The point is that all of this squabbling is making the torrent the easiest, quickest, most convenient, and most reliable way to obtain the product. (Not to mention the torrent file will not be crippled with DRM.)
If the legitimate vendors hope to compete with torrents, they have to beat torrents at everything. On top of that, the price has to be something that seems "reasonable" to the purchaser. Failure to achieve this makes torrents more attractive to more people.
To begin: I would like to hear Santorum's definition of "science". How would he describe science, its methods, and its purpose? That should be good for a few yuks.
His opinion might fit perfectly with his understanding of science.
I have been using SageTV and their Media Extenders for a couple of years now, and I am very happy with it.
The basics:
1) You set up a "server" PC loaded with hard drives and tuner/capture cards, running the SageTV software.
2) At the TV, you connect a small, low-power Media Extender, which presents an identical user interface to the SageTV software.
I am using this to record broadcast TV from an antenna, watch DVD and Blu-ray rips, and (with the addition of PlayOn) watch Hulu and Comedy Central streaming.
I used to use MythTV, and I find that SageTV has pretty much identical functionality, but I could remove a computer from the living room and use the small extender device instead.
God went to a lot of effort to manufacture the false DNA trail for us to discover. He did it all merely "to test our faith".
OMG, that God fella sure worked hard! How come he has become so complacent since then. I mean, what universes, creatures, or false evidence has he made lately. It's not like God is spending all of his time raising the kid - he's dead, for Christ's sake!
The guy could make a lot of money harvesting the email addresses, and then selling lists to spammers.
Anyone dumb enough to reply to "donotreply" is likely to buy products from spam emails!
He could probably filter into lists based on the mail initiator, and the contents of the original email (quoted in the reply). Plus, the harvested emails are from currently active, valid accounts. These targeted lists of high-quality chumps would be worth paying extra for.
It goes all the way back to Shakespeare: In King Lear, the Fool is the one who can tell Lear the painful truth - the truth that Lear does not want to hear, and everyone else is afraid to say.
I can get a player that will play all formats: BD, HD-DVD, DVD-movie, VCD, Audio CD, Divx on ISO/UDF, MPEG-TS on ISO/UDF, and the new Chinese format (EVD).
The DRM scheme has been cracked, so I don't have to worry about getting locked out from media I have purchased.
There is a decent selection of movies, especially foreign/indie/arthouse titles.
Most of the big vendors (HP, Dell) offer system "bundles" that offer similar specs for $100-200 cheaper.
I recently purchased an HP CTO bundle through CompUSA. After rebates (yeah, I know, rebates suck) it was $300 + $89 (shipping/handling) + tax. The specs are very close to the Ars system (faster CPU, no DVD burner, 40G drive). It would have cost an extra $30-40 to upgrade the optical drive and hard drive, but the ones I got are all I needed for the "appliance" tasks I an using the machine for.
Plus, I didn't have assemble anything (not like that's difficult, though).
You can save a lot of money by downgrading from the specs in the article.
Any equivalent of a 3GHz P4 single-core is plenty of CPU for HDTV. A nvidia fx5200 is enough graphics card. For sound, you just need an spdif port if you already have a receiver.
And, of course, Linux and MythTV are free, and superior to MCE.
Given the networks of tens or hundreds of thousands of zombie Windows computers, it is clear that the Total Cost to 0wn (TC0) some AOL user's Windows PC is very, very low.
One question this cases raises: Does Google want any of Microsoft's trade secrets?
Microsoft is playing catch-up to Google in the search arena, and they are far behind. It is doubtful that Google has hired Lee to "steal" Microsoft's trade secrets. The more likely scenario is that Lee is a double-agent (and Microsoft has to raise a stink so that Google doesn't see that they got the double-agent "too easily" and get suspicious).
A lot of effects houses built their pipelines on SGI machines running IRIX, back in the days when SGI was the only credible platform for doing the work. (Sony Imageworks, ILM, Cinesite, CFX, Rhythm and Hues.)
Eventually, SGI was not offering a decent price/performance ratio compared to commodity PC hardware and video cards from NVidia or ATi. The writing was on the wall: SGI is going to die, and it is time to figure out what platform to move to.
If you've got a production pipeline on IRIX, it is much easier to move it onto another Unix-like platform than to Windows. This involves porting some large in-house applications and thousands of scripts. A lot of the code assumes Unix-style filesystems and utilities.
During the main transition time (2001-2003), OS X was really new, and the machines were expensive compared to Intel commodity machines. BSD wasn't very attractive for the desktop. Linux was the strongest candidate.
In the end, Linux was chosen primarily for "legacy" reasons. It was cheaper to port the tools and pipelines to Linux than to any other alternative.
When you are writing code, the compiler is unsympathetic to your syntactic mistakes. It gives you a clear "Error on line X", and rejects the code. You are forced to fix it.
English, on the other hand, allows for a lot of "slack", in terms of syntax. It would be hard to write an automatic English parser that, for instance, would reject your Slashdot posting after you hit the "Submit" button, until you get it right.
Plenty of people use spellcheckers, but those will still pass "should of".
The Slashdot "language Nazis" are the closest you will get to an "English compiler". However, while you can't tell your C compiler, "Fuck off! I'm not going to fix my syntax error," you can ignore the language Nazis.
Slashdot Mirror
The point is that all of this squabbling is making the torrent the easiest, quickest, most convenient, and most reliable way to obtain the product. (Not to mention the torrent file will not be crippled with DRM.)
If the legitimate vendors hope to compete with torrents, they have to beat torrents at everything. On top of that, the price has to be something that seems "reasonable" to the purchaser. Failure to achieve this makes torrents more attractive to more people.
Fortunately, torrents are not subject to contract disputes.
