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Vista Won't Play With Old DVD Drives
tlhIngan writes "From a developer's blog, Windows Vista will no longer support DVD-ROM drives that do not handle region coding in hardware (RPC1 drives) - thus preventing playback of DVDs that are region/CSS encoded with those drives. Not a big problem, as RPC1 drives haven't been officially manufactured since 2000 (and Microsoft claims their drives are all broken), but for those with hacked drives (RPC2 with RPC1 firmware), or move the RPC1 drive to new computers, well, no more DVD movies for you!"
Since we're all a bunch of criminals anyway, this can only help to save us from ourselves. Thanks Microsoft!
would I want Vista anyway?
I have XP and I don't have any need for Vista.
Of couse at on point, support stops for XP. But then Linux for the desktop will hopefully be awesome.
First Goatse of 2006! /.'s 10th anniversary!
Trolls, fire up your keyboards; only 12 months until
what about places like new zealand where it is illegal to sell a region coded piece of hardware. does this count as like rpc1? does this mean Win Vista will not run in new zealand? if not then whatever new zealanders do will be able to be used anywhere else to get region free dvd drives on windows. if yes, then microsoft loses new zealand to linux in ten seconds flat.
...but for those with hacked drives (RPC2 with RPC1 firmware), or move the RPC1 drive to new computers, well, no more DVD movies for you!
Funny reasoning!
So why do you think you have to use Vista?
Or if you think you need to upgrade your OS, why don't you consider Linux which I'm sure offers a better DVD watching experience than Vista on that hardware?
)9TSS
No more DVDs when Vista has come out? I'm sure Vista coming out won't affect my installation of Fedora Core in any way, nor other peoples installs of Windows XP...
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I never installed XP at home, and don't miss it. I'm certainly not going to install Vista anywhere.
Besides, the easy way to watch DVDs on crippled OS's like Windows is to rip it and re-record it without region codes, or no-skip flags. It makes a backup of your DVD and you can watch it anywhere.
Happy New Year!
- Paul
Why do the big players not get the long tail fact that stopping people from seeing your stuff is suicidal? There is so much other good stuff out there fighting for attention, be it news sites, blogs, podcasts, videocasts, flashfilms, indie films, et bloody cetera.
The money is in editorial branding. And that is because editorial choice is a way of dealing with information overload. It's so freaking obvious, yet none of the majors seem to get it. Even when some english nightclub goes on to form a top selling dance mix brand, just by picking good tunes. This is the way it is done.
Not by making your software even more anti-usable. FFS.
In other words, people who have bought legitimate DVDs now cannot play them (BTW, buying DVDs from a different region is still legimate and not illegal, even if the DVD marketeers don't really like it).
So now I guess everyone in the 'wrong region' will then have to get their movies from bittorrent instead.. yet another instance where big media and big software companies push their legimate customers to "piracy". That's brilliant...
1)shut out legitimate DVD purchases
2)push them to bitorrent
3)????
4)more profit?!?
Gotta wonder about some of these companies...
Message to Microsoft, and to the content providers:
1) Our PC hardware is our private property, fully bought and paid for by us. Our PCs are not just a rented delivery platform which can rightly be controlled by you.
2) The operating system that we run on our PC hardware has the purpose of making our hardware do whatever *WE* want *OUR* hardware to do, and not merely what *YOU* would like *OUR* hardware to do.
If you want a fully controlled delivery platform doing whatever you desire and no more, then set up a subsidized leasing business and we'll rent the content delivery platform from you, at a cost far below the cost of private PC purchase.
In the meantime, our hardware is ours to do with as we please.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
You make baby Stalin cry. :(
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
You're shouting at the wrong people. You should be shouting at your elected representatives (DMCA, etc).
So don't install Vista. Nobody is forcing it on you.
Install an operating system that does make your hardware do whatever you want! Microsoft is under no duty to make the system you wish for, they just make one they believe sells best, but it's up to you to decide whether you want to buy it or not...
Unless I'm misunderstanding something (which is very possible, I don't know much about anything besides Linux and Star Trek), the Windows version of VLC will presumably keep on working, doing all the decoding in software using libdvdcss. So people will still be able to use it to view their legitimately-acquired foreign DVDs.
-Stephen
That would be sensible. This is the era of creaping copyright legislation making everything not in the interests of big business illegal, get with the program.
How we know is more important than what we know.
"well, no more DVD movies for you!" Ha. Well MS, no more money for you! Really, what incentive is there to *achem* upgrade to Vista anyway? 95/98 over W3.1 I get (pain in the ass as it was) ME over 98 ? no fsking way NT over 98 ? not for home use tnx 2k over 98 I get (glad I did) XP over 2k ? I can live without the eye candy Vista over 2k ? take your Trusted Computing and DRM and put it where the sun don't shine thank you very much. Until 64bit apps are the norm and force me to upgrade (like 32/16 with w2k) I can't see buying into this endless upgrade cycle.
1. Using DeCSS technology, copy your region encoded DVD to your PC's hard drive. ...
2. Watch movie
3.
4. Profit! (but remember, this violates fair use policies if you do profit from this).
I've got a computer with a 10 year old CD drive that's been running for ten years and used heavily and has no problems. I've then got another 7 year old drive that is absolutely fine, and a 5 year old one. Pah, 3 years my arse.
They forgot to Embrace and Extend first.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
If you read the article, you'll see that any DVD hardware you'd likely use would have the region-coding in it. Or you get a de-regionalized one from Sony.
This just doesn't look important for the vast majority of Slashdot readers.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
I _upgraded_ most my DVD drives to RPC1.
:)
Having to suffer from region restrictions is not acceptable (locally both region 1 and region 2 dvds were easily available and I also order stuff from both amazon.com and amazon.co.uk.
Of course, I usually play DVDs under linux, so this is not really a problem
Your average Slashdotter isn't a 'mainstream user' anyway, and this 'news' won't have ANY affect on most 'mainstream users'. The anti-Microsoft rhetoric here gets really tiresome, nobody has asked where this 'news' came from, I'm guessing it wasn't a Microsoft initiative.
When will our governments, and consumers, realise that regionalisation is nothing more than a mechanism of creating continental price disparity and deliberate market manipulation? It has nothing to do with "costs" but maximising profits by restricting parallel imports. It does nothing for quality, or support....
Consumers should respond by simply not buying anything which is deliberately designed to support a cartel. They are only ripping themselves off (The Matrix: US $9.95... Aust $19.48)
Combined with DRM, how many months will we wait after the release of a fully DRM'ed Vista with hardware support before a company threatens its users with an OFF switch unless they pay their $2 per month DVD hardware "licencing" fee, or your CPU/RAM/HDD monthly "licencing" fee?
Refuse to pay? OFF.
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
Every true pirate will just download the movie and keep it on his harddrive ... and how is this going to help against copied dvds with the correct region code ?
*an infinite number of monkeys wrote this sig
I'd just like to congratulate anybody who has gotten over 5 years out of a DVD drive.
Can anyone explain how the hardware protection should work anyways? On my powerbook, i can't play DVD's with the wrong Region code using Apple's DVD Player (unless i switch my drives Region code, which would make the drive useless after a while, since you can only switch 5 times). However, if I use VLC instead, it doesn't care which Region code the dvd has. It just works. So it doesn't really seem to be a "hardware" protection, if it can be worked around just by using different software.
llegal drugs are at least a big of a problem as copyright violation in the world today. In fact many of the artists promoted by Hollywood and the American recording industry include many positive drug related references in their scripts and lyrics. So the question is : Would you endorse forced illicit drug testing for all artists, actors and executives involved in content production?
Over 11,000 people die in America each year at the hands of gun violence. The USA has the highest murder rate in the developed world. So the question is : Would you endorse taking away the legal capability of all Americans to bare arms?
In the USA there are over 12,000 speeding-related traffic deaths per year. The technological capability exists to install a "governor" in every new automobile which would deny the driver the ability to exceed the speed limit. So the question is : Would you endorse restricting access to roads and highways to only vehicles that have such a speed restriction system installed?
( If the questioned person says yes to any of the above then pass the quote along to the Hollywood/recording/NRA/automobile media, bloggers and lobby groups etc)
Spam advertising and spyware has become a major problem for computer users. The DRM capability that Intel is offering to content providers would also be available to those wanting to abuse those same user restrictions. Intel is effectively offering the ability to hide malicious content or deny access to content needed to gather evidence for the basis of a complaint. So the question becomes: Why are you offering up this ability to content providers when it denies the owners of the computer the ability to protect themselves?
Whether it is a war on drugs, gun, or road crime restrictive and technological solutions that lock the end users out of the ability to make personal decisions perform actions are effectively a fundamental violation of a person's civil rights, even if taking that action could violate the law of the land.
Even though illicit drug consumption is against the law, wholesale drug testing would be seen as a violation of a persons right to privacy. In fact most American courts would not accept evidence gathered though such an action.
Even though gun related crime is a major problem, taking away the right for any citizens to bare arms would leave them at risk from criminals who would ignore the law as a matter of course.
