I generally see DVDs ranging in price here in the US from $15-$20 (excluding box sets, of course). I see Blu-Ray movies ranging from $20-$30, depending on how new they are. I don't really feel that's much of a price increase.
I can't agree that it has anything to do with DRM. I, like pretty much anyone on slashdot, oppose DRM, and I refuse to buy music and videos digitally because of it. However, I still buy Blu-Ray movies, because the DRM simply doesn't matter. I can't afford a Blu-Ray drive for my computer. I won't be able to any time soon. It doesn't matter how much DRM the discs have, because all I'm doing is sticking them in my PS3... which I'd wager is the same for most people, even the geeks.
Looking at that chart, while HD-DVD has support, it's definitely in the minority now with this announcement. Moreover, New Line is owned by Time-Warner, so they're likely to go Blu-Ray only too at some point. I'd say that the situation looks pretty grim for HD-DVD, although it's not quite over yet.
I didn't say it wasn't possible, I just said I doubt it. In either case, my issue is with your ludicrous claim that Hollywood isn't the driving force behind this, which is clearly not true. Either Microsoft is unwilling, in which case Hollywood is forcing them, or they're willing, in which case, it's still Hollywood's idea, and they're the ones responsible for it.
Maybe you need to lay off your medication, because no matter what Microsoft's degree of willingness is, Hollywood is clearly the one at fault here.
Bullshit. Whether Microsoft has their own evil motivations aside (highly doubtful, I say), that has no bearing on whether Hollywood is making Microsoft do this. Hollywood is so overprotective of their stuff that it's intuitively obvious that they'd force Microsoft to implement DRM in order to play HD content.
In your overzealousness to hate on Microsoft, you forgot that the entertainment industry is a hell of a lot more evil and monopolistic than Microsoft could ever be.
Practice is not the same as theory. It's impossible to maintain control of your data in practice, but that doesn't mean that you don't own it... just that you can't control it. You still have the right to try, because it's your damn data.
Not for me. Games aren't an issue themselves, the issue here (for me) is one of censorship. If a candidate is willing to prohibit violent (or any other kind, for that matter) games from being made, that means they endorse government censorship. The only tolerable level of government censorship is 0, and as soon as any candidate expresses a willingness to censor (games or otherwise), they've instantly lost my vote.
And you're neatly sidestepping the issue altogether. Nice trick, that. The issue is that switching to a "free" (however one defines that, which is a discussion unto itself) OS will not solve the problem at all. All that will happen is you'll have to pirate your videos, which is the same damn solution that you'd have to go to under Windows... so the OS change has netted you no benefit whatsoever with respect to this DRM issue.
You don't make a good case for Unix admins being smarter, because your post is profoundly stupid. There are tons of talented Windows IT guys out there, and, while it's unfortunate that you don't know any, that doesn't mean they don't exist.
I'd hardly call his songwriting any good. His singing (mediocre as it was) was a lot better than his songs which tended to have about four notes in them total, repeated in the same pattern over and over. Most good songwriters write songs that actually sound interesting, not ones where you've heard the whole song once you've heard 10 seconds of it.
But hey, if you enjoyed it, more power to you, I guess. I just think calling it "good" is a stretch.
I disagree, there's no difference. Quite simply, the deaths of artists don't affect our lives in any meaningful way. Yes, they won't produce any more art, which is a shame (or a blessing, depending on your opinion of the artist). But their old art is still available to you, just as much as it was the day before they died. Anyone who gets worked up over the death of an artist is no better than anyone who gets worked up over the minutae of Britney's (or whoever's) life. It just doesn't matter. It should be something mentioned in passing, and then never mentioned again, because it just isn't real, meaningful news.
I want my consoles to have DVD playback because I want to have as few boxes sitting by the TV as possible. A DVD player is cheap enough, but adds unnecessary clutter. Thankfully, I have a PS3, which plays DVDs beautifully.
Not really. A sensible person looks at each case individually. Obviously Ron Paul doesn't feel that the evidence for evolution is enough to support it, but that doesn't mean he'll come to the same conclusion in other cases. Of course, this depends on the assumption that Dr. Paul is a sensible person who evaluates each issue on its own merits, but I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.
No, you have the right idea, but you missed it by a bit. Religious views still have no bearing on one's ability to run the country. What you're talking about is someone letting their religious views dictate how they run the country, which is a very bad quality, but is separate from their religious views.
First point: secularism is no guarantee of liberty. Religion is no guarantee of tyranny... I remind you that this country was first settled by Puritans.
