It appears you are confusing HDMI and HDCP. You do not need to use an HDMI interface to view HD content. DVI works. As does digital component video.
True, I'm personally viewing my HD DVD through component (and my TivoHD through HDMI). However, studios will eventually enable the flag on their HDDVD and BluRay discs prohibiting the HD content from going through component and DVI cables.
So we're in the clear for now but as soon as the studios have had enough, those without HDMI will be forced to watch new HD discs at 480.
Not much higher?.99 cents vs 2.00. I'd say that's a lot higher...like double.
He said DRM-free pricing. Apple's DRM-free tracks are $1.29 for 256 kbps. That's, what, 50% higher for uncompressed music. It's a valid argument.
In my opinion iTunes has 3 things going for it. I've listed them in order of importance to me.
Legal - I have enough stress in my life than to worry about whether I should riskdownloading some song illegally and risk a lawsuit. I make more than enough to support my music habit which consists of maybe 5 songs per month.
Cherry Picking - most of my iTunes library consists of singles, I might have 2-3 songs from an album but that's rare.
Instant Gratification - If I get a song stuck in my head, hear a good one on the radio, or somehow get some other urge to listen to a song I can get it pretty much instantly.
I'm not saying the Ringle thing is bad, I'd consider getting one if I liked all of the songs on the discs. If I like all of the songs then that takes care of "legal" and closely resembles "cherry picking." But then I'd either have to drive 30 minutes away to the nearest store just to get a CD, or wait until I need to run errands near it. So iTunes still wins out for me.
I hope this means that the demo of Netflix on cross platform browsers isn't too far from becoming a reality. Honestly, the only reason I even have a bootcamp partition on my MacBook Pro is for NetFlix's OnDemand feature.
I live across the pond, but my main grief with something like this is the way it would be used/abused. Once the data is somewhere, it's only a small step to expand its uses. Yes, DNA evidence is great for crime fighting and with it you can help exclude suspects or arrest criminals. But fortunately only a small percentage of the population has been arrested, so the current data storage isn't so massive. But what happens when this goes from 2% of the population to 100%?
Unlike fingerprints, which serve as act as close to a "natural serial number" as we can get, DNA stores almost everything biological about you. What are your chances for disease X, are you likely to become addicted to compound Y, etc. As we map more and more gene sequences we increase the amount we can learn about a person. Sure, a lot of it is something you'd like to know about yourself (am I prone to cancer?), but it's probably also more than you'd like other people to know.
Once everyone's DNA is indexed somewhere then it opens up a can of worms. It's inevitable that at some point it will be misused. Perhaps it's opened up for other uses (Insurance companies, public domain, etc) or maybe someone just gets access to the data.
We've already proven we cannot fully trust organizations (both private and federal) to keep simple data safe (SSNs, account numbers, credit card numbers, etc). Hell, here in the states loan firms were getting unauthorized access to students' profiles for months before anyone noticed. Why would letting these same organizations keep everyone's DNA be any safer?
I guess it's inevitable that national citizen DNA databases will be setup, 10 years from now or 50. I just think that if the present is any indicator, we need to get serious about how we protect and use said data.
No problem. I purchased a song a while back that is no longer offered on iTunes for some reason. It still has the DRM on it and I can still listen to it on my "authorized" PCs, even after multiple reformats and such.
In simplest terms each file is locked to your account whether or not the file is still available for sale, and via iTunes you can authorize a machine to play music purchased by your account.
iTunes isn't a subscription, you download the media file with a piece of DRM. The DRM then essentially says "you can only play this file if this machine is authorized for your account." You can have up to 5 devices activated for an account, so you can listen to it on your laptop, desktop, iPod, etc. Authorization only takes a second or 2, but once authorized you don't need an Internet connection to listen to said music.
If you try activating a 6th device you'll need to unauthorize 1 of the 5 current devices, and the function is available via iTunes installed on that device. Or, if you no longer have access to that device there's a option to de-authorize ALL of your devices so you can start authorizing from scratch.
They will continue to work. For example, I purchased a song on iTunes that for some reason is no longer available, but even after multiple reformats on my OS partition I am able to listen to it.