Even though speeding is a major problem, there are cases it is needed for safety. Overtaking vehicles may require the driver to exceed the speed limit to safely avoid oncoming traffic. Also there are rare cases, such as transporting someone requiring urgent medical treatment, where the even the courts have found that exceeding the speed limit was preferable to the affected person's demise.
While making a copy of copyrighted content may seem trivial in comparison to the examples in the above three paragraphs, remember that Intel along with Adobe and Microsoft is talking of offering this same DRM technology for business, legal and even governmental documents. The ability to blow the whistle on suspect dealings, and pass copies along to the press and even authorities, may be severely restricted in the future.
So the final question to everybody has become: Why should the consumers and citizens have to put up with DRM restrictions on their general purpose computers that they own?
It also doesn't allow RPC2 drives using RPC1, which is an evasive way of saying "drives with hacked region-free firmware."
Take it from me, a very large percentage of the popular drives have this firmware available, and a significant number of users use it. By locking them out, they've just pissed off the end user, and if the end user is a Joe Durr who doesn't know what RPC1 or RPC2 are, they'll start bitching at their nerdy associate for their drive being broken...and, more than likely, just shove it and buy a new drive rather than listening to words like "reflash."
Of course, my personally trained users aren't that stupid...but I know a lot that are.
It's only an insult if it's not true.
You don't get it, do you? The problem is that the drive you can buy at newegg is region-locked, and the region can only be changed 4 times. This means that if I want to watch my American, Japanese and European DVDs, I need to buy three players (and a case big enough to accommodate them).
--
*Art
I don't know why you would want Vista, but for me there is a new networking & audio stacks, XPS & totally cool new printing system, transactional FS, and a lot more interesting stuff. Sure, crawl back under your rock and keep beliving that all what Vista is is Aqua interface AKA MacOS circa 80s ;-P
My other Beowulf cluster is... er...
How many of the people spreading anti-Microsoft FUD will actually be affected by this? Now don't get me wrong, I dislike Microsoft as much as the next sane person, but c'mon, even I know when it gets frivolous.
That in a month, when the 360's core is hacked and it becomes region-free, Vista will no longer support it as a Media Center extension?
You don't suppose the optical drive test team might use their drives a little more heavily than you, do you?
Not to mention the fact that a CD drive, no matter how old, is not a DVD drive
Advanced users are users too!
Yep, and they're free to not support as much or as little of it as possible. Good to see you're on their side with this one.
Actually, not significantly. Also... they're talking about the average consumer life being 3 years. They must be testing some pretty awfuk units.
A quick firmware "upgrade" soon sorted out the region-locking problem on my DVD drive. ;)
I have my RPC-1 specifically because I own DVDs from differen regions. Some stuff is just not the same when translated. For example ''Buffy'' in German is not much fun.
But then I see no reason to get Vista anyways: It is a hardware-hog, XP works reasonably well, instaling new MS ''OSses'' is a pain, they are much to expensive, it does not have any features that are needed,....
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Japan and Europe share a region code (region 2) :-)
So only 2 drive (as I have on my desktop). Or of course you can use some hack, like AnyDVD - but I think many geeks like me have at least 2 drives, so we can live without any hacking.
Slashdot - free anti-Microsoft propaganda 24/7
The ratio of gun ownership in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the USA is roughly the same, but only the USA suffers from such a high rate of gun related crime. Why is that?
yea, cause DVD drives are like.. older technology... ::rolls eyes::
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
You're right. I was totally appalled to learn that one of my favorite Congressmen, John Conyers, and one of my least favorites, Sensenbrenner, have teamed up to cosponsor a law that plugs the "analog hole," making any copy, anywhere, illegal. You can't make a digital copy now, and you can't make an analog one if this bill is passed. I sent Conyers a "Say it ain't so, John" message, and Sensenbrenner a polite cease-and-desist. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117934938?catego ryid=1009&cs=1
What are you talking about? You don't need an old DVD drive to play different-region DVDs. I thought everybody knew that. Microsoft's not supplying drivers for these is of no practical effect to watching foreign DVDs. Maybe you should think for a minute before getting all self-righteous.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
No this will be intresting. France recently ruled copy protection on DVD's illegal, region encoding is under fire and now MS is going to enforce something that nobody wants but the movie industry? WHY?
I think this could be a big mistake for MS. XP already did poorly, to many people still on 98 or 2k to MS tastes. The last thing they need is for Vista to be even less appealing.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
...will it be purposedly hard-blocked or will it be just "unsupported" so that by installing 3rd party drivers you get your old DVD support back?
Vista may of course not support lots of obsolete hardware and there's nothing wrong with that. It's ancient, hardly anybody uses it anymore, developing drivers costs money and time, so cutting back on these costs is understandable. If someone wants to have their ISA gfx card or some obscure SCSI scanner supported, they'd have to write the driver themselves or pay someone to write them to work, cool. But if some hardware is blacklisted as in "This kind of hardware may be used for illegal purposes, we won't allow you to use it", it's a different matter.
Anyway, I strongly believe that in both cases the hacker community will be more efficient that Microsoft.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Just in case one has been living under a rock for the past few years, CSS, the DVD encrypting scheme has been broken a long time ago.
On a general-purpose PC, including Macs, BeBox and whatnot, DVD region coding can be bypassed any old way, for example using VLC. RPC1 or 2 don't serve any purpose anymore.
Isn't regional code locked devices illegal in Australia..? Does this mean that they'll have to sell a modified version here?
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
10, 7 and 5 yr old Cd drives.
Lemme guess...
1x, 2x and 4x?
Okay, so i exaggeratted a bit.
But the fastest thing out around 2000 was a 24x read/write CD drive (AFAI Remember)
Just to mention something else while I'm posting: I would not build/spec even the most entry level PC with a dvd-rom and without a cd-rw drive.
PC Gamer magazine has been pissing me off for years because their "entry-level system" has a 16x dvd-rom but has never, ever had even a 1x cd-r(w) priced into the setup. Is it wrong to think that a computer isn't much use if you have a dvd-rom but no cd-rw?
Am I wrong to value a cheap way to move files around (1 cent per MB cd-rw's) above viewing dvd's on a computer?
Since my first cd-r drive, I've considered burning CDs to be an integral part of my computing experience. Yes I know that now there are very good quality & low priced dvd+-r/rw drives out on the market, but I'm talking about a bare bones PC. The cheapest cd-rom on newegg was $13 and the cheapest burner was $15.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
"As for pirated movies, MS is not there to help you."
Sigh. This is nothing to do with 'pirated movies'. I live in Europe and have over three hundred region-1 DVDs: Microsoft is now telling me that I won't be allowed to play those DVDs _THAT I HAVE PAID FOR_ on my PC, with a drive that I've paid for, with an operating system that I've paid for.
Pirates, of course, don't need to worry since they'll rip the DVD to a DivX file or copy it to a disk with no region coding. THIS ONLY HURTS LEGITIMATE PURCHASERS OF DVDS!
Grim Fandango came out in 1998, I bought a 50x CD drive for that. It's been used pretty intensely since and is still in tip top condition...
That aside, this is just more good news for Apple. If this bugs you, get a Mac. The new ones with Intel will be able to dual boot Windows, Apple has said, so your usual excuse about not being able to play games doesn't work anymore. Use OS X for work and switch over to Windows for the games, all on hardware that doesn't look like crap. Watch DVDs with any operating system, as long as you use VLC.
I could've been talking about Windows XP in this case, but I was referring to every OS that does what you want (or, usually, the greatest subset thereof). While I personally prefer GNU/Linux for philosophical reasons I have never simply said "* is better" to anybody. Use whatever satisfies your needs (Apparently yours include using broken disks, mine don't, but I do watch DVDs...).
Bashing everything in sight isn't the smartest option, you know?
The page you linked to is at rpc1.org. RPC1 is the non-region coded firmware which Windows Vista will not be supporting.
What you will need is an RPC2 firmware with the limit on the number of region changes removed.
New Zealand has a higher ratio of non-European population, it also has lower socio-economic areas, a vibrant hip hop community and similar ratio of illicit drug abuse to the USA. It does not suffer anywhere near the proportion of gun related crimes in comparison.
...of AnyDVD? It is a driver filter for windows which presents all DVD data as unencrypted and region free. Besides it beats most recent Sony, Macrovision,etc. DVD "protections".
The page you linked to is at rpc1.org. RPC1 is the non-region coded firmware which Windows Vista will not be supporting.
Uhh, yes, that's the domain name. If you spend two minutes browsing the site, you'll see they have plenty of RPC2 firmwares. link
(A bunch of savages in this place, I swear. I'm not even supposed to be here today.)
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Okey dokey I'll save the $16 + the cost of Vista and not upgrade at all.
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
Most people should be unaffected by this, as only in Soviet Japan do old DVD-ROMs need people...
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Why does that suprise anybody?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
You'd only need two: Japan's in Region 2, the same as Europe.
Yeah, that'll do it...cue M$ policy decision change at Executive level in 3..2..1
AT&ROFLMAO
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yeah. And because you own the machine within which the programs in question are stored you are free to do as you wish with the apps as long as you don't distribute them.
