Win2K/XP register 65% versus Win98 at 22% from Google Zeitgeist for systems accessing Google. There may not be so many Win98 users out there as you suggest.
Apple may not be able to hold on indefinitely to its current massive lead in music downloads but this effort from Sony appears ill-designed to challenge. It is restricted by being MiniDisc and memory stick limited. I speak as an owner of a MiniDisc deck in my car (from Blaupunkt) and a nifty Sony MDS-PC1 deck connected to my PC.
There is probably money to be made by Sony but I think this is more a case of Sony showing their regard for their loyal customers. If you buy Sony technology, like MD or memory sticks, Sony will bring services to them like downloadable music.
We have gone through a long period of very abnormal conditions (devastating world wars, savagely anit-intellectual revolutions, unnecessary deprivation, etc). We are returning to a more natural period when more cultures will not be deprived of the opportunity to contribute to scientific advances. Just because our lives happen to be during this odd period does not mean there was anything normal or sustainable about it. Trying to fix "blame" for a return to something closer to equilibrium is particularly perverse.
Despite the sanctimonious choruses of condemnation about 'kids these days' my own personal observations of children, including my three, do not imply the nostalgia others invoke. It goes back at least to the ancient Greeks that people will always feel they are better than those that follow them. I know I didn't have bilingual education in my public elementary school (French used for essentially all courses), nor had as many (well any) AP courses in high school. I know my school orchestra was not even approximately as good. We didn't have Math Olympiad (which I did coach for eight years and there were some excellent students). I'd have to conclude students are better today than they've ever been in the US and they simply face better competition than before.
OK, I'll grant you the lack of a wish list and reviews, though they may not apply in quite the same way to music tracks as they do to books and other merchandise. I think Amazon is spectacular and have logins for the US, UK, Canadian, French and German sites. It is fantastic to be able to purchase simply and inexpensively those books and DVD's that are not offered in the US (Olympia from the German site, Spooks from the UK, Made in Canada from Canada and several foreign language book titles). Since I don't have an iPod, my purchases from iTMS have been mainly out of curiosity and I was favorably impressed with how well it has been implemented. Throw in FairPlay to strip off the RIAA required file inhibitor and you have a fine service.
C'mon, you know that you are obscuring the facts for people who read your comment and assume you have to pay $30 in order to enjoy full screen video playback. No one says that Apple isn't trying to make a buck. The question is how sleazy their methods are (for comparison see Real). You can pay a lot for pro applications that take full advantage of the API's and QuickTime Pro is included. You can roll your own with the professional develop environment that comes for free with every Mac (XCode). If you just want access to simple editing capabilities and fullscreen video using Apple's bundled player that is $30. Finally there are any number of free apps that provide all sorts of added capability over QuickTime Player. No one's forced to pay $30 though you may have to click your mouse a few times.
Incidentally, I have paid $29.95 for QuickTime Pro and consider it money well spent. I also spent the $30 or so to download (or more precisely register) RealPlayer back when they were the first out the gate with streaming audio. I am considerably less pleased with that purchase as it became almost instantly incompatible with new codecs from Real. There has been a real difference between how the two companies have treated their customers whether you see it or not.
"At least real doesn't charge 29.95 USD for the ability to play a videofile fullscreen..."
I'll give you a clue for free. Go to Versiontracker.com and search on "movie player". Many of the results, including the mysteriously named "Fullscreen Movie Player" which is freeware, will enable you to play your movies full screen. The API's are all there for all of QuickTime whether you pay for Pro or not (cheapskate). They just don't give away apps that take full advantage of them in order to try to gain revenue. It is a way for the QuickTime group to justify more development. But they don't stop third parties from providing such capabilities.
If you want to try something for the Mac that is truly innovative take a look at "Trans Lucy" which is shareware. It is a DVD player app that provides variable translucency for DVD videos. Apple didn't give that away either (or even offer it) but their API's made it possible. It does require a sufficiently capable graphics card.
"No where near as polished..." There is no polite way to point out how completely busted you are. Both Amazon and iTMS offer music for sale. A huge difference between the two is that you can sample all the products at iTunes while sampling at Amazon is a stricly hit or miss proposition. Sometimes they have it in Real format, sometimes in WMA format. Maybe you can listen to it or maybe you have to try installing someone's player software. If you order from Amazon you probably have to pay shipping charges and wait for the product. With iTMS you just click and download the product for instant gratification.
