Before you get crazy calling things my own logic, you should make sure you're basing that on what I actually said, and not what you thought I meant.
Gosh, I am so sorry. I was going under the assumption that you were moderately effective in communicating your thought processes. Now I see how wrong I was. Instead of questioning your logic, I should've just torn you a new one on your pathetic communications skills.
Anyway, your "revised" point still makes no sense at all. You think this is "an unreasonable measure, since it is likely to produce 100% false positives." Now let's examine the logic of that statement...assuming, of course, that it's what you really meant to say this time instead of something you're going to retroactively redact in your next response.
Just how do you think it's "likely to produce 100% false positives?" What data do you have to back up this assertion? Perhaps you should've said "likely to produce mostly false positives" and that might've been something I would let pass. But since you want to be such a stickler for words, I just can't in good faith let it go without a challenge. So, step up and defend your point, sir! Or not...
So, since you're destined to lose on this particular point, I'll cut to the chase: this method of detection is likely to produce more false positives than real ones. That being said, 99 false positives will not kill you, but 1 missed positive just might. I'm sure, in your infinite wisdom and all-seeing, all-knowing omniscience, you are perfectly happy to pretend that you're comfortable that 1% might escape detection.
Me, on the other hand...I want to have that extra bit of assurance, especially since the "misery" of those false positives is trivial beyond compare. Think about this for a moment if you can actually bring yourself to do so: you are arguing that it's more trouble to get stopped in a manner no more insidious than your average traffic stop than it is to get blown up by a dirty bomb. If they took this guy (and his cat), carted them off to jail, held them without charges, beat them into a confession, gave them a mock trial, and executed them both, I'd say your objections had a leg to stand on. None of that happened. Instead, the guy was stopped, the police asked some questions, and life went on.
I'll go even further with this oh-so-appropriate analogy: if you had a fatal disease and the best known cure only had a 1% success rate, would you complain that it's too much trouble to try the cure? Or would you instead beat the doctor's door down and demand the cure (probably at government taxpayer expense, given your disposition on this issue, but I digress)? Nuclear terrorism is something we must fight with all available cures, so long as those cures do not erode our basic freedoms in any reasonable way.
The number of people in this country who are likely to be stopped because they've had radiation therapy (or because their co-traveling pets have) is shockingly, amazingly, pathetically, dismissively, undeniably small. Your willingness to argue so unsuccessfully on behalf of such a tiny minority certainly makes you the most compassionate person on the planet, but it doesn't gain you any recognition in the intelligence department. Somehow, I doubt you're doing it "for them." No, you're doing it for you because you have a bone to pick, an axe to grind, and a chip on your shoulder so big it's blocking your vision. I said it before and I'll say it again: methinks thou dost protest too much.
Now, you're also very likely to use the tired old canard of "there are more effective ways of doing this job without encroaching on our freedoms." Putting the "encroachment" angle aside for a moment, why don't you try putting some meat on those bones? If you think you have a better idea on how to catch rogue nuclear material moving across this country -- a method that has fewer false positives, less false negatives, or a combination of the two, all without encroaching on
Richard Armitage was the Deputy Secretary of State under Colin Powell.
So, you agree then that I'm right and you're wrong.
Thus your claim that Bush was somehow behind this rings quite hollow.
I made no such claim. I said that a member of the Bush administration leaked the name, which you just confirmed. I generally make it a policy not to argue with blithering idiots, but for you I'll make an exception. Here, let me walk you through it so you don't get lost this time: I never stated Armitage was not a member of the administration. You made that up. You conjured it out of thin air in a attempt to beat me over the head with it. The problem with your strategy is that it's not only stupid, it's ineffective. You should try picking something your opponent actually said and beat them over the head with it. Instead, you've taken your insubstantial argument and tried to use it to allude to a link between Bush and the Plame affair. Don't play coy and don't try being disingenuous. We both know that was what you were aiming -- yet failing -- to do, so just own up to it and be done. Otherwise your comment, instead of merely being wrong, was pointless. So, which would you rather be, stupid or pointless? Either way, it doesn't look too good for you at this point, bub.