To be perfectly honest.... i've read threads of all sorts where tons of people have said they won't switch to vista for various reasons. But I'm feeling a bit of deja vu, twice over infact. Tons of people declared that they'd never switch to XP. To go back further tons of people said they wouldn't switch to 98! ***Rant Begin*** The simple fact of the matter is: if widespread use of Vista warrents the end-user changing, either through enhanced or added functionality that just isn't availible in XP or the discontinuation of support, people will switch to Vista plain and simple. It might be one hard long fight, but eventually it will be the standard. The US military in most offices has finally made the switch to XP, and moreover (in some departments) to Server 2003. Heck, even some parts of the military are using Media Center Edition for different types of briefings and training because it works well with media. So for all of you that say this is just one more reason for you *not* to switch to Vista, come talk to me in 4 or 5 years and let's see what operating system you are using. Disclaimer: For you linux geeks out there, I think it's fair to say you don't have all that much of a say in the Vista switch. Granted a great deal of you may use XP as an alternative OS, but you have already made the great leap into the alt-beyond. You have survived and came back to tell about it. For those of us that are comfortable with a Windows environment (and would consider ourselves power-users in the realm) we are the ones that really get a final say as to what is unreasonable and what is not in the implementation of a new OS. ***Rant Over***
What the heck are they thinking??? It's amazing that they still feel they're going to bully consumers into purchasing new hardware and acting a certain way... completely beyond comprehension. What was the story about the old Model T? Any color as long as it's black? People now have options. And one option that I'm sure a lot of IT managers as well as home consumers will exercise is, "Hey, I think I'll just run my old copy of XP/2000... *OR* I'll give that fancypants Linux thing a try! *OR* Heyy... check out those delightful Macintoshes!" Microsoft will declare lower sales than anticipated this year... The market will speak directly to these knuckleheads! Gartner, WSJ and all those other MS fellaters can bank on it!
One of my machines runs Win XP with a DVD burner. I recently started to pick up import Japanese Anime which are set to Region 2. When I got my first import, I put the DVD in and ran DVD Shrink. It insisted on changing the RPC-2 H/W Region Code. Of course, there are a max of 5 changes before the it is permanent. I ended up going out to pick up another DVD drive which is specific for Region 2 DVD's. What a pain !
I would like to meet the a-hole, probably a marketing executive, who thought of this Region coding BS.
On DVD Shrink, it is used for my own purpose of making dups of the DVD's i buy. The originals are kept at home and I play off the copies. I am about done with vacation and I recently bought some new Anime. I made copies and took the copies with me to watch when I have time. The originals are at home safe.
1. i have a region-free dvd player, and i prefer watching stuff on my tv.
2. i will not upgrade to vista anyways.
Why in the world include it in Linux. If you want to buy Vista and get that feature go right ahead. But don't go suggesting this for Linux. Cummon man.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
No, its no more windows for me. Well, not that im runing windows anymore, but you get my point. Why does the default answer to all this DRM 'just roll over and accept it'?
And if the day comes i cant watch what i bought on what i want too, *that* is the day of 'no more dvd movies'. Not that my 'media budget' will bankrupt anyone, but i refuse to participate.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
They have simply sold their product to any company that wants to preinstall it instead of the end-user (using a few nasty contract clauses). In my book that counts as "selling best"... For me that statement doesn't include any notion of being a good product or having actual customer interest, just plain old "gathering shitloads of money" and I'd argue that Microsoft seems to know very well what "sells best" in the end.
Oh, and, no more protection laws, please, I don't want any government baby-sitting me any more... I can buy my PC without Windows, which is all I need. Actually enforcing existing laws (against Microsofts contracts for example) is another thing.
Um, guys, don't forget that there is already a level of region protection built into Windows itself. If anyone here has actually used a RPC1 firmware, you will know that to fully disable region protection, you will need not only a firmware "upgrade", but also some sort of software that hooks into Windows and disables the the region protection on the OS side of things.
So it just means that to get real region freedom, the software will need to do more.
And as mentioned earlier, region protection works simply by getting the drive to refuse to give you the CSS decryption key in the key exchange. Movies that are not CSS-encrypted won't be affected. And software that brute-forces the CSS key won't be affected either.
You're paying $6.50 - $7.00 per disc for CD-RWs?
Man, I gotta deal for you...let's talk...
No, the manufacturer of your DVD drive is "telling" you that.
You should also be voting with your wallet. That's where the megacorporations are going to feel it most.
Until the Middle Class disappears and you find yourself just struggling to survive. 2 income families have become the norm, just to get by. Eventually, if you're not rich, you'll be poor.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
...of Vista ever shipping?
New monitors needed, now new DVDs, more memory, more disk space. The costs of upgrading are getting out of hand. OK, over a 3 to 5 year interval, hardware replacement may result in a significant change, but on day one who is going to upgrade?
So, Vista may not be the financial bump that MS will need. You have to wonder if it is time to abandon development until the necessary hardware is already in the field.
It really couldn't be considered for Linux.
As I understand it, if you connect an RPC-1 drive to your system, the cdrom.sys driver will emulate the region control. If you look at the drive's properties, it'll say that you have two or fewer region changes left. The region setting is saved in a fairly well-known location in the registry (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\<random junk>). Vista will remove this emulation, and will probably refuse to pass key exchange messages to the drive. (As an aside, the cdrom.sys driver only checks the RPC level on startup. So, if you change an RPC-2 drive into an RPC-1 drive, Windows no longer shows the drive as being region controlled until the next reboot.)
On the other hand, Linux doesn't have any region control emulation. Since it's not encumbered by any DVD licensing contracts, it can simply pass the key exchange messages to the drive. So, it really wouldn't make sense for it to "be considered for Linux."
similar problem here, too, sucks doesn't it? I have wondered why the distro makers or distro clone resellers don't offer an image of their LAST release with all the patches applied. New releases just mean a lot more broken stuff and bugs. Seems like as soon as you finally get a distro installed and patched and working fairly well they stop supporting it. Maybe some of them do, but I haven't run into it (really could be just me, but haven't seen it), and being on dialup again, it's just too hard to keep trying this or that huge distro to see what works better. You certainly can't go by fans reviews on the net, because every distro is the worst or best depending on what you read.. They just don't get it on how absurd it is today to try and keep a multi gig installation patched, let alone try to participate in bug reporting, etc over a dialup connection. I don't even do full installs anymore, I try to pare them down severely right at install time, just to limit patching as much as possible. I used to try and do some bug reports too, sheesh, it takes a long long time to work through some of these bugtraq menu systems and sites. Just isn't worth it unless it's your only hobby.
How's the Firefly theme song go again?
...You can't take the sky from me...
Take my home, take my land, make it where I cannot stand.
Sky == Linux.
Your copy awaits. Avoid all this convoluded BS and the daily circus entirely. How can you guys STAND it?
Tell me again how my speakers and monitor have to be replaced so's I can play media on Vista...I love that.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
I RTFA and don't see what the hell this has to do with Linux. The way the article reads is that the "old" and "new" dvd drives (otherwise known as RPC-1 and RPC-2) handle things so differently that it's impossible to support both. This is not actually the complete truth... in fact to handle either is just as easy and they are almost completely the same. The difference is mainly how the drive responds to requests for a CSS key.
Also, the article is very Windows-dependent and has nothing to do with similar hardware/software in other OS's. For example:
"It was impossible for third-parties to compile their own CDROM.SYS from the source code in the DDK because the region code enforcement code was not included in the DDK."
This means that the source code was not present to include complete support. This is a decision that MS has made because they don't want people re-doing the region protection. That's not a "generic" issue, that's an OS issue. OS code to handle any type of DVD drive is available and (because of the GPL) always will be.
"The region code enforcement code would sometimes mistake a new drive for an old one, resulting in customers unable to play DVDs. Even worse, the driver test team could not reproduce the problem reliably, and the problem went away entirely once a debugger was attached to the system."
Strange how the new code would mistake the drives when the code in every operating system currently available that supports DVD's has no such problems (previous versions of Windows included!). Also, is it really the DVD's fault that their debugger was stopping the code from executing in the same way when it was activated or not? This definitely smells of bovine excrement.
"The code to support the older drives is complex, and the drives that the optical storage team purchased prior to January 1, 2000 are dead or dying. Consequently, testing the code that provides support for old drives has become increasingly difficult, and when the last old drive finally gives up the ghost, testing will become impossible altogether."
Strange, then, that they haven't noticed that almost every new DVD drive has firmware available that'll run it as a RPC-1 (or as they like to coin it, "old") drive. Also, I'm pretty sure that the "more complex" claim would not stand up to scrutiny (check out any OS code that deals with DVD drives, whether in the kernel, libdvd* or other places and see if they differ that much for RPC-1 or RPC-2).
"What does this mean for you? Almost certainly, the answer is "absolutely nothing"." Followed by the quote: "Only if you have an old drive will you notice anything different, namely that encrypted/regionalized DVD movies will no longer play."
That's not "absolutely nothing", especially for the budget-conscious who may well upgrade their PC a bit at a time.
"And since the average drive lifetime is only three years, the number of such old drives that are still working is vanishingly small. Not even the optical drive test team can manage to keep their old drives alive that long."
