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Blu-Ray Drive For Apple Notebooks
Sean Jackson writes "Fastmac has beaten Apple to the Blu-Ray punch and has a new slimline Blu-Ray drive that works in PowerBooks, iBooks, Mac Minis, the MacBook Pro 17", and a few other systems. It's pricey ($800), but you have to admit that burning 45 GB is pretty sweet. Here are technical specs. Fastmac says that playing Blu-Ray movies isn't currently supported since there is no software player. However, several solutions are in the works and there is always a chance OS X 10.5 will support playing movies. Perhaps this means that Apple isn't far behind and will be offering Blu-Ray with the next MacBook and MacBook Pro revisions."
However, several solutions are in the works and there is always a chance OS X 10.5 will support playing movies. Perhaps this means that Apple isn't far behind and will be offering Blu-Ray with the next MacBook and MacBook Pro revisions.
Perhaps, but it's purely speculation. There's a chance that OS X 10.5 will also come with a full installation of Windows Vista included in the box. Perhaps this means that Apple is planning on buying Microsoft.
See the problem with drawing conclusions from items that are pure speculation to begin with?
If the only problem is lack of software, does it work if you boot into Windows, I wonder?
Although, since all my HD movies are in the other format, it's kind of moot anyway. Mind you, some would say that about my not owning a MacBook, too.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Incredible. NOW the overpriced Blu-Ray drive is available in BOTH of your massive-selling flavors! MAC and PS3!
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
Dell offers BluRay in their XPS and has done so for quite a while...
I would be more interested in a SuperDrive that supports both HDDVD and BR
you can buy external hardrives at about 30 cents a gig, on special, so 800 bucks is ~~ 2400 gig of hardrive, or about 53 bluray disks, assuming you can efficiently fill the disks at 45 gig each, neglecting the cost of the disk..
as usual, for early adopters YMWV (your mileage Will vary)
Harddrives are notoriously prone to failure. Plus, you can't stash four or five in a briefcase or the average laptop bag... Grabbin g the data off the disks would be a tedious process of unhooking and rehooking up an external drive. Even with the ATA overhead, the bluray drive might be faster.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
It's a bad idea to rush into selling something that isn't ready. There is no PLAYER! Although this is a real juicy project for an OSS lover............ :-)
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Of course you can stash four or five... Let's see one DVD is 45 Gigs? I have two 2.5 Hard disks which is about the size of four or five CD's, and that stores at least 320 Gigs. With five BluRay I have 225 Gigs... Considering that 2.5 drives will cost you less than 200 USD I think hard disks are the better buy....
Regarding failure... Not true. I know for the past five years all I do is buy two drives per year, and copy the old information to the new drives. Beats any other backup system on price, performance, portability.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
So I guess I won't beable to watch any movies with my brand new non-HDCP compatible 23" DVI monitor.
This is the first step to pirati^H^H^H legitimately downloading PS3 games because copyright law is BROKEN and like FUCK YOU GEORGE BUSH TAKE THIS!
All we need now is for someone to actually release some PS3 games and we're good to go!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
How long would it take to burn a 45GB disc? Blu-ray.com says 1x is 36Mbs, so that would be 4.5MB/s. 45GB is approximately 45000MB, so it would take about 10,000 seconds at max speed the whole way. So that's like what, 2 hours and 50 minutes? Not that bad for massive backup if you just start it when you go to bed.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
>> System administrators and database administrators can archive and retrieve large amounts of data on 1 convenient disk. Blu-ray is the next generation of storage technology and it's available today, only from Fastmac.
Really? Last I looked I can now get a terrabyte of hard disk space under 300 USD. If I want a terrabyte of RAID it will probably cost me 400 USD, maybe 500 USD. A terrabyte of blueray is 20 DVD's burning at 8x. Oh yeah I am going to pay 800 USD and 20x CD's + more time to do the same backup... Yeah that sounds like a plan!
CD's, DVD's are history for backing up purposes. Even the original intention of CD's for music is starting to become irrelevant. Times have changed.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
My external hard drive (120gb) has been good for well over two years now. Plus, I've dropped the thing several times. I never had a cd-rw work for more than a few weeks or a dvd-rw for a few days due to scratches. Plus, you can't stash four or five in a briefcase or the average laptop bag It's fairly easy to stash a 200gb external in a bag.
