And also to recognize that no system is perfect--there will always be the cantankerous guy who is inexplicably "invaluable" to the company who thinks that "fereng1" is an uncrackable password, for instance--and to take steps more along the lines of risk mitigation than risk removal.
I wouldn't say they got their revenge for Betamax. More like they've learned a little bit, at least with the main video standards. The lesson learned is that PSP wins the format war. That is, Philips, Sony, Panasonic. Actually, IIRC, Matsushita (Panasonic) actually owns more patents regarding Blu-ray than Sony does (Samsung might actually own more than Sony, too). No idea how that translates into royalties, though.
The funny thing is...Toshiba was one of the companies that made Betamax VCRs...I guess they didn't learn the same lesson.
The PS2 is a poor DVD player. You may not have DVDs that show this off to great effect, but its deinterlacing is poor and playback quality isn't very good. It really is a poor player; I had to limp along using it when my main DVD player decided it didn't like reading DVDs anymore (a Panasonic CP-72; eventually replaced it with a Oppo DV-971H).
The PS3, on the other hand, is actually a very good Blu-ray player and a very good DVD player. So the parent's guess on it being a bad Blu-ray player is a bad guess, as it actually rates very well as a Blu-ray and DVD player.
I'd buy the downloads only if they're DRM free, and lossless
Honestly, I'd buy them if they are lossless and I can burn at least one audio CD. Because it's lossless, converting it to a CD and re-ripping it back as a DRM-less lossless audio file will not result in any artifacts. It works for me.
even Dennis Miller was far more entertaining than Madden ever could be.
Oh hell no. Dennis Miller could almost make me hate football. You can pretty much ignore Madden.
Shoot, Fouts was funnier and more entertaining than Miller, by far. They should have just dumped Miller and kept Fouts and not had Madden. That would have been better.
I will say that Miller is much better than Kornheiser. Miller just makes me almost hate football. Kornheiser makes me want to hate life.
Well yeah, I understand that the content of the dvd is scrambled. But if you do a bit to bit copy, like most burner apps let you do, you don't care if you can't make sense of those bit. You just copy them to the DVD+/-R, in their scrambled state. The result is a disc that is identical to the original, so it will play just fine in a normal DVD player. I'm pretty sure that I'm still missing something though...
What're your missing is that you can't copy the CSS keys to a DVD+R/-R, since those parts of the disc aren't writable. Without the keys, all you have is the encoded bits; you can't decode them with a normal DVD player.
It's not like they've added this in today. The account information has always been there; it's been in the tags since the store started. IIRC, one of the first DRM strippers left this account info in (on purpose).
Anyways, there was a perfectly good reason for the info being there (with the DRM); you can authorize your computer for more than one account. Handy to know what account the song was bought under (if there were any authorization issues).
I chalk this up to people not realizing that the info was already there and Apple not changing the fact that the account info was in the metadata.
So, Apple moves away from PPC and to x86/Intel in part because they don't want to have to be on the hook for development costs of a processor; a big risk (something they were going to have to do, if they didn't switch and wanted to continue making computers). So the next logical move is to go into the processor making business and really be on the hook for it? Something doesn't add up.
Music CD's already include error correction bytes embedded in each frame of data, so I assume this technology does the same sort of thing for data CD's/DVD's/bluray's/etc..
On music CD's, there's one error correction byte for every three bytes of data. That's a lot more space-efficient than just burning your data twice.....
Music CD's have piss poor error correction, by data standards. CD-ROM and DVD-ROM (which includes the video variant, since it's an application of DVD-ROM) have much more robust error correction. There is more error detection (and correction) per block on a CD-ROM (consequently, less for data) than on a music CD. Music CDs have the additional advantage of not needing to be precise; it can try to guess (interpolate) the missing data it runs into, or, at worse, skip (which may or may not be noticable). Can't do that with a spreadsheet.
Burning your data twice also has the advantage of being able to separate the copies (to different physical locations). Error correction technologies aren't going to help if you CDs and DVDs are roasted in a fire; the extra copy you made and put into storage elsewhere will still be safe.
Huh? That's some pretty crappy forcasting if you can't even predict shipping prices. And advertising? Seriously, that's a new one. Generally speaking, advertising dollars are budgeted, aren't they? When the advertising dollars run out, the ads go away.
Please read the whole paragraph. The answers to your question are in the next sentence.