Strange... sitting here with DVD drives that are much older than that and still working. All of them "original" RPC-1, all of them the cheapest crap I could afford, all of them still reading the disks perfectly. None have died and, whoops, if they did you could always get a new RPC-2 drive and firmware it. This is just an excuse... for this paragraph read "We couldn't be arsed to support it and you're not allowed to use it anyway because you'll just use it to do naughty stuff you're not allowed to do cos the DVD forum said you can't and this sounds like a decent excuse to convince the idiots who are going to buy Vista anyway".
"It is that software enforcement that is going away"
There's your answer - they've made a conscious decision to remove this feature. Why? Because if you believe the above quotes, their dev team is incompetent, can't get already working code to play nicely in Vista and can't find a single RPC-1 drive to test i
I watch movies at 1x.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
11: the number of days before the official Vista release that it will for some clever people to get RPC1 drivers working.
It's quite simple; if you don't like the way content is encoded then don't buy it. If you don't like the features of an operating system, don't buy it. No one is forcing anyone to install Windows Vista. You can stay with Windows XP, or use an alternative operating system if you want something newer.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
All RPC-2 does is prevent the drive from passing through the decryption information from out-of-region discs. So having an RPC-1 drive means 1) faster ripping of out-of-region discs, and 2) the ability to easily play out-of-region discs. I was wondering what the hell Microsoft might be thiking, so I RTFA'd and found out that there were apparently just too many technical problems for them. Hey, they can't even keep their OS secure, so I'm not too surprised. Awwwwww, poor Microsoft.
I suspect all this will do is cause the firmware hackers to start making region-free firmware that speaks RPC-2. I mean, after all, they're already patching RPC-2 firmware.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I still remember the time when my neighbourhood groccer stopped stocking my favourate cereals. I switched to shopping for what I want from the supermarket. Even though it was a bit further from my home and needed a drive by car, I still got what I wanted and was happy in the process. On a similar note,
If Vista don't allow playing of encoded DVDs on old DVD drives, then it is the right time to give Linux a try. It will allow you to play encrypted DVDs and more. And the good thing is Linux is not at all fussy at all and is very user friendly.
Linux Help
for all things on Linux
Great, something else it doesnt do. What exactly will it do? When will it do it? Are you sure? Didnt think so....
Hardly anybody installs Windows. Yeah, I'm sure there are Slashdotters out there who are exceptions. "I have a kickass machine but sometimes I need to need to test my software under Windows, yadda yadda." But that's what you are: exceptions. "Normal" people who run Windows, run it on the hardware that it came with. They also call the "e" icon on their desktop "the internet" and they call their Dell PocketPC their "palm pilot." Yes, really.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
But Vista will lock out DVD drives that have a region of 0, and that's the bigger issue at hand...
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
It's not clear from the article whether this will ONLY affect genuine RPC-1 drives, or will also affect new drives that have been modified to remove region restrictions. Either way, though, it sounds like Microsoft has thought up yet another reason for me not to get Vista.
The money is in editorial branding... It's so freaking obvious, yet none of the majors seem to get it.
It's not necessarily that they don't get it. I suspect they understand their impending extinction perfectly well. But that doesn't mean they can do anything about it.
Imagine the average head of a major label. He's probably a forty or fifty year old man with thinning hair. He's not a music critic -- he's a businessman, who built his career by negotiating contracts, pushing product onto radio playlists, and moving physical CDs. He might not have any musical taste -- and even if he does, what 15-year-old is going to be caught dead taking editorial advice from an old man? There's a reason why major-label producers pay 18-year-olds like Britney to front for them.
In the immortal words of Paul Graham: "When I say business can learn from open source, I don't mean any specific business can. I mean business can learn about new conditions the same way a gene pool does. I'm not claiming companies can get smarter, just that dumb ones will die."
1. Windows XP is incredibly buggy (as in bugs that won't crash the system, but are usability nuisances)
Turn on focus follows mouse, and clicking on a window in a grouped taskbar is pot luck.
Speaking of the grouped taskbar, if you close a window, and then click on the taskbar group right quick again, the list is almost always corrupted.
The network stack that they are holding off until Vista is needed "yesterday" in Windows.
Indexing service is worse than useless, and if you don't have it installed, you still see cruft from it.
Ditto for disk search. If it wasn't for Agent Ransack, I'd be looking long and hard at switching to Linux. For me, Agent Ransack is the epitome of the search experience (even counting Gogle Web Search). Their pro version may even be a step down in some areas.
2. I don't like the paradigm of the "Desktop search". What? You mean if I like some plugins for Google and some plugins for Microsoft, I'm going to have to use two separate databases? Also, what happens when I move a file from one drive to another?
3. They yanked the feature of truly customized folders in 98 from Windows XP. What? You mean I get to pay for less features? How about removing ones I don't want, like the broken search and indexing...Even the 98 search was more functional!
That being said, why do I stay on Windows?
I understand environment variables, have DOS apps I still use, get along nice with CMD.EXE, NTFS compression, which I still don't understand why it isn't on by default. I don't really use the home directory feature (Documents and Settings), and I understand it's even worse on Linux. I have a better understanding of Windows programming than Linux programming, and I'm looking towards swapping pieces out with Wine and ReactOS based components.
A "nice" first step from Microsoft in the direction of a fully DRManaged PC. Of course we are reaching the critical point where hardware will come with full DRM crap and we'll see which has more weight: the mass dumbness to swallow anything big corps throw at them, or the desire for convenience.
You're looking at it from a top-down perspective. Sometimes a bootom up approach is effective or coming at the problem from both sides.
There's a reason for the straight and narrow way.
If the supports for the core get too ornerous, then people might decide to scrap the whole thing, too ineffective and people think why bother. Sure, remove the core and the rationale for the supports collapse, but without sufficient support the core fails.
I was watching a History Channel piece on a campaign by Caesar, and he slaughter a lot of people thinking he could intimidate the city into not fighting, which is a possibility, but had the opposite effect of outraging them.
so what's the problem?
Wanna watch a DVD? Dual boot into linux or use a linux live-cd.
Problem solved!
It will be interesting to see how as more commerically available OS's restrict their users, more users will move towards free and open alternatives.
Or you can use a program like DVDidle pro that lets you switch to any region anytime you like.If I'm not mistaken anyDVD and DVD43 will also do the same.I personally like dvdidle pro for the fact that it'll load a movie into RAM so your drive doesn't have to spin so much.Great for saving juice and wear on my laptop dvd drive.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
As in, I buy two DVD players and throw them into my computer/entertainmentsystem/whatever and simply call them "1" and "2" and set the region thus. It is *WAY* more problematic for high end people who shell out some serious money on DVD players. You really don't want to have to buy two of them. Screw this whole region 1 and 2 crap. Let's just all have one region, earth...
I think you might be. I rarely burn more than one CD a month. For transferring files between machines, USB keychains and network shares are more convenient. On the other hand, I watch DVDs and install software from DVD-ROM fairly often. This is a similar situation to many of my friends - we all own CD-RWs, and they are mostly collecting dust.
Just because you burn a lot of CDs doesn't mean it's something everyone does.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It says there are limited switches when you are asked to switch it.
RPC2 was made to stop you from doing what you are doing. So of course it's a pain.
That being said, the chance that you are boned now is tiny. Go to rpc1.org and remove the rpc2 lock from your drive once and for all.
http://rpc1.org/
Additionally, DVD drives are so cheap now that even if you were boned, it wouldn't be that big a deal. I wonder of the region coding people ever thought that drives would be come so cheap that people could just keep 6 drives around (the number of region codes settable) for about $100 and bypass all the region coding stuff anyway.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Just change your current system over to linux when you switch to a new box for Windows Vista. What, you expected to be able to run Vista on your old machine? Yeah, right...
every barrier is meant to be broken..?
No, just the drivers apparently.
Blank until
(pretend I've just done the hat trick where it comes off my head, rolls down my arm, etc. here)
Or of course you can use some hack, like AnyDVD - but I think many geeks like me have at least 2 drives, so we can live without any hacking.
You want AnyDVD anyway, regardless of how many drives you have.
Simply being able to access the data on the DVD as if css and regon codes do not exist at all makes live a lot easier, and in fact makes your PC a much better and more convenient media player.
Next question will be if 'Vista' would allow running software like AnyDVD
I object to this comment. There are computer-illiterates, users, power users, and "slashdot"-level users, and of those four categories, there *is* a population of people who are either users or power users that can re-install Windows despite not knowing what the hell they're doing otherwise.
You forget that the average person gets loads of spyware. Granted, they could just install anti-spyware software, but many just re-install Windows. BECAUSE THEY CAN. Don't be elitist prick.
But the thing is you are SUPPOSED to be getting those DVD's from other regions to being with. Thats why they made the ridiculous lock system. I'm not saying I agree with the practice, only mentioning that this is how it is supposed to be
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
- Winston Churchill
Just because you use "USB keychains and network shares" doesn't mean everyone else does.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
not to upgrade to vista.
If I do, i won't be able to play the DVD collection I legitimately bought in Europe before I emmigrated to the US.
A "troll" is someone who intentioally takes the opposite view of yours for no reason than to play "devil's advocate" but in a somewhat hostile manner. The Soviet jokes are old and stale, yes. I wish that people who utter them would die horribly because THEY ARE NO LONGER FUNNY. But they are not trolls.
