It depends on who is pushing the HD players, and how much control they can exert over the releases. Really - very few consumers can tell the difference between a 7GB feature and a 4.6GB feature when it has been reencoded by (say) DVD shrink. I can, and it still doesn't bother me on my 51" RP system unless I'm "evaluating" the disc instead of just watching the movie. With a studio-end encode it should be mostly trnasparent, especially to anyone watching on really good version, all you have to do is get an HD player, because you already own the superior version. Win-win, baby! (there should be an evil laugh in the background here) Of course, once market penetration of HD boxes are good enough, they'll drop the broken-DRM version in favor of their (they hope) unbroken-DRM format.
It really does depend on what you do with your PC. On the fun side, I dabble in graphics and video (just boring stuff, mostly - resizing and rotating digital photography, archiving shows off the TiVo, dice and splice videos of the family) - that alone is enough to want more power, even on a temporary basis. I also archive my music as FLAC and recode on the fly when I load my portable player. Just for grins I converted the whole collection to MP3 once, and it took 4 days. Copying the entire archive over my 1Gb network takes close to 1.5 hours, so it's not bandwidth limited. I've got a P4M-1.86 and 2 GB of memory on a "workstation" class laptop, and there are fairly few operations I do that don't involve getting up to watch TV between prompts.
For work, I run AutoCAD. Now, this may seem simple, but there is a "new" feature in Acad2006 which puts a semi-transparent version of the command line right next to the cursor. Sort of a heads-up display for CAD. With nothing but the basic "empty" autocad template loaded and all other programs at 0 cpu cycles, the heads-up command line slows the program down so much that it misses my normal click-speed operations. I've watched the CPU peg at 99% in the taskmanager just dragging the cursor around the screen. And that's with hardware acceleration on with an nVidia Quadra FX go1400 with memory that is 27x the size of the 32bpp frame buffer (256MB). It's either I slow down or the machine needs to get faster. I chose option 3: turn of the heads up display.
So, really, even on the desktop there are operations that really need more speed, and it will always be that way. I'm sure if I get a computer that's 4x as fast, I'll end up with a 28MP digital camera and I'll start shooting HD instead of DV video. And once again I'll be able to catch a segment of The Daily Show while the computer churns away at a large task.
Since the entire net community has proven that 4.7GB DVDs are perfectly acceptable, this paves the way for barebones movies at 4.7GB plus the HD version on dual layer. They'll be marketed as "future proof" and they'll charge you an extra $5-10 for the privledge. And you'll happily pay it becuase you know if you buy the DVD version you'll probably want the HD version eventually, and the initial cost - resale of the DVD will probably be in the $5-10 range.
Of course, if they really wanted HD-DVD to win, they'd _only_ produce the dual version. That way its a value added product, and you don't have to upgrade all the players in the house to get the most benefits. As you drop your DVD in favor of HD, your discs stay the same. Folks who are quality nuts will get an HD box pretty soon anyway, and the other 98% of the population will never know the difference of the lost 1-2GB of space.
It is seriously brilliant. Marketing can still fumble th ball on this, but properly played this could be the difference in who wins the format war.
Sorry, it's really a haves vs have-nots kind of hate. Instead of the company setting their intended price, and letting random chance settle in for those to try and get the "hot" holiday item, most of the supply will likely be intercepted via greased palmes and back room deals. Or people buying 10 or 20 of them for the sole purpose of scalping them on ebay.
PS3 doesn't affect me, 'cause I'm not a gamer, nor is anyone in my family. It's the lack of respect and consideration for your fellow man that drives me insane. I'm not religious, but I do believe that you should treat everyone fairly, as you would like to be treated. This practice strikes at the heart of what is utterly wrong with modern society - that the need for the quick buck will trump human decency in almost every case.
I believe that it is this type of market that causes an overall increase in the unhealty stress that pervades the population and leads to a general decline in attitude, interpersonal communication, and mental and physical health.
Now, that's a lot of shit to heap on Ebay, but it's not just ebay (though, in all honesty, they probably deserve it). The attitude pervades human society, and (as game theory will show) having this cancer - even in small quantities - will cause it to spread.
