You do if you want to transcode it at all (to fit it onto smaller media or remove region coding etc), but it's also possible to make a direct 1:1 copy including the encryption and thus don't need to decrypt it.
1) Release groups suck. I've never seen ONE decent rip of a DVD, EVER! Idiots that encode them use crappy apps that cause nasty ghosts. How that can happen when encoding from fully-progressive DVDs, I don't even know... They downscale the resolution dramatically to try and make up for their utter lack of video encoding knowledge... It's not uncommon for VCDs to look better than the hatchet job DVD-rips most people do. Agreed, most release groups think they're in competition to get the rip out as fast as possible, so they cut back on the quality to improve encoding speed. I also hate that lots of downloaded files are chopped into rar files... The video is already compressed, rar won't compress it any further, but it doubles the amount of space i need to unpack the video and watch it, and also means i need to keep the useless rar files hanging around if i want to seed the torrent.
2) I can do 2-pass encoding from the DVD in much less time than it takes to download the same film over my DSL connection... and mine will look infinitely better. Depends on processor speed and bandwidth... However, you don't take into account the time it takes you to obtain the DVD, even if you get next day delivery you would need a pretty slow connection for the download to be slower. You'd pretty much have to live next door to a video store to get DVDs quicker.
3) Upgrading to a higher-speed connection would cost more than my entire Netflix subscription, and still might not increase download speeds significantly. Depends on the ISP i guess, a faster connection could have other uses too. I need a fast link during the day to work, at night it would sit idle so downloading movies is a good use of it.
4) It's easy to find new releases online, and not too difficult to find older blockbusters and award winners. It's quite a bit more difficult to find cult films, independent films, and older pretty-good but overlooked films. Netflix has almost ALL of them, any time you want them. Good luck getting eg. Hell Comes To Frogtown, Canadian Bacon, etc. Agreed.. Local stores are even worse tho, the typical selection in a physical store is often limited to new and popular movies only. However, there aren't always netflix type services available to everyone. Then there's the availability of "out of region" movies, movie companies try to discriminate based on where you live as to what movies you can see and when, and try to prevent you buying imports, a behavior i find utterly deplorable.
5) Downloading movies you don't own is letter-of-the-law illegal. Making a copy of a DVD you have rented is just a bit on the legal side of the grey area... You are allowed to indefinitely time-shift rented DVDs just as you are with TV programs. Nobody wants to talk about this terribly inconvenient fact, however. Hmm, never realised it was legal to copy a rented movie...
And not necessarily lower bitrate either... There are some direct 1:1 digital copies available to download. You can also get better quality videos that are DVD sized, basically rips from HD sources but compressed using a more modern codec, so that they fit on a DVD but look better than a regular DVD would. And of course there are straight HD rips, which are great in places where original HD media isn't even available at all.
My biggest issue tho is the staggered release times... If a movie comes out several months earlier in another country, then chances are people in that country will tell me about it, thus spoiling the movie for me when it eventually comes out here...
Torrenting is hardly cpu intensive, you could use one of these new atom-based low power systems. Also chances are you're system would be running anyway. I intend to get a low power system to run mythtv, the slowest machine i can find that will play 1080p video properly. That will need to run 24/7 anyway to record scheduled shows... I will put the base OS on a solid state drive, and spin up the media drives as required.
Some cinemas here actually jam mobile phone signals when you're inside... That said, there are still other problems with the cinema... Uncomfortable chairs, other kinds of noise (eating, rustling of noisy food packaging etc) people getting in the way of the screen (tall people in front of you, people walking around to use the bathroom etc), not to mention the profiteering (stupidly overpriced and poor selection of food/drink, not allowed to bring any in from outside) I have a projector, good sound system and a large lcd tv at home, watching a 720p or 1080p movie on there is just fine for me, the screen may be smaller but i can sit closer so the experience is similar... I can sit in comfort, eat what i want, watch what i want when i want, pause the movie to use the bathroom, all without any distraction from others.
The biggest problem with windows mobile, is that it isn't actually windows... It is a completely different kernel, with a userland and interface that only has some similarities... Thus, even if more windows software had source code, you still couldn't recompile most of it to run. It's only windows by name. As phones become more powerful, they are more than capable of running software that would have run on a desktop system just a few years ago... And just look at how much has been ported to the iphone, so quickly, with an unofficial SDK, simply because it's OS is so similar to desktop OSX and other unixes... A program i wrote several years ago for Solaris compiled without modifications on the iphone.