"The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent system."--Lew Rockwell
End The FED. -
Give me an external firewire option and I am on board.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
It says that it burns at 1x BD-R. How fast is this? I'll tell you, 4.5 MB/s. That means 10,000 seconds for a 45 GB disc. That's 166 minutes. That isn't slow, I guess, but it sure sounds slow.
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=DYCWRSV&s=dhs
Yawn.
I don't respond to AC's.
Fastmac has beaten Apple to the Blu-Ray punch and has a new slimline Blu-Ray drive that works in PowerBooks, iBooks, Mac Minis, the MacBook Pro 17", and a few other systems. [. . .] Fastmac says that playing Blu-Ray movies isn't currently supported since there is no software player.
Yeah, they totally beat Apple to the punch of selling a product that the OS doesn't support at all. Hurp. It's not that Apple can't get hardware from vendors, it's that they have to implement the software side as well, which isn't very likely until the next big OS update. I mean, we're kinda at the end of the Tiger line, here, after all.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
I would be more interested in a SuperDrive that supports both HDDVD and BR
And I'd be more interested if OS 10.5 came with a real, live, spotted leopard in the box, but I guess we're both just going to have to learn to live with disappointment, won't we?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
On the PC side of the world, we've been enjoying various 3rd-party Blu-Ray drives and various third-party Blu-Ray video players for a year now.
As a Mac user, I'm rather disappiointed. But that's why I'm also a PC user - it helps me avoid disappointment when Apple decides to sit on the fence.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
I want to see some very heavy results from independent testing labs that give me an idea that if I put data on such disks that it will be readable in at least 5 years @ 99.99% reliability.
If not, hard drives are way better as they read and write at far higher speeds.
Blu-ray support in Mac is a reasonable assumption. Apple buying Microsoft is not. What's the difference? The probability of it happening. You or a 5 year-old may think that probability can be reduced to "yes", "no" and "maybe", but actually it is a whole continuum of values between 0 and 1.
I burn forty-five gigabits all the time.
Maybe what you meant to say is 45GB.
Look on the bright side, you were off by less than an order of magnitude... though not by much.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I hope the next MacBooks (specifically the 13.3" MacBookPro I've been whining for for a while now) has a BluRay option.
That'll make the version without the BluRay reader $200 cheaper, which works just fine for me.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
To put facts with your point:
8 2E16827106037
8 2E16817131063
/best/ light financially...
8 2E168221481348 2E16822136073
.22x = .26x -> 529 = .04x -> 13,225 = x
/and/ cost advantages in several (but not all) situations).
Cheapest Blu-Ray burner: $529 + 1 25GB DVD (requires a decently powerful video card???)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N
Cheapest per-GB BD Disks: $32.99 (150GB total ~$0.22/GB)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N
Blue ray in it's
HDs in better light
HDDs:
750GB: $254.99 ($0.33/GB, 15 BD's worth of data)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N
500GB: $129.99 (26/GB, 10 BD's worth of data)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N
OK, ignoring the cost of the BD drive, which we'll assume you only need to buy once, per-GB the BD is cheaper. However, assuming you don't use unlimited BDs, then you you are cost effective with BDs, only if you have to have simultaneous backup of up to X GB:
529 +
So, you must need at least 13TB of backup at any given time for BD to be more effective in terms of cost. (NOTE: if you do a rolling backup, you'll never reach this, and unless the BDs are -RW, they'll probably not be cost-effective)
And I'm petty sure 10 optical disks are about the same size standard HD or larger. With a good/small enclosure, you'll still have less space than 15BDs, and you only need one enclusre, just swap the drives. Heck you can get a dongle type setup that doesn't even require the enclosure.