Given the hype around Y2K, the environment, and everything else that we have been told is "bad and will happen- it just hasn't happened yet" I can understand that attitude.
Well, Y2K wasn't too bad because companies were panicking. They paid consultants huge sums to patch up their code so they wouldn't go dark come the new year.
Back then I was still working at a store during college, and that company (and my boss) didn't pay any real attention even though their system was very old. The first day we were open after Jan 1st SUCKED. The computers were out, the cash registers were out, the barcode scanners were out. We had power, but the computers were all dead. And of course we don't price individual items.
While that sounds like no big deal, everyone was coming in to buy loads of food, supplies, etc and there were only 3 employees. So we either had to check the shelves for the price of each item until a tech came at noon.
That day sucked so bad it wasn't even funny. I just forget if it was Jan 1st or Jan 2nd 2000.
Ah, but what is "unlimited service?" They could easily describe "unlimited" in fine print in the contract and I always see fine-print at the bottom of the end of a commercial. Sometimes the commercial fine print is so small it won't even render on a 480i TV.
It could be along the lines of a car offer with "a year's worth of gas." That sounds awesome until you find out it's only $500, which covers 100 miles per week and the average American drivers 200-300 per week. Sure, it's still a nice offer but no really what your brain immediately jumped to: "Yay! No paying for gas for a year!"
I'm not saying it's right, but they could have things setup enough so that it's barely legal. Just enough fine print on the commercial to say "We the provider consider the term unlimited to mean as much as we are able to offer without impacting the overall network architecture, and we reserve the rights to alter the definition of unlimited as the environment changes."
Seems like a smart lawyer out to be able to be able to take comcast to court for failing to meet their contractual obligations. Maybe even put together a class action suit if there are enough people with some sort of documentation of long-term consistent usage getting the same treatment out of the blue.
Not true. IANAL but in their contract it could say something like "We the provider reserve the right to change requirements and restrictions at our choosing, and may enforce said requirements and restrictions at our discretion."
That would cover them pretty legally, though keeping everything secret is a jerk thing to do. Who knows, perhaps the secretive act alone might violate some little law somewhere.
I just had 2 technicians come in last week to install them in my Tivo HD.
The actual work took maybe 2 minutes, and if I had the cards and a phone number for support I could have done it myself. The thing is they can't do everything on my end, they have to call the office, read off some ID numbers from the diagnostic screen, and wait for the person on the other end to activate them. Unfortunately the person put them on hold for 15 minutes, then didn't know any of the procedures, and refused to pass them to someone who did. So after waiting for her to pt them off hold they had to step her through it from memory. They were annoyed at her to say the least.
So 2 minutes of work took 45 minutes. They work fine, but there's a glitch on my Tivo HD that Tivo is working on: random pixelation. They have it narrowed down to people that use a specific brand of CableCard (for the most part) and are hoping to fix it via a software update.
They said it doesn't matter, in a few months BestBuy and the like will be selling Cable Boxes in the stores, but they say they're cheaply made.
Take with a grain of salt, but one thing I recall hearing someone say is that Einstein was talking about accelerating matter (with mass) to the speed of light, and that approaching the speed of light causes the mass to increase exponentially, which then raises the energy requirements exponentially. Since photons have zero mass, the energy requirements wouldn't increase exponentially due to mass increase since x*0 = 0.
Funny, when people realized the DRM-free iTunes music came with the user's email, one of the "big fears" everyone was having was that they were also watermarking the music. The radio news was all abuzz about Big Brother this and Watermark that.
Personally I'm fine w/ watermarking so long as it doesn't degrade the sound. If I hear a pop in a song I'll be mad. But since I don't pirate music I really don't care if they have a way to determine if that file actually belongs to me, and if it allows me to play their music in other AAC players then all-the-beter.
And yet I still have to pay for it even though I can't use it, because of their stupid Windows-only implementation.
Hmmm, I must have missed the press release where they raised their prices after activated the "Watch Now" feature. Wait, I didn't... there simply was no price raise. They gave us a new feature without raising our prices, so you can't complain that you're paying for it if you already have a NetFlix account.
