Don't think like an audiophile, think like the average person.;) Seriously, how often do most people listen to albums they bought as little as 5 years ago? Most music is bought by young people and it's flavor of the month. How many people who bought "Baby One More Time" still listen to it?
Then the question becomes, why not just listen to it on the radio? People want to "own" the music to make a statement about their tastes. To identify themselves with the product.
And furthermore, if people don't listen to their old music, what's the point in making it expire?
Unlike music, which is primarily a personal experience (is packaged and sold to be experienced by a single or small group of people), films are still largely a social experience.
Err, concerts? Clubs? Bars? Parties?
I don't see this at all.
Even now where we have home theatre setups which can rival movie theatres in sound and picture quality . .. . . . true genius of his work can never be appreciated on anything other then the giant screens of the theatre.
Maybe it's just too late, but isn't this a contradiction? I mean, clearly this is insightful but I can't figure out what the hell it means.
You CAN store more than 2 hours of video on a DVD, just create the videos in VCD format (MPEG-1 video), and store them on a DVD disk. This will give you around 7 and a half hours of video per DVD.
There's no reason to constrain the encoder to MPEG-1. Reducing the resolution is a good idea, though.
MPEG-1 video is compliant MPEG-2 video, but without the extra features that can improve your compression ratio. If your sources are home videos, there's probably an advantage to staying with field pictures, for instance.
Actually, it does. The GPL isn't a Copyright type, it's an End User License Agreement. It's contract made between the End User, and the Copyright owner.
What makes you say it's a EULA? The text of the gpl indicates otherwise to me:
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program).
C-3PO was actually made by Anakin and just happened to be on the ship that was attacked near Tatooine and end up on Luke's farm? Now Chewbacca is going to show up, as a "coincidence?"
I think you have a very insightful point here. For me, the galaxy stopped feeling big after Empire. There are lots of examples: Why the hell was Lando suddenly a general? Didn't the rebels have a command structure.
But . . . I think the particular example of the droids showing up at Tatooine has an explanation. Leia is taking the plans to Obi-wan. Obi-wan intentionally lives near Luke.
The real head-scratcher is why would Luke be on Tatooine. Yeah, his uncle's there, but your step-father's house doesn't seem like the best place to hide someone, given the whole galaxy to choose from.
Somebody once suggested that Obi-wan and Vader are really in league (against the emperor and Yoda, the latter of which I think is a real stretch.)
But try this on for size:
Suppose Obiwan and Vader are really in league against the Emperor in episodes 4-6.
Consider this --
Sometime after episode 2, Obiwan "hides" Luke on Vader's *home planet*. At his step father's house.
Vader "intercepts" a rebel ship, and then his daughter and droids leave with the plans to the Death Star.
Vader and Obiwan's duel distracts the Storm Troopers, allowing the heroes to escape the Death Star on the Falcon.
All of Imperials on the Death Star die except for the super-human pilot Vader, who "crashes" into his wingman, freeing up the shot for his son.
In episode 5, Vader shows he's a heartless SOB . . . by choking to death a slew of Imperial officers and sending the Imperial fleet into an astroid field.
In episode 6, Vader consciously allows the rebels to land on the moon of Endor.
On the new Death Star, Vader says a bunch of things to Luke that don't support this hypothesis, so please ignore them.
Vader, in the Jedi tradition, throws the emperor down A Really Big Hole.
Okay. Let's say MPEG4 sucks at higher bitrates... Keep the bitrate for the 720x480 picture at about 1Mps, and instead, have 9x the resolution or so. 9 720x480 MPEG4 streams, each carrying 1/9th of the video, played back in an arrangement like a tic-tac-toe board, to make one full (*HUGE*) screen.
Sorry, I don't buy the "MPEG4 sucks at high bitrates" story.
That's a strawman. I didn't say anything of the sort. MPEG-4 is better at high bit rates, too, just not as dramtically so.
It's very surprising that the MPAA chose to come out with DVD using MPEG2 instead of MPEG4, since MPEG4 was already established.
Three points:
MPAA has a lot of influence, but the forum includes the consumer electronics companies as well.
There was cheap silicon to decode MPEG-2 in hardware. MPEG-4 in hardware is just now becoming a reality.