There is no direct link from Bush to Plame, there never was such a link, and there never will be such a link...except in your overly-imaginative-yet-tragically-undersized cranium. Sorry, it seems I broke your argument. Hope you kept the receipt. Toodles. It's been fun poking you with a sharp stick, but I really do have talented, worthwhile debaters elsewhere who have something interesting to say, and I don't have time to mess with junior-league wannabees like you tonight.
Richard Armitage leaked her name (and probably others as well).
Richard Armitage was a member of the Bush administration.
Richard Armitage was the Deputy Secretary of State under Colin Powell. Powell's disagreements with the Administration's foreign policy are well known (one reason why he vacated the post), and Armitage shared these same viewpoints. To call Armitage a member of the Bush Administration is correct in the sense that he worked there, but you're trying to paint him as some sort of Bush sympathizer doing his master's bidding. Perhaps it would help if your patsy were actually sympathetic to the Bush cause, but he was not and still isn't. Thus your claim that Bush was somehow behind this rings quite hollow.
The facts are explicitly not on your side in this statement. This has been reported in every major newspaper and on every news station. It is a matter of easily accessible public record. If that's the case and it's so cut and dried, perhaps you'll be so kind as to point out what facts are not on my side. Armitage was the source of the leak, as confirmed by Woodward, Armitage, and the special investigative council. Plame was not on the CIA's payroll as a covert agent at the time Armitage leaked her name, nor has it been confirmed that she was in the prior five years which constitutes the legal definition of "covert." Wilson has published a book which covers Plame's "covert" career in detail. Armitage was the Deputy Secretary of State under Colin Powell, and both of them were critics of Bush foreign policy despite being members of the administration.
Please, by all means, try your best to find fault with any of the above. If the best you can do is say that it's true because you heard it on the news somewhere, you've got a lot to learn about how to effectively debate your point.
Right. I mean there's been so many dirty bombs going off all over the place that it's totally worth inconveniencing medical and veterinary cancer patients...
Your post shows a shocking lack of perspective. Have you even considered that the reason there haven't been dirty bombs going off all over the place could be because we have such sensors in place?
Taken literally, your idea means that we should abandon all pro-active measures to prevent any and all kinds of violence or other crimes. Why do we need police? I've never been mugged. Why do we need a military? I've never been invaded. Why do we need anything preventative at all in this world? What you're suggesting is tantamount to "Since all the criminals are locked up in prison, there's no crime, so why do we need prisons if there's no crime?" Such a stance is patently absurd, yet you somehow find it logical. Amazing. Hopefully you're not of voting age.
As for your claim that it's "inconveniencing medical and veterinary cancer patients," I'll throw a little of your own logic right back at you: this can't possibly be inconveniencing that many people because this is the first time I've ever heard of it.
My cat just received treatment for a benign thyroid tumor causing hyperthyroidism. It cost a bloody fortune (US$1,100) but it was either that or medicate him twice a day for the rest of his life (euthanasia was not open to consideration). The clinic was RadioCat in Marietta, GA. Take a look at their logo and tell me if it doesn't bring back memories of Napster's...but I digress.
The clinic kept him for three days after the treatment, both to observe and to let some of the radioactivity die down. After he came home, we had to keep him separate from our other cats (we have five total). We were cautioned not to dispose of his litter in the trash; it should be flushed. The clinic said the county dumps have radiological sensors that scan everything going into the dump, and the litter would definitely set off the sensors. It would cause an investigation that would have the trash company trace back where that particular trash truck picked up garbage from and could cause a lot of unneeded trouble. We were advised not to hold the cat for more than 20-30 minutes per day and to wash our hands thoroughly after any contact with the cat.
I knew our pet would be "hot" when he came home, but I had no idea the cat could set off a roadside sensor. Either this fellow didn't let the lab keep the cat for the required 3-4 days before transporting him or the sensor was amazingly sensitive. If so, I'm actually quite happy about it. If somebody is transporting a radioactive cat is found, they're detected, nobody gets their fur in a fluff, and everybody goes their way. If somebody is transporting a dirty bomb or components thereof, they're detected and law enforcement deals with it. I see nothing here to complain about.