I'm primarily a OSX user, my main rig is a MacBook Pro. I only boot into BootCamp to run NetFlix and a 1-2 games, but supposedly they are working on extending OS support for NetFlix.
Actually, the netflix model seems weird in that you can only watch 6 hours a month. I assume that when the guy says the time constraint is still there, you lose from the 6 hours. On one hand, there is the agreement you sign. But what I am complaining about is the restriction on fair use that these agreements force you to accept.
Actually, it's an hour for every dollar you spend on your subscription a month. So if you have a pricier subscription, say 4 movies-at-a-time, you're getting 16-20 hours a month.
I'm actually pretty annoyed about this. In my opinion, NetFlix was doing a good thing for us. Without raising the monthly price, not only do you get to keep renting DVDs in the same manner but you also get to rent movies online. Sure, it's no DVD (quality or location) but that's pretty darned good. I was ecstatic.
Now this will ruffle feathers and give the Movie industry the chance to say "We told you so... Online streaming doesn't work, etc"
I don't see why people are so happy about this, except that they probably pirate everything in sight. There are obviously going to be repercussions down the road, and it will regular customers (like me) that will get the shaft.
Either:
We'll lose the service
they'll start charging more
they'll drop plans to support other Operatings Systems
they'll cripple it to the point that it's useless.
would agree that if it wasn't for the free in-store rentals, my wife and I would have Netflix, but it's something we simply can't pass up. Basically now you just bring in your finished mailed DVD and get a free rental from the store.
I was very close to signing up for BlockBuster's service. However I remembered that the store in my town is horrible: their stock is laughable and they never have what I want. I walked through the store a couple of times trying to find movies on the list I'd want to initially create in NetFlix and they had maybe 1/5th.
So I went w/ NetFlix. If the BlockBuster in my town actually had a large selection then it would be a no-brainer, the immediate swap-out is just all-too-tempting, but that's not worth a darn if they don't have anything to swap back to you.
That's why a component for component matching laptop from Dell or HP costs roughly $1K more?
I haven't done the comparison in a while, but the last time I specced out a high-end Dell laptop meeting all of the Apple MacBook specs, it wasn't that far apart. Maybe $200-$300, which isn't chump change but nowhere near as bad as you say.
Then again, it's been a while. I have no idea where they are now.
Networks have more viewers than cable. They get more return on the investment if they air it on FOX as opposed to Comedy Central, not to mention now Fox suddenly saves themselves money since they don't have to pay for another show to fill that timeslot.
That is true, but you're not looking at the big picture. While US Network shows have bigger budgets and their audiences are 10x greater, they have downsides.
They're more likely to cancel if the show isn't a major success, while Cable channels will let a show ride.
Networks worry more about the FCC and morality groups, so unless you have a lot of weight behind you they tend to freak out when they find out you want to touch on a particular subject or make a particular joke.
While Cable channels are pretty hands-off about the day-to-day, Networks are more pushy. This is partially because of fear of the FCC, but also for other reasons. Unless it's a major success they tend to try to tell the creative teams how to do their jobs.
A lot of shows that did well and lasted 3+ seasons (good or bad) on Cable would have gotten the axe on a Network before even the end of the first season. Likewise, said shows would not have been "the same" if they were on network.
Sure, Network shows get all of the attention, reach audiences an order-of-magnitude greater than cable, and tend to have bigger budgets but they have downsides.
Well, like I said I would tell them in person (if possible) because it is the right thing to do. After all, it's not my money. I also used to work with money for a while, and know how annoying it is to have to account for large sums and the major headache of your count being off by a couple of dollars.
The only problem I have is if this happen when the bank is closed then it becomes a hassle. Let's say after hours I do a fast cash widrawl of $60, but it instead gives me $80. Obviously something is in error, but the bank is closed so there's nobody to talk to.