The Soviet Russia trolls take the opposite view of yours (i.e. that it is funny) for no reason than to play devil's advocate in a hostile manner.
And by replying to them, you are feeding the trolls. Do stop.
You can't take the sky from me...
You know Microsoft is just a private business. They don't really have any obligation to support every hardware device you buy... they offer a product and then you, as a consumer, decide whether you want to purchase their product or not. It's not a "rights" issue, this is just how the free market economy works.
If you don't like how Microsoft decides which device drivers to include, don't buy their product. But don't fuck up the system and waste everyone's time by making the government *force* them to do something they ordinarily wouldn't do.
Comment of the year
What's the real deal with region locking on drives? My gateway laptop has a DVD drive and I can find a drive properties page that says I can change the region only so many times. Current region 1, region changes remaining 4, never messed with the setting. But I can pop in a Japanese region 2 DVD and play it fine with VLC and not have to mess around with the drive region properties.
VLC uses DeCSS to break the encryption. So it doesn't much matter, but WinDVD or any other commercial player will complain because the drive will not hando ver the decryption keys when the region does not match.
Just use VLC
:-)
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
I know because I am in Canada for christmas and we got a couple of european DVD's. Of course no DVD player in the house would play them and the only computers with a DVD-drive were running Windows and would also not play them.
But VLC were installed in a few minutes and worked with a charm.
And a few people realised why I was wearing my "no CSS" thinkgeek T-shirt
I'm not ure about DVD players, but drivers for video cards need to pass some Microsoft tests that include support for DRM. If they're signed by MS, they're not allowed to run in Windows.
Even worse, Vista will allow MS to revoke signatures if a particular make and model of video card is hacked. So your video card could suddenly stop working, just because you happen to be using the same kind as DVD Jon.
I'd like to recommend SlySoft AnyDVD. When you want to run a DVD w/o a region or w/o CSS, just start up AnyDVD and you're free to backup your DVD or watch it region free. It's a nice and compact and works like a nice little hack around the system. Only con is that it's not free/open source (sells for like $20-30).
Read my blog posts on usability.
Luckily I don't run Windows on my laptop but it's 2 years old (1800 MHz AMD Athlon Mobile processor) and the DVD-combo drive never complained if I played my japanese anime movies, my european movies and since I moved to the states I have been playing US movies. No region codes are involved, I thought that region codes were deprecated as of 2000 (I have an old drive that does it but all the new ones (even brand new) don't complain). Or maybe it's just because I'm running Linux on all my machines but WTF?
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I meant: If they're not signed by MS, they're not allowed to run in Windows.
I think you are giving new ideas to MPAA.
Besides, that is compromising the copy protection mechanism (region limitation) in DVD, which is illegal in US of A according to that DCMA.
Skipping the obvious remarks about floppies being the best technical medium for drivers (well supported, the drives themselves never need drivers) and that everyone should have them, I need to ask something....did you honestly change your desktop OS because you couldn't be bothered to throw in a floppy drive? If you were a true geek you wouldn't even have the case on your computer!! ;-)
Every computer has floppy drive connectors. Not every computer has USB, especially in servers (USB is actually a vunerability there). Not every CD drive works without drivers. Besides, if you have a SATA adapter you are trying to configure, how exactly would you get the drivers onto the system? Install an IDE CD-ROM? WHat if the system has no IDE bus (many new ones don't)? How is that any different to temporarilly installing a floppy?
Bottom line on why floppies are used, in your own words: "it just works". I'd add "for everyone" to the end of that though.
It seems like there's always some stupid fucking annoyance whenever I try to deal with Windows.
This is where the decent into la-la land really begins. Are you fucking serious? Are you, even for a minute, trying to suggest that Linux is easier to setup than Windows? Bull-----shit. When I came to Linux, I found it relatively easy, because of one important thing...I'd used Sun OS's a lot in the past. I knew what /etc/fstab did. I understood the rc.d system. And yet it still took me over a week to get WiFi working (this was four years ago, things are better now). It involved kernel recompiles, discovering and logging bugs in the various drivers and countless hours spent trying to get WEP to work. And this was top-of-the-line Cisco gear, which they had actually provided their own Linux drivers, in addition to the third-party OSS ones available.
The Windows laptop I was preparing the WiFi for (using the linux box as a router) was set up in 10 minutes. It downloaded the drivers from the net for me. All I have to do was enter the WEP.
OK, so that's just one anecdote, but it's consistent with all my other experience on the platforms. The only hastles I ever have with Windows are driver ones, and 9 times out of 10 a safe-mode visit will fix them. 99% of Windows cock-ups are pilot error (installing weatherbar type malware etc), and Linux would have the same issues if it's users were as equally as clueless as the Windows average user.
When it comes out, just don't use windows. Use Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Mac OS. :-D
Then just don't deal with their crap.
-- kyle
If con is the opposite of pro. Then isn't congress the opposite of progress?
Wanna get on the Internet? Get one of those "Trusted" OSs (you know, the only kind that ISPs will legally be able to allow once the **AAs of the world catch wind of what you suggest).
Problem solved?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I've found that DVD drives have a lot shorter lifetimes than CD drives. I think it's an alignment thing, I have quite a few DVD drives that long ago stopped being able to reliably read DVD's but are perfectly good CD readers.
I've had very few CD readers fail. Most of the failures were due to extremely heavy use and/or very cheap (Dell OEM) drives.
Well it may be no more Windows Vista for me too. And I'll convert to Linux when it will be time to upgrade from Windows XP. If Linux can't play the new medias with DRM lock, then I'll just stop buying crap from the industry
I've been using DVD Region+CSS Free for years and have never had to touch my hardware - yes this is a recommendation, no I'm not affilliated.
I originally got it for the region free bit (being a Brit with a lot of UK stuff - yea Spaced :), but where it really shines is the user restriction removal. I can stick in a DVD and it starts on the menu - no credits, adverts or FBI warnings. I've got so used to it that I actually thought our standalone DVD player was broken when I stuck in a disc the first time and HAD to watch a couple of minutes of logos and FBI warnings.
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
Haven't seen an update since this story, but HD-DVD was leaning towards not including region codes.
So it's odd then that Microsoft would make such a big push to enforce older region codes, in a way that will break a lot of old hardware...
Unless possibly it's some kind of ploy to help push HD-DVD sales, which might be the case as Vista will be making a lot of people buy new drives right around the time HD-DVD players become more plentiful.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
burned with a laser removed from on old burner and an electron microscope built from spare system components from a cardboard box in the garage. :-)
This is really pretty much a non-story as the whole point of new launches like this is to drive new hardware sales. My local experience is that PCs are largely disposable. Kinda expensive sure, but I've seen quite a few perfectly good PCs get tossed simply because they wouldn't work properly due to spyware, crappy hardware, dodgy network card.
Very very few copies of Vista will be installed on any machine older than a couple of years. What's the point? If an upgrade copy costs $200, only another $200-$400 will get a base Dell that will already have Vista Home installed and sorted out on it.
Slashdot users may do a new install, but let's face it, pre-installed on new hardware is really the only thing that most users can really cope with.
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
I've been running the latest Vista preview on vmware, works well, though you need to install the vmware display drivers to get out of 16 colour VGA mode, a mode where the install GUI really sucks:
C BA3641CC871A2CB415A27D142C
http://www.1060.org/blogxter/entry?publicid=45137
VMware can only emulate "trusted" hardware like TPM units if it has a private key of a unit, one that can be somehow linked to a "trusted" TPM authority. That is the key that TPM units never ever provide to the outside world, so you are left with a reverse engineering or brute force cryptography problem.
-Steve
actually, yes point in case: the xbox DVD drive *shudders*
;-)
Thank god for XBMC and network shares
Yeah, if you absolutely have to watch your DVDs on a computer. There's still the old-fashioned TV set with a region-free player.