Startup expenses such as advertising and shipping were higher than the company had anticipated. Production delays forced Sony to ship machines by air rather than ships to meet launch targets in the United States.
Shipping by air, instead of boat will drastically drive up the cost of shipping.
Actually, it's more like Cingular bought AT&T. Cingular bought AT&T Wireless in 2004, which had been spun off as a separate company from AT&T. Later in a separate move, SBC (Cingular's parent) bought AT&T, taking the name for themselves.
Well, mostly. There's more incest to the story. SBC wasn't Cingular's only parent. It was a joint venture between SBC and BellSouth. Bellsouth, which is now part of SBC (using the AT&T name). Thus making Cingular wholly owned by SBC now (using the AT&T name).
So is the TV not up to spec or is the spec not well enough defined? I'm assuming the PS3 is not the culprit since Westinghouse is the one talking firmware upgrades. I'm just curious if this is a real HDCP issue or just a cheap TV maker not following specs (which wouldn't be the first time a 2nd or 3rd tier manufacturer has ignored specs).
Well, I've had the same thing happen with my Sony TV (HDCP compliant DVI plug) and my cable box. It happens very rarely (blue moons happen more often), but it does happen (solution I use is to turn the cable box off; the TV's connected to it, too, so in effect, I'm rebooting my TV and cable box).
For it to happen so frequently (w/ the PS3 and the Westinghouse) tells me one of two things, or both. One is that the standard isn't defined well enough or people (the TV, Sony and the cable box makers) are cutting corners. I wouldn't be surprised if it's both.
And Apple has a choice in that...how? If they want to run a music store, they HAVE to have DRM to get the big labels and movie studios. There's no way around it. Why are people blaming Apple when it rests squarely on the shoulders of the RIAA and MPAA?
Yes and I recall an interview with Steve Jobs a long time ago, where he recalls conversations with the RIAA companies and how DRM wasn't going to work (i.e. there would always be people figuring out how to work around it, regardless of what you do), but they insisted on it. Funny how that insistance has now given Apple some leverage (since they have the iPod) over the RIAA companies. Actually, their only way out of that at this point is unencumbered music...which I hope happens.
As for the article, it's obvious that the author either doesn't understand the situation or is deliberately trolling. The iPod is the tool that Apple is bludgeoning the record companies with and the record companies are the ones that helped by locking the door by insisting on DRM. If the music companies suddenly decide to start selling unencumbered music, the iPod will still sell like gangbusters.
Then again, the record companies are still making $$$ without extra marketing costs and without having distribution costs. Of course, for those companies, that's a signal to try to jam the artists more (by trying to reduce the cuts from digital distribution, insisting on fees that don't even make sense any more, especially with downloadable music) and to complain.
That's blatently untrue in WMP 10, and I don't think it was true in 9 either.
I haven't seen it in WMP 10, but I do know for a fact that, for whatever reason, some systems had it on by default under WMP 9. Not all...maybe (probably) not even a majority of them, but there were enough systems out there with it turned on by default to make my life miserable (explaining to people that they need to re-rip their whole collection again, with the setting off and them getting mad at you).
I'm not going to miss any action in a football game on a regular cable broadcast
Ah, but you do miss the action in a football game on the regular cable/local broadcasts a lot of times. The SD feed is a 4:3 picture, where the HD feed is 16:9; you see much more of the field. If we're talking NFL, you can see how the safeties are lined up lot of the time. If we're talking basketball, you can see pretty much the whole half court, without having the camera pan that much (you can watch the players away from the ball, especially if it goes into the post). The extra resolution is nice, but the wider picture is a bigger benefit (though it does pain me to watch the SD broadcast for detail reasons as well...things just look fuzzy, since you're not zoomed on to a person for the most part in sports; obviously going to be different for pr0n).
(now, that obviously isn't an advantage with DVDs, since there are provisions for widescreen display).
Cook noodles but don't add the flavor. Drain and warm noodles with canned chili (Hormel). Mmmm..Mmmm..Mmmm
Ah, I figured I wasn't the only one to do this. You can use other canned foods as well; chicken soup is (not surprisingly) a good choice as well. Good change of taste/pace.
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And also to recognize that no system is perfect--there will always be the cantankerous guy who is inexplicably "invaluable" to the company who thinks that "fereng1" is an uncrackable password, for instance--and to take steps more along the lines of risk mitigation than risk removal.
Crap. I'd better go and change my password.