I swear, it's not hate. It's frustration. Maybe if I didn't have kids it would be different. If I wan't leaving someone behind it would be much easier to just let the whole world go to hell in a handbasket. Screw the global warming nuts. To hell with keeping corporations in check. Who really gives a fuck anyway? When I'm gone, eveyone elses useless, undisciplined, lazy, ungreatful spawn can fight it out after I'm dead. 'Cept now I've got a dog in that fight, and I'm much more inclined for it to not be a bar room brawl.
*shrug* It's not about ebay, it's about the culture. I think it's bad for society; you might think this is a positive. It's just my opinion.
Is this a (legal) end run? Download your music, burn it to taxed music CDs, and it's now legally yours to do with under otherwise fair-uses, such as format shifting and backups for personal use only (on non-taxed media). This is a pretty big loophole if it is true. (And I'm hoping you get your question answered)
This is a bit of a technicality, but any work you create of any type is owned by you (copyright) - be it a text or an image. This could be stretched as a copyright case, as he did not receive permission to reprint the "content." Furthermore, he was reasonably certain (by nature of the "prank") that those people would deny him permission if he had asked to reprint the responses and photos publicly. He also denied explicit requests from the copyright holders to remove the infringing material from the website, and he has documented both their request and his denial.
It may be debatable what the financial incentive is (though publicity in itself has financial ramifications), but ED does presumably receive ad revenue from their yahoo ads, which makes it relevent.
There's nothing like a tight supply to get the ebay vultures circling. I suspect the actual cost for the first few thousand units will be in the $1200-1500 range. Sadly, there are enough people out there who will feed the ebay scum.
Can you imagine what a Tickle Me Elmo would go for today (ex if it had happend in 2006 vs 1996), give then hype that surrounded it back then combined with the insane market that is ebay?
Why even talk about binary storage methods in bits? All of us endusers only know bytes, and it's a significant imposition to make us multiply or divide by eight to get anything useful. It's not like you're storing your information as individual bits of...oh...right.:rolleyes:
But there is a limit beyond which it is effectivly unlimited. How many write cycles do you get, and if you turn off your swapfile what kind of life could be expected? If it's greater than 5 years for 90+% capacity, the point may be moot. (yes, I've turned off my cache. If XP can't fit what I'm doing today in 2GB, I trying to do too much at once.)
Ditto. Oh, sure there were holes you could drive a truck thorough, but hell - it was only 2 hours; you have to take shortcuts sometimes. It was a fun movie to watch. I just wish they had released a better transfer on DVD - the current one is non-anamorphic and they seemed to spend very little effert cleaning it up for the home release.
I agree about the prison term. 1 year (heck, 4-6 months) for any first offender is probably enough. Prisons are bad places. Period.
I disagree about the lifetime income limitations. Hit white collar where it hurts - in the pocket. I don't think there should be a limitation on fines, I think fines should be exempt from bankruptcy in all cases, and I think fines should be as large as the crime, plus treble damages. I don't think you should take more than all of the individuals assets (but should include retirement account forfeiture) and, say, 75% of income or all but 2x minimum wage, whichever results in a larger burden.
I'd rather see them suffer for years and years in effective poverty as punishment for their crime, than pay for them to rot in jail, only to be absolved of the any remaining debt when their assets are liquidated at their death as a final payment.
He was once targeted for terrorist-like (or was it drug-lord like) movement of money. It seems that he pays for everything in cash "so that no one can track where my money goes" (the quote isn't exact, but that was the gist of his response). He regularly had a staffer pull several thousand dollars out of his account for walking-around money, and pays for everything with cash. It's the sheer volume of cash he mows through that got him snagged, though. Iirc, it was on the order of $5k-$10k every other week.
So, yes, you can still do it all with cash. Nonetheless, if you do you'll be targetted as a terrorist/bad guy for trying to hide your transactions. I'm still waiting for the bumper sticker that says "being anonymous isn't a crime...but it should be".
Actually, that's exactly how I "rent" movies. I buy them occasionally, sometimes in a bunch from CH if I haven't signed up in a while, and usually average less than $10/disc including shipping (much less with CH). They go in my jukebox, and I eventually watch them, though it may take up to 2 years for that to happen. If I like it, I keep it. If I don't, it gets resold on ebay or amazon mktplace, often for between $8-$10 net of fees. It's cheaper than netflix, I'm (almost) never without a new movie, and I get to keep a copy of everything I like.