I don't get where you would attempt a comparison to eBay where you stand a good chance of being stiffed by the seller (or buyer is you are a seller). Again, like Amazon, you are dealing with shipping products around physically.
I use both Amazon and eBay and have since they were newly minted services. They are very useful but in completely different categories from each other and from iTMS. But for shopping experience iTMS is incomparably smoother and better unless they don't have the track you want. If they have something close at least you are certainly going to be able to sample it.
Of course what iTMS really competes with are P2P networks. Even though the competition involves no specific charges, iTMS competes very well because it doesn't waste your time and it has decent quality control.
The whole knee jerk anti Jobs reaction seems to be missing an obvious established fact. Jobs is saying no to Glaser and Real. This doesn't mean he is saying no to everyone. They've already forged a deal with HP. Is he not supposed to have a choice which companies he wants to work with?
If you don't customarily run as a user with administrator privileges is it even possible to make the modifications needed to render your system a proxy/zombie for an attacker? I understand that if you provide an administrator password you can obtain administrator capabilities temporarily. But wouldn't the fact that launching an MP3 file asks for an administrator password (I'm assuming the trojan in this case tries to install something to give the attacker some lasting access, not just muck with your files) be an adequate clue that something is seriously wrong?
I suppose an important question is how many OS X users create one account just for administrator tasks and another account for day to day use (or more quantitatively what percentage have this setup). The accounts for my kids have always been without administrator privileges.
I don't want to be too nasty but your tone seems more than slightly smug without showing an impressive command of the relevant facts. There seem to be two situations being considered: costs for wifi implementation on British rail and costs for wifi implementation at places like coffee shops.
For the second case we have businesses trying various strategies from free access to metered per minute or megabyte. In the US it currently appears that free access is gaining the upper hand with wifi being treated as a differentiating amenity that businesses factor in to their costs like rent or taxes. I'm sure there are several reasons for this trend but one is certainly the phone company syndrome. That syndrome is that more than half of what you pay is actually incurred by the monitoring and accounting needed to present you with a bill. So to a large extent you are paying for them to produce a bill for you to pay. Eliminate all that added burden by making access "free", build the remaining cost into the costs for the main business (coffee shop, hotel, etc) and use it as a competitive advantage.
The first case is illuminated by the concepts taught in Economics 101. In particular the question of monopoly pricing since no one is allowed to compete with the wifi provision from the railroad. As anyone who has taken Economics 101 could tell you this will tend to cause prices to be higher than the socially optimum rate. I believe that might be what the original poster was complaining about.
As a matter of fact there are competitve pressures but they involve the person using a competing form of transportation such as an airline, bus transportation, or private car. So a proponent of passenger rail might look askance at a policy that prices wifi access high enough to erode use of his preferred mode of transportation.
>I have 8GB of music on my work computer. It's all legal - I own the CD or vinyl to match each one
You may think it is legal but the RIAA doesn't agree. They just haven't gotten around to suing you yet (and they probably won't). Last time I was taking the time to see what the RIAA was saying on various issues on their web site I was surprised to read that particular tidbit. Every time a copy is made their position is that they are owed a royalty. The fact that they were not pursuing every instance was due to there being only so many hours in a day, not an abdication of a position. If and when technical means are available it was clear they intend to pursue every such instance.
An organization like this has to be put firmly in its place. The AHRA of 1992 did almost no good at all. We need to put pressure on politicians to get laws updated to reflect something closer to reality. If copyright infringement occurs in the course of non-commercial activity it needs to be de-criminalized (I'm thinking of the DMCA here) and civil penalties need to be limited to something a reasonable citizen would find appropriate, not what an RIAA lawyer finds useful. It's an election year. If the issue matters to you then make certain you let others know.
You talk about DVI input and then call someone else fraudulent? Please line up and buy a clue. Almost the entire point of DVI is to prevent people from reading the digital signal. The only components with DVI in are monitors. They are adding HDCP in order to make it even more certain that only monitors ever see a signal from DVI.
On the issue of HDTV signals from an antenna you seem equally unacquainted with the facts. Around 99 % of the US population has the ability to receive digital TV signals with an antenna and some large fraction of those can receive HDTV. All the major networks and some of the minor ones are delivering HDTV content. With FOX upgrading to HDTV this fall the HD rollout will be complete. Then it is just a matter of time for the remaining lagards to catch up.
