Ok, So here in Switzerland I can get the average DVD for around 14.99 CHF to about 24.99 CHF (MediaMarkt). I saw a blue ray movie and it was 44.99 CHF and could not believe it. Why in the heck would somebody pay nearly double the price so that you can see the butt pimple of an actor? Maybe one or two movies you want to see the butt pimple, but in general no way... First, you need to answer this one: if you don't care for HD movies and butt pimples, why do you care about their higher prices?
Second, what I think you might have been seeing is classic DVD movies being released in HD formats? These are normally far more expensive in HD format, mostly not because they're in HD, but because they're new releases. I see the same pricing here. However, if I look at e.g. Pirates of the Caribbean III, it's 299 SEK as Blu-ray, 179 SEK as DVD. An older movie like Blood Diamond is however 239 SEK as Blu-ray and HD-DVD, and 119 SEK as DVD. I think this is pretty common to see, and the differences will probably lessen in time. DVD's were also ridiculously priced compared to VHS tapes once upon a time.
Blueray - nothing exciting - everyone is still basically on DVDs with no incentive to change Blu-ray is clearly the dominating format and in at least my (and quite a few others I've heard) case hampered in adoption primarly from the uncertain format war. If HD-DVD would only die, and the discs were slightly cheaper, I'd go Blu-ray.
I wonder if DRM isn't used a lot just because it locks out the competition. It certainly seems like a strategy beyond encryption and copy(right) protection at least, where Apple has strongly opposed opening up their DRM method, and even more visibly with Microsoft suddenly switching to a new form of DRM in the Zune Marketplace and in the process making Zune players incompatible with their old PlaysForSure encryption. I doubt it was because they thought PlaysForSure used a too weak encryption.:-p
A deaf person has physically damaged hearing, so you're saying that pretty much all of us have damaged brain activity at night? It just seems that a claim like that would need a lot more substantial support, or the more sensible idea of "maybe we don't see the full picture yet" seems far more realistic.
Ugh, this comment needs to be modded down ASAP -- we have already had info on this in the comments that the Google competition aspect is untrue, heck, even I remember many past Slashdot stories on this since before Google Knols were announced.
Yes, clearly, just like Google Search has an abused algorithm, Wikia Search will surely see abuse somewhere in its system too. I don't think there's any question of that, and neither that Wales challenge your opinion in saying abuse will be non-existant, only that the issue will be tried to be dealt with, for example like it is on Wikipedia, and like it is on Google. The important part here isn't whether it'll be free from abuse (it will see abuse), but how efficiently it will be able to deal with the abuse in its design.
And they said I was crazy for stockpiling all that food! Score: 4 Insightful? It's funny, but come on... Hmm, a call for more meta moderation, I guess. I'll be on my way there.
Bah. My compelling reason to upgrade is part having a reliable format for burning HD movies. Another major convenience would be a format for regular backups from modern hard drives. When drives were 60 GB large, it wasn't a big deal, but today you can pretty much add on a zero to that number. "What would one need that much drive space for?" Well, that's besides the topic, but HD and even DVD images are becoming increasingly more common to store for me, and they eat space faster than one may at first believe. Archiving these on fewer discs would of course be a big bonus.
The reasons not to upgrade is mostly disc pricing along with the HD war. It's not as much about the burner pricing. I can actually take the cost of a Blu-ray burner; it's not that bad. But the BD-R discs (and HD-DVD-R ones) are really expensive at the moment, obviously due to them not being produced in large quantities thanks to this format war.
It's a modern day witch hunt and new laws surrounding it should be treated as such. I can only hope we'll look back at these times with as little understanding as we today to with medieval witch hunts. It's completely ridiculous that someone urinating in public or using an opportunity to peek at a hot nude person at home should be in some "registry" for life and not be allowed to live near children or have Internet access. These penalties are not even related to the crime, and it is a witch hunt.