Valerie Plame. The Federal government basically said: if you speak out against us, we're going to use all our powers to make your lives miserable. And the fact that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage -- a vocal critic of the Bush administration -- admitted to leaking Plame's name -- not Karl Rove, Cheney, or anyone else in Bush's "close advisers" group -- doesn't matter one little bit to you, does it? Bob Woodward, the reporter that broke the Plame story, admitted under oath that Armitage was his source. Armitage himself came out and admitted he was the source as well after he was assured of immunity.
I'm sure it also doesn't matter that Plame herself could not verify she fit the definition of a "covert agent" -- this while under oath and testifying in front of the Congressional inquiry. The CIA itself could not verify she had covert status at the time of the disclosure, and in the meantime Plame's neighbors testified she made no secret of her work at the CIA. Seems she wasn't particularly eager to keep her work under wraps at all...at least, not until it was politically convenient to do so.
Also, let's not forget that Plame was made so "miserable" (to use your adjective) at being "outed" that, in order to avoid more public intrusion into her life, her husband wrote a book about the whole affair and loudly promoted it on a nationwide book tour. Plame herself has delivered paid speaking engagements on the affair. She's making far more money now than she ever did for the CIA. Yep, nothing but misery here. But don't let that get in the way of you screaming, frothing, and vituperating that it's all the fault of some vast right-wing Bush Conspiracy(tm).
When trying to have an objective, reasoned debate about policy, it's always unhelpful to use politically-charged, inflammatory language like "domestic spying." The name makes it seem like the government is flying around in black helicopters in the dead of night, spying in you windows and reading your mail. The reality is nothing of the sort and is being taken completely out of context.
Are conversations between two U.S.-based citizens being monitored? Absolutely not. Are conversations initiated in the U.S. to overseas destinations being monitored? Absolutely not. Are general conversations originating outside the U.S. to U.S.-based destinations being monitored? Absolutely not. Are conversations originating from known or suspected terrorist organizations to U.S.-based destinations being monitored? Yes, they are. This is not "domestic spying," this is anti-terrorist intelligence gathering.
I strongly believe the authorities in the U.S. should obtain warrants for this type of activity (if for no other reason than conformity to procedure) but I am not against the activity itself one little bit. If someone overseas is plotting and/or coordinating with assets already in place in this country, I want my government to know about it and take an active stance to thwart it. This debate would be much better served if people would place their ideological biases aside and examine this issue without Bush Derangement Syndrome (from the left) or Liberal Condemnation Disorder (from the right) ruining their judgement.
in which more than 120 Palestinians were killed. And these poor, pitiful, peace-loving Palestinian's were crouching in abject horror and total defenselessness as the warmongering Israeli death squads butchered 120 babies suckling at their mother's breasts, right? Or could it be that most -- very likely all -- of these 120 Palestinian's also just happened to be trying to murder Israeli's with AK-47's, rocket attacks, bombings, or the occasional random school shooting in a Jewish seminary. Nah, that couldn't be anything remotely close to the truth or you wouldn't have omitted such an important fact from your logical, unbiased, totally reasonable assessment of the situation. After all, everyone knows that Israel receives so much international praise and support when it engages in these military operations. One is amazed they haven't nuked their surrounding Arabian neighbors (you know, the peace-loving ones chanting "Death to Israel! Death to the Jews!" in their mosques on a daily basis) just for the sheer fun of it by now.
Now, if you can take your blinders off for just a moment, try reversing the current situation just a bit and see how absurd your argument is. The Israeli's have nukes. The Arabs don't. Many Arab regimes have vowed to "wipe Israel off the map" and most of their people celebrated it the streets on 9/11 and a few days ago when that Islamic nutcase shot up the school. One can't help but wonder not at why Israel is so "brutal" but instead why it is so restrained by not annihilating those nearby who are constantly calling for, praying for, and working towards Israel's annihilation. I can assure you that if the Arab regimes had the military power (i.e. nukes) that Israel now has, and if Israel lacked them, there would be very few Jews left to complain about the situation, and the Arab's wouldn't give two damns what the "international community" thought about it anymore than they do right now. Jews be glowing grains of dust blowing across the desert sands. Think about that next time you try to paint these poor, pitiful, oppressed people (so bad off that apparently their own Egyptian brethren won't allow them in, unlike Israel) as the victims. They are far, far, far from being innocent. Their current situation and suffering is almost entirely of their own making due to their total inability to tolerate a religion or culture other than their own.
