Slashdot Mirror
Single-play DVDs a Hoax
psy writes "Ed Bott's blog states that in relation to a previously posted slashdot story "a hoax can spread just as fast as a genuine news story. That's the lesson from the bogus story published in an obscure UK business magazine yesterday that claimed Microsoft is about to unleash a new single-play DVD format.
Paul Thurrott reprinted the story without giving credit to the original source. Bink.nu picked up the story from Paul and reprinted it verbatim.
Techdirt commented on the original story, with attribution but without any fact-checking. So did John Walkenbach.
The funny part? There's no truth to the story. None whatsoever. In fact, the original story sparked a flurry of e-mails around Microsoft as people in different groups tried to figure out where on earth this story came from. After the head-scratching stopped, a spokesmen told me, they concluded that the story was not true. "It appears to be confusing an existing feature within Windows Media DRM that allows for single-play of promotional digital material. This has been an option for content owners to use for some time for the Windows Media format - it does not apply to MPEG2 content found on DVDs."
having an idea doesn't help if you can't make the product reality. I got an idea for a car that moves instantly from one place to another, it's a good product idea in the sense that it would be useful and make a lot of money - but that doesn't mean that I could actually go and build it into a real product. i'm pretty sure someone at somewhere has had the idea for this magically working single use dvd a gazillion times(it's so obvious that calling it an idea is far fetching, really).
they got the feature in windows media, but how could they include something to allow this into the dvd standard?
(if it were software based solution, it wouldn't be just simple self destruction of the disc - which would make it quite hard to do it on a read only media on unconnected dumb players)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
OK, they aren't "single-play," but disposable DVD's have been around for YEARS. This was the first hit on Google:
wired news, 2003
I saw these for sale in a convinience store (Circle-K) TWO YEARS AGO. I haven't seen (noticed?) them lately, so they certainly didn't blow up in sales, but for heaven's sake: what are all of you smoking! Doesn't anybody read? (I'm not even talking about the article, I'm talking about tech news in general!) You guys call yourselves nerds? I can't believe all of these people are "up in arms" about a product that's been around and already failed in the marketplace. The only "hoax" is the idea that it was Microsoft; in fact, it was the arguably equally evil Disney that came up with this one.
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
Haha, from the site:
:)
"What is DHMO?
Dihydrogen Monoxide, or DHMO, is a colorless and odorless chemical that kills or maims thousands each year, primarily through accidental inhalation."
Brilliant.
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
called it DIVX, sold three disks and ten players, and folded. didn't help circuit city one bit, the principal money behind it, and curiously, the only place that sold those doomed discs of death. disney tried it again last year, bombed. the market doesn't want bs in a box. stop trying to sell it to us.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
> Perhaps it isn't only the editors that should check the credibility of a story?
Everyone should check the credibility of what they read, for sure. A good friend of mine wrote a comical story on her blog at the beginning of this year about macintoshes getting intel upgrades. Remember this was before steve jobs let out the big news. Then in June when steve admitted it was true, someone submitted the story to slashdot. Then the world picked it up, and it was featured on engadget, the inquirer, hundreds of blogs, and within two weeks had made it to two US radio station broadcasts and was printed as a center piece in one Australian nationwide newspaper. The journalist at The Australian lost his job over it and a california radio news guy only just escaped with his.
The kicker was nobody wrote to her to check the origins of the story, not one solitary person until Media Watch, an Australian media watchdog television show contacted her to find out the reality behind the story in The Australian.
Tens of news sites blindly followed one another and printed what everyone else was printing. All the while many regular joes picked out it was meant for a laugh immediately.
Wow, talk about not even using a hint of logic. The poster was criticising the way disposable DVDs create more waste, and you immediately go off on an irrelevant tangent that assumes he has a car and the pollution it may or may not cause.
That's not even arguing by anlogy, it's a strawman bullshit point.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.