I get to watch it on my monitor, which is fairly small. In my office, where there's room for one, maybe two people. On an uncomfortable chair instead of my couch. And I get to pay more than an excellent condition DVD off of ebay, often as much or more than the DVD from Amazon, and probably more than the WalMart B&M down the road.
In return I get to avoid waiting the 2 days for shipping (which I get "free" from Amazon Prime), or driving the 4 miles to a local store.
I'm sorry, was there something I was supposed to enjoy about this transaction?
BTW - you're the first/.er I've seen with a 7 digit UID.
Anyway, you're generally right. The right to do anything generally stops at the right of other people not to be injured in some way. Injury can simply be the loss of a service or time (=money) which is excessive or beyond what society deems as such. VA has drawn their line further than you feel is reasonable. I think it's a good like to draw, though I'd rather see larger monetary fines or internet access injunctions rather than long jail sentences (1-3 months is good enough for me - jail is a very depressing place).
That solves the problem on their end, but not on the consumer's end. You see, a single purchase of a $0.02 video will now cost $5. Of course, you get an extra $4.98 worth of content for free on that specific site, youtube.com in this case, but you're still out $5 to watch the first video. No, the micropayment system would need to be well distributed, and V/MC/D/AMX don't really want to get into the $0.02 charge game, and due to their effective opoly/cartel status they don't have to.
I hadn't thought of this until now, but what if the studios decided that the DRM was "good enough" this time around, and decided to stop releasing and repressing films onto DVD in favor of one or both of the HD formats? What if the phase out of the "old" media went faster, and was coordinated? If HD player prices dropped into the sub $100 range, we could possibly see the death of DVD in a couple of years. I don't think it would happen, but if they really wanted to put your balls in a DRM vice, that'd be the way to do it.
how long until instant messager spammers are punished?
not soon enough
how about people who spread viruses?
already illegal, I think
what about the people whose systems are compromised and used to send out junk? aren't they also spamming? being part of a crime is enough to prosecute in many cases.
Good point, and one that should not go unnoticed. Contributory neglegence, or possibly being civilly liable by presenting an attractive nuisance. Of course, I would expect that if a machine was zombied and a patch was not provided, then the OS maker might be criminally liable as well. I like that, too. Would it be awful to have more people without internet licenses (oops, did I just make up a new idea?) so that they couldn't have their own compters connected to the public right of way? Of course they could still use public terminals.
i'm sure that this was an issue years ago with telemarketers until it was reigned in and control restored, hopefully something like the national do not call list will be enlisted. at that point i could see punishments escalating. as it stands, nothing more than fines would be appropriate, perhaps paying damages. good bye profits
Telemarketers aren't really under control, but they're better. A national do not spam list might be good, but I would want to be able to entire domains. I do tend to agree that prison sentenses don't need to be terribly long for these crimes. I've been in a jail recently (design work, not inmate), and although it was a very nice, clean, well run facility it was still one of the most depressing places I've visited in my life. I'd rather see these spammers shackled with a repayment debt for 20 years than spend much time in jail. That and revocation of their internet licence;-)
No, you don't pay for spam in your mailbox, except as (a) trash and (b) time to get and sort. Your taxes don't pay for the postal system, as it is an independent entity. You have to have a mailbox to get any mail, so that's not an issue.
The real issue, and the one that keeps spam in your real mailbox at a certain level, is that espam costs a negligible amount to send whereas dead tree spam has a signiciant cost in both postage and printing. Perhaps you might view it differently if you look at the relative costs to each side in processing spam. For the sender, the cost may be in the 0.001c range, whereas for the recipient the cost is likely to be a couple of cents. For physical mail, the cost to send will be closer to 12c for the simplest of forms (and 25c-50c for anything worthwhile), while the 2-3c end user cost remains about the same.
Slashdot Mirror
It depends on who is pushing the HD players, and how much control they can exert over the releases. Really - very few consumers can tell the difference between a 7GB feature and a 4.6GB feature when it has been reencoded by (say) DVD shrink. I can, and it still doesn't bother me on my 51" RP system unless I'm "evaluating" the disc instead of just watching the movie. With a studio-end encode it should be mostly trnasparent, especially to anyone watching on really good version, all you have to do is get an HD player, because you already own the superior version. Win-win, baby! (there should be an evil laugh in the background here) Of course, once market penetration of HD boxes are good enough, they'll drop the broken-DRM version in favor of their (they hope) unbroken-DRM format.
