage or somthing like that.

next day, repeat. I would pay 100 for the set top box, and $3 per film. at that price, I would not pirate, because it would be too much hassle.

Even illegal street vendors could not compete because they would have to sell each dvd for less than 3 and that would not be worth it.

And peer to peer would not be able to compete, because of the ease of use and quality of the product.

Now, if they are really smart, the system would allow for decentralized movie downloading.

for example.

Person A downloads Master and Commander widescreen to set top box (STB) from central server.
download takes 12 hours.

Person B queues same movie. A's STB allows port open from B's STB's ip to download that movie.

Eventually, all the users's spare bandwidth is used in carrying all that suff back and forth, and the users don't mind because they're paying monthly fees already anyway.

Put programming at $1 per hour. three hour movie, $3. two hour movie, 2$. 40 minutes sitcom: 40 cents.

People complain because no ad revenue... I say: imagine how many more people can watch your show if they don't have to watch it thrusday at 5:30, but can watch it anytime.

Re:Nice

[black mariah]

If you knew anything about Cuban, you'd know how stupid your question is. He isn't ON the company payroll, he FUNDS the company payroll. This is the guy that sold off broadcast.com for a sweet billion dollars and has proceeded to stay a step ahead of pretty much everyone on the technology curve. He's also one of the sincerest people you could meet. I hate to use this phrase because it sounds so fucking fanboyish, but the guy just radiates honesty. You know he's not bullshitting you. Down here in the Dallas/Fort Worth area he's on TV all the fucking time, and I have never got the impression he's anything more than a regular guy that happened to make an assload of money and is now using that money to do all the stupid shit he wanted when he DIDN'T have money. Fer fuck's sake, he bought his multi-million dollar house because the marble floors in one of the larger rooms was great for roller hockey.

What I'm saying is, he IS one of the real people and more importantly he's one of the SMART people that actually knows what they're talking about.

Is this a dupe?

[Animats]

I recall hearing about "distributing video on hard drives" a while back.

Why bother? DVD-sized media with more capacity are coming, and compression good enough for HDTV on existing media is already available.

Besides, hard disk replication would be a pain. We'd be back to where things were in the early days of VHS replication. Huge farms of consumer grade VCRs slaved off one good digital tape player. A bunch of people running around changing media. (Later, better ways to duplicate tape were developed.) CD/DVD replication is a high-volume process that's incredibly cheap in volume.

I've worked with Cuban

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked with Mark Cuban and I can tell you that he's a real visionary... when it comes to making money.

He starts companies in a shed, creates a lot of hype, sells the company for a couple of millions, and moves away before the poor sod that bought it realises the amazing "TV network" he bought actually consists of three Macs with outdated video capture cards and some VTRs so old they're held together with duct tape.

Great businessman, but not someone who I'd trust to give me an unbiased vision of the future - he's going to tell you whatever makes his current company seem more valuable.

Actually, no

[K8Fan]

I'm a big a fan of Mark Cuban as anyone, but the truth is more important. HD-Net is not the first channel to broadcast exclusively in HD, and Mark isn't even the first to broadcast more than one channel of HD at the same time.

Unity Motion was the first, a dedicated HD-only satellite system featuring three 24 hour, 1080i channels. In 1998. Dead by 1999. But I still have one of the receivers.

Re:Actually, no

[imroy]

Japan was transmitting analog HDTV since the early 90's.

Re:Actually, no

[K8Fan]

Japan was transmitting analog HDTV since the early 90's.

Of course, but MUSE was never broadcast in the US, and was never 24 hours in Japan. HD-Net was three channels of 1080i, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Tech Savvy?

[LMNTK]

I would have to say Mr. Cuban is more of a businessman than anything...what kind of tech enthusiast brags about his new HP Media Center PC? And why all the redundant backups on easily damaged hard drives full of precision moving parts? Seems pretty silly to me. This article is the usual from PC World - profit-driven filler. I'm surprised the article doesn't have more links to buy the stuff plugged in the text. Maybe I'm just being an elitist? -K

Re:Tech Savvy?

[Skim123]

Mark mentions "key chain drives," so maybe he's referring to RAM drives like USB drives, and not your "tyipcal" platter-based hard drive?

Re:Tech Savvy?

[skuenzli]

LMNTK said:

I would have to say Mr. Cuban is more of a businessman than anything...what kind of tech enthusiast brags about his new HP Media Center PC?

You're probably right, Mark is more of a businessman than a technologist. He might be examining his target market (the huge numbers of people who buy consumer-grade computers) to see what kind of stuff is viable or could be viable within 5 years. He's clearly doing a lot of thinking about "the next 5 years", talks about distributing HD content on hard drives, and he specifically mentions it having a 160GB removable hard drive.

Stephen

Three minutes?