Dudes, i use a program called DVDshrink. It simply hacks through all the encryption, including the region encoding. I just insert the random DVD movie into my laptop, and press 'Backup' on DVDshrink, and it rips it to my hard drive to a customized size. It simply, crunches through the encryption in a reasonably amount of time. I am sure that most of you have heard of this program before, but anyways that is your solution to the problem! For everything else, there's e-mule
and then watch as the 10% of the internet that actually does 90% of the work (made up the numbers...) dissapear from the "official" internet leaving the **AAs of the world with their thumbs up their asses and dumb looks on their faces.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Linux is a mess. A great OS to be sure, but a mess. Linux needs to get the word out. There needs to be a marketed movement on TV, print, internet, radio by a serious linux player that can once and for all, start infecting the minds of the average user. Windows is all people know. MS is being hurt by Apple thanks to the IPOD success and Window's horrible security holes and spyware. When will Linux get its ass in gear and start saying to the world: "Check out our awesome UI, our easy and most advanced home media organizational tools for and audio and video" "Check out our superior software that increases the performance of your existing hardware over Microsoft Windows XP and increases security 100x" "No longer will you have to deal with spyware, adware, or blue screens of death" "It's time to try a better operating system... Linux. We've been waiting for you" "With Linux you have superior networking and internet connectivity at high performance speeds, using the technology that drives 90% of the internet" "Microsoft Windows dictates to you, how you will use your computer... LINUX is a USER based operating system that evovles constantly around the needs of you the user... Not only does Linux adapt to new trends in technology faster, it's also pioneered those trends." "Dump Windows today, and enjoy freedom from the system" "Linux, It's what computers are made for" Essentially, Linux has no marketing and thats because Linux is not one man. It's not one company, It's not one anything. That's its biggest fucking problem when it comes to destroying windows. Until there is a solid unified movement, marketed on tv during superbowls that direct its marketing towards the end user... Linux will lack applications, It will LACK the average users.... and windows will dominate It. I dream for the day whe linux gets is ass in gear and can play with the big boy (MS). But it cant. It has no marketing. You see, we all sit here and bitch about how Microsoft does this and that, and how they use PR to LIE to the user base. But you know what.. Thats the fucking game.. and Linux is not playing it. Linux doesnt have to necceserially lie, but it needs to get out there in a unified force that SLAMS the shit out of windows on national TV. You want more users? YOU WANT PHOTOSHOP? Sony Vegas? 3dsmax? XSI and Maya (yes they're on linux but they're worthless without many other apps that are windows only currently). You want professional audio and video apps? You want to dominate the Office software market? You want to get APPS? You've gotta start playing hardball. These corperations arent developing software for a market that does not exist. Yes linux gets some apps commercially, but many are free open source projects (AND i sure hope that continues... but we need The Adobes of the world) Until then... Hello Vista!... you steaming pile of shit. And thats the way it will be... because no one has the balls to go after the users. So keep bickering about Suse, Mandrake, Redhat, etc etc etc... It's all worthless to the average user. Make it easy to use, and attractive to REAL people. Not just the IT dungeon creatures. You've gotta sell the world on the idea that linux is cool, pretty, advanced, user friendly etc. Apple did themselves a favor with the "Think Different" slogan. Linux could learn a thing or two from apple (I know ironic) Anyways this rant is too long and its falling on deaf ears anyways. Linux will never succeed at winning microsoft's market share. Linux doesnt play the game. You can sell it to buisnesses which is great.... But the second you can convince every highschool kid into thinking running linux is "cool" and running windows is "gay", you might actually hurt Billy Goat Gates. Take a lesson from APPLE and the IPOD. It is possible to shift an entire market into your corner through great marketing and a great product! Marketing and image is key, and the time is ripe. MS is hurting. Vista looks like crippleware and people are sick and tired of windows crashing and becoming infected with all kinds of horrible stuff. Mak
Neither OS X or Linux have a real transactional FS (Spotlight and Beagle just use a regular FS, and build a separate database), but that's OK because Vista isn't actually going to have it either!
First of all, you're confusing metadata storage with transactioning. Just because both are vaguely related to databases doesn't mean that they are related to each other.
However, Linux does, in fact, support both, through file systems like ReiserFS, XFS, and Ext3.
But interestingly enough I'm perfectly able to rip my new DVDs on my new DVD drive under Linux despite any region encoding. Yet another reason for me not to use Windows. In face of their control freak tactics throughout Vista it'd take one hell of a list of awesome features to make me even consider using Vista. Windows 2000 is still my favorite Windows but overall I would take Mac OS or Linux over Windows any day of the week.
(Extra grudge this week - trying to fix corrupted file permissions in a NTFS file system using XP Home was fun. Oh love the holidays and helping family without the proper tools at hand. It makes perfect sense for an OS not to give you the ability to manipulate file permissions right?)
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Or make it easy on yourself and buy a copy of Slysoft's AnyDVD and get it over with. Well, maybe not ... I have no idea if that product will work on Vista.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
That's just it. To me the problem isn't that they kill off support for some ancient dropped standard, but, that they kill off support for something that still is supposed to be within the current standard but is just a little old. Anyway, it's still annoying on the principle that MS is doing yet another little thing to further their love of digital media protections. Next thing you know we'll be hearing that Vista won't play any video files without MS certified DRMs.
Oh yeah, I forgot to say, but, a lot of new drives automatically limit their speeds to 1x when they detect a video disc, whether ripping or playing, so if MS is saving us from ourselves, they need to make drives with that hardware "issue" stop working too while they're at it. Well, it's no worse than forcing people with old drives that were working just fine to have to buy a new one just because MS says so.
I don't think the region code alone is a DMCA violation.
The DMCA has allowances for compatibility and there are no laws that stop you from personally buying a foreign DVD.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
but for those with hacked drives (RPC2 with RPC1 firmware), or move the RPC1 drive to new computers, well, no more DVD movies for you!
Ummm, no.
It just makes the decision of what operating system to install on my computer that little bit easier.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
That sounds like a good idea but what it means is that you are freezing a computer at year 2000 software. You spent the time and money needed to make it do what you want and you can reproduce it until the machine breaks down. It's going to get harder to keep up though. If M$ has not already abandoned your OS, they will soon and their "support" did not keep people from rooting it anyway. At some point you will think connecting it to a network is too big a pain. In effect, what you have is a set top box that will lose functionality over time.
Your situation nicely illustrates the treachery of non free software. The first "offer" you could not refuse was not as onerous as the one you will be forced to migrate too. That's they way it usually goes. Once they have you, they abuse you.
Besides, the easy way to watch DVDs on crippled OS's like Windows is to rip it and re-record it without region codes, or no-skip flags.
Good luck ripping it when your OS refuses to recognize your drive.
Good luck replacing your drive with one that works too. Sooner or later drives won't come with drivers for your OS. That's the flip side of the non free upgrade train. New hardware does not work with old software and vice versa forcing you to buy a complete set of both for a single feature of one or the other.
To mirror your statement, I don't have any Windoze and I don't miss it. There are a few things I have not figures out yet, but that's only because you can't legally distribute code to work with non free formats like CSS. It sucks to not be able to put together and edit little home movies from my digital cameras, but one day I will be able to because the OS I'm using to preserve them won't make them all dissapeare one way or another. The trade off has been worth it and it won't last forever.
To see what I mean, compare the functionality of Windows 95 with Mepis. Mepis will see network hardware like wifi cards, does SSH, IMAP and other useful up to the minute stuff. Windows 95, well, good luck making it work with anything but the computer it came with.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If Microsoft pulls another one like this, then nobody will buy the next Windows O/S...especially if people get to be aware that they do not really own their hardware and software if they use Windows.
The idea of region coding for DVDs is one of the stupidest ever. In the current world where globalization is advertised to be the next big thing since sliced bread, the big corporations come and say "no, DVDs will not be globalized!".
I would recommend the Lian Li PC70 case... or buying external drives. =)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I bought a 500 Euro DVD player, (a Yamaha) I bought it from an expensive HiFi shop, not Wal*Mart or some back alley dealer. I told them I wasn't buying it unless it played everything I had, they said it was no problem. Having got the thing home I discovered it wouldn't play RPC1 encoded DVD's took it back the next day and got a Marantz DV4300 that would play everything. So if reputable HiFi shops have no qualms about chipping a player, and ordinary people wont buy buy "normal" players if they're not multi region, I can't see the point in anyone worrying about whether or not MS are duplicitous or incompentent, in not allowing you to do the same on your "future" PC. DVD's look better on a TV anyway. I won't be installing, (let alone buying) Vista for this and the myriad other reasons we will discover in the months leading up to it's launch. XP works fine, and I doubt games will demand Vista for a few years yet. That and I have faith that just as people will only buy hardware that's multi standard, they wont take any less from a PC, and with software enforcement being a thing of the past, it wont be long before somebody produces hardware that does give the peole what they want. Market forces will not be denied, no matter how broken your business model is, or what you try to do to shore it up.
Microsoft just announced that you must load the first 640k of Vista with punch cards...
Get your Unix fortune now!
What's wrong with CSS? You're one of those mouth breathing table elements for layout kind of people, aren't you?
After all, I am strangely colored.
I like AnyDVD, I use AnyDVD. But only because I must.
t -available-in-stores-faq.90.20.html
Is it just me, or does anyone else see something wrong with that product? It's nice because it gives me (allows me to use rather) the freedoms I enjoy under my Fair Use rights but I've got to pay for it. Ironically, the software has copy protection built in!
I don't see AnyDVD lasting for long, but for good reasons. It is similar to bootlegging - we've been forced to look to questionable business practices because the government has sided with the special interests and hasn't supported our rights. Frankly I think it is wrong, wrong, wrong. I can't get a copy of DVD Decrypter (legally, you know) but I can *buy* a copy of AnyDVD?
http://www.slysoft.com/en/why-is-your-software-no
It seems the only thing that creates cyber-criminals is cyber-laws.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Doesn't much matter to me, my Windows 2000 PC/PVR doesn't even have a DVD drive.
The XP machine has made it more than two years (from the factory!) without a second install/re-install so I don't think I'll be breaking that record with Vista.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Question is why are the japaneese anime production companies region locking the content to #2.??
They dont have to , its their choice to have it has reg-0.
Email them to find out why, or is it sony which owns the distro company?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I'll simply download movies instead of bothering with the extra inconvenience of locating import shops, buying massively marked-up media and contributing to the media control freaks' bottom-line. ... there is no reason for the *AAs to worry about this since there has been hardly anything worth downloading (at least for me) coming out of the major North-American studios for the last many years anyway.