So, HDs have space
34486853790
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1) ICT (Image Constraint Token) will make the movie play at half resolution
2) Hollywood has agreed to not use ICT before 2012 at earliest if at all
3) ICT is per disc, so none of your current discs will be degraded in the future
Running around like chicken little saying the sky is falling, will have none if not the opposite effect. All you'll do is make normal people try it, see that you're wrong and think you're some sort of wierdo conspiracy crackpot. HDCP won't affect many, most won't notice it and for the technically savvy there'll probably be workarounds. That is if it's even relevant anymore since if AACS is broken.
* Note: AACS can't technically be broken as such, but if broad classes of devices are compromised to the point where the public backclash would be too great to revoke the key, it's de facto broken permanently.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Umm, you can fit Blue-Ray disks in a case the size of 2 HDD. That's ~1125Gigs. But HDD tend to die a lot easer than disks. And you don't need external power to access them. After all the point of a laptop is portability vs. showing up with 2 external drives that need power.
PS: They are Blue-Ray disks not DVD's.
oh it's even worse than that. who needed to burn 4GB of data before dvd-films were being ripped? i bet, amongst the kiddies, 80 percent of content on DVD-Rs is films and other media (illegally) ripped for giving to their friends. of course, most kiddies nowadays have 120GB external usb harddrives.
so this leaves the question, how are the kiddies going to get 45GB together to put on a blu-ray disk? you have three guesses... (hint, the answer's in the question)
I saw the mac, had some mod points and thought that i'd revenge myself for the rabid mods who down vote me every time i poo poo macs, no matter how logic, right, obvious, or stupid i may feel at the time that i click the submit reply button.
However, if this means that i could install a *cough* open source player to play blu-ray discs on a pc that wasn't crippled by drm issues *cough vista coughcough*, it might be worth my next laptop replacement.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
burning 45 GB is pretty sweet
If it's as slow as burning a DVD is, then not really. I gave up on optical media for backup long ago because it's just too slow. I just use an extra hard drive instead. Does anybody know if burning Bluray is any faster per GB than burning a DVD?
Penny - plain text accounting
Neglecting whatever increased power requirements the new optical drive might introduce, 2.5 hours is cutting it close for burning on a battery. Now certainly it's always possible to plug in when you're on the road, but if you have a socket nearby, an external hard disk can be plugged in too (or you can beat this by using a "self-powered" USB disk).
Not to mention that, at best, you could have ~3 Blu-Ray discs worth of data stored on your hard disk.
Okay, I can get a dual-layer DVD Burner for about seventy bucks currently, which means I can burn about 8 GB (or 18% of 45 GB) for less than one-tenth of the price--nearly twice as "cost effective."
Then you consider that I can buy the six dual-layer DVDs for about $1.50 each ($9 total), whereas a single "sweet-burnin'" dual-layer Blu-Ray disc (the kind you need to hold 45 GB) is gonna cost me at LEAST thirty bucks--four times as much for the same amount of data.
Hm. When you consider the trend, I think I can hold off for, say, two years when Blu-Ray or HD-DVD or whoever wins that war costs about what a dual-layer DVD burner costs now (and ditto for the discs).
Burning 45 GB onto just one disc will be "sweet," but for the nonce I can stand burning six d-l DVDs without laying out the $800 smackers (esp. since I've already bought the DVD burner with my latest notebook computer anyway).
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
But which standard has the most pr0n available for it?
You can use HTML in these posts, you know, instead of putting /slashes/ you can actually italicize things.
I'm in between insightful sigs right now...
Cool, now I can add a 800$ drive to my 600$ Mac mini.
Ok, it's a Blu-Ray burner, but still.
HyperDrive? TrueBlue? Blueper drive? MoneyBurn?
I mean... Superdrive?
Where was common sense that DVD RW/DL drives will be a common thing couple of months later, back then when someone came up with THAT idea?
Now its like pointing out that your brand new digital watch has a calculator and calling it "A Com-pew-thoor".
But you can still hear Mac users calling it a Superdrive.
Mac user: My brand new Mac has a Superdrive.
Non-Mac user: Dude, it is called a DVD Recorder... They are like... 30$ or something now.
