I experience the same 'feeling' to, but on my external harddrive case, and only when connected (with USB) to my system. In both cases there's no 50/60 hz AC on the line, only 5V DC or 12V DC. Then, if 50/60hz AC isn't it, what can it be?
From what I understand that is incorrect. For the Level2 content you'll need the new players, but the movies itself arre backwards compatible to Level1 players.
The consumer gets a bad deal, because they buy defunct hardware that can play discs no-one sells. On top of that they'll have to get a BR-player anyway. The point is that people with smaller wallets will think this is a good deal when it's not, and the retailer/Toshiba knows it but just dont tell. Bordering on fraud if you ask me, because the retailer damn well knows HDDVD is sold with great promises of HD-iness.
And consumers dont (shouldnt) really care about how the retailer or Toshiba gets rid of its stock, right?
Point still stands.
And you're missing the subtleties on percieved quality versus quality: I bet you that most people would be just as productive and happy with FOSS as with proprietary alternatives.
I think the war is already over for the rest of the world. Here in the Netherlands I have never even seen a HD-DVD player, and maybe three discs, while there's been a (small) stack of Blu-Ray movies in the local recordshop and the PS3 is selling pretty well.
His point is (as you could have known if you actually though a little bit) that HD-DVD appears a dead end anyway and this is just a way to dump stock. In other words: they'll have to buy Blu-Ray anyway after this, so they're effectively tricked into buying a format thats absolete from the moment of purchase.
Because you can choose between two DRM-ridden formats that really do not offer anything extra to people with normal TV's (eg:everyone but three home cinema owners)? Great... And I know that the movie and device industries are trying to convert more and more people into home cinema owners, but I think/hope people will be voting with their wallets on this one.
You are talking about this BluRay level 1 and level 2 stuff. I know it's a popular pasttime to bash Sony and BluRay, but the newer BluRay discs will play fine in any and all players. Level 2 is backwards compatible to level 1, the only difference with a level2 player is that it can use the newer features (mostly Java), which the level1 players won't. The movies themselves will play fine in any movie however.
Interaction between large groups of humans (and fileformats) == Bureaucracy
There is _no_ way around this, unless you make it less democratic ofcourse. It's not a coincidence that the most succesfull governments (in achieving their goals) are not very democratic and the reverse (UN anyone ?). Large groups means that things have to be formalized and to make sure the end result is satisfactory to most if not all affected. Formalizing is bureaucracy.
The reason I make this point is that bureaucracy generally gets a lot of flak while I think that, in it's function as a mediator, it's serves a very important purpose: it makes sure we're all be happy in the end, without useless fights of wars (on level of states: pick a choice, level of industry: BluRay vs. HDDVD). Things like standardisation organistion on the level of industry and the UN/NATO in the level of state, can prevent these and compromize around the table and as such is preferable over option 1.
So even on the topic of document formats, it's not necessarily bad. Sure, the process itself isnt a great innovating contributor (that'll always be the genuises with the great ideas), but in making sure we get something we all want: interoperability, it serves it's purpose in the best I know. Perhaps in this case (most certainly even) it would be better to compare the obvious competitors directly, ooxml and opendoc, but that's for another day.
Damn, does the FUD never end?
A small search on Google demonstrates that the EU fines domesitc industries at least as much as foreign ones (I read the official numbers ones, can't find the source now, but most 'income' was from domestic corporations). Just because Spanish Telecom, Fujifilm and Siemens don't reach the/your news, doesn't mean they're fined hundreds of millions of euros.
My dad is an excellent example of the problem posed in the article: he's more than willing to sink huge amounts of money in software (he's bought photoshop CS and then CS3 when it came out, dozens of raw converters and plugins, more than a thousand euro altogether). He just does not 'buy' it, when I tell him there's pieces of software that are free can be as good. He's never even tried the GIMP or Rawtherapee, and forget about Ubuntu, but you'd think that investing some time in these applications would save money. Not enough.
When people/buy/ software, I think they assume it comes with some magic factor X that makes it better than anything free, because it cannot have factor X, because it's free. And you gotta have that factor X, because, well, you just gotta...
I had to camouflage Firefox as IE to get him to use that, because I was sick of all these spyware that came streaming in.
Also, the 'IT department' on my mothers school (she's a teacher) is another example. They're a poor school that couldn't even afford to repair a leaking roof for over a year (the water came an inch high once in the classroom), yet they made money available for a fat win2003 server and xp-systems everywhere, with remote desktop. This is kindergarten ffs, but the 'IT-people' havn't got a clue, being trained MS-monkeys.