It really does depend on what you do with your PC. On the fun side, I dabble in graphics and video (just boring stuff, mostly - resizing and rotating digital photography, archiving shows off the TiVo, dice and splice videos of the family) - that alone is enough to want more power, even on a temporary basis. I also archive my music as FLAC and recode on the fly when I load my portable player. Just for grins I converted the whole collection to MP3 once, and it took 4 days. Copying the entire archive over my 1Gb network takes close to 1.5 hours, so it's not bandwidth limited. I've got a P4M-1.86 and 2 GB of memory on a "workstation" class laptop, and there are fairly few operations I do that don't involve getting up to watch TV between prompts.
For work, I run AutoCAD. Now, this may seem simple, but there is a "new" feature in Acad2006 which puts a semi-transparent version of the command line right next to the cursor. Sort of a heads-up display for CAD. With nothing but the basic "empty" autocad template loaded and all other programs at 0 cpu cycles, the heads-up command line slows the program down so much that it misses my normal click-speed operations. I've watched the CPU peg at 99% in the taskmanager just dragging the cursor around the screen. And that's with hardware acceleration on with an nVidia Quadra FX go1400 with memory that is 27x the size of the 32bpp frame buffer (256MB). It's either I slow down or the machine needs to get faster. I chose option 3: turn of the heads up display.
So, really, even on the desktop there are operations that really need more speed, and it will always be that way. I'm sure if I get a computer that's 4x as fast, I'll end up with a 28MP digital camera and I'll start shooting HD instead of DV video. And once again I'll be able to catch a segment of The Daily Show while the computer churns away at a large task.
Since the entire net community has proven that 4.7GB DVDs are perfectly acceptable, this paves the way for barebones movies at 4.7GB plus the HD version on dual layer. They'll be marketed as "future proof" and they'll charge you an extra $5-10 for the privledge. And you'll happily pay it becuase you know if you buy the DVD version you'll probably want the HD version eventually, and the initial cost - resale of the DVD will probably be in the $5-10 range.
Of course, if they really wanted HD-DVD to win, they'd _only_ produce the dual version. That way its a value added product, and you don't have to upgrade all the players in the house to get the most benefits. As you drop your DVD in favor of HD, your discs stay the same. Folks who are quality nuts will get an HD box pretty soon anyway, and the other 98% of the population will never know the difference of the lost 1-2GB of space.
It is seriously brilliant. Marketing can still fumble th ball on this, but properly played this could be the difference in who wins the format war.
Sorry, it's really a haves vs have-nots kind of hate. Instead of the company setting their intended price, and letting random chance settle in for those to try and get the "hot" holiday item, most of the supply will likely be intercepted via greased palmes and back room deals. Or people buying 10 or 20 of them for the sole purpose of scalping them on ebay.
PS3 doesn't affect me, 'cause I'm not a gamer, nor is anyone in my family. It's the lack of respect and consideration for your fellow man that drives me insane. I'm not religious, but I do believe that you should treat everyone fairly, as you would like to be treated. This practice strikes at the heart of what is utterly wrong with modern society - that the need for the quick buck will trump human decency in almost every case.
I believe that it is this type of market that causes an overall increase in the unhealty stress that pervades the population and leads to a general decline in attitude, interpersonal communication, and mental and physical health.
Now, that's a lot of shit to heap on Ebay, but it's not just ebay (though, in all honesty, they probably deserve it). The attitude pervades human society, and (as game theory will show) having this cancer - even in small quantities - will cause it to spread.
I swear, it's not hate. It's frustration. Maybe if I didn't have kids it would be different. If I wan't leaving someone behind it would be much easier to just let the whole world go to hell in a handbasket. Screw the global warming nuts. To hell with keeping corporations in check. Who really gives a fuck anyway? When I'm gone, eveyone elses useless, undisciplined, lazy, ungreatful spawn can fight it out after I'm dead. 'Cept now I've got a dog in that fight, and I'm much more inclined for it to not be a bar room brawl.