Where MPEG-4 really shines is lower bitrates. At the rates available on a DVD drive, MPEG-2 isn't that far behind.
In general, there could have been a better DVD standard had they waited another 4 years, but when is that not true? DVD is the union of existing technologies, tweaked a bit. That has a lot to do with its success.
I think that Gentoo is the ultimate distro for Newbies. . .. The difficult part is making sure that your kernel is configured just right, but a person with commodity hardware could install Gentoo on his/her system and be up and running within one day of compiling.
A day before getting a usable system? For a newbie? Are you serious?
You mean it was counter-intuitive to select the disk and go to the menu marked "File" and use the "Eject" item (key combo: apple-E)? You could also have used the "Put Away" (key combo: apple-Y) item in the "Special" menu . Later on when contextual menus were available you could control-click on the disk and hit the "Eject Disk" item.
Compared to pressing a button on the floppy drive? Yeah, that sucks. It's not like you don't have to reach down and take the damn thing out anyway. The CD drive is the same way now. The media is the thing I want to change, the first place to look is the area around the media, in my opinion.
Ok, so I understand the whole Microsoft Tax idea, but I think the same thing could be said for Apple. Why purchase a Mac just to wipe out the drive and install Linux? The higher cost associated with Macs is partly contributed to Mac OS X.
It's a little different in that there is no incremental cost for Apple. (There's no incremental cost to Microsoft either, but some incremental cost to the OEM.) Yes, it cost money to develop OX X. And yes, hypothetically, iBooks would cost less if they didn't have to bear that cost. But if Apple sold computers without an OS, their market would be much smaller.
On the one hand, the geeks benefit from the mass market for notebooks. On the other hand, the geeks have to go along with the mass market to reap the benefit.
As we go from a software buy to a software rental model, users are going to pay to continue accessing thier own data.
People can, and I suspect will, say no to this if it means they will pay more. Software rental might catch on in the business world for reasons of long term negotiations or accounting concerns. But I don't think there'll be much appeal in the home market.
I mean, Microsoft et al. have a lot of influence but the buyers' still have to sign the checks. I think this is a pretty likely scenario:
Big company: To use our software, you have to send us money every month. Buyer: No, go fish.
User (like yourself) will start sniffing around free or cheaper solutions.
Besides all that, the rental model doesn't parallel well the actual costs and thus will be problematic.
mmm, riiiight. The point was news articles quoted are all about the buyer paying the sales tax to the state he lives in. Michigan already has such a "use tax": you are supposed to pay a tax on the goods you use in that state, regardless of what state (or country, as Canada is mere minutes away from the South East corner) (Detroit! What?!?) you live in. New York will often has "tax inspector" coming New Jersey shopping malls looking for New York license plates on cars. Changes are, you owe your home state sales tax no matter where you buy your shit, this is just about collecting it.
There's a real question about the constitutionality of these "use taxes". (Indiana has one, too, by the way.) Since you don't pay tax to "use" the item in your own state, it's pretty clear to me that this a euphemism for a sales tax. Congress has exclusive authority to regulate interstate commerce. The point is to avoid tariffs between the various states, state-level protectionism, and whatnot.
I've heard of game obsessions, like those college kids in the seventies that murdered their whole family while playing a Dungeons and Dragons game, but I just thought that sort of obsession lies only in the minds of sociopaths or people with a lot bigger problems than playing a game.
I remember that. And afterwards, didn't they take out their kidneys and sell them?
Slashdot Mirror
An arch is also a way of keeping the ceiling from falling on your head.
Then the question becomes, why not just listen to it on the radio? People want to "own" the music to make a statement about their tastes. To identify themselves with the product.
And furthermore, if people don't listen to their old music, what's the point in making it expire?
Err, concerts? Clubs? Bars? Parties?
I don't see this at all.
Maybe it's just too late, but isn't this a contradiction? I mean, clearly this is insightful but I can't figure out what the hell it means.
Well, geez. What's not to like? Network transparency? Established standards? Everybody likes X. Except these guys.
In your PC's Laserdisk drive?
Wouldn't you have to re-encode it?
So, I agree and use the hard G now when pronouncing GIF.