People are undescribibly lazy and stupid when it comes to technical stuff. They don't care to spend dollars/euros, they want to be done with, _zero_ _effort_ must be involved.
It's the same 'grip' TV's have on the movie-industry, there's simply no other way to view them than through/some/ tube from/some/ data carrier. The fact that it's BluRay is technically hardly different from any other format, so no reason to get paranoid.
Movies will still be ripped and unprotected Blu-Ray movies are still perfectly possible. Also hard drive space is so cheap nowadays that bypassing discs altogether is a piece of cake. The music industry is slowly seeing the light of unprotected mp3's, and I'm convinced these ridiculous protection scemes on BR will go largely unused or will become easiliy bypassed (actuallu, it pretty much already is), just like happened with DVD, just like what happened to each and every other protection sceme.
No need to lose sleep over this. If anything, you should be happy that this crazy capital distructing format war is coming to an end. Let the industry go forward and do usefull things.
Ahhhhh, the nineties. 'Extreme Value 98' or 'Super Subscription 2000'. Wait, wait wait! 'Extreme Super Value Subscription 2000'!
Then again, Microsoft is still very much a nineties software company. "Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition". Note how many words in there are everyday words by the way, only marketing departments can come up AND SELL such crap...
You seem to be forgetting, that, even before PS3, BluRay was winning in Europe and Japan, if any format was winning. I (as a European) rarely see HD-DVD discs in the shops and have never seen a HD-DVD player advertisedor in shops, while BluRay is creeping up everywhere. DVD still dwarfs all other of course, but HD-DVD was never going to be it for the rest of the world.
While I agree that MS probably didn't want to risk supporting a dead format, I've read more than once about complaint from gamedevelopers that the 360 only supporting DVD places too much constraint on supplying the content they'd like. Games of more than 9GB are not rare these days and the PS3 has an advantage there.
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I experience the same 'feeling' to, but on my external harddrive case, and only when connected (with USB) to my system. In both cases there's no 50/60 hz AC on the line, only 5V DC or 12V DC. Then, if 50/60hz AC isn't it, what can it be?
From what I understand that is incorrect. For the Level2 content you'll need the new players, but the movies itself arre backwards compatible to Level1 players.
They tried.
The consumer gets a bad deal, because they buy defunct hardware that can play discs no-one sells. On top of that they'll have to get a BR-player anyway. The point is that people with smaller wallets will think this is a good deal when it's not, and the retailer/Toshiba knows it but just dont tell. Bordering on fraud if you ask me, because the retailer damn well knows HDDVD is sold with great promises of HD-iness. And consumers dont (shouldnt) really care about how the retailer or Toshiba gets rid of its stock, right?
I'd say that Stone Age and Bronze Age are pretty close from our perspective. twas Snipes on DOS for me sometime in the 80's.
Point still stands. And you're missing the subtleties on percieved quality versus quality: I bet you that most people would be just as productive and happy with FOSS as with proprietary alternatives.
I think the war is already over for the rest of the world. Here in the Netherlands I have never even seen a HD-DVD player, and maybe three discs, while there's been a (small) stack of Blu-Ray movies in the local recordshop and the PS3 is selling pretty well.
His point is (as you could have known if you actually though a little bit) that HD-DVD appears a dead end anyway and this is just a way to dump stock. In other words: they'll have to buy Blu-Ray anyway after this, so they're effectively tricked into buying a format thats absolete from the moment of purchase.
Because you can choose between two DRM-ridden formats that really do not offer anything extra to people with normal TV's (eg:everyone but three home cinema owners)? Great... And I know that the movie and device industries are trying to convert more and more people into home cinema owners, but I think/hope people will be voting with their wallets on this one.
You are talking about this BluRay level 1 and level 2 stuff. I know it's a popular pasttime to bash Sony and BluRay, but the newer BluRay discs will play fine in any and all players. Level 2 is backwards compatible to level 1, the only difference with a level2 player is that it can use the newer features (mostly Java), which the level1 players won't. The movies themselves will play fine in any movie however.
Point is that FOSS is not necessarily of lower quality.