Second point: Ron Paul being a creationist is completely irrelevant to his ability to be a good president. Religious views have no bearing on one's ability to run the country.
I refuse to measure success or failure of a product relative to how its sibling products did. The PS3 is a success, by my standards, because it's sold ok, especially if you consider the handicaps it's had to overcome. Really, it is dependend on the metric which you choose for success or failure.
PS3 and BluRay have been a resounding failure. Hell no. I'm not a Sony zealot or fanboy, but this is patently false. The PS3 is in the last place in the console race, it's true. I don't even expect them to take second in the end, for that matter (although I may yet be surprised). That doesn't make it a resounding failure, though. The PS3 has done surprisingly well, in my opinion, for how expensive it started out being... it might even pick up some steam now that Sony is wising up, and dropping prices. And as far as Blu-Ray being a resounding failure, last I checked, Blu-Ray was selling more than HD-DVD. It's kind of a moot point, because high-def discs aren't catching on in general, but Blu-Ray is a success, seeing how it seems to be winning the high-def format war.
Uh... you obviously didn't understand his point. The point is that Windows is becoming so bad (in Dvorak's opinion), that it's now getting to be almost as bad as the bloody awful (in Dvorak's opinion) Linux and Mac OS. He's using Windows because he thinks it's still the best, but getting worse, and he's afraid that it'll get so bad he'll be forced to switch to other OSes he hates, because his OS of choice sunk to a profound level of suck.
Mind you, I disagree with him on almost every point there (except about Mac OS), and still think it was a pretty horrible article, but that is what he was trying to say. So, to answer your question, that would be bad because using something you hate, just because it's the lesser of two evils, doesn't mean you stop hating it... thus your experience would be pretty miserable.
Well, we'll have to agree to disagree then. I've never found the way PC games handle their multiplayer to be lacking in the slightest, so I'm rather disgusted that Microsoft offers for a fee what I can get for free, and just as good, elsewhere.
Yeah, I'll have to agree that XBL revolutionized online play. Microsoft managed to convince console gamers to pay for what PC gamers have had free for years, that takes serious skill.
Exactly, thank you. Reading this story, and the one about Linux being used in various devices, those were my thoughts exactly. Sometimes (especially with hardware), it's important to a user how many others adopt something, so that whoever makes it will have incentive to keep going. This doesn't apply to Linux and OSS, though, so the periodic "Let's get people to use OSS!" discussions slashdot has are nothing more than zealotry, imnsho. If you're not being a zealot, you should have no reason to care what software the military uses, or anyone else, for that matter.
I've had a question lingering as I read through people's comments in this page, and I'm just gonna ask it here (yeah, at the bottom of the page, I know...). Why RAID 1? Why not RAID 5? Seems to me that RAID 5 is a hell of a lot better solution. You get (small, but not non-existent) performance benefits, not to mention that you aren't losing half your storage space. It's pretty damn reliable, too. Why would you recomment going RAID 1 instead of RAID 5?
To answer your question, I'd guess that maybe it's just a higher volume of users? The clueless masses are using computers now, and they're, well, clueless. And don't bother to educate themselves. That's just a guess, though.
a) I've never played Deus Ex, nor seen it played, really (I had a roommate who played, but I didn't pay much attention).
b) Isn't Deus Ex generally considered an RPG, not an FPS?
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I generally see DVDs ranging in price here in the US from $15-$20 (excluding box sets, of course). I see Blu-Ray movies ranging from $20-$30, depending on how new they are. I don't really feel that's much of a price increase.
I can't agree that it has anything to do with DRM. I, like pretty much anyone on slashdot, oppose DRM, and I refuse to buy music and videos digitally because of it. However, I still buy Blu-Ray movies, because the DRM simply doesn't matter. I can't afford a Blu-Ray drive for my computer. I won't be able to any time soon. It doesn't matter how much DRM the discs have, because all I'm doing is sticking them in my PS3... which I'd wager is the same for most people, even the geeks.
Looking at that chart, while HD-DVD has support, it's definitely in the minority now with this announcement. Moreover, New Line is owned by Time-Warner, so they're likely to go Blu-Ray only too at some point. I'd say that the situation looks pretty grim for HD-DVD, although it's not quite over yet.
Maybe you need to lay off your medication, because no matter what Microsoft's degree of willingness is, Hollywood is clearly the one at fault here.
In your overzealousness to hate on Microsoft, you forgot that the entertainment industry is a hell of a lot more evil and monopolistic than Microsoft could ever be.