Isn't the VCR part of the reason? Kids are quite happy to watch the same show many times. VHS and DVD make the network broadcast less valuable.
Suppose they actually put the ring into this story. Suppose a hero retrieves it. Suppose the game engine actually gives the character a huge boost.
Do you think there's any chance of the ring's destruction in Mount Doom?
There's no reason to constrain the encoder to MPEG-1. Reducing the resolution is a good idea, though.
MPEG-1 video is compliant MPEG-2 video, but without the extra features that can improve your compression ratio. If your sources are home videos, there's probably an advantage to staying with field pictures, for instance.
What makes you say it's a EULA? The text of the gpl indicates otherwise to me:
You can't get away with something like this on Slashdot. You have to expect some asshole like myself to bring up an irrelevent detail.
The function keys are labeled: F1 F3 F5 F7.
The even numbers are available with the SHIFT key.
Sorry I didn't provide the reference. I couldn't remember where I read this.
I'd appreciate it if someone with mod points could moderate the parent up.
I think you have a very insightful point here. For me, the galaxy stopped feeling big after Empire. There are lots of examples:
Why the hell was Lando suddenly a general? Didn't the rebels have a command structure.
But . . . I think the particular example of the droids showing up at Tatooine has an explanation. Leia is taking the plans to Obi-wan. Obi-wan intentionally lives near Luke.
The real head-scratcher is why would Luke be on Tatooine. Yeah, his uncle's there, but your step-father's house doesn't seem like the best place to hide someone, given the whole galaxy to choose from.
Somebody once suggested that Obi-wan and Vader are really in league (against the emperor and Yoda, the latter of which I think is a real stretch.)
But try this on for size:
Suppose Obiwan and Vader are really in league against the Emperor in episodes 4-6.
Consider this --
field.
That's a strawman. I didn't say anything of the sort. MPEG-4 is better at high bit rates, too, just not as dramtically so.
Three points:
MPAA has a lot of influence, but the forum includes the consumer electronics companies as well.
There was cheap silicon to decode MPEG-2 in hardware. MPEG-4 in hardware is just now becoming a reality.
Where MPEG-4 really shines is lower bitrates. At the rates available on a DVD drive, MPEG-2 isn't that far behind.
In general, there could have been a better DVD standard had they waited another 4 years, but when is that not true? DVD is the union of existing technologies, tweaked a bit. That has a lot to do with its success.
A day before getting a usable system? For a newbie? Are you serious?
Compared to pressing a button on the floppy drive? Yeah, that sucks. It's not like you don't have to reach down and take the damn thing out anyway.
The CD drive is the same way now. The media is the thing I want to change, the first place to look is the area around the media, in my opinion.
It's a little different in that there is no incremental cost for Apple. (There's no incremental cost to Microsoft either, but some incremental cost to the OEM.) Yes, it cost money to develop OX X. And yes, hypothetically, iBooks would cost less if they didn't have to bear that cost. But if Apple sold computers without an OS, their market would be much smaller.
On the one hand, the geeks benefit from the mass market for notebooks. On the other hand, the geeks have to go along with the mass market to reap the benefit.
People can, and I suspect will, say no to this if it means they will pay more. Software rental might catch on in the business world for reasons of long term negotiations or accounting concerns. But I don't think there'll be much appeal in the home market.
I mean, Microsoft et al. have a lot of influence but the buyers' still have to sign the checks. I think this is a pretty likely scenario:
Big company: To use our software, you have to send us money every month.
Buyer: No, go fish.
User (like yourself) will start sniffing around free or cheaper solutions.
Besides all that, the rental model doesn't parallel well the actual costs and thus will be problematic.
The codec in the article is related to the DVD format in name only. The codec guys chose the name as a bit of mockery.
There's a real question about the constitutionality of these "use taxes". (Indiana has one, too, by the way.) Since you don't pay tax to "use" the item in your own state, it's pretty clear to me that this a euphemism for a sales tax. Congress has exclusive authority to regulate interstate commerce. The point is to avoid tariffs between the various states, state-level protectionism, and whatnot.
5 dollars! I hope that was a fucking good burrito.
I accidentally modded this comment down instead of up. I'm posting to remove the moderation.
I remember that. And afterwards, didn't they take out their kidneys and sell them?