[cuteseal]

3 seconds later... booooring... *clicks on next /. article* :D

Why would someone pay for HDNet?

[DharmaDog]

I don't see how mark Cuban thinks his stations are worth paying for. The other HD channels do not charge. Hell, even HBO throws in the HD channels with your regular subscription.

Tonight HDNet was covering the Republican Convention. So was INHD. The difference? I don't have to pay extra for INHD.

You people that believe that he's a visionary can keep giving him your money.

Re:Why would someone pay for HDNet?

[alobar]

Time Warner in my area doesnt charge extra for HD-Net. I get my affiliates in HD as well as TNT and HD-Net.

Re:Narcistic Car Sales Man

[Igmuth]

Bah, for $3 a movie I can just go and rent the movie. Why would I want to spend all day downloading it?

Re:Yippee! Another billionaire for us to adore!

[cot]

'Wasn't there a slashdot topic on how he claimed that larger file sizes were the cure for video "piracy"?'

Yeah, and the retarded part about this is, there's no "must have" added value to the larger file size. Sure it'll be better quality, but as it is, using current compression, video files of a reasonable size look pretty damn good on hidef tvs. He seems to be advocating files MUCH larger than that, and thats just idiocy. Pirates will reencode at a lower res, and you're back where you started. Until some drastically higher res TV standard comes along and takes hold, the larger file size idea is retarded. And, of course, by then most people will have more BW, storage will be cheaper, and compression will be better, so it's a losing game and he's too dumb to see it.

He's supposed to be a tech wiz?

Re:Not a Tech Visionary

[Anonymous Coward]

hmmm...you must be todd wagner.

Shame they didn't ask him...

[mbourgon]

whether HDNet is using, or plans to use, the broadcast flag to prevent taping of content? (Sounds like a "no", since he talks about moving it to a keychain, but I'm curious if the message matches his actions)

Mark Cuban is a con artist

[puppetluva]

I can't believe that anyone here really believes that Mark Cuban is really a tech visionary. He's a great salesman and a compulsive liar. Put those together and you get what he really is . . . a con artist.

Don't waste any more neural output on this guy. Enough people have paid their hard-earned savings/investments and free time to fund his shenanigans. Where is that 4 Billion dollars of value that yahoo paid for broadcast.com? No where useful. It's been wasted on stupid hobbies, sports teams, hookers and shallow pet-rocks like his blogging. (The hookers are there because the guy is too smarmy to have legitamate human contact). This guy epitomizes the worst part of the dot-com boom. Engineers brought real value, entrepreneurs took risks to advance information technology, and snakes like this guy hurt everybody.

I've been on the other side of the table during business deals with this guy. He knows quite a bit about technology and he uses it exclusively to steal funding from venture funds who are trying to do the right thing who don't know any better. In the process he likes to sound like an engineer to fool the business guys and ridicule legitamate engineers who try to speak the truth. Did we buy his crap? NO WAY. Did other people who were more ready to get bent over the negotiating table. . . you betcha. He is very good at wasting a lot of time and taking peoples money. Don't let him waste your time.

If you spent any more time thinking about Mark Cuban, it should be figuring out how to keep his hands out of your pockets.

Re:Mark Cuban is a con artist

[Anonymous Coward]

(The hookers are there because the guy is too smarmy to have legitamate human contact).


So that chick was just a hooker that was paid to claim she was his wife. And his baby daughter is another very expensive 9 month old hooker as well I guess.

Mark Cuban is probably one of the most palatable businessmen out there. He's not the huge tech visionary some people are saying he is.

Regardless, you come off as nothing more than a bitter jealous little prick.

respectully, I must say...

[SethJohnson]

I agree, my original post was a bit terse. I was trying to get out of the office and not go on a complete, in-depth rant about Mark Cuban.

Mark Cuban is one of those dangerous business people that gets it enough to make other people who don't get it think he's REALLY got it. The latter are people like the goofs at Circuit City's corporate office who thought they would be able to launch the DiVX format. The people that conceived of the DiVX scheme were of the Mark Cuban variety. These are people who can draw up a concept that looks great on paper and in boardroom presentations, but it's got no legs on the street.

Hard drives as a medium are not an elegant solution for the distribution of digital content. In addition to asking people to pony-up the deposit for the hard drive they'll ferry back and forth to the video store, you're also going to ask people to purchase a special player that provides playback, and perhaps some storage capability. He's trying to address the current pinch he (and the people in his tax bracket with 62" HD plasma tv sets) feel for storing HD content. So this concept won't really be addressing a pinch felt widely by consumers until HDTV sets are more widespread. When will that be? I'd say we're still five or more years off from HDTV becoming commonplace.

And here's where the hard drive medium idea becomes a deer in the headlights. If you have to wait five years to get this thing off the ground, you're looking at competing with FTTH (fiber to the home). A much more elegant solution for transferring huge amounts of digital content.