Region limitation is not a copy protection mechanism. It is a regional lockout mechanism designed to allow companies to charge different prices in different locations, based on what people in that region can pay.
Honestly I will rarely spend money on an official dvd anymore if it's foreign. If it's not a US DVD I will probably just buy the Chinese bootleg for 1/4 the price and with _NO_ region code. What do the companies think they are gaining in this day and age by trying to restrict region access when we have portable dvd players everywhere, laptops all come equipped standard with dvd playback. If I travel to another country they don't want me to play a dvd there? The whole concept is a throwback to a time when instant dissemnation of information was impossible. The comnpanies are trying to maintain an artificial grip on the world's distribution system but in the process they are encouraging not only piracy but also organized crime and the people who own these huge illegal pirating operations throughout the world.
Why have you imported DVDs? Are you a terrorist?
That of course is not a problem with Microsoft or yourself, but a problem with regioning content... A useless tactic. If I can get DVDs cheaper in Asian markets, why shouldn't I?
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
1) ??????? 2) ??????? 3) Watch movies using VLC and/or stand alone DVD player you can get with happy meal or WalMart (10 dollars) 4) ??????!
Oddly enough, I have the tendency to watch movies at 1.1x. Really bad Hollywood schlock gets 1.4x. You wouldn't believe how many pacing problems this can solve.
The ______ Agenda
But Vista will lock out DVD drives that have a region of 0, and that's the bigger issue at hand...
The right hand specifically: most porn is region 0.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
You must be new here.
"Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
Whoops! Slip of the hand there!
"Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
Not with a Ralink RT2500 PCMCIA card. I tried Lindows, Knoppix, Ubuntu, Xandros, and Gentoo, with an old Dell and a Toshiba Satellite 2800-something. I do use WPA, but turned it off specifically to make using linux easier. There are native drivers for that card so I tried them. Which distro failed which way is a little fuzzy a year later, but a couple wouldn't even compile the drivers; where it did compile, it didn't work. I started with the Dell, and I tried ndiswrapper next. When neither worked, I tried them both on the Toshiba, and no dice. Needless to say, I think, the card works just fine under Windows XP.
I am well aware that this is a factor of support and not the innate quality of the operating systems. If it weren't for issues like this I'd be running Xandros right now--but the fact is, without decent hardware support, linux loses. It's a hassle to research every last component to make sure it will run under linux, and then find out that even though it's allegedly supported, for some reason beyond my ken, it just won't work.
Back In The Day when I had more patience for that sort of thing, I was building my own Slackware kernels and gccing little games and things. I'm no guru but I've got a decent handle on things. I've migrated towards other hobbies lately and I'm not the 'expert' I was ten years ago, but if I can't make it work you can be damn sure my grandma can't.
Well, maybe DVD playback will be the killer application that Linux needs...
Oh well, what the hell...
But don't fuck up the system and waste everyone's time by making the government *force* them to do something they ordinarily wouldn't do.
But that's just the point: supporting these devices is something they have ordinarily done. If they weren't supporting a new device, like Blue Ray or HD-DVD, you'd have a good point, but that's not what they are doing. They are specifically removing functionality in hardware you've already purchased.
Since those "licenses" come up after the purchase is already made, they aren't fit to be so much as toilet paper.
No they aren't. Windows Vista is a *DIFFERENT* product than Windows 2000 and Windows XP. They're not removing anything from Windows XP.
I also find this whole debate interesting coming from the "make sure you check the supported hardware list before you buy" Linux crowd.
Comment of the year
The anti-Microsoft rhetoric here gets really tiresome
Could be worse, could be a knee-jerk Microsoft appologist.
Of course Microsoft forces their products and upgrades on people, it's what their entire business is based on. Want to keep your OEM discount? Better not install Netscape, or they'll cut your discount and your compeditors will destroy you. Want to play games on your computer? Had to upgrade from 2k to XP to get DirectX. Why is each version of Office not quite backwards compatible? So you'll be forced to upgrade to make sure you can handle all your clients files.
Sure, there are worse companies out there. Monsato comes to mind. But they're still pretty damn bad.
he means this css
I was wondering about that... whether this was meant not to fit into a world of newer hardware, but rather into a world of Treach^H^H^H^H Trusted Computing...
:)
Wonderful tagline. Hope you don't mind if I steal and quote it liberally, most especially to anyone who doesn't get the concept.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
That's an interesting thought, actually. Not that some of the geek set will vanish, but rather, to what degree will their defection into a non-TC'd system (and subsequently into prison, when using a non-TC'd system is outlawed) disrupt the remaining TC'd internet?
:) that TPTB's pain will cause a swing back toward a non-damaged internet and security system?
Will it be sufficiently griefful (new word, made up to go with your numbers
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
The point is that DRM will be controlled at the hardware level. It won't matter what program you run because your hardware will refuse to read the DVD if the region code isn't what it's looking for.
This is on of the first steps where the entertainment industry is fucking with our hardware. Personally it pisses me off. Not because I want to watch Euro movies on my PC but because I don't think that the entertainment industry should be able to dictate that my hardware won't do whatever I tell it to do just to protect their profit margins. We all will be paying for the extra junk. And the only function of the extra junk we will be paying for is to limit what we can do with our own hardware.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Wanna get on the Internet? Get one of those "Trusted" OSs (you know, the only kind that ISPs will legally be able to allow...).
And they'll be able to do it under the guise of "quarantining" your insecure system. Nevermind that an RPC1 DVD-ROM drive has as much to do with the Internet as an air conditioner in a garbage truck has to do with homeland security.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Well, in tha case, let's declare it public domain and make it everyone's anti-DRM slogan :)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
"But Vista will lock out DVD drives that have a region of 0, and that's the bigger issue at hand..."
The right hand specifically: most porn is region 0.
Region 0 drives, not region 0 discs. It is drives that allow playback of any disc regardless of region they're obsoleting.
And it isn't just porn in region zero: the entire run of The Tomorrow People is already available from the UK on Region 0 discs, and most players in the US can convert PAL content to NTSC. Though after the currency conversion it does cost a lot more, and that's before postage and packing charges.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Teletubbies are best viewed at 16x.
Of course, your solution of buying four drives and a new computer case would work, too
Don't be so sure about that either. I could see the system balking at having multiple drives of differing regions. I can see software getting created with the presumption that you have only one DVD-capable drive in your system and refusing to work with any other than the first one it finds, in addition to requiring the hardware match the software's opinion of authorized region, the latter also restricted in the number of region changes.
Things like this make me glad I don't throw away my old computers. Anyone have a program that will turn any file into an audio signal suitable for piping into an Apple ]['s cassette port? Preferably something able to split the file into 16 KiB chunks.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
That wasn't funny at all. I don't see why mod's would take time out of their day to makes sure that was recognised as funny. It just doesn't make sense. Hmm, let me see....
Switching to Humor Region 2....
*ROTF*,*LOL* Ok ay... NOW I get it. Good joke!
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
and he means this
Great idea! It's only too bad that the notice wouldn't fit in the space allotted for the sig...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
People like you really frighten me. The way you think is very scary. Let's see, point by point (I know it won't do any good, but I have to try, especially after some dumbass modded you insightful, which means someone out there actually agrees with what you said):
Do you really feel safe carrying a gun around? What happens if you do get robbed? Would you give the criminal what they want to avoid bloodshed, or would you pull your gun out and either shoot them or end up being shot yourself?
You left out "give the criminal what they want and then get shot anyway," or "watch your friend or loved one get shot and robbed just before you get shot and robbed yourself because you had no way to defend yourself or your friend/loved one". And several other scenerios that don't quite fit in the either/or box you described. See, if they have a gun they have no particular reason not to shoot you in many situations. Fewer witnesses and all that. So if you're put in a position where it's shoot or get shot, guess what? I'd like a chance to do some shooting if it might protect my life or someone else's.
The simple fact is that there will always be desperate and/or crazy people in this world, and at some point in your life one might try to hurt you or someone you care about. Guess what? The likelihood of a police officer standing within 1 meter of you at any given time, ready to take a bullet for you or take down an attacker, is zero. Sometimes, you have to defend yourself. Scary, huh? Oh my God, I just realized, the police have firearms! Maybe we should take their firearms away, so they'll be safer on the job. Yeah, that makes sense. Just like it makes sense to take all firearms away from private individuals who have never committed any crime and probably never will.
If you don't get robbed, do you really want the temptation to be there to act on a whim and kill someone because you were angry? Would you want the chance a kid or teenager to find that gun and kill someone? Do you really want the chance of an accident happening, and the gun going off and killing yourself or another person?
Wow, now that's really revealing. There are actually people like you who think that the moment someone puts a gun in your hand you're going to go on a killing rampage. You know, those issues are internal, they have nothing to do with the firearm. That kind of attitude sheds light for me on why there is so much gun related violent crime here in the US even though many other countries have the same level of gun ownership in their societies. We all know how many times we've seen a police officer just whip out his firearm and shoot people randomly on the street, or even his partner, simply because he was a little irritated. Yeah, that happens a lot.