Also, has anyone of you ever seen the damage katyushas make? Calling those things rockets or spending money to intercept them is ludicrous.
I would imagine that if one of them fell on you, or perhaps one of them fell on your five-year-old daughter who was playing in your back yard, blowing her body apart, tearing limbs off and flinging them tens of meters away, spattering blood, bone, and brain over a similar area, you'd find them less ludicrous.
The fact that people defend or otherwise apologize for the monsters using these weapons, all while claiming God loves them more for every Jew they kill, is a constant reminder of what a demented world we live in.
The vast majority of video/movie pirating is DVD-R copies of DVD movies sold on the street. For this market, the primary market, the cost of blanks is very relevant. And most people don't have their fancy HDTV hooked up to their desktop (and increasing number do, but most don't) so they might want to play the movie on their standalone player. Or maybe they just don't want to waste 20GB of hard disc space. I'm sorry...at what point did you completely jump off the deep end and forget this whole discussion is about high-def? You're talking DVD-R blanks, non-HD televisions, and bootleg DVD's, none of which has a damn thing to do with the discussion at hand.
You're a little naive. Organized crime makes a fortune off pirate DVDs. They also want to make a fortune off pirate Blu-Ray discs. Who do you think AnyDVD works for? And you're more than a little presumptuous and pompous in flinging around such accusations. I never said anything about who SlySoft (AnyDVD is the product, not the name of the company, just in case you were too busy calling me naive to know the difference) may or may not be allied with. No doubt organized crime would be happy to use their product to further its goals. Crime syndicates may even be actively funding SlySoft. Even though such collusion would make sense (the enemy of my enemy is my friend, after all) I challenge you to put forth conclusive proof of any such partnership. You won't find any, so perhaps you ought to be more careful next time before you accuse someone else of being naive.
BD+ has already been cracked. You don't see pirate Blu-ray movies widely distributed because the file sizes (20 GB+) are too large for P2P and blanks still cost $20. When the blanks come down in price expect to see pirate Blu-ray movies on the street in Hong Kong. Actually, I've seen several Blu-ray movies cracked and distributed on P2P networks, so your idea that they're "too large for P2P" doesn't hold water. HD-DVD movies were cracked even sooner and distributed as well, and their file sizes are no smaller than Blu-ray. BD+ movies, however, have not been cracked and distributed yet that I can tell. Slysoft's AnyDVD will allow decryption of BD+ titles but, unless I'm mistaken, you cannot rip the BD+ to your hard drive. As for your "blanks still cost $20" issue, that is largely irrelevant. P2P distribution is usually done so it can be viewed on a PC, not burned to a disc.
Still, I have no doubt that a garden-variety BD+ hack will appear in fairly short order. There are too many people out there trying to break it, and too much ego on the line for the person or group who gets to it first.
Remember how compact discs which broke the spec weren't allowed to be labeled with the philips CD logo? You're going to see Blu-Ray on anything burned to a Blu-Ray disc, whether it will play in anything in particular or not.
And if you'll recall, every time someone has tried anything like this, it's always either been hideously easy to crack or it's been a compatibility nightmare that backfires. Retrofitting a completely different DRM scheme onto an existing format is almost impossible for these two reasons.
So, to use your example, once BD+ is cracked (and it will be, and the crack will become widespread just like DeCSS), Sony can either do minor revisions of BD+ (which will again get cracked) and retain compatibility with the millions of existing player, or Sony could completely revamp BD+ (BD++?) and break all existing players. Obviously the latter is an untenable position.
Now, Blu-ray players do have the "advantage" of allowing firmware upgrades to "support" newer encryption schemes. However, Sony cannot overuse this idea. Consumers are used to their stuff just working. Having to frequently update your player every time somebody cracks Sony's encryption just isn't practical in the long run. Consumers will rebel, or there will be a massive negative PR backlash. If Sony wants to drive customers to downloaded content, this is the surest way to do it, and they know that.
DRM will continue to be an annoyance in the short-term, but nothing more. Real pirates (China-based mass duplicators) will continue to bypass it. P2P will get around it. In the end, it will be no more effective or annoying than DeCSS.