*shrug* It's not about ebay, it's about the culture. I think it's bad for society; you might think this is a positive. It's just my opinion.
Is this a (legal) end run? Download your music, burn it to taxed music CDs, and it's now legally yours to do with under otherwise fair-uses, such as format shifting and backups for personal use only (on non-taxed media). This is a pretty big loophole if it is true. (And I'm hoping you get your question answered)
the sound of...
This is a bit of a technicality, but any work you create of any type is owned by you (copyright) - be it a text or an image. This could be stretched as a copyright case, as he did not receive permission to reprint the "content." Furthermore, he was reasonably certain (by nature of the "prank") that those people would deny him permission if he had asked to reprint the responses and photos publicly. He also denied explicit requests from the copyright holders to remove the infringing material from the website, and he has documented both their request and his denial.
It may be debatable what the financial incentive is (though publicity in itself has financial ramifications), but ED does presumably receive ad revenue from their yahoo ads, which makes it relevent.
There's nothing like a tight supply to get the ebay vultures circling. I suspect the actual cost for the first few thousand units will be in the $1200-1500 range. Sadly, there are enough people out there who will feed the ebay scum.
Can you imagine what a Tickle Me Elmo would go for today (ex if it had happend in 2006 vs 1996), give then hype that surrounded it back then combined with the insane market that is ebay?
Why even talk about binary storage methods in bits? All of us endusers only know bytes, and it's a significant imposition to make us multiply or divide by eight to get anything useful. It's not like you're storing your information as individual bits of...oh...right. :rolleyes:
But there is a limit beyond which it is effectivly unlimited. How many write cycles do you get, and if you turn off your swapfile what kind of life could be expected? If it's greater than 5 years for 90+% capacity, the point may be moot. (yes, I've turned off my cache. If XP can't fit what I'm doing today in 2GB, I trying to do too much at once.)
...the mountain cannot bow to it.
(sorry, I have a 4 year old. These damned disney films just burrow into your mind even after a few partial viewings)
Ditto. Oh, sure there were holes you could drive a truck thorough, but hell - it was only 2 hours; you have to take shortcuts sometimes. It was a fun movie to watch. I just wish they had released a better transfer on DVD - the current one is non-anamorphic and they seemed to spend very little effert cleaning it up for the home release.
That said, a sequel would be just wrong.
I agree about the prison term. 1 year (heck, 4-6 months) for any first offender is probably enough. Prisons are bad places. Period.
I disagree about the lifetime income limitations. Hit white collar where it hurts - in the pocket. I don't think there should be a limitation on fines, I think fines should be exempt from bankruptcy in all cases, and I think fines should be as large as the crime, plus treble damages. I don't think you should take more than all of the individuals assets (but should include retirement account forfeiture) and, say, 75% of income or all but 2x minimum wage, whichever results in a larger burden.
I'd rather see them suffer for years and years in effective poverty as punishment for their crime, than pay for them to rot in jail, only to be absolved of the any remaining debt when their assets are liquidated at their death as a final payment.
He was once targeted for terrorist-like (or was it drug-lord like) movement of money. It seems that he pays for everything in cash "so that no one can track where my money goes" (the quote isn't exact, but that was the gist of his response). He regularly had a staffer pull several thousand dollars out of his account for walking-around money, and pays for everything with cash. It's the sheer volume of cash he mows through that got him snagged, though. Iirc, it was on the order of $5k-$10k every other week.
So, yes, you can still do it all with cash. Nonetheless, if you do you'll be targetted as a terrorist/bad guy for trying to hide your transactions. I'm still waiting for the bumper sticker that says "being anonymous isn't a crime...but it should be".
You'll understand someday when you move out of that dorm room.
Actually, that's exactly how I "rent" movies. I buy them occasionally, sometimes in a bunch from CH if I haven't signed up in a while, and usually average less than $10/disc including shipping (much less with CH). They go in my jukebox, and I eventually watch them, though it may take up to 2 years for that to happen. If I like it, I keep it. If I don't, it gets resold on ebay or amazon mktplace, often for between $8-$10 net of fees. It's cheaper than netflix, I'm (almost) never without a new movie, and I get to keep a copy of everything I like.
...but I can't watch it on my TV.