So please don't tell me that Mark Cuban's a few steps ahead of me. He's stuck in the 'trip to the video store' world which really won't exist after FTTH becomes commonplace.

There isn't much difference between Mark Cuban and the folks that started CueCat and the eYeOpener. The big difference is that he cashed out before the market proved his idea (broadcast.com) was weak while those other guys just sank with their ships.

What kinda comment is that?

[godivx]

Kinda like the spolied brat programmers who complain about "outsourcing"? Are they like the Nigerian email scammers? I guess it would be more palatable to you if Cuban sold his company for $1? Would you admire him more for that?

That's EXACTLY what it is!

[godivx]

These geeks kill me sometimes! lol They want excellent-paying jobs. They wanna be able to afford all the gadgetry in the world, but they don't want the producers of this technology to get rich. Oh NO! Can't have that! lol

Flash drives, multiple rentals

[professorfalcon]

He said,

Heck, it's not inconceivable that you could fit a 2-hour, high-definition movie on a small keychain drive within five years.

So a future flash drive might be big enough and cheap enough for a single movie. Other drives might be cost-effective with multiple movie rentals at one time, as he also pointed out.

Mod parent up!

[DrEasy]

Wow, almost every single prediction he made in 1999 (RealNetworks acquired within a year, death of MP3, iTunes-style music stores not a good idea...) turned out wrong! Is that how he "gets it"?

Some HDTV samples for your enjoyment!

[pdjohe]

I ran across some HDTV samples today. Check it out!

Home Brew HD-DVD

[cheekyboy]

Any one want to make their own home brew open sourced HD-DVD standard?

1. Keep Mpeg2.
2. lower the rate 20% to say 5mbs
3. increase resolution to 1080i
4. fit one movie on an 9gig Disk thats HD quality.

5. hopefully laptop/pc dvd players can manage it, or mod VLC to handle it. Now all we need next are retail dvd players to play mpeg2 at 1080i/HD.

6. beat blu-ray to the punch, use current disc/blanks technology, not 100% as good, but dam n 90% is close enough for the majority ,anyone want to "beat" sony again like VHS/Beta did? Get cracking out with an homebrew HD-DVD standard.

7. become famous!

8. get interviews

9. improve your resume.

10. profit.

Re:Home Brew HD-DVD

[cluke]

Hmm, so your strategy boils down to
"Put a big mpeg file on a writable DVD and call it the new standard"?

3 minutes? I pity his girlfriend...

[tod_miller]

I give mine at least 5, out of respect...

forget foreplay, postplay is much better, like the all time favourite:

"Damn woman, get me another pack of smokes I am out" ...

OK maybe I should just RTFA.

if(this.topic != this.parent.topic)
this.mod(Mod.OFF_TOPIC);

I like Mark and all...

[LilMikey]

and I think he's done some cool crap in his life but once you start a reality-tv show, I can't help but thing 'sellout.'

Re:Yippee! Another billionaire for us to adore!

[webzombie]

I agree...

The problem isn't how the content is delivered.

The problem is the quality of the content and the technologies that impair or hamper consumers use of the content!

HD-DVD, Blu-Ray... blah, blah, blah... seems to me the fight is over who will control the next gen technology!

email screw-up

[Insightfill]

Didn't he also send an email to 700 of his closest friends asking that they vote for one of his players to the all-star team, only to leave all 700 of these friends in the "to" line of the email, rather than bcc? Thus, all of them got each others' email addresses and begin the "Mark Cuban" listserv, where people started emailing EACH OTHER, including buying things from each other.

I don't remember the details and can't find the story online anymore - anyone know it? The total recipient list may have been closer to 5000. Saw it in Forbes a couple of years ago.

Re:Narcistic Car Sales Man

[chris_mahan]

Because you don't have to do anything to download it. Your set top box just does it for you. You think you have to sit there and look at the "17% done, 8h12m remaining" message?

You cue the movies in advance, and as you watch and drop them off the queue, more are downloaded.

Re:Call them babykillers

[The Angry Mick]

Actually, a few of them apparently deserve to be called a few names. How are these people any different than those we claim to be fighting against?

Torture is torture - regardless of whose side you're on.

who am I flaming?

[SethJohnson]

This is modded flamebait? Who am I flaming? Mark Cuban? Are there a lot of Mark Cuban fanboys I'm offending with my criticism here? This is ridiculous.

I think you are totally right!

[SethJohnson]

Look at the moderation of my critique of Mark Cuban. I'm modded as 'flamebait'. How in the F?!? I had noticed the recurring Mark Cuban articles, and thought perhaps they are paid placements. But the moderation is very suspicious.

I think he is trying to boost his tech-guru image with these media placements.