A networkable quake3 that you can play over wifi with random people on the train would be fun. Infact, a phone with enough power to play good multiplayer games, wifi, the ability to auto detect other devices within range, and most importantly the ability to remote boot games from other users (so you dont need to rely on finding people with the same games) would be awesome... Just imagine the commute to work, and finding random other people on the train to play games with.
Perhaps this technology could be used to produce a very small quiet and low power consuming mythtv box...The noise of my current system can be annoying when trying to watch a movie, but i didn't want to skimp on the cpu because i wanted to play 1080p video on it.
If OpenOffice wasn't seen as a threat, then MS wouldn't need to work so hard keeping their formats closed and obscure. If they truly had the better product, it could stand on it's own and they wouldn't need to use dirty tricks to keep market share.
Why bother? Their products are lousy, yet people are buying them anyway... Why bother investing millions improving them to try and capture the trivial amount of marketshare lost to linux/mac?
This is the reason monopolies are bad, they don't need to bother trying to compete.
However, patent holders are a small minority, thus in a supposedly democratic country something that benefits a small minority at the expense of the masses should never happen.
Infact, patents like this only benefit patent trolls, they don't really benefit companies who have actual products of any complexity because of the risks of a counter suit, look at all the patents held by microsoft/ibm/sun/etc.
A typical copy protection scheme wouldn't make a drive vibrate like that, it's more likely that the media is poorly pressed and isn't balanced properly, causing it to vibrate when spinning at high rpm.
I would suggest that you pirate software instead, that way you can have the choice of media to put it on, and therefore choose to put it on higher quality media that carries less risk of damaging your hardware not to mention irritating you by the noise.
The problem was not so much that their proposed standard was flawed, but the fact they tried to fast track an unfinished standard of that size... The text is huge, much bigger than most other standards, so there wasn't enough time to review it thoroughly enough, and even then the first vote generated far too many comments to address in the time given before the resolution meeting. Also the fact the text was written by a single company, without any input from other interested parties.
Instead, it should have been submitted through the normal ISO process, so that the standard could have been brought to a usable state (however long that took) before it was submitted for voting.
More worrying is that someone willing to commit the crime of identity fraud isn't likely to think twice about breaking into large numbers of computers systems, scouring them for information and then turning them into compute nodes for cracking encryption. Thousands of compromised machines working together would make a fairly effective cluster.
No, ODF will only be compatible with the latest msoffice, while a lot of msoffice users have much older versions... That said, it gives those users on older versions an easier path if they choose to migrate to openoffice instead.
While you're right, most of the people who want these things also don't particularly care what product they use, and will use what they know about... They also tend to have rather limited requirements, and wouldn't want to spend a lot of money on it.
Someone who just types up a few letters or does their own limited accounts in a spreadsheet would be much better off with openoffice, if only due to the cost. There are also a number of cheap suites, such as msworks being marketed quite successfully to these people.
Large companies and governments on the other hand, are starting to realise the importance of open formats but are far more constrained by the need to support an existing corpus of documents in proprietary formats, and communication with other companies who use proprietary formats. There's also a large number of businesses who would like to implement openoffice for the financial savings if nothing else too.
Well, i am surprised to see Microsoft supporting ODF in their office suite, and before Apple too... Will they support it on the Mac version of office too?
It's also good to see Microsoft contributing towards the ISO/OASIS process for future versions of ODF, and if they have any genuinely worthwhile enhancements i hope they will be incorporated.
Now the questions are... How good will the support be? Will they deviate from the spec and introduce proprietary extensions? Will it let you set the default save format to ODF, on a single system and on a network via group policies? Did the EU put pressure on them to support ODF?
Yes, but will games actually take advantage of the standardised hardware, or will they just run through a compatibility layer like they currently do?
There really isn't much point having semi standardised hardware that implements a standardised software middleware layer, you have even more work to make sure that the middleware is up to scratch, as even a piece of hardware complying with the hardware specs could have software issues (eg poor drivers, background malware etc) that causes the games to underperform.