It is not a cop-out to say for the millionth time that it isn't the firearm's fault that you decided to shoot somebody for no particular reason, without due cause. The fact that you think the mere presence of a weapon will make you do something horrible... Well, maybe you should get some counseling, friend. You're dangerous, with or without a weapon. Might want to stay away from sharp objects too.
By the way, there really are very few "accidents" with firearms. Most of what you and the press call "accidents" are simply unbelievable stupidity. Anyone who follows ONE or more of the THREE (you can count 'em on one hand!) simple firearms safety rules can avoid having any safety problems with firearms, ever.
1. Keep it pointed in a safe direction at all times, even if you "know" it's not loaded.
2. Keep the action open and the firearm unloaded until you're ready to shoot it.
3. Keep your finger away from the trigger until you're ready to shoot.
And of course the cardinal firearm safety rule that every man, woman and especially children should be taught:
A gun is ALWAYS loaded. Even if you just checked it. Even if you just saw somebody check it. Even if you "know" it's "just a replica," or you "know" there is no ammunition kep
dude what would happen at 16X damn those movies would go fast
(yes i know i suck at spelling fell free to correct my grammar and/or spellin i dont care, im still not going to change
it's different technology, it's not the same as CD so therefore not everything to do with CD can be applied to DVD.
Sure, it's an optical drive, but there's still plenty of things different between them that could certainly have an effect on the useful life of the drive.
Advanced users are users too!
It'll be cracked 2 weeks after it goes out.
When fiction hits reality, dreams have no air-bag.
I use what came with the DVD player: Intervideo WinDVD 4. It does a good job of speeding up the audio imperceptibly, and it pretty full featured viewer besides. Unfortunately, it doesn't speed up anything other than DVD's.
If anyone knows anything which will speed up / slow down arbitrary video files, Divx / Xvid, please post.
The ______ Agenda
Region codes are not a copy protection system: they are a distribution control system that lets the movie industry say when DVDs are released into different markets, the content of those DVDs, and how much they cost. Region coding does not therefore fall under the DMCA, and bypassing it is not illegal; the actual copy protection mechanism for CDs is DCSS, and it _is_ illegal to bypass that (although doing so is trivially easy from a technological viewpoint).
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
And you are such a big percentage of the DVD drive buying population, that Microsoft and the drive manufacturers should just abandon their plans. Just playing Devil's advocate, since I definitely believe you should be able to play whatever the hell you want in your player. Your concerns will not affect them.
Realistically, you know there will be a patch or some other such workaround for this from the user community. As with any other technology, don't upgrade to Vista until all the problems are resolved for you. Or just don't upgrade at all. As many have noted, there really aren't many benefits left to upgrading from XP to Vista. I'm very comfortable where I am on XP and will be until Microsoft forces me off, at which time one of the open source OSs might finally be on par, or Microsoft has corrected these mistakes in judgement.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
[thinking] "Steal this sig!" oughta be sufficient :)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Utter nonsense. Here's a hint: Windows XP. Windows Vista. Vista is NOT a completely new product, it is an UPDATE to an existing one. If this were something like Apple's OS X transition you might have a point, but it's not so you don't. It takes more effort to remove a feature than to leave it in place, especially with the gigantic code base that Windows has, and in this case was done simply for political reasons. If I owned one of those drives, and it had a "designed for Windows" sticker on it, I'd be pissed.
It's no different than if say, Adobe removed support for PNG in Photoshop CS. Arguing that Photoshop CS is a completely different product than Photoshop 7 because it's newer and has a different name, and there for nothing was "removed", is simply inane.
I also find this whole debate interesting coming from the "make sure you check the supported hardware list before you buy" Linux crowd.
Right, as if Vista is going to say on the box that Microsoft has disabled support for those drives. Oh, I also find it laughable when the herd of snobby Slashdoters criticize other Slashdotters for herd-like mentality. Usually it pops up in a story where Apple has done something unpopular, and people fall all overthemselves to post "now if this were Microsoft, people would be raising hell...."
This is a religeous issue... logic and reality have no place in it.
Nor do they in your post, apparantly. Commercial support for a user-created operating system is going to be iffy, and everyone knows it. As opposed to support for a comercial companies products that have their name plastered over much of the hardware you can buy.
Of greater interest is the increasing shrill tone of the anti-MS screaming.
Not as interesting as the screaming MS appologists.
you got a "flamebait"
Yeah, I'm trying to see how that post was in any way flamebait... can't.
Ah well, I guess it's someone drunk... or someone with a grudge.
You can't take the sky from me...
oh, well if he's not serious, then i would take it as more of kidding than sarcasm
I don't know about the parent. But that's also my case.
I've done a huge amount of installation since when a started using Linux (a little after 1995. Guess why this special year).
Linux almost never gave any problem. The only time it wasn't a plug'n'play experience (or "put CD and easy install") was when installing on a decade old pentium laptop : I had to figure out the name of the network chip to get load the correct driver because I had no documentation (searched on internet, but finally found it by just turning the docking station and reading on the back... duh !) and getting the non standart IO port for the sound card to work (re-boot to DOS, write the IOPorts announced by the DOS driver, reboot to linux, enter them).
Windows XP on the other hand was a PITA *almost every single time*. And I'm only speaking about my personal machines and my friend's machine (it'ld be unfair to include the installation at the university (IT Helpdesk paid my medical studies) 'cause the network makes it a little bit more difficult).
Windows XP refusing to install because hardware is too old and XP needs some obscure BIOS setting trick to accept to boot up (the machine ended having only FreeDOS/Linux dual boot), ultra modern hardware refusing to work (one AMD64 took me a good 6 month before guessing the correct voodoo magic to make the miracle of installation happen. On another AMD64, Windows XP accepted only 1 512Ram module for the first few months until a BIOS update came out. Every other OS ran fine on that machine. Some other friends had similar problems with similar setups : so most likely, i'm not the only one, but it's realy a common problem), and everything in between.
So I personnaly do feel like the parent poster, and fear just every new inventive annoyance that Windows XP can make me suffer.
The best technical medium should be *user selectable*. end of story. In every Linux disto I have worked with you could at least choose between Floppy/CD/harddrive/ZIP (on floppy, IDE or SCSI bus, and then USB and FireWire as soon as these interface where out)/FTP/HTTP/Samba/TFTP and NFS. For years. Windows on the other hand only accepts floppies. Even MS-DOS (and current DOS clones like FreeDOS) let you enter full paths during installation for installation sources (and let you interrupt the installation process, load the drivers to access this special medium (like ATAPI drivers, Dos USB drivers or network drivers) and then restart installation).
The only way you could use whatever else under Windows is having a BIOS that can masquarade your device as a floppy. No such bios / device not supported by BIOS ? You're out of luck.
They've spent time to design nice EULA displayers, Serial number controls, On-line genuine control, or nice themed GUI that make the press reviewing it rave, etc. but nothing usefull like selectable drivers source.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You should also be voting with your wallet. That's where the megacorporations are going to feel it most.
The problem is when we do this, the megacorporations scream that they are losing sales due to 3V1L P1R4T35!!!1!11oneone. And buy legislation for ever-more-insidious "drm" schemes.
It's completely beyond their comprehension that people are boycotting them (or simply not buying their goods because they're complete shit).
No they can't. In fact, very few R1 players can do PAL->NTSC, and most of those do a very shitty job of it.
Most PAL DVD players can convert to NTSC. Not the other way around.
OK, so maybe my sample size is small (two players: RCA and Philips), or because I only used component output to an HDTV, not RCA or S-Video, but I'll test the Panasonic portable and the Humax TiVo w/DVD-R just the same. But surely someone that maintains a database of DVD player capabilities has more thorough data.
I feel no need at all to test the computers' software players.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I wonder the same thing. It would require a huge hit to affect the net overall. (Doesn't seem like a possible outcome to me).
But there is an equally attractive alternative:
the creation of a new net. Definitely not easy, but some dedicated Open Source EE combined with modern wireless broadband tech could re-create the hobby of personal/private networks. There would be a lot of l33t-cr3d to be had for creating/joining a private net - but there may also be some serious resources put into outlawing and policing them too...and I still can't envision a solution to the inter-city bandwidth issue (Without big corps, I don't know if this is possible).
If it is accomplished and stabilized, I think it would be a long, long, long, long time before enough of the mainstream population left the mainstream net to gain control of the geek-net.
Yeah, even the best case for a "new" internet probably won't have much effect on the "old" internet, unless/until (big IF) it reaches the same sort of critical mass that filesharing has now -- and look where THAT got us :( The, er, net result may not be Progress, if using it merely makes one a more easily spotted target.
:(
I've said many times before -- it may be time for a return to the dialup BBS, at least for stuff you really want free from prying eyes and gov't control (such as email). I'd sooner trust my local sysop (hell, I'd BE my local sysop) than trust Uncle Sam and his Big Brother.
Cripes, and we used to rag on FidoNet for being built from tin cans and string...
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
BSPlayer lets you speed up/slow down any video file, except for some weirdly encoded WMVs. Excellent for 2.0xing the pr0n from puretna.com.
By any definition of the word.
You can't take the sky from me...