Interaction between large groups of humans (and fileformats) == Bureaucracy There is _no_ way around this, unless you make it less democratic ofcourse. It's not a coincidence that the most succesfull governments (in achieving their goals) are not very democratic and the reverse (UN anyone ?). Large groups means that things have to be formalized and to make sure the end result is satisfactory to most if not all affected. Formalizing is bureaucracy. The reason I make this point is that bureaucracy generally gets a lot of flak while I think that, in it's function as a mediator, it's serves a very important purpose: it makes sure we're all be happy in the end, without useless fights of wars (on level of states: pick a choice, level of industry: BluRay vs. HDDVD). Things like standardisation organistion on the level of industry and the UN/NATO in the level of state, can prevent these and compromize around the table and as such is preferable over option 1. So even on the topic of document formats, it's not necessarily bad. Sure, the process itself isnt a great innovating contributor (that'll always be the genuises with the great ideas), but in making sure we get something we all want: interoperability, it serves it's purpose in the best I know. Perhaps in this case (most certainly even) it would be better to compare the obvious competitors directly, ooxml and opendoc, but that's for another day.
Damn, does the FUD never end? A small search on Google demonstrates that the EU fines domesitc industries at least as much as foreign ones (I read the official numbers ones, can't find the source now, but most 'income' was from domestic corporations). Just because Spanish Telecom, Fujifilm and Siemens don't reach the/your news, doesn't mean they're fined hundreds of millions of euros.
It just isn't the same ... rolleyes.
My dad is an excellent example of the problem posed in the article: he's more than willing to sink huge amounts of money in software (he's bought photoshop CS and then CS3 when it came out, dozens of raw converters and plugins, more than a thousand euro altogether). He just does not 'buy' it, when I tell him there's pieces of software that are free can be as good. He's never even tried the GIMP or Rawtherapee, and forget about Ubuntu, but you'd think that investing some time in these applications would save money. Not enough. When people /buy/ software, I think they assume it comes with some magic factor X that makes it better than anything free, because it cannot have factor X, because it's free. And you gotta have that factor X, because, well, you just gotta...
I had to camouflage Firefox as IE to get him to use that, because I was sick of all these spyware that came streaming in.
Also, the 'IT department' on my mothers school (she's a teacher) is another example. They're a poor school that couldn't even afford to repair a leaking roof for over a year (the water came an inch high once in the classroom), yet they made money available for a fat win2003 server and xp-systems everywhere, with remote desktop. This is kindergarten ffs, but the 'IT-people' havn't got a clue, being trained MS-monkeys.
People are undescribibly lazy and stupid when it comes to technical stuff. They don't care to spend dollars/euros, they want to be done with, _zero_ _effort_ must be involved.
So... your setup is essentially a violin that you play yourself and take to the other room?
You can pick up Simcity4 for like 5 euro, and (especially with Rush Hour) is a _much_ better game and you don't need supermodern hardware to play it.
So that cheaper African food can enter the market? Yes, let it happen!
It's the same 'grip' TV's have on the movie-industry, there's simply no other way to view them than through /some/ tube from /some/ data carrier. The fact that it's BluRay is technically hardly different from any other format, so no reason to get paranoid.
Movies will still be ripped and unprotected Blu-Ray movies are still perfectly possible. Also hard drive space is so cheap nowadays that bypassing discs altogether is a piece of cake. The music industry is slowly seeing the light of unprotected mp3's, and I'm convinced these ridiculous protection scemes on BR will go largely unused or will become easiliy bypassed (actuallu, it pretty much already is), just like happened with DVD, just like what happened to each and every other protection sceme.
No need to lose sleep over this. If anything, you should be happy that this crazy capital distructing format war is coming to an end. Let the industry go forward and do usefull things.
Ahhhhh, the nineties. 'Extreme Value 98' or 'Super Subscription 2000'. Wait, wait wait! 'Extreme Super Value Subscription 2000'! Then again, Microsoft is still very much a nineties software company. "Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition". Note how many words in there are everyday words by the way, only marketing departments can come up AND SELL such crap...
Searching around that basement for intelligent life does not count.
You seem to be forgetting, that, even before PS3, BluRay was winning in Europe and Japan, if any format was winning. I (as a European) rarely see HD-DVD discs in the shops and have never seen a HD-DVD player advertisedor in shops, while BluRay is creeping up everywhere. DVD still dwarfs all other of course, but HD-DVD was never going to be it for the rest of the world.
While I agree that MS probably didn't want to risk supporting a dead format, I've read more than once about complaint from gamedevelopers that the 360 only supporting DVD places too much constraint on supplying the content they'd like. Games of more than 9GB are not rare these days and the PS3 has an advantage there.
I think we need to forgive MisterLawyer. He is after all not trained to think, but to see possible opening for a liability case.