Many people seem to be at a loss to understand that they can view many (most) HD programs of interest using an antenna and not paying a cent to some company for the privilege. It is important for someone to point out that with the transition from NTSC to ATSC in the US the fact is that the absolutely best quality signal for video fidelity is now available for free using a receiver and antenna. Better than laserdisc, DVD, standard "digital cable", standard "digital satellite". If paying that absurd monthly bill makes you happy go ahead. But don't pretend there is anyting fraudulent about HDTV delivered for free by local stations.
You are wrong in multiple dimensions. First there is a huge selection of HD content on the major networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and additional HD content on WBand UPN. Starting in the fall FOX will be upgrading from 480p widescreen to true HD. These HD programs are not available in every single market but they are no longer rare.
On the issue of copy protection the FCC has decreed support for the Broadcast Flag but no encryption of over the air (OTA) signals. Part of the directive demands backward compatibility. So although you may not have many or possibly any computer HD receivers, any that you already own should continue to work. Putting off the purchase will force you to the used market (eBay).
Your reference to HDTV and the US is almost completely clueless. Are your other claims just as counter-factual? Japan introduced a technologically/economically doomed analog HDTV system which has essentially entirely collapsed. The US was the first to introduce an advanced digital HDTV standard and at this point no other country in the world is even within hailing distance of the deployment of HDTV in the US. Do you bother checking any facts before blurting out nonsense?
On a technological issue of possibly greater significance how would you choose to dismiss the complete dominance of US companies in the processor marketplace? Intel chose to leave the low margin memory chip market in order to decisively commit to the processor market. Together with AMD, IBM and Motorola their dominance has been for decades contrary to what many pundits predicted.
If these cases go to court the RIAA has to defend the legitimacy of the newer laws they bought and paid for. Specifically, until quite recently there was no law against file copying that did not involve economic gain. Even more specifically an MIT student was being prosecuted for running a free FTP site and when the trial started his lawyer pointed this out and the case was thrown out. Subsequent to that they had their paid lackey's, like Howard Berman, pass new laws to criminalize this area of activity.
Many people obviously want such activity to be criminalized and are willing to lobby (ie pay) to make it so. But as spectacles like this occur we may find that society as a whole does not agree with that position. Don't forget that copyright law, according to the US Constitution, is only there to encourage the progress of arts and sciences, not to enrich people and corporations who proceed to create new 'categories of property'.
A number of scholars like Lawrence Lessig, Jessica Litman and many others have been making the case that copyright law has been about compromises between various powerful interests. Trying to apply it to essentially powerless (except as voters and jury members) individuals may inevitably lead to results that are antithetical to the primary justification for copyright law. That is, however you may feel about a specific instance of file copying, by outlawing the activity you may be doing more harm to the progress of arts and sciences than any benefit to companies in the RIAA or MPAA can offset.
We know large corporations stand to gain benefit from these laws that criminalize file copying and they have the patience to pay and influence to cause these abominations (like the DMCA) to become law. But if jurors are allowed to examine all the angles involved the corporations know that their cozy arrangements might become increasingly fragile. To avoid that possibility they seem to have engaged in behavior that is dangerously close to racketeering. We'll see if they have stepped over the line.
"Care to venture how many people had even heard of Patrick Stewart before he was cast as Jean Luc Picard?"
The BBC series "I, Claudius" was one of the best miniseries ever. Patrick Stewart played the prominent role of Sejanus brilliantly and memorably. That was a series filled with fine actors and plots based on actual events that took place two thousand years ago. I hope you take off your pointy ears on occasion and watch something besides sci fi.
It's a real shame that an actual scripted series with actors, costumes and sets might be canceled to make room for yet another cheap ass "reality" series. If no one watches the damn informercials and reality shows then they will go away. It is our own fault that we don't laugh at and pull down the pants of anyone with the temerity to discuss the details of the latest junk in public.
Mr. Crusher, how cool that you reply to posts on/. Does this mean that you are a viewer of the current Star Trek? I think there have been two or three episodes this season that are at the same level as the best episodes from previous series (including the Star Fleet Academy episode that introduced the actor who later played Tom Paris).
The worst part of this is that they are probably planning to replace it with another pathetic "reality" show.
"The main challenges that neither Blu-Ray nor HD-DVD solves: -- Security"
Why is such a demonstrably fallacious goal treated as anything but nonsense? If it had an ounce of validity how would it be possible that the DVD is such a runaway success? For several years "security" for the DVD format has been rendered impotent by DeCSS. The portion of the population that has access to a computer with a DVD drive and the necessary software has to be simply huge. So when can we expect to see the DVD market collapse?