Amazon, Warner, Hachette and others seem determined to drive everyone to torrents.
To begin: I would like to hear Santorum's definition of "science". How would he describe science, its methods, and its purpose? That should be good for a few yuks.
His opinion might fit perfectly with his understanding of science.
I have been using SageTV and their Media Extenders for a couple of years now, and I am very happy with it.
The basics:
1) You set up a "server" PC loaded with hard drives and tuner/capture cards, running the SageTV software.
2) At the TV, you connect a small, low-power Media Extender, which presents an identical user interface to the SageTV software.
I am using this to record broadcast TV from an antenna, watch DVD and Blu-ray rips, and (with the addition of PlayOn) watch Hulu and Comedy Central streaming.
Their website: http://sagetv.com/
I used to use MythTV, and I find that SageTV has pretty much identical functionality, but I could remove a computer from the living room and use the small extender device instead.
So, when Flexplay fails, will we get a FleXPlaY codec to memorialize it?
Or the other explanation:
God went to a lot of effort to manufacture the false DNA trail for us to discover. He did it all merely "to test our faith".
OMG, that God fella sure worked hard! How come he has become so complacent since then. I mean, what universes, creatures, or false evidence has he made lately. It's not like God is spending all of his time raising the kid - he's dead, for Christ's sake!
The guy could make a lot of money harvesting the email addresses, and then selling lists to spammers.
Anyone dumb enough to reply to "donotreply" is likely to buy products from spam emails!
He could probably filter into lists based on the mail initiator, and the contents of the original email (quoted in the reply). Plus, the harvested emails are from currently active, valid accounts. These targeted lists of high-quality chumps would be worth paying extra for.
I would be happier to see the headline:
"Microsoft envisions patent-free computing"
Colbert and Jon Stewart play the same role.
Who is shipping a BD or HD-DVD drive? One that is actually in retail channels? And is the drive affordable?
You need the device before the "software/drivers" will be of any use.
And, until the AACS is cracked, your software/drivers will not let you watch a movie. And, there aren't any movies available yet, anyway.
And which "computer with TV out" supports BD, HD-DVD, and EVD right now?
Yes.
HP 15" 1024x768 LCD monitor. A pretty crappy one: no DVI input; just a single VGA.
Most of the big vendors (HP, Dell) offer system "bundles" that offer similar specs for $100-200 cheaper.
I recently purchased an HP CTO bundle through CompUSA. After rebates (yeah, I know, rebates suck) it was $300 + $89 (shipping/handling) + tax. The specs are very close to the Ars system (faster CPU, no DVD burner, 40G drive). It would have cost an extra $30-40 to upgrade the optical drive and hard drive, but the ones I got are all I needed for the "appliance" tasks I an using the machine for.
Plus, I didn't have assemble anything (not like that's difficult, though).
You can save a lot of money by downgrading from the specs in the article.
Any equivalent of a 3GHz P4 single-core is plenty of CPU for HDTV. A nvidia fx5200 is enough graphics card. For sound, you just need an spdif port if you already have a receiver.
And, of course, Linux and MythTV are free, and superior to MCE.
Cheap bastards will save a few bucks by not buying an iPod. The same cheap bastards will save money by downloading songs illegally for free.
Patient: "Why to I have cancer?"
Intelligent Design Doctor: "You are designed to have cancer."
Patient: "Okay. Thank you. I will go away and die, now."
ID promotes fatalism. Not only is not science, it is anti-scientific.
Real science provides real value.
I have one. It works.
Given the networks of tens or hundreds of thousands of zombie Windows computers, it is clear that the Total Cost to 0wn (TC0) some AOL user's Windows PC is very, very low.
I doubt you can 0wn a Linux box as cheaply.
[...] or we are all doomed.
Get some perspective: It's just frickin' games!
It just isn't that important.
One question this cases raises: Does Google want any of Microsoft's trade secrets?
Microsoft is playing catch-up to Google in the search arena, and they are far behind. It is doubtful that Google has hired Lee to "steal" Microsoft's trade secrets. The more likely scenario is that Lee is a double-agent (and Microsoft has to raise a stink so that Google doesn't see that they got the double-agent "too easily" and get suspicious).
A lot of effects houses built their pipelines on SGI machines running IRIX, back in the days when SGI was the only credible platform for doing the work. (Sony Imageworks, ILM, Cinesite, CFX, Rhythm and Hues.)
Eventually, SGI was not offering a decent price/performance ratio compared to commodity PC hardware and video cards from NVidia or ATi. The writing was on the wall: SGI is going to die, and it is time to figure out what platform to move to.
If you've got a production pipeline on IRIX, it is much easier to move it onto another Unix-like platform than to Windows. This involves porting some large in-house applications and thousands of scripts. A lot of the code assumes Unix-style filesystems and utilities.
During the main transition time (2001-2003), OS X was really new, and the machines were expensive compared to Intel commodity machines. BSD wasn't very attractive for the desktop. Linux was the strongest candidate.
In the end, Linux was chosen primarily for "legacy" reasons. It was cheaper to port the tools and pipelines to Linux than to any other alternative.
When you are writing code, the compiler is unsympathetic to your syntactic mistakes. It gives you a clear "Error on line X", and rejects the code. You are forced to fix it.
English, on the other hand, allows for a lot of "slack", in terms of syntax. It would be hard to write an automatic English parser that, for instance, would reject your Slashdot posting after you hit the "Submit" button, until you get it right.
Plenty of people use spellcheckers, but those will still pass "should of".
The Slashdot "language Nazis" are the closest you will get to an "English compiler". However, while you can't tell your C compiler, "Fuck off! I'm not going to fix my syntax error," you can ignore the language Nazis.
Check with snopes.com for more info.