I heard a story about a guy who was 19 and had sex with his 17 year old girlfriend. According to the laws of that state, there was some flexibility there if the age difference was two years or less. The male was like a year and two days older than the female. The judge banged his gavel, and now the kid is a 'sex offender' that has to register. These stories are sad, and he wouldn't even have needed to have actual sex with someone. You can also become labelled a sex offender for life by for example taking your chance and peeking at a hot naked neighbor from your window. It also seem like public urination can fall under this. Or as George W Bush put it:
"These are a group of people who are the sickest of the sick. They are truly perverts and it's not curable. Instead of civil detention, we ought to make sure...these pedophiles...are locked up forever."
It's especially out of hand when considering what a "sex offense" actually is.
It can be things like: - Urinating in public - Indecent exposure - Unlawful detention - Voyeurism
There's been reports telling that there's not a majority here who're doing sex offenses against children, but rather these minor crimes. Earlier it was no big deal if someone mooned others for a short moment from a car while being drunk, or urinating in public for that matter after having a few too many beers. Or if you took a chance and peeked at a hot neighbor when he/she was walking nude at home. All pretty innocent stuff to me that doesn't scar any "victim" for life either. Now these things risks you being placed in a public sex offender registry for life (searchable by anyone -- especially those who assume everyone there are paedophiles and want to hurt the people in there physically) and have your Internet access right withdrawn (??).
Sony made good on its commercialization plans and put the set on sale in Japan on Dec. 1, where it sold out almost immediately despite the ¥200,000 price tag. ??
¥200,000 is no amazing price for a small scale release with frontier technology... It's around $1,750...
Actually, with AOL discontinuing it and recommending Firefox just with a Netscape skin to keep the browser in memory, I think AOL could just as well just donate the brand to Mozilla? Or are they keeping it just in case...?
Apple has figured out what most people want to do with a PC at home and produce a nice bundle that just works. No, it doesn't always, but it's still a good OS and software bundle. But even the godly Mac can have its share of problems, let's not kid ourselves.
The XPS One come in four basic configurations: The Essential One, The Music One, The Performance One, The Entertainment One. I'm unsure which one you compared to, but depending on which one you get, you also get various hardware over that of the iMac, as far as I can tell. For example, The Entertainment One comes with a Blu-ray drive. The Music One comes with wireless headphones, etc. All configurations come with a TV tuner and remote control.
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Second, what I think you might have been seeing is classic DVD movies being released in HD formats? These are normally far more expensive in HD format, mostly not because they're in HD, but because they're new releases. I see the same pricing here. However, if I look at e.g. Pirates of the Caribbean III, it's 299 SEK as Blu-ray, 179 SEK as DVD. An older movie like Blood Diamond is however 239 SEK as Blu-ray and HD-DVD, and 119 SEK as DVD. I think this is pretty common to see, and the differences will probably lessen in time. DVD's were also ridiculously priced compared to VHS tapes once upon a time.
HD-DVD supports AACS, Blu-ray supports AACS, region coding, BD+.
That may in part be why Blu-ray seems to be winning this "war".
But in either case, AnyDVD can decrypt all of that, yes, including BD+.
Wow, binaries that use to work? This boggles my mind. I've been compiling sources on Windows since 1993.
I wonder if DRM isn't used a lot just because it locks out the competition. It certainly seems like a strategy beyond encryption and copy(right) protection at least, where Apple has strongly opposed opening up their DRM method, and even more visibly with Microsoft suddenly switching to a new form of DRM in the Zune Marketplace and in the process making Zune players incompatible with their old PlaysForSure encryption. I doubt it was because they thought PlaysForSure used a too weak encryption. :-p
A deaf person has physically damaged hearing, so you're saying that pretty much all of us have damaged brain activity at night? It just seems that a claim like that would need a lot more substantial support, or the more sensible idea of "maybe we don't see the full picture yet" seems far more realistic.
Do you mean a *voice deepens* metaverse?