The main challenge to a new format is sufficiently low cost and ease of use. If those are reduced in the foolish pursuit of "security" then the new discs will be wonderfully secure by virtue of being relegated to land fills. Judging from the ham-handed efforts at DRM by Microsoft for HD material I expect ease of use to be compromised and that consumers will stay away in droves.
I don't live in the UK. I visited there the summer before last. That is when I actually saw a lot of people in London actually carrying and using MD. Certainly not a careful, objective survey but it was far from my experience in the US.
In the future (ie not quite yet) I think that for use in the automobile only a hard drive makes sense. It seems that every technology is transitory and for higher quality, mobile audio systems MD had its day. This claim was obscured by marketing failures in the US. My observation about Sony is that even when they don't completely succeed they don't seem to cut and run like some other large technology companies.
Ha, the Blaupunkt minidisc player in my car can beat up your car audio player. No, seriously, it is great and it didn't cost much because of the opinions of ill-informed people such as you. So I guess I should be saying thank you. It is easy to create discs using my Sony MDS-PC1 using the playlist editing program that runs on Mac or PC. You realize that MD is a popular format in the UK and other non-US location and Sony never gives up easily.
Well, that's good for you and I don't mean that in a sarcastic manner. The issue remains that a fairly simple request for information was made and instead of providing a concise answer there seemed to be a lot of arguing over numbers that could eventually lead to an answer. I suppose I'm as easily tempted to get into less than illuminating arguments but I thought it would be useful in this case to cut directly to the answers to satisfy the curious. Again it requires a bit more than 9 gigabytes per hour to record and it is easily edited down to 5.5 gig if you want to save without ads.
Um, have you been around here very long to see the trends? How long do you think it will be until 20 terabyte drives are as common as 20 gigabyte drives are now? How long ago was a 20 megabyte drive considered capacious? Don't forget that disk capacity per dollar is growing exponentially and even faster than processor speed. There do not even have to be any novel innovations to get the next two orders of magnitude according to experts in the field. Forget P2P and all the other minor developments, cheap mammoth hard drives are the nightmare facing Hollywood and the RIAA.
Why are people who have never recorded any HD so anxious to jump in and insult each other? It takes a little over 9 gigabytes to record an hour long program. After removing commercials (easily done because at least for now they are essentially all in SD) and filtering out null packets it is about 5.5 gigabytes. Some people on the AVS forum have worked out a procedure to transcode (or re-encode, I'm not sure which) to Windows Media 9 format with excellent results and even further size reduction. But reducing to 5.5 gig is as simple as falling out of bed and just takes a few minutes.
Oh please, I've been in London and I've seen at least a smattering of TV in PAL format. I also have HDTV here in the US. Trying to pass off HDTV as just a little better than PAL is complete crap. You have zero credibility. Maybe it doesn't matter enough because of issues of program quality having nothing to do with resolution (essentially all of prime time programs except for reality and news magazines are already in HD). But it sounds just like sour grapes (like the fox said in Aesop "I don't care about those grapes I can't reach. They are certainly sour in any case") or your eyesight needs significant correction.
"This ruling eliminates any kind of non-authorized content, weither that is indie films, home movies, pirate TV stations, or illegal downloads"
OK, you need to share whatever you're smoking with everyone else. What is the source of this bizarre idea? I'm opposed to the broadcast flag but I'm not going to accuse it of stealing my luggage. You sound like the people who claimed nuclear power plants would melt down, jets would fall from the sky and pencils would stop writing because of Y2K.
What does the broadcast flag have to do with your stinkin' home movies? If people are going looney like you have here, how can informed debate stand a chance? Your local township's cable channel has NOTHING to do with the broadcast flag. Have you actually spent any time or effort trying to understand what the real issues are?
Relax, you haven't missed anything. Just a whole lot of slashdotters who don't seem to be aware that there is such a thing as HDTV. They are just assuming that DVD is the highest resolution available for TV. It's only been available for about 5 years (depending on how you mark the starting date) and varies by specific location. I bet a majority don't know that most of prime time is presented in HD.
No it isn't. Only FOX network tried to make that claim and they have finally blinked. Next fall they will start broadcasting 720p to join the other networks already broadcasting in HD. They are the last since UPN has started presenting Enterprise and Jake 2.0 both in HD as of two weeks ago.
480p widescreen is much better than regular NTSC but anyone can tell the difference between it and either of the true HD formats of 720p and 1080i after watching for a while.