Which gives microsoft and apple the perfect opportunity to do it right... Instead of fragmentation among different distributors, they can create a single standard packaging system for their respective OS.
Which is why most packaging systems let you specify multiple repositories... If the main distributor doesn't support a package, chances are someone else will. The nokia n800 is a good example of this, there are a huge stack of third party repositories offering all kinds of different apps, the iphone (unofficial apps) has something similar too.
Then do it like debian's system... A single app that comes with the OS, and you configure multiple package sources for it. Each third party is responsible for their own repository, but the OS provides a standard that everyone uses... A third party service won't work, it won't be widely enough supported and thus have no incentive for other vendors to support it.
Which is expensive, and requires you to set up a windows system to run the update services on in addition to whatever client(s) you may have, and has some quite considerable work to set up... Far too much hassle for a single installation, only really makes sense with a significant number of machines, but then it becomes even more expensive.
Or you can install ubuntu, and it has the update feature right out of the box on one system, already configured and working, for free, with a huge selection of packages already registered with the system.
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You do if you want to transcode it at all (to fit it onto smaller media or remove region coding etc), but it's also possible to make a direct 1:1 copy including the encryption and thus don't need to decrypt it.
And not necessarily lower bitrate either...
There are some direct 1:1 digital copies available to download.
You can also get better quality videos that are DVD sized, basically rips from HD sources but compressed using a more modern codec, so that they fit on a DVD but look better than a regular DVD would.
And of course there are straight HD rips, which are great in places where original HD media isn't even available at all.
My biggest issue tho is the staggered release times... If a movie comes out several months earlier in another country, then chances are people in that country will tell me about it, thus spoiling the movie for me when it eventually comes out here...
Torrenting is hardly cpu intensive, you could use one of these new atom-based low power systems.
Also chances are you're system would be running anyway.
I intend to get a low power system to run mythtv, the slowest machine i can find that will play 1080p video properly. That will need to run 24/7 anyway to record scheduled shows...
I will put the base OS on a solid state drive, and spin up the media drives as required.
Just how many coasters do you need?
Some cinemas here actually jam mobile phone signals when you're inside...
That said, there are still other problems with the cinema...
Uncomfortable chairs, other kinds of noise (eating, rustling of noisy food packaging etc) people getting in the way of the screen (tall people in front of you, people walking around to use the bathroom etc), not to mention the profiteering (stupidly overpriced and poor selection of food/drink, not allowed to bring any in from outside)
I have a projector, good sound system and a large lcd tv at home, watching a 720p or 1080p movie on there is just fine for me, the screen may be smaller but i can sit closer so the experience is similar... I can sit in comfort, eat what i want, watch what i want when i want, pause the movie to use the bathroom, all without any distraction from others.
The biggest problem with windows mobile, is that it isn't actually windows... It is a completely different kernel, with a userland and interface that only has some similarities...
Thus, even if more windows software had source code, you still couldn't recompile most of it to run. It's only windows by name.
As phones become more powerful, they are more than capable of running software that would have run on a desktop system just a few years ago... And just look at how much has been ported to the iphone, so quickly, with an unofficial SDK, simply because it's OS is so similar to desktop OSX and other unixes...
A program i wrote several years ago for Solaris compiled without modifications on the iphone.
A networkable quake3 that you can play over wifi with random people on the train would be fun.
Infact, a phone with enough power to play good multiplayer games, wifi, the ability to auto detect other devices within range, and most importantly the ability to remote boot games from other users (so you dont need to rely on finding people with the same games) would be awesome...
Just imagine the commute to work, and finding random other people on the train to play games with.
Perhaps this technology could be used to produce a very small quiet and low power consuming mythtv box...The noise of my current system can be annoying when trying to watch a movie, but i didn't want to skimp on the cpu because i wanted to play 1080p video on it.
If OpenOffice wasn't seen as a threat, then MS wouldn't need to work so hard keeping their formats closed and obscure.
If they truly had the better product, it could stand on it's own and they wouldn't need to use dirty tricks to keep market share.
Why bother?
Their products are lousy, yet people are buying them anyway... Why bother investing millions improving them to try and capture the trivial amount of marketshare lost to linux/mac?
This is the reason monopolies are bad, they don't need to bother trying to compete.