Practice is not the same as theory. It's impossible to maintain control of your data in practice, but that doesn't mean that you don't own it... just that you can't control it. You still have the right to try, because it's your damn data.
Not for me. Games aren't an issue themselves, the issue here (for me) is one of censorship. If a candidate is willing to prohibit violent (or any other kind, for that matter) games from being made, that means they endorse government censorship. The only tolerable level of government censorship is 0, and as soon as any candidate expresses a willingness to censor (games or otherwise), they've instantly lost my vote.
And you're neatly sidestepping the issue altogether. Nice trick, that. The issue is that switching to a "free" (however one defines that, which is a discussion unto itself) OS will not solve the problem at all. All that will happen is you'll have to pirate your videos, which is the same damn solution that you'd have to go to under Windows... so the OS change has netted you no benefit whatsoever with respect to this DRM issue.
You don't make a good case for Unix admins being smarter, because your post is profoundly stupid. There are tons of talented Windows IT guys out there, and, while it's unfortunate that you don't know any, that doesn't mean they don't exist.
But hey, if you enjoyed it, more power to you, I guess. I just think calling it "good" is a stretch.
I disagree, there's no difference. Quite simply, the deaths of artists don't affect our lives in any meaningful way. Yes, they won't produce any more art, which is a shame (or a blessing, depending on your opinion of the artist). But their old art is still available to you, just as much as it was the day before they died. Anyone who gets worked up over the death of an artist is no better than anyone who gets worked up over the minutae of Britney's (or whoever's) life. It just doesn't matter. It should be something mentioned in passing, and then never mentioned again, because it just isn't real, meaningful news.
I agree. I think it's pretty silly that the Wii doesn't have DVD playback, regardless of the fact that I have that capability elsewhere.
Pojut, just use your PS3 as a DVD player. Make sure you get the remote. That's what I did, and it works beautifully, I have no need for anything else.
I want my consoles to have DVD playback because I want to have as few boxes sitting by the TV as possible. A DVD player is cheap enough, but adds unnecessary clutter. Thankfully, I have a PS3, which plays DVDs beautifully.
Not really. A sensible person looks at each case individually. Obviously Ron Paul doesn't feel that the evidence for evolution is enough to support it, but that doesn't mean he'll come to the same conclusion in other cases. Of course, this depends on the assumption that Dr. Paul is a sensible person who evaluates each issue on its own merits, but I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.
No, you have the right idea, but you missed it by a bit. Religious views still have no bearing on one's ability to run the country. What you're talking about is someone letting their religious views dictate how they run the country, which is a very bad quality, but is separate from their religious views.
Second point: Ron Paul being a creationist is completely irrelevant to his ability to be a good president. Religious views have no bearing on one's ability to run the country.
I refuse to measure success or failure of a product relative to how its sibling products did. The PS3 is a success, by my standards, because it's sold ok, especially if you consider the handicaps it's had to overcome. Really, it is dependend on the metric which you choose for success or failure.
Mind you, I disagree with him on almost every point there (except about Mac OS), and still think it was a pretty horrible article, but that is what he was trying to say. So, to answer your question, that would be bad because using something you hate, just because it's the lesser of two evils, doesn't mean you stop hating it... thus your experience would be pretty miserable.
Well, we'll have to agree to disagree then. I've never found the way PC games handle their multiplayer to be lacking in the slightest, so I'm rather disgusted that Microsoft offers for a fee what I can get for free, and just as good, elsewhere.
Yeah, I'll have to agree that XBL revolutionized online play. Microsoft managed to convince console gamers to pay for what PC gamers have had free for years, that takes serious skill.
Exactly, thank you. Reading this story, and the one about Linux being used in various devices, those were my thoughts exactly. Sometimes (especially with hardware), it's important to a user how many others adopt something, so that whoever makes it will have incentive to keep going. This doesn't apply to Linux and OSS, though, so the periodic "Let's get people to use OSS!" discussions slashdot has are nothing more than zealotry, imnsho. If you're not being a zealot, you should have no reason to care what software the military uses, or anyone else, for that matter.
To answer your question, I'd guess that maybe it's just a higher volume of users? The clueless masses are using computers now, and they're, well, clueless. And don't bother to educate themselves. That's just a guess, though.
a) I've never played Deus Ex, nor seen it played, really (I had a roommate who played, but I didn't pay much attention).
b) Isn't Deus Ex generally considered an RPG, not an FPS?