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Win2K/XP register 65% versus Win98 at 22% from Google Zeitgeist for systems accessing Google. There may not be so many Win98 users out there as you suggest.
Apple may not be able to hold on indefinitely to its current massive lead in music downloads but this effort from Sony appears ill-designed to challenge. It is restricted by being MiniDisc and memory stick limited. I speak as an owner of a MiniDisc deck in my car (from Blaupunkt) and a nifty Sony MDS-PC1 deck connected to my PC.
There is probably money to be made by Sony but I think this is more a case of Sony showing their regard for their loyal customers. If you buy Sony technology, like MD or memory sticks, Sony will bring services to them like downloadable music.
We have gone through a long period of very abnormal conditions (devastating world wars, savagely anit-intellectual revolutions, unnecessary deprivation, etc). We are returning to a more natural period when more cultures will not be deprived of the opportunity to contribute to scientific advances. Just because our lives happen to be during this odd period does not mean there was anything normal or sustainable about it. Trying to fix "blame" for a return to something closer to equilibrium is particularly perverse.
Despite the sanctimonious choruses of condemnation about 'kids these days' my own personal observations of children, including my three, do not imply the nostalgia others invoke. It goes back at least to the ancient Greeks that people will always feel they are better than those that follow them. I know I didn't have bilingual education in my public elementary school (French used for essentially all courses), nor had as many (well any) AP courses in high school. I know my school orchestra was not even approximately as good. We didn't have Math Olympiad (which I did coach for eight years and there were some excellent students). I'd have to conclude students are better today than they've ever been in the US and they simply face better competition than before.
OK, I'll grant you the lack of a wish list and reviews, though they may not apply in quite the same way to music tracks as they do to books and other merchandise. I think Amazon is spectacular and have logins for the US, UK, Canadian, French and German sites. It is fantastic to be able to purchase simply and inexpensively those books and DVD's that are not offered in the US (Olympia from the German site, Spooks from the UK, Made in Canada from Canada and several foreign language book titles). Since I don't have an iPod, my purchases from iTMS have been mainly out of curiosity and I was favorably impressed with how well it has been implemented. Throw in FairPlay to strip off the RIAA required file inhibitor and you have a fine service.
C'mon, you know that you are obscuring the facts for people who read your comment and assume you have to pay $30 in order to enjoy full screen video playback. No one says that Apple isn't trying to make a buck. The question is how sleazy their methods are (for comparison see Real). You can pay a lot for pro applications that take full advantage of the API's and QuickTime Pro is included. You can roll your own with the professional develop environment that comes for free with every Mac (XCode). If you just want access to simple editing capabilities and fullscreen video using Apple's bundled player that is $30. Finally there are any number of free apps that provide all sorts of added capability over QuickTime Player. No one's forced to pay $30 though you may have to click your mouse a few times.
Incidentally, I have paid $29.95 for QuickTime Pro and consider it money well spent. I also spent the $30 or so to download (or more precisely register) RealPlayer back when they were the first out the gate with streaming audio. I am considerably less pleased with that purchase as it became almost instantly incompatible with new codecs from Real. There has been a real difference between how the two companies have treated their customers whether you see it or not.
"At least real doesn't charge 29.95 USD for the ability to play a videofile fullscreen..."
I'll give you a clue for free. Go to Versiontracker.com and search on "movie player". Many of the results, including the mysteriously named "Fullscreen Movie Player" which is freeware, will enable you to play your movies full screen. The API's are all there for all of QuickTime whether you pay for Pro or not (cheapskate). They just don't give away apps that take full advantage of them in order to try to gain revenue. It is a way for the QuickTime group to justify more development. But they don't stop third parties from providing such capabilities.
If you want to try something for the Mac that is truly innovative take a look at "Trans Lucy" which is shareware. It is a DVD player app that provides variable translucency for DVD videos. Apple didn't give that away either (or even offer it) but their API's made it possible. It does require a sufficiently capable graphics card.
"No where near as polished ..." There is no polite way to point out how completely busted you are. Both Amazon and iTMS offer music for sale. A huge difference between the two is that you can sample all the products at iTunes while sampling at Amazon is a stricly hit or miss proposition. Sometimes they have it in Real format, sometimes in WMA format. Maybe you can listen to it or maybe you have to try installing someone's player software. If you order from Amazon you probably have to pay shipping charges and wait for the product. With iTMS you just click and download the product for instant gratification.