However, patent holders are a small minority, thus in a supposedly democratic country something that benefits a small minority at the expense of the masses should never happen.
Infact, patents like this only benefit patent trolls, they don't really benefit companies who have actual products of any complexity because of the risks of a counter suit, look at all the patents held by microsoft/ibm/sun/etc.
Minus the numeric keyboard? I think you're thinking of the Amiga 600 rather than the 500...
A typical copy protection scheme wouldn't make a drive vibrate like that, it's more likely that the media is poorly pressed and isn't balanced properly, causing it to vibrate when spinning at high rpm.
I would suggest that you pirate software instead, that way you can have the choice of media to put it on, and therefore choose to put it on higher quality media that carries less risk of damaging your hardware not to mention irritating you by the noise.
The problem was not so much that their proposed standard was flawed, but the fact they tried to fast track an unfinished standard of that size...
The text is huge, much bigger than most other standards, so there wasn't enough time to review it thoroughly enough, and even then the first vote generated far too many comments to address in the time given before the resolution meeting.
Also the fact the text was written by a single company, without any input from other interested parties.
Instead, it should have been submitted through the normal ISO process, so that the standard could have been brought to a usable state (however long that took) before it was submitted for voting.
More worrying is that someone willing to commit the crime of identity fraud isn't likely to think twice about breaking into large numbers of computers systems, scouring them for information and then turning them into compute nodes for cracking encryption. Thousands of compromised machines working together would make a fairly effective cluster.
Some fonts do, some don't... does msoffice obey these flags or does it embed fonts anyway?
No, ODF will only be compatible with the latest msoffice, while a lot of msoffice users have much older versions...
That said, it gives those users on older versions an easier path if they choose to migrate to openoffice instead.
While you're right, most of the people who want these things also don't particularly care what product they use, and will use what they know about...
They also tend to have rather limited requirements, and wouldn't want to spend a lot of money on it.
Someone who just types up a few letters or does their own limited accounts in a spreadsheet would be much better off with openoffice, if only due to the cost. There are also a number of cheap suites, such as msworks being marketed quite successfully to these people.
Large companies and governments on the other hand, are starting to realise the importance of open formats but are far more constrained by the need to support an existing corpus of documents in proprietary formats, and communication with other companies who use proprietary formats. There's also a large number of businesses who would like to implement openoffice for the financial savings if nothing else too.
Well, i am surprised to see Microsoft supporting ODF in their office suite, and before Apple too...
Will they support it on the Mac version of office too?
It's also good to see Microsoft contributing towards the ISO/OASIS process for future versions of ODF, and if they have any genuinely worthwhile enhancements i hope they will be incorporated.
Now the questions are...
How good will the support be?
Will they deviate from the spec and introduce proprietary extensions?
Will it let you set the default save format to ODF, on a single system and on a network via group policies?
Did the EU put pressure on them to support ODF?
Yes, but will games actually take advantage of the standardised hardware, or will they just run through a compatibility layer like they currently do?
There really isn't much point having semi standardised hardware that implements a standardised software middleware layer, you have even more work to make sure that the middleware is up to scratch, as even a piece of hardware complying with the hardware specs could have software issues (eg poor drivers, background malware etc) that causes the games to underperform.
Which gives microsoft and apple the perfect opportunity to do it right...
Instead of fragmentation among different distributors, they can create a single standard packaging system for their respective OS.
Which is why most packaging systems let you specify multiple repositories...
If the main distributor doesn't support a package, chances are someone else will. The nokia n800 is a good example of this, there are a huge stack of third party repositories offering all kinds of different apps, the iphone (unofficial apps) has something similar too.
Then do it like debian's system...
A single app that comes with the OS, and you configure multiple package sources for it. Each third party is responsible for their own repository, but the OS provides a standard that everyone uses...
A third party service won't work, it won't be widely enough supported and thus have no incentive for other vendors to support it.
Which is expensive, and requires you to set up a windows system to run the update services on in addition to whatever client(s) you may have, and has some quite considerable work to set up... Far too much hassle for a single installation, only really makes sense with a significant number of machines, but then it becomes even more expensive.
Or you can install ubuntu, and it has the update feature right out of the box on one system, already configured and working, for free, with a huge selection of packages already registered with the system.