Mac user: A SUUUUUPPEERR-DRIVE!!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I could be completely wrong, I don't know Apple's stance but I'd imagine Apple just aren't ready to commit to Bluray yet, they're probably waiting for more mature drives that support both HDDVD and Bluray together or waiting for a more definitive winner in the format wars, right now it's just too early to take sides and I doubt Apple want the headache of producing/supporting systems that have either Bluray or HDDVD and not both in, I can see it now:
Customer: I bought this HD movie and it doesn't work in my drive can you help?
Apple: Sir, it's an HDDVD, you have a Bluray drive
Customer: But my Bluray drive is for HD isn't it?
Apple: Yes, but HDDVD and Bluray are different formats
Customer: But I want to be able to play HD movies!
Apple: *sigh*
Are you saying we should stop now, and not try to make high capacity formats because some random subset of people you don't actually know ("kiddies"), have no use for the disc but pirating movies?
So if i want to use Blu-ray disks to store clean installation disk images for the 15 servers and machines i routinely manage, Am I pirating movies to hand out?
Are you then also saying that any large cache of media in digital format, must be illegal?
I have digital h.264 copies of a good portion of the 240dvds I bought and paid for, so if I want to put those copies on a more reliable format for archival in case the original discs corrode (They do, and they have), should I just stop trying?
Well, I've read reports that the Leopard builds do support the version of UDF necessary to read HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disks. Under Tiger you need something like ReadDVD!. (I'm currently looking for reviews of that software with an eye toward using it with the XBOX 360 HD-DVD drive.)
DVD Studio Pro lets you build HD-DVDs, but at present burning them only to DVD recordable media in a readable file system, or to a directory on a hard drive. Apple's DVD Player will play them or play from a readable directory. I'm going to try that out this weekend.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
At this point in time MacOS X does not have the necessary drivers for either HD-DVD or BluRay. I also don't see MacOS X gaining the necessary drivers until the delivery of Leopard, which is now slated for October. For this reason I don't see any chance of seeing Apple providing either drive as an option until then. At that point in time I would not be surprised that if the drives are offered, then it will be a build-to-order option, given the cost and the fact the competition between HD-DVD and BluRay is just hurting everyone.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
To be honest I can't see myself ever buying a Blu-Ray drive.
For one it is too expensive for the drive. $800. I can get a 500GB HDD for about 120 euros. Easier to store, no messing trying to find a disk. No DRM, no region messing.
It will (imho) go the way of the DAT tapes (niche market).
Hollywood also empahtically stated they would not abuse the DMCA. Congress believed them and now consumer rights and computer/electronic producer rights have been reduced to loose poo on a stick.
GP's claim is not fud.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Shouldn't this be from the "Who gives a Rat's A** Dept".
Why, the Internet (HDD) or BD?
Don't be crazy anymore!
Don't you have to add the cost of the hard drive in there somewhere?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
And cds/dvds are notoriously prone to scratches.
My external hard drive (120gb) has been good for well over two years now. Plus, I've dropped the thing several times. I never had a cd-rw work for more than a few weeks or a dvd-rw for a few days due to scratches.
Well I have had 2 external HD's fail in the last 3 years and zero of my DVD's fail. It's all anecdotal evidence.
Most likely the reason your discs started to fail was either you were not taking care of them AT ALL (since they failed so quickly), they were just low quality media, and/or your drive was crap. I work in the computer forensic field specializing in optical media and I have worked with quite a few drives and a whole lot of media so I have pretty good insight into this. I mean good God man what were you doing to this media to have it fail so quickly? I wouldn't trust RW media with the sole copy of any data but I have used CD-RW, DVD+RW, and DVD-RW discs for years to shuffle data between different computers without much trouble. Just keep them in a case when they are not in use and out of extreme temperatures and sunlight and your discs should last a long time. Write once media is even more bullet proof as long as it is cared for and of good quality.
Hard drives and discs both have their pros and cons but I think because of how easy it is to transport discs compared to HD's as well as the costs involved that discs will be around for quite some more time. The best example I can think of off the top of my head is if you had a bunch of high definition video you wanted to send to your friend/relative who didn't have broadband and they lived far away from you would you rather mail them a couple of discs or a few hard drives?