I don't get where you would attempt a comparison to eBay where you stand a good chance of being stiffed by the seller (or buyer is you are a seller). Again, like Amazon, you are dealing with shipping products around physically.
I use both Amazon and eBay and have since they were newly minted services. They are very useful but in completely different categories from each other and from iTMS. But for shopping experience iTMS is incomparably smoother and better unless they don't have the track you want. If they have something close at least you are certainly going to be able to sample it.
Of course what iTMS really competes with are P2P networks. Even though the competition involves no specific charges, iTMS competes very well because it doesn't waste your time and it has decent quality control.
The whole knee jerk anti Jobs reaction seems to be missing an obvious established fact. Jobs is saying no to Glaser and Real. This doesn't mean he is saying no to everyone. They've already forged a deal with HP. Is he not supposed to have a choice which companies he wants to work with?
If you don't customarily run as a user with administrator privileges is it even possible to make the modifications needed to render your system a proxy/zombie for an attacker? I understand that if you provide an administrator password you can obtain administrator capabilities temporarily. But wouldn't the fact that launching an MP3 file asks for an administrator password (I'm assuming the trojan in this case tries to install something to give the attacker some lasting access, not just muck with your files) be an adequate clue that something is seriously wrong?
I suppose an important question is how many OS X users create one account just for administrator tasks and another account for day to day use (or more quantitatively what percentage have this setup). The accounts for my kids have always been without administrator privileges.
I don't want to be too nasty but your tone seems more than slightly smug without showing an impressive command of the relevant facts. There seem to be two situations being considered: costs for wifi implementation on British rail and costs for wifi implementation at places like coffee shops.
For the second case we have businesses trying various strategies from free access to metered per minute or megabyte. In the US it currently appears that free access is gaining the upper hand with wifi being treated as a differentiating amenity that businesses factor in to their costs like rent or taxes. I'm sure there are several reasons for this trend but one is certainly the phone company syndrome. That syndrome is that more than half of what you pay is actually incurred by the monitoring and accounting needed to present you with a bill. So to a large extent you are paying for them to produce a bill for you to pay. Eliminate all that added burden by making access "free", build the remaining cost into the costs for the main business (coffee shop, hotel, etc) and use it as a competitive advantage.
The first case is illuminated by the concepts taught in Economics 101. In particular the question of monopoly pricing since no one is allowed to compete with the wifi provision from the railroad. As anyone who has taken Economics 101 could tell you this will tend to cause prices to be higher than the socially optimum rate. I believe that might be what the original poster was complaining about.
As a matter of fact there are competitve pressures but they involve the person using a competing form of transportation such as an airline, bus transportation, or private car. So a proponent of passenger rail might look askance at a policy that prices wifi access high enough to erode use of his preferred mode of transportation.
>I have 8GB of music on my work computer. It's all legal - I own the CD or vinyl to match each one
You may think it is legal but the RIAA doesn't agree. They just haven't gotten around to suing you yet (and they probably won't). Last time I was taking the time to see what the RIAA was saying on various issues on their web site I was surprised to read that particular tidbit. Every time a copy is made their position is that they are owed a royalty. The fact that they were not pursuing every instance was due to there being only so many hours in a day, not an abdication of a position. If and when technical means are available it was clear they intend to pursue every such instance.
An organization like this has to be put firmly in its place. The AHRA of 1992 did almost no good at all. We need to put pressure on politicians to get laws updated to reflect something closer to reality. If copyright infringement occurs in the course of non-commercial activity it needs to be de-criminalized (I'm thinking of the DMCA here) and civil penalties need to be limited to something a reasonable citizen would find appropriate, not what an RIAA lawyer finds useful. It's an election year. If the issue matters to you then make certain you let others know.
You talk about DVI input and then call someone else fraudulent? Please line up and buy a clue. Almost the entire point of DVI is to prevent people from reading the digital signal. The only components with DVI in are monitors. They are adding HDCP in order to make it even more certain that only monitors ever see a signal from DVI.
On the issue of HDTV signals from an antenna you seem equally unacquainted with the facts. Around 99 % of the US population has the ability to receive digital TV signals with an antenna and some large fraction of those can receive HDTV. All the major networks and some of the minor ones are delivering HDTV content. With FOX upgrading to HDTV this fall the HD rollout will be complete. Then it is just a matter of time for the remaining lagards to catch up.