I wouldn't say they got their revenge for Betamax. More like they've learned a little bit, at least with the main video standards. The lesson learned is that PSP wins the format war. That is, Philips, Sony, Panasonic. Actually, IIRC, Matsushita (Panasonic) actually owns more patents regarding Blu-ray than Sony does (Samsung might actually own more than Sony, too). No idea how that translates into royalties, though.
The funny thing is...Toshiba was one of the companies that made Betamax VCRs...I guess they didn't learn the same lesson.
The PS2 is a poor DVD player. You may not have DVDs that show this off to great effect, but its deinterlacing is poor and playback quality isn't very good. It really is a poor player; I had to limp along using it when my main DVD player decided it didn't like reading DVDs anymore (a Panasonic CP-72; eventually replaced it with a Oppo DV-971H).
The PS3, on the other hand, is actually a very good Blu-ray player and a very good DVD player. So the parent's guess on it being a bad Blu-ray player is a bad guess, as it actually rates very well as a Blu-ray and DVD player.
I'd buy the downloads only if they're DRM free, and lossless
Honestly, I'd buy them if they are lossless and I can burn at least one audio CD. Because it's lossless, converting it to a CD and re-ripping it back as a DRM-less lossless audio file will not result in any artifacts. It works for me.
Baseball (like American football) is a placeholder between commercials.
Congratulations. You've just described TV. ^_^
Shoot, you've described radio, too.
even Dennis Miller was far more entertaining than Madden ever could be.
Oh hell no. Dennis Miller could almost make me hate football. You can pretty much ignore Madden.
Shoot, Fouts was funnier and more entertaining than Miller, by far. They should have just dumped Miller and kept Fouts and not had Madden. That would have been better.
I will say that Miller is much better than Kornheiser. Miller just makes me almost hate football. Kornheiser makes me want to hate life.
(Actually, I'm not sure if it's that the blanks don't let you write there, or if the consumer writers aren't capable of writing there, or both.)
The former; that area is pre-recorded over, so it's not available for recording.
Well yeah, I understand that the content of the dvd is scrambled. But if you do a bit to bit copy, like most burner apps let you do, you don't care if you can't make sense of those bit. You just copy them to the DVD+/-R, in their scrambled state. The result is a disc that is identical to the original, so it will play just fine in a normal DVD player. I'm pretty sure that I'm still missing something though...
What're your missing is that you can't copy the CSS keys to a DVD+R/-R, since those parts of the disc aren't writable. Without the keys, all you have is the encoded bits; you can't decode them with a normal DVD player.
It's not like they've added this in today. The account information has always been there; it's been in the tags since the store started. IIRC, one of the first DRM strippers left this account info in (on purpose).
Anyways, there was a perfectly good reason for the info being there (with the DRM); you can authorize your computer for more than one account. Handy to know what account the song was bought under (if there were any authorization issues).
I chalk this up to people not realizing that the info was already there and Apple not changing the fact that the account info was in the metadata.
Is that .07 dollars or .07 cents?
Verizon: Yes.
So, Apple moves away from PPC and to x86/Intel in part because they don't want to have to be on the hook for development costs of a processor; a big risk (something they were going to have to do, if they didn't switch and wanted to continue making computers). So the next logical move is to go into the processor making business and really be on the hook for it? Something doesn't add up.
You may want to stop the catbox, while you're at it. ^_^
(It's Video Killed the Radio Star , by the Buggles)
Music CD's already include error correction bytes embedded in each frame of data, so I assume this technology does the same sort of thing for data CD's/DVD's/bluray's/etc..
On music CD's, there's one error correction byte for every three bytes of data. That's a lot more space-efficient than just burning your data twice.....
Music CD's have piss poor error correction, by data standards. CD-ROM and DVD-ROM (which includes the video variant, since it's an application of DVD-ROM) have much more robust error correction. There is more error detection (and correction) per block on a CD-ROM (consequently, less for data) than on a music CD. Music CDs have the additional advantage of not needing to be precise; it can try to guess (interpolate) the missing data it runs into, or, at worse, skip (which may or may not be noticable). Can't do that with a spreadsheet.
Burning your data twice also has the advantage of being able to separate the copies (to different physical locations). Error correction technologies aren't going to help if you CDs and DVDs are roasted in a fire; the extra copy you made and put into storage elsewhere will still be safe.
Please read the whole paragraph. The answers to your question are in the next sentence. Shipping by air, instead of boat will drastically drive up the cost of shipping.