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
I'm assuming that as a condition of allowing Macs to play Blu-Ray disks, Sony will require Apple to make Leopard require all drivers to be digitally signed so that fake device drivers can't be used to break the DRM. Same reason as Vista 64.
I honestly hope that someone either builds a large quantum computer or finds a fast discrete logarithm algorithm soon before asymmetric encryption ruins consumer rights.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
PS. They are Blu-Ray disks not Blue-Ray disks.
In the calculation you mean? Yes, it was in there. There is no sunk cost o use the hard drive (maybe $25 for a usb enclosur), the rest is per-gigabyte (the 0.26).
34486853790
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Cost per BD disc is NOT .22/GB. The newegg link you gave is for a single 50GB disk, not a 3-pack.
The cheapest I could find http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16817130011 comes to .44/GB, but thats a 25GB disc.
what i'm saying is, that the vast majority of blu-ray or hd-dvd discs burnt will contain (illegally) ripped media, which wouldn't have existed in these sizes without blu-ray or hd-dvd. i just find the irony quite amusing. naturally, large density discs have some legal uses too, i just can't anywhere near the same number of blu-ray discs will be burnt containing legal media as those burnt to contain illegal media.
this i view as a pretty positive development. it is positive for those who don't yet have broadband and want to share files (be that legal or illegal, it doesn't really bother me). anybody who's really into data-archiving should probably be spending more time thinking about raid-arrays and waiting for flash-media to reach a size when it gets useful. i do believe that flash-media represent the future of data-storage.
on a similar note, i went into my local computers-for-the-masses discounter recently and asked what sort of external harddrives they had 'because i have 250GB of pictures i've taken myself and films i've filmed myself and texts i've written myself'. the assistant laughed at that one.
so basically, blu-ray and hd-dvd in the actions of most people will provide an answer to one question: how am i going to transport the high-density films i rip? the irony is delicious.
It's a bad idea to rush into selling something that isn't ready. There is no PLAYER! Although this is a real juicy project for an OSS lover............ :-)
'Ready' is a matter of requirements. I have no interest in BluRay movies, but I'd love a 45GB burner for backing up raw DV data. Hard drives are too expensive, fragile, and big for that. For archival stuff, if a BluRay blank is under $15, it's cheaper than a reliable hard drive backup.
I'm still not buying at $600, but when they hit $199 next spring, I'm definitely buying one.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
You're right. Wonder why I saw 3x.
Guess there is no redeming value for BluRay as a backup.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
So, HDs have space /and/ cost advantages in several (but not all) situations).
.DV archives on this system wouldn't be cost effective - I'd much rather store them on BluRay.
If you get a good enclosure they're closer to $40, then you need at least two of them for RAID, you need controllers to drive them - if that's USB you're stuck at slow rates, if it's e.SATA you have expensive controllers and/or port limitations. Now you need to handle hot-swapping effectively for hard drives which takes some admin experience or an expensive hard drive shelf.
I use hard drives for my business's backups, but the cheapest I can do today is $1.38 per GB if I want two copies off-site (I don't trust a single old HD spindle to work next year), with hot-swap and e.SATA. I'm not even counting the cost of the computer which needs to have enough PCI slots to handle the e.SATA cards, and that's with el-cheapo cards, not 3Ware or anything dense, plus I have to admin the linux RAID-10 setup.
Now, what I get for my trouble is versioning for 6 months (rsnapshot) and instant random-access to my backups, so in my judgement it's worth it. But storing old
Gosh, maybe I don't have to chose between the two options!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Here's what the FAQ says about flamebait: "Flamebait -- Flamebait refers to comments whose sole purpose is to insult and enrage. If someone is not-so-subtly picking a fight (racial insults are a dead giveaway), it's Flamebait." My comment was intended to amuse and educate, not to insult or enrage.
Therefore, it should be neither Troll nor Flamebait. The most appropriate moderation is no moderation whatsoever, because it's not really worthy of any moderation. But the second-most appropriate is "Informative" because I am correcting someone's error.
You're hoping that other moderators will be as undiscerning as yourself?
Welcome to my foes list for your abuse of the system.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Maybe what you meant to say is 45GB.