Many people seem to be at a loss to understand that they can view many (most) HD programs of interest using an antenna and not paying a cent to some company for the privilege. It is important for someone to point out that with the transition from NTSC to ATSC in the US the fact is that the absolutely best quality signal for video fidelity is now available for free using a receiver and antenna. Better than laserdisc, DVD, standard "digital cable", standard "digital satellite". If paying that absurd monthly bill makes you happy go ahead. But don't pretend there is anyting fraudulent about HDTV delivered for free by local stations.
You are wrong in multiple dimensions. First there is a huge selection of HD content on the major networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and additional HD content on WBand UPN. Starting in the fall FOX will be upgrading from 480p widescreen to true HD. These HD programs are not available in every single market but they are no longer rare.
On the issue of copy protection the FCC has decreed support for the Broadcast Flag but no encryption of over the air (OTA) signals. Part of the directive demands backward compatibility. So although you may not have many or possibly any computer HD receivers, any that you already own should continue to work. Putting off the purchase will force you to the used market (eBay).
Your reference to HDTV and the US is almost completely clueless. Are your other claims just as counter-factual? Japan introduced a technologically/economically doomed analog HDTV system which has essentially entirely collapsed. The US was the first to introduce an advanced digital HDTV standard and at this point no other country in the world is even within hailing distance of the deployment of HDTV in the US. Do you bother checking any facts before blurting out nonsense?
On a technological issue of possibly greater significance how would you choose to dismiss the complete dominance of US companies in the processor marketplace? Intel chose to leave the low margin memory chip market in order to decisively commit to the processor market. Together with AMD, IBM and Motorola their dominance has been for decades contrary to what many pundits predicted.
You have heard of the XBox?
If these cases go to court the RIAA has to defend the legitimacy of the newer laws they bought and paid for. Specifically, until quite recently there was no law against file copying that did not involve economic gain. Even more specifically an MIT student was being prosecuted for running a free FTP site and when the trial started his lawyer pointed this out and the case was thrown out. Subsequent to that they had their paid lackey's, like Howard Berman, pass new laws to criminalize this area of activity.
Many people obviously want such activity to be criminalized and are willing to lobby (ie pay) to make it so. But as spectacles like this occur we may find that society as a whole does not agree with that position. Don't forget that copyright law, according to the US Constitution, is only there to encourage the progress of arts and sciences, not to enrich people and corporations who proceed to create new 'categories of property'.
A number of scholars like Lawrence Lessig, Jessica Litman and many others have been making the case that copyright law has been about compromises between various powerful interests. Trying to apply it to essentially powerless (except as voters and jury members) individuals may inevitably lead to results that are antithetical to the primary justification for copyright law. That is, however you may feel about a specific instance of file copying, by outlawing the activity you may be doing more harm to the progress of arts and sciences than any benefit to companies in the RIAA or MPAA can offset.
We know large corporations stand to gain benefit from these laws that criminalize file copying and they have the patience to pay and influence to cause these abominations (like the DMCA) to become law. But if jurors are allowed to examine all the angles involved the corporations know that their cozy arrangements might become increasingly fragile. To avoid that possibility they seem to have engaged in behavior that is dangerously close to racketeering. We'll see if they have stepped over the line.
"Care to venture how many people had even heard of Patrick Stewart before he was cast as Jean Luc Picard?"
The BBC series "I, Claudius" was one of the best miniseries ever. Patrick Stewart played the prominent role of Sejanus brilliantly and memorably. That was a series filled with fine actors and plots based on actual events that took place two thousand years ago. I hope you take off your pointy ears on occasion and watch something besides sci fi.
It's a real shame that an actual scripted series with actors, costumes and sets might be canceled to make room for yet another cheap ass "reality" series. If no one watches the damn informercials and reality shows then they will go away. It is our own fault that we don't laugh at and pull down the pants of anyone with the temerity to discuss the details of the latest junk in public.
Mr. Crusher, how cool that you reply to posts on /. Does this mean that you are a viewer of the current Star Trek? I think there have been two or three episodes this season that are at the same level as the best episodes from previous series (including the Star Fleet Academy episode that introduced the actor who later played Tom Paris).
The worst part of this is that they are probably planning to replace it with another pathetic "reality" show.
"The main challenges that neither Blu-Ray nor HD-DVD solves: -- Security"
Why is such a demonstrably fallacious goal treated as anything but nonsense? If it had an ounce of validity how would it be possible that the DVD is such a runaway success? For several years "security" for the DVD format has been rendered impotent by DeCSS. The portion of the population that has access to a computer with a DVD drive and the necessary software has to be simply huge. So when can we expect to see the DVD market collapse?