The next day I'd have to try to schedule some time to call them up, give them a ring, let them know about the problem, talk to a manager, etc. And it's not as simple as "Hey, the ATM gave me an extra $20..." it instead becomes a long conversation: "what day / time did it happen, are you sure you didn't enter it in wrong, are you sure you counted right, do you still have the receipt, etc. My guess is more-than-not I'd have to go there in person, as my experience is the bank is to lazy to just do things the easy way (like just take it out of my account).
In the end, would I still contact them? Probably, but it's still a hassle.
If this happened to me during while the bank was open, I'd go inside and let the tellers and/or manager know. After all it wouldn't take me too much time, it would be the "right" thing to do, and I wouldn't have to worry about getting in trouble. I mean I'm there anyway already, so why not just tell them.
If this happened to me while the bank was closed, which is a good percentage of the day / week, then it gets annoying. It's one thing to pop my head in and say "Excuse me, but bla-bla-bla" but the only time I'm free when the bank is open is Thursday nights (for 1 hour) and Saturdays. So it's a real hassle to:
remember about it the next day
wait until I have the extra time to call from my job (since there isn't a branch near my work)
lookup the number
get past the annoying automated touch-tone-service
speak to a manager
etc
But I guess if I didn't do all of that, then it's my fault they screwed up.
You can buy phones from Sony Ericsson direct, unlocked and ready to use on a SIM-capable network. Their phones range from plain-vanilla to more robust. Offhand, I don't know if they offer a SmartPhone.
Anyway, that's where I bought mine. I already had an El-Cheapo phone from Cingular and I migrated the SIM card to the Sony.
Unfortunately, you pay. Unlike the providers that offer them at major discounts to get you hooked, SE more-or-less sells the unlocked phones at the same price the providers sell the locked versions without a contract / renewal.
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So we're in the clear for now but as soon as the studios have had enough, those without HDMI will be forced to watch new HD discs at 480.
He said DRM-free pricing. Apple's DRM-free tracks are $1.29 for 256 kbps. That's, what, 50% higher for uncompressed music. It's a valid argument.
In my opinion iTunes has 3 things going for it. I've listed them in order of importance to me.
I'm not saying the Ringle thing is bad, I'd consider getting one if I liked all of the songs on the discs. If I like all of the songs then that takes care of "legal" and closely resembles "cherry picking." But then I'd either have to drive 30 minutes away to the nearest store just to get a CD, or wait until I need to run errands near it. So iTunes still wins out for me.
If you go to the Silverlight homepage they have very short list of samples. You can click "See more" to see an expanded list, but it isn't huge.
I hope this means that the demo of Netflix on cross platform browsers isn't too far from becoming a reality. Honestly, the only reason I even have a bootcamp partition on my MacBook Pro is for NetFlix's OnDemand feature.
I live across the pond, but my main grief with something like this is the way it would be used/abused. Once the data is somewhere, it's only a small step to expand its uses. Yes, DNA evidence is great for crime fighting and with it you can help exclude suspects or arrest criminals. But fortunately only a small percentage of the population has been arrested, so the current data storage isn't so massive. But what happens when this goes from 2% of the population to 100%?
Unlike fingerprints, which serve as act as close to a "natural serial number" as we can get, DNA stores almost everything biological about you. What are your chances for disease X, are you likely to become addicted to compound Y, etc. As we map more and more gene sequences we increase the amount we can learn about a person. Sure, a lot of it is something you'd like to know about yourself (am I prone to cancer?), but it's probably also more than you'd like other people to know.
Once everyone's DNA is indexed somewhere then it opens up a can of worms. It's inevitable that at some point it will be misused. Perhaps it's opened up for other uses (Insurance companies, public domain, etc) or maybe someone just gets access to the data.
We've already proven we cannot fully trust organizations (both private and federal) to keep simple data safe (SSNs, account numbers, credit card numbers, etc). Hell, here in the states loan firms were getting unauthorized access to students' profiles for months before anyone noticed. Why would letting these same organizations keep everyone's DNA be any safer?
I guess it's inevitable that national citizen DNA databases will be setup, 10 years from now or 50. I just think that if the present is any indicator, we need to get serious about how we protect and use said data.
No problem. I purchased a song a while back that is no longer offered on iTunes for some reason. It still has the DRM on it and I can still listen to it on my "authorized" PCs, even after multiple reformats and such.