Posting just to spell check someone is generally considered insulting the person you're correcting. So yes, flamebait is correct. Pointing out the difference between GB and Gb on a tech site is like explaining the difference between iodized salt and kosher salt to a chef, so it is not informative whatsoever. There is nothing amusing about the post, just arrogance. Unless of course you were being sarcastic. In that case, I would like to help prove my point with the below quote:
You're hoping that other moderators will be as undiscerning as yourself?
See how well sarcastic tones work over teh intarweb? (Feel free to submit spelling corrections!)
I pity you, since your ego is so fragile that you consider a correction an insult.
Personally, I want to know when I am wrong, so that I can get it right next time.
If I were instructing everyone but the person who got it wrong (actually, if you hunt around this thread just a bit, you will find multiple people making the same mistake) would not be informative. But instructing the person who made the mistake is, and I am addressing them directly in my comment.
Again, I don't think the comment should have been moderated at all, positive or negative.
The internet isn't the problem. Stupid people can't detect sarcasm when they read a book, either.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I pity you, since your ego is so fragile that you consider a correction an insult.
Personally, I want to know when I am wrong, so that I can get it right next time.
And I pity you, since you can't accept when you're wrong, even when several people tell you you are. I'm sure you know that you're actually wrong in this situation, but it seems that you can own up to it and say "ok, maybe it came off a bit insulting."
If you really just to wanted to correct them, you would simply say "8 Gb = 1 GB". When I'm in a peer review correcting someone's design, I don't say "rofl, we've verified to IEC-68-2-3 Ca BEFORE!~! Maybe you meant to say we need to verify to MIL-STD-810F?! Don't' worry, you're only ten years late!" I would usually say "Replace IEC-68-2-3 ca with MIL-STD-810F." Simple, eh?
But instructing the person who made the mistake is [informative], and I am addressing them directly in my comment.
I don't think the comment should have been moderated at all, positive or negative.
At least you partly agree with me that the comment had no worth whatsoever. Doesn't sound like you've completely convinced yourself one way or the other though.
Stupid people can't detect sarcasm when they read a book, either.
And it's good to know you'll be here to let people know when they've got it wrong! You should teach third grade, I hear children excel when they're ridiculed.
Might not be a very cost-efficient backup solution, but it should help out some small video studios out there. We already have one pr0n producer (CDGirls.com), who plans to burn-to-sell Blu-ray movies in the future. No DRM needed, either ;)
http://www.avn.com/articles/287130.html for full article
Another slashbot with a reading comprehension problem. Is this related to your deciding to simply not read the full comment, or a tiny vocabulary? If you had actually read the moderation FAQ you would have known that it instructs you to concentrate on positive moderation, but it also says that moderation should be reserved for comments which are particularly worthwhile. Thus this comment (by my criteria) is worthwhile but not particularly worthwhile and thus not deserving of moderation.
As for your jab about teaching third grade, I agree that I should not do that job. I would not have the patience. But with that said, even an intelligent third grader has a better grasp on the English language than yourself.
Finally, let me just address the top of your comment: "I'm sure you know that you're actually wrong in this situation, but it seems that you can own up to it and say "ok, maybe it came off a bit insulting." But see, again, this is an issue of reading comprehension. My comment can be "a bit insulting" to you if you infer that it is meant to be insulting. Even if I meant it to be a bit insulting, that is clearly not the primary thrust of my comment, or I would have called him an ignorant cockbagger or something. One of the things about me is that you seldom have to wonder what I'm thinking because I will let you know in no uncertain terms just what is going on in my head.
I'm sure you know that you are wrong, but you are unwilling to admit that the moderation was not justified, so you have to continue saying ignorant things that make it clear that the FAQ is only interesting to you when you think it says what you want it to say.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is a 12.5mm drive, which means it's too big for the MacBooks and the 15in MacBook Pro, as they require 9.5mm drives. So for now we're stuck with these awful unreliable Panasonic drives that Apple seems to love (presumably because they're so cheap) which cannot be patched for RPC1.
Man and Goat
cd-r's I don't have a problem. I burn cds all the time and they still play well, even with visible scratches. I usually use the memorex black ones. For dvd-rs I use various brands. No real problems. Just with rw-s. All the brands I've tried tend to start giving read errors fairly quickly.