The main challenge to a new format is sufficiently low cost and ease of use. If those are reduced in the foolish pursuit of "security" then the new discs will be wonderfully secure by virtue of being relegated to land fills. Judging from the ham-handed efforts at DRM by Microsoft for HD material I expect ease of use to be compromised and that consumers will stay away in droves.
I don't live in the UK. I visited there the summer before last. That is when I actually saw a lot of people in London actually carrying and using MD. Certainly not a careful, objective survey but it was far from my experience in the US.
In the future (ie not quite yet) I think that for use in the automobile only a hard drive makes sense. It seems that every technology is transitory and for higher quality, mobile audio systems MD had its day. This claim was obscured by marketing failures in the US. My observation about Sony is that even when they don't completely succeed they don't seem to cut and run like some other large technology companies.
Ha, the Blaupunkt minidisc player in my car can beat up your car audio player. No, seriously, it is great and it didn't cost much because of the opinions of ill-informed people such as you. So I guess I should be saying thank you. It is easy to create discs using my Sony MDS-PC1 using the playlist editing program that runs on Mac or PC. You realize that MD is a popular format in the UK and other non-US location and Sony never gives up easily.
Well, that's good for you and I don't mean that in a sarcastic manner. The issue remains that a fairly simple request for information was made and instead of providing a concise answer there seemed to be a lot of arguing over numbers that could eventually lead to an answer. I suppose I'm as easily tempted to get into less than illuminating arguments but I thought it would be useful in this case to cut directly to the answers to satisfy the curious. Again it requires a bit more than 9 gigabytes per hour to record and it is easily edited down to 5.5 gig if you want to save without ads.
Um, have you been around here very long to see the trends? How long do you think it will be until 20 terabyte drives are as common as 20 gigabyte drives are now? How long ago was a 20 megabyte drive considered capacious? Don't forget that disk capacity per dollar is growing exponentially and even faster than processor speed. There do not even have to be any novel innovations to get the next two orders of magnitude according to experts in the field. Forget P2P and all the other minor developments, cheap mammoth hard drives are the nightmare facing Hollywood and the RIAA.
Why are people who have never recorded any HD so anxious to jump in and insult each other? It takes a little over 9 gigabytes to record an hour long program. After removing commercials (easily done because at least for now they are essentially all in SD) and filtering out null packets it is about 5.5 gigabytes. Some people on the AVS forum have worked out a procedure to transcode (or re-encode, I'm not sure which) to Windows Media 9 format with excellent results and even further size reduction. But reducing to 5.5 gig is as simple as falling out of bed and just takes a few minutes.
Oh please, I've been in London and I've seen at least a smattering of TV in PAL format. I also have HDTV here in the US. Trying to pass off HDTV as just a little better than PAL is complete crap. You have zero credibility. Maybe it doesn't matter enough because of issues of program quality having nothing to do with resolution (essentially all of prime time programs except for reality and news magazines are already in HD). But it sounds just like sour grapes (like the fox said in Aesop "I don't care about those grapes I can't reach. They are certainly sour in any case") or your eyesight needs significant correction.
"This ruling eliminates any kind of non-authorized content, weither that is indie films, home movies, pirate TV stations, or illegal downloads"
OK, you need to share whatever you're smoking with everyone else. What is the source of this bizarre idea? I'm opposed to the broadcast flag but I'm not going to accuse it of stealing my luggage. You sound like the people who claimed nuclear power plants would melt down, jets would fall from the sky and pencils would stop writing because of Y2K.
What does the broadcast flag have to do with your stinkin' home movies? If people are going looney like you have here, how can informed debate stand a chance? Your local township's cable channel has NOTHING to do with the broadcast flag. Have you actually spent any time or effort trying to understand what the real issues are?
Relax, you haven't missed anything. Just a whole lot of slashdotters who don't seem to be aware that there is such a thing as HDTV. They are just assuming that DVD is the highest resolution available for TV. It's only been available for about 5 years (depending on how you mark the starting date) and varies by specific location. I bet a majority don't know that most of prime time is presented in HD.
No it isn't. Only FOX network tried to make that claim and they have finally blinked. Next fall they will start broadcasting 720p to join the other networks already broadcasting in HD. They are the last since UPN has started presenting Enterprise and Jake 2.0 both in HD as of two weeks ago.
480p widescreen is much better than regular NTSC but anyone can tell the difference between it and either of the true HD formats of 720p and 1080i after watching for a while.