I'm sorry, but I just don't see how that has as lasting appeal as perfecting a character build or maybe building social networks.
You have a point there. They should probably make it illegal to be stupid to cover these problems.
Ugh, this comment needs to be modded down ASAP -- we have already had info on this in the comments that the Google competition aspect is untrue, heck, even I remember many past Slashdot stories on this since before Google Knols were announced.
Yes, clearly, just like Google Search has an abused algorithm, Wikia Search will surely see abuse somewhere in its system too. I don't think there's any question of that, and neither that Wales challenge your opinion in saying abuse will be non-existant, only that the issue will be tried to be dealt with, for example like it is on Wikipedia, and like it is on Google. The important part here isn't whether it'll be free from abuse (it will see abuse), but how efficiently it will be able to deal with the abuse in its design.
There's some more interesting (scientific) commentary on this on the Cosmic Variance blog:
http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/01/01/what-have-you-changed-your-mind-about/
I'm surprised it wasn't, so I'm tagging this one getoffmylawn.
Bah. My compelling reason to upgrade is part having a reliable format for burning HD movies. Another major convenience would be a format for regular backups from modern hard drives. When drives were 60 GB large, it wasn't a big deal, but today you can pretty much add on a zero to that number. "What would one need that much drive space for?" Well, that's besides the topic, but HD and even DVD images are becoming increasingly more common to store for me, and they eat space faster than one may at first believe. Archiving these on fewer discs would of course be a big bonus.
The reasons not to upgrade is mostly disc pricing along with the HD war. It's not as much about the burner pricing. I can actually take the cost of a Blu-ray burner; it's not that bad. But the BD-R discs (and HD-DVD-R ones) are really expensive at the moment, obviously due to them not being produced in large quantities thanks to this format war.
It's a modern day witch hunt and new laws surrounding it should be treated as such. I can only hope we'll look back at these times with as little understanding as we today to with medieval witch hunts. It's completely ridiculous that someone urinating in public or using an opportunity to peek at a hot nude person at home should be in some "registry" for life and not be allowed to live near children or have Internet access. These penalties are not even related to the crime, and it is a witch hunt.
"These are a group of people who are the sickest of the sick. They are truly perverts and it's not curable. Instead of civil detention, we ought to make sure...these pedophiles...are locked up forever."
It's especially out of hand when considering what a "sex offense" actually is.
It can be things like:
- Urinating in public
- Indecent exposure
- Unlawful detention
- Voyeurism
There's been reports telling that there's not a majority here who're doing sex offenses against children, but rather these minor crimes. Earlier it was no big deal if someone mooned others for a short moment from a car while being drunk, or urinating in public for that matter after having a few too many beers. Or if you took a chance and peeked at a hot neighbor when he/she was walking nude at home. All pretty innocent stuff to me that doesn't scar any "victim" for life either. Now these things risks you being placed in a public sex offender registry for life (searchable by anyone -- especially those who assume everyone there are paedophiles and want to hurt the people in there physically) and have your Internet access right withdrawn (??).
¥200,000 is no amazing price for a small scale release with frontier technology... It's around $1,750...
Actually, with AOL discontinuing it and recommending Firefox just with a Netscape skin to keep the browser in memory, I think AOL could just as well just donate the brand to Mozilla? Or are they keeping it just in case...?
The XPS One come in four basic configurations: The Essential One, The Music One, The Performance One, The Entertainment One. I'm unsure which one you compared to, but depending on which one you get, you also get various hardware over that of the iMac, as far as I can tell. For example, The Entertainment One comes with a Blu-ray drive. The Music One comes with wireless headphones, etc. All configurations come with a TV tuner and remote control.
I wonder how well this system's hardware is supported in a typical desktop-oriented Linux distro?
Especially more bleeding edge stuff like the Blu-ray drive, but also other things, like the TV tuner.
Because if it's pretty much OK there, then I know which OS could be a nice alternative if you dislike Windows.