I get to watch it on my monitor, which is fairly small.
In my office, where there's room for one, maybe two people.
On an uncomfortable chair instead of my couch.
And I get to pay more than an excellent condition DVD off of ebay, often as much or more than the DVD from Amazon, and probably more than the WalMart B&M down the road.
In return I get to avoid waiting the 2 days for shipping (which I get "free" from Amazon Prime), or driving the 4 miles to a local store.
I'm sorry, was there something I was supposed to enjoy about this transaction?
BTW - you're the first /.er I've seen with a 7 digit UID.
Anyway, you're generally right. The right to do anything generally stops at the right of other people not to be injured in some way. Injury can simply be the loss of a service or time (=money) which is excessive or beyond what society deems as such. VA has drawn their line further than you feel is reasonable. I think it's a good like to draw, though I'd rather see larger monetary fines or internet access injunctions rather than long jail sentences (1-3 months is good enough for me - jail is a very depressing place).
First to concieve baby!
So...wouldn't that just result in everyone screwing everyone else as often as possible?
Oh, right. Sorry.
Well, of course adding DVD doesn't make it original. That's why it has to involve the internet to be both unique and non-obvious. ;-)
That solves the problem on their end, but not on the consumer's end. You see, a single purchase of a $0.02 video will now cost $5. Of course, you get an extra $4.98 worth of content for free on that specific site, youtube.com in this case, but you're still out $5 to watch the first video. No, the micropayment system would need to be well distributed, and V/MC/D/AMX don't really want to get into the $0.02 charge game, and due to their effective opoly/cartel status they don't have to.
I hadn't thought of this until now, but what if the studios decided that the DRM was "good enough" this time around, and decided to stop releasing and repressing films onto DVD in favor of one or both of the HD formats? What if the phase out of the "old" media went faster, and was coordinated? If HD player prices dropped into the sub $100 range, we could possibly see the death of DVD in a couple of years. I don't think it would happen, but if they really wanted to put your balls in a DRM vice, that'd be the way to do it.
how long until instant messager spammers are punished?
;-)
not soon enough
how about people who spread viruses?
already illegal, I think
what about the people whose systems are compromised and used to send out junk? aren't they also spamming? being part of a crime is enough to prosecute in many cases.
Good point, and one that should not go unnoticed. Contributory neglegence, or possibly being civilly liable by presenting an attractive nuisance. Of course, I would expect that if a machine was zombied and a patch was not provided, then the OS maker might be criminally liable as well. I like that, too. Would it be awful to have more people without internet licenses (oops, did I just make up a new idea?) so that they couldn't have their own compters connected to the public right of way? Of course they could still use public terminals.
i'm sure that this was an issue years ago with telemarketers until it was reigned in and control restored, hopefully something like the national do not call list will be enlisted. at that point i could see punishments escalating. as it stands, nothing more than fines would be appropriate, perhaps paying damages. good bye profits
Telemarketers aren't really under control, but they're better. A national do not spam list might be good, but I would want to be able to entire domains. I do tend to agree that prison sentenses don't need to be terribly long for these crimes. I've been in a jail recently (design work, not inmate), and although it was a very nice, clean, well run facility it was still one of the most depressing places I've visited in my life. I'd rather see these spammers shackled with a repayment debt for 20 years than spend much time in jail. That and revocation of their internet licence
No, you don't pay for spam in your mailbox, except as (a) trash and (b) time to get and sort. Your taxes don't pay for the postal system, as it is an independent entity. You have to have a mailbox to get any mail, so that's not an issue.
The real issue, and the one that keeps spam in your real mailbox at a certain level, is that espam costs a negligible amount to send whereas dead tree spam has a signiciant cost in both postage and printing. Perhaps you might view it differently if you look at the relative costs to each side in processing spam. For the sender, the cost may be in the 0.001c range, whereas for the recipient the cost is likely to be a couple of cents. For physical mail, the cost to send will be closer to 12c for the simplest of forms (and 25c-50c for anything worthwhile), while the 2-3c end user cost remains about the same.
If everybody in China jumped off of a 1 foot step ladder at the same time, would there be a sudden drop in P2P data that might indicate the event?
(of course I didn't RTFA, I'm just trying to avoid work this afternoon by wandering around making incoherent posts)