Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates Speaks Out Against Next-Gen DVDs
jZnat writes "Although we all know that Microsoft hates Blu-Ray, Bill Gates doesn't seem to like HD-DVD either. Primarily, it seems, because Mr. Gates believes media storage on hard drives is likely to be the default standard sooner rather than later. From the interview: 'Well, the key issue here is that the protection scheme under Blu-Ray is very anti-consumer and there's not much visibility of that. The inconvenience is that the [MPAA] got too much protection at the expense of consumers and it won't work well on PCs. You won't be able to play movies and do software in a flexible way.'"
Is he kidding? Anti-Consumer? Kind of like a company that gets sued every other day for anti-competitive and monopolistic practices which are the definition of anti-consumer. Blu-Ray may be anti-consumer, I don't know, but that cause most definitely needs a spokesman that doesn't look like a pot yelling at a kettle.
said "640k of memory should be enough for everyone"?.. personally I think taking any forward looking statements from Mr. Gates require a fair amount of salt.
* You can't stick it in a binder
* It will be useless in cars with DVD systems
* It will destroy portable dvd player market
* You think netflix will still offer free shipping on that stupid catridge?
* Will you really want to redesign your shelfs and entertainrooms around bigger/goofier looking catridges?
* Will you really let your kids touch something like this?
* Do you really think *SONY* is good or even better than Microsoft? Sony isn't Mr Corporate Friendly last time i checked.
Blue Ray destroys everything that is GOOD about DVD and CD type technology and takes us back to the days of proprietary zip disk looking things that may be the talk of the town for a short while but don't do anything but give us space that we won't use for a while.
Oh great. Does that mean each time a 'DVD' (or whatever they become) will display a nice JAVA screen saying "Please wait, initalizing interface" for 10 seconds between chapters?
Or alternatively, players requiring a minimum of 128 mb of RAM, dedicated to the JAVA DRM system...
Poory billy baby doesnt want to pay SONY royalties so he bad mouths Blu-Ray...
On a more realistic note, its always the case that different media formats come down to two things, Need and cost. Lets face it a removable harddrive is going to cost significantly more then a plastic disk to mass produce. The thing that works against blue-ray which i dare say will be only a matter of time is the need, at present it may not be needed to utilise the entire 50gig at present but the day will come when something greater then DVD will be required.
Weather it be removal hdd, i see its just a little unrealistic, heck so many factors work agaisnt using hdds as standard removable meida, one of those is the fact they are easily breakable, by dropping and magantisim, Okay yes we can sctrach disks but they still a hell of a lot more durable then a hdd.
I'm posting this so that you (the moderator) have some context to consider twitter and not mod him up whenever he posts his filler preformatted rants about installing Knoppix or Mepis or whatever that unfortunately get him karma every single time and allow him to continue posting his trademark toxic crap (read on) day in and day out. You may consider this a troll - I consider it community service. And I ain't kidding.
If you're a /. subscriber, I invite you to look through some of his posting history. I guarantee that you'll be hard pressed to find someone that is more "out there" than twitter. You'll also probably notice he's got quite an AC following. Don't just read his posts, make sure you go through the replies.
To get an idea of what I'm talking about, check this post out. This is an article about email disclaimers. The parent of the post is complaining about the ads in the linked page and so on, and twitter actually goes off on a rant to blame it on Microsoft and recommend Lynx, because "is teh free".
Here's another. In this post twitter not only calls the OP a troll but attempts to "tell it like it is" while making some vague argument about "GNU". Yes, if you're confused, you're not alone. The reply (modded +4) proceeds to simply destroy his bogus argument. You will notice he did not reply. This is what some people call "drive-by advocacy". A sort of I'll just leave you with my thoughts here and move on to the next flamebait kind of deal. In fact, he almost never replies because he knows that his fanatical arguments simply do not hold up to any sort of discussion. It's not that he's chosen the wrong cause - he's just going at it in a completely wrong way.
Here's that drive-by advocacy and FUD in motion: twitter goes on about some topic and then drops the usual "oh and M$ is teh evil" because "WMP phones home" or some such. Called on his FUD, he then claims that WMP stores every song and movie you've ever played in a file, somewhere. Pressed further, he just sort of slithers out of sight, his FUD-spreading complete. This is not about some Microsoft technology that nobody likes anyway; it's about lying for the sake of lying. Way too many of his posts are exactly like this one.
More? Just read though this post and the subsequent replies. I guess this stands on its own. Or these two. Or this one. Or this one.
Still not convinced? This is what twitter considers "humour" while going about his daily "M$" routine.
M