In simplest terms each file is locked to your account whether or not the file is still available for sale, and via iTunes you can authorize a machine to play music purchased by your account.
iTunes isn't a subscription, you download the media file with a piece of DRM. The DRM then essentially says "you can only play this file if this machine is authorized for your account." You can have up to 5 devices activated for an account, so you can listen to it on your laptop, desktop, iPod, etc. Authorization only takes a second or 2, but once authorized you don't need an Internet connection to listen to said music.
If you try activating a 6th device you'll need to unauthorize 1 of the 5 current devices, and the function is available via iTunes installed on that device. Or, if you no longer have access to that device there's a option to de-authorize ALL of your devices so you can start authorizing from scratch.
So, a
They will continue to work. For example, I purchased a song on iTunes that for some reason is no longer available, but even after multiple reformats on my OS partition I am able to listen to it.
Well, Y2K wasn't too bad because companies were panicking. They paid consultants huge sums to patch up their code so they wouldn't go dark come the new year.
Back then I was still working at a store during college, and that company (and my boss) didn't pay any real attention even though their system was very old. The first day we were open after Jan 1st SUCKED. The computers were out, the cash registers were out, the barcode scanners were out. We had power, but the computers were all dead. And of course we don't price individual items.
While that sounds like no big deal, everyone was coming in to buy loads of food, supplies, etc and there were only 3 employees. So we either had to check the shelves for the price of each item until a tech came at noon.
That day sucked so bad it wasn't even funny. I just forget if it was Jan 1st or Jan 2nd 2000.
Ah, but what is "unlimited service?" They could easily describe "unlimited" in fine print in the contract and I always see fine-print at the bottom of the end of a commercial. Sometimes the commercial fine print is so small it won't even render on a 480i TV.
It could be along the lines of a car offer with "a year's worth of gas." That sounds awesome until you find out it's only $500, which covers 100 miles per week and the average American drivers 200-300 per week. Sure, it's still a nice offer but no really what your brain immediately jumped to: "Yay! No paying for gas for a year!"
I'm not saying it's right, but they could have things setup enough so that it's barely legal. Just enough fine print on the commercial to say "We the provider consider the term unlimited to mean as much as we are able to offer without impacting the overall network architecture, and we reserve the rights to alter the definition of unlimited as the environment changes."
That would cover them pretty legally, though keeping everything secret is a jerk thing to do. Who knows, perhaps the secretive act alone might violate some little law somewhere.
I just had 2 technicians come in last week to install them in my Tivo HD.
The actual work took maybe 2 minutes, and if I had the cards and a phone number for support I could have done it myself. The thing is they can't do everything on my end, they have to call the office, read off some ID numbers from the diagnostic screen, and wait for the person on the other end to activate them. Unfortunately the person put them on hold for 15 minutes, then didn't know any of the procedures, and refused to pass them to someone who did. So after waiting for her to pt them off hold they had to step her through it from memory. They were annoyed at her to say the least.
So 2 minutes of work took 45 minutes. They work fine, but there's a glitch on my Tivo HD that Tivo is working on: random pixelation. They have it narrowed down to people that use a specific brand of CableCard (for the most part) and are hoping to fix it via a software update.
They said it doesn't matter, in a few months BestBuy and the like will be selling Cable Boxes in the stores, but they say they're cheaply made.
Photons have no mass.
Take with a grain of salt, but one thing I recall hearing someone say is that Einstein was talking about accelerating matter (with mass) to the speed of light, and that approaching the speed of light causes the mass to increase exponentially, which then raises the energy requirements exponentially. Since photons have zero mass, the energy requirements wouldn't increase exponentially due to mass increase since x*0 = 0.
Personally I'm fine w/ watermarking so long as it doesn't degrade the sound. If I hear a pop in a song I'll be mad. But since I don't pirate music I really don't care if they have a way to determine if that file actually belongs to me, and if it allows me to play their music in other AAC players then all-the-beter.
Great, I may live to hear some alien life form call us "ugly bags of mostly water." Just don't let them near the laser drill.