For burners, plextor (cd) and sony (dvd). The best example I can think of off the top of my head is if you had a bunch of high definition video you wanted to send to your friend/relative who didn't have broadband and they lived far away from you would you rather mail them a couple of discs or a few hard drives? I'm talking about read/write. HDs are faster and have been far more reliable for me. If you're mailing/giving, cds/dvd are definitely the way to go.
"The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent system."--Lew Rockwell
End The FED. -
They were either in a case or in a drive. Still somehow they managed to get scratched. I'd usually have to put three or four copies of everything just make sure I'd be able to copy it off later.
Hmm, that is very odd, what burning software were you using? Some software...cough Roxio... has a bad habit of writing the file system first then starting to write the actual file contents and FAILING (but without any warnings or messages) and basically saying the burn process completed without a problem. The user then "checks" the disc by opening it up in windows explorer, sees all the files they wanted to burn listed (since the file system was written first), but they don't actually try to OPEN any files. So, later on they go to use that disc and get a whole bunch of read errors because the data they are trying to access was never actually written to the disc. This usually ends up with the user blaming the problem on the media or their optical drive when the blame really should be on the burning software. Nero has this same problem but does not do it as often. I don't know if this was the issue you were experiencing (probably not) but it may be.
Scratches on a discs bottom surface usually are not a problem at all. The top side is where you need to worry about scratches because if the top gets scratches you lose the reflector and usually the dye too and when that happens those bits are gone for good. My main guess is still the media you were using just was not compatible with your drive or something. I recently got a spindle of CD-RW's and they work like shit with my plextor drives (basically not at all) while some other drives work with them just fine.
For burners, plextor (cd) and sony (dvd).
Sony drives are okay but if you can afford it I highly recommend sticking to the Plextors. In my experience Plextors have the best firmware which allows them to be superior at both writing to discs as well as reading discs (especially damaged/corrupted discs). Whenever anyone is having an issue with a disc the first thing I tell them is to put it in a Plextor and get back to me.
I'm talking about read/write. HDs are faster and have been far more reliable for me. If you're mailing/giving, cds/dvd are definitely the way to go.
I agree that for home use HDs are the way to go and that is usually what I do myself. You said it is easy to throw a HD into a bag which is true but overall optical discs are the way to go when you are dealing with sneakernet. I know personally I would rather throw a few discs into my bag rather than an expensive HD and its external enclosure both because the discs weigh much less and take up less room but also if I were to lose my bag I wouldn't be out so much money.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
Argh! Idiots.
Think Anti Piracy: Use one of the "non compatible" formats (HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Disc) for computers, the other for movies, etc.
How I see it, HD-DVD should be for computers simply because the Xbox 360 has the HD-DVD drive, and Microsoft will likely let it be used for Vista or Vista+1.
This leaves Blu-Ray Disc to be sold as a solely Movie/Media based format that without computers should have little piracy issues (ahem, yes).
But no, no one ever thinks of an "intelligent" alternative to a format war do they?
signature is pants
I'm not sure to be honest - you could well be right, but it's probably worth noting that MS are part of the HDDVD alliance yet have publicly noted they'll likely release a Bluray solution for the 360 if that were to become the prominent format.
Companies behind the two alliances that aren't part of the manufacturing process seem a lot more willing to sway between formats as the market allows, I'd guess Apple is in the same boat - whilst they may be a Bluray backer, if it did flop I doubt they'd be afraid to jump ship and if they become both just as prominent I doubt they'd just ignore HDDVD.
I think it would be dangerous for Apple to make a software Blu Ray player. You know that would get hacked in a second, and the Blu Ray Consortium or whoever has no qualms about revoking keys. Can you imagine the hit to Apple's "coolness" when they keep getting their keys revoked and customers have to make sure to install the latest updates just so they can play their discs? Imagine every few months popping in a new disc and being presented with "please download the latest patches from Apple" screen right when you're at a friend's house who doesn't have wireless and you wanted to watch a movie together?
That is lame, not "Apple Cool."