People tease me because I still call them "bell bottoms".
We tell those people to stay the hell off our lawns. Damn kids these days...
Hardly the case for my wife's Verizon service... which was so poor we switched her to Verizon.
Yeah, that'll teach her!
Actually, it's more like Cingular bought AT&T. Cingular bought AT&T Wireless in 2004, which had been spun off as a separate company from AT&T. Later in a separate move, SBC (Cingular's parent) bought AT&T, taking the name for themselves.
Well, mostly. There's more incest to the story. SBC wasn't Cingular's only parent. It was a joint venture between SBC and BellSouth. Bellsouth, which is now part of SBC (using the AT&T name). Thus making Cingular wholly owned by SBC now (using the AT&T name).
So is the TV not up to spec or is the spec not well enough defined? I'm assuming the PS3 is not the culprit since Westinghouse is the one talking firmware upgrades. I'm just curious if this is a real HDCP issue or just a cheap TV maker not following specs (which wouldn't be the first time a 2nd or 3rd tier manufacturer has ignored specs).
Well, I've had the same thing happen with my Sony TV (HDCP compliant DVI plug) and my cable box. It happens very rarely (blue moons happen more often), but it does happen (solution I use is to turn the cable box off; the TV's connected to it, too, so in effect, I'm rebooting my TV and cable box).
For it to happen so frequently (w/ the PS3 and the Westinghouse) tells me one of two things, or both. One is that the standard isn't defined well enough or people (the TV, Sony and the cable box makers) are cutting corners. I wouldn't be surprised if it's both.
And Apple has a choice in that...how? If they want to run a music store, they HAVE to have DRM to get the big labels and movie studios. There's no way around it. Why are people blaming Apple when it rests squarely on the shoulders of the RIAA and MPAA?
Yes and I recall an interview with Steve Jobs a long time ago, where he recalls conversations with the RIAA companies and how DRM wasn't going to work (i.e. there would always be people figuring out how to work around it, regardless of what you do), but they insisted on it. Funny how that insistance has now given Apple some leverage (since they have the iPod) over the RIAA companies. Actually, their only way out of that at this point is unencumbered music...which I hope happens.
As for the article, it's obvious that the author either doesn't understand the situation or is deliberately trolling. The iPod is the tool that Apple is bludgeoning the record companies with and the record companies are the ones that helped by locking the door by insisting on DRM. If the music companies suddenly decide to start selling unencumbered music, the iPod will still sell like gangbusters.
Then again, the record companies are still making $$$ without extra marketing costs and without having distribution costs. Of course, for those companies, that's a signal to try to jam the artists more (by trying to reduce the cuts from digital distribution, insisting on fees that don't even make sense any more, especially with downloadable music) and to complain.
That's blatently untrue in WMP 10, and I don't think it was true in 9 either.
I haven't seen it in WMP 10, but I do know for a fact that, for whatever reason, some systems had it on by default under WMP 9. Not all...maybe (probably) not even a majority of them, but there were enough systems out there with it turned on by default to make my life miserable (explaining to people that they need to re-rip their whole collection again, with the setting off and them getting mad at you).
I'm not going to miss any action in a football game on a regular cable broadcast
Ah, but you do miss the action in a football game on the regular cable/local broadcasts a lot of times. The SD feed is a 4:3 picture, where the HD feed is 16:9; you see much more of the field. If we're talking NFL, you can see how the safeties are lined up lot of the time. If we're talking basketball, you can see pretty much the whole half court, without having the camera pan that much (you can watch the players away from the ball, especially if it goes into the post). The extra resolution is nice, but the wider picture is a bigger benefit (though it does pain me to watch the SD broadcast for detail reasons as well...things just look fuzzy, since you're not zoomed on to a person for the most part in sports; obviously going to be different for pr0n).
(now, that obviously isn't an advantage with DVDs, since there are provisions for widescreen display).
Cook noodles but don't add the flavor. Drain and warm noodles with canned chili (Hormel). Mmmm..Mmmm..Mmmm
Ah, I figured I wasn't the only one to do this. You can use other canned foods as well; chicken soup is (not surprisingly) a good choice as well. Good change of taste/pace.
Green grass in Arizona? That *is* news.
Nah, they have a few nice golf courses over there.
It doesn't compare to i.Link, though. I hear that beats both of those.
LOL
I believe I'm supposed to say "Welcome to Slashdot". I guess we're a case study. Or maybe they really just studied