Yeh, but that's the super-deluxe version with a helment. Note: a NON-WEARABLE helmet (too small for even a child).
But I agree, that's a bit much. I pre-ordered, but only the regular version.
I'm primarily a OSX user, my main rig is a MacBook Pro. I only boot into BootCamp to run NetFlix and a 1-2 games, but supposedly they are working on extending OS support for NetFlix.
I'm actually pretty annoyed about this. In my opinion, NetFlix was doing a good thing for us. Without raising the monthly price, not only do you get to keep renting DVDs in the same manner but you also get to rent movies online. Sure, it's no DVD (quality or location) but that's pretty darned good. I was ecstatic.
Now this will ruffle feathers and give the Movie industry the chance to say "We told you so... Online streaming doesn't work, etc"
I don't see why people are so happy about this, except that they probably pirate everything in sight. There are obviously going to be repercussions down the road, and it will regular customers (like me) that will get the shaft.
Either:
So I went w/ NetFlix. If the BlockBuster in my town actually had a large selection then it would be a no-brainer, the immediate swap-out is just all-too-tempting, but that's not worth a darn if they don't have anything to swap back to you.
I just wish NetFlix's "Watch Now" feature didn't require Windows + Internet Explorer. That's just annoying.
Then again, it's been a while. I have no idea where they are now.
- They're more likely to cancel if the show isn't a major success, while Cable channels will let a show ride.
- Networks worry more about the FCC and morality groups, so unless you have a lot of weight behind you they tend to freak out when they find out you want to touch on a particular subject or make a particular joke.
- While Cable channels are pretty hands-off about the day-to-day, Networks are more pushy. This is partially because of fear of the FCC, but also for other reasons. Unless it's a major success they tend to try to tell the creative teams how to do their jobs.
A lot of shows that did well and lasted 3+ seasons (good or bad) on Cable would have gotten the axe on a Network before even the end of the first season. Likewise, said shows would not have been "the same" if they were on network.Sure, Network shows get all of the attention, reach audiences an order-of-magnitude greater than cable, and tend to have bigger budgets but they have downsides.
Well, like I said I would tell them in person (if possible) because it is the right thing to do. After all, it's not my money. I also used to work with money for a while, and know how annoying it is to have to account for large sums and the major headache of your count being off by a couple of dollars.
The only problem I have is if this happen when the bank is closed then it becomes a hassle. Let's say after hours I do a fast cash widrawl of $60, but it instead gives me $80. Obviously something is in error, but the bank is closed so there's nobody to talk to.
The next day I'd have to try to schedule some time to call them up, give them a ring, let them know about the problem, talk to a manager, etc. And it's not as simple as "Hey, the ATM gave me an extra $20..." it instead becomes a long conversation: "what day / time did it happen, are you sure you didn't enter it in wrong, are you sure you counted right, do you still have the receipt, etc. My guess is more-than-not I'd have to go there in person, as my experience is the bank is to lazy to just do things the easy way (like just take it out of my account).
In the end, would I still contact them? Probably, but it's still a hassle.
If this happened to me while the bank was closed, which is a good percentage of the day / week, then it gets annoying. It's one thing to pop my head in and say "Excuse me, but bla-bla-bla" but the only time I'm free when the bank is open is Thursday nights (for 1 hour) and Saturdays. So it's a real hassle to:
- remember about it the next day
- wait until I have the extra time to call from my job (since there isn't a branch near my work)
- lookup the number
- get past the annoying automated touch-tone-service
- speak to a manager
- etc
But I guess if I didn't do all of that, then it's my fault they screwed up.You can buy phones from Sony Ericsson direct, unlocked and ready to use on a SIM-capable network. Their phones range from plain-vanilla to more robust. Offhand, I don't know if they offer a SmartPhone.
Anyway, that's where I bought mine. I already had an El-Cheapo phone from Cingular and I migrated the SIM card to the Sony.
Unfortunately, you pay. Unlike the providers that offer them at major discounts to get you hooked, SE more-or-less sells the unlocked phones at the same price the providers sell the locked versions without a contract / renewal.