One thing to note: there is a very beneficial side-effect to the end of the format war. The more players that are sold, the more difficult it will be for Sony to make the alterations you're so afraid of. Now that HD-DVD is dead, Blu-ray sales should pick up all that slack, effectively doubling its adoption rate. Regardless of what you think of Sony and its policies, mass adoption of its hardware locks Sony into a format. This is a Good Thing(tm), as we have all the time in the world to crack it.
It's ironic... the cheapest crap DVD players from China will play anything vaguely resembling an optical disc with files vaguely resembling a standard published somewhere just fine, but expensive high-end players even choke on discs they're SUPPOSED to be able to play. I had a friend with the exact same problem... the $600+ Denon he had in his living room refused to play anything from a DVD+R, but the $129 no-name player from WalMart in the bedroom worked just fine (this was a few years ago, as you can tell from the prices). You are so right on the money. You have no idea how many tortured conversations I've had with idiot clients that went something like this:
Client: The DVD your sent me is worthless! It doesn't work! Send me another one! Me: Sir, what brand player do you have? C: It's a Marantz, their top of the line! Your product is crap! I want a new DVD! Me: Sir, the Marantz players are not compatible with DVD-R/RW or DVD+R/RW media, and they do not properly implement the full DVD specification. It's not our disc, it's your player. C: [frothing] That's impossible! It's the most expensive player on the planet! I paid $8,000 for that DVD player! It's made of precious metals! It has to be the best because it costs the most! Your product is the problem! I demand a new disc! Me: Sir, there's nothing we can do to make it play on your Marantz. If you call Marantz they will confirm it will not play burned media. I suggest you go purchase a cheap $99 upscaling DVD player at Wal-Mart. It will play our discs just fine and with a quaility indistinguishable from your Marantz. C: [completely unhinged] That's insane! How could a $69 player work better than my platinum-encased $8,000 Marantz? It must be your disc at fault!
Eventually I convince the client that reality does indeed exist. They try the cheap player. They see it work. They try the same disc in their gold-plated uber-player and it doesn't work. They feel like complete asses for spending that kind of dough on a DVD player. Next client, please.
To the best of my knowledge, there isn't a single BD player out there that supports the full range of options that are in the BD spec. The lack of such a player is pretty irrelevant because there currently are no titles which exercise the full range of options of the BD spec.
Granted, such titles will eventually exist, but they likely won't happen until there's a sufficient critical mass of 2.0 players in consumer hands.
Also, just in case you were unaware of it, a good number of DVD players (yes, good old fashioned standard-def DVD players) do not properly implement the full DVD specification. You may recall the kerfuffle about "The Abyss: Special Edition" and the initial issue of "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace," both of which had significant compatibility issues with top name-brand players. It turned out that player manufacturers had skimped on putting all the features in place because nobody ever expected anyone to make a DVD that used every feature. I have a small company I run that makes custom DVD's with advanced features and I still find clients with incompatible players -- in some cases, players they just purchased! Denon's seem to be the worst, followed by Marantz and Pioneer.
Lastly, Profile 2.0 titles should be playable on Profile 1.1 players but without the 2.0-specific features. Looking at what 2.0 brings to the table over 1.1, I have to say that it's nothing the average movie viewer is going to horribly miss. How many of us want to dynamically interact with a movie while we're watching it? It's a movie, not a video game. Most movie buffs (myself included) just want a great picture with great sound and some nice extras (commentary, making-of documentary, etc.). Having pop-ups all over my movie is just damned annoying.
While I think you were speaking tongue in cheek, I don't think that has any real bearing on it. The specifications for doing the softmods are well understood by the parties writing the modding software (i.e. Unwinder). There's even been speculation that Unwinder is either a current or former NVIDIA employee, although I think that might be stretching it a bit.
There are some things in nature, that gradual evolution over vast amounts of time cannot deal with.
I present an alternate hypothesis: millions of Plover's set out for some distant island. Some made it, millions perished. Those that made it had chicks which inherited the distinction. Lather, rinse, repeat until all surviving Plovers are also part of the same group that goes to the same island every year. Natural selection would tend to automatically "tune" the animal to have a specific amount of fat, as would flocking behavior, because natural selection tends to favor efficiency when possible. A fatter bird would require more food -- thus more foraging and greater chances of being eaten by a predator -- and more energy expended to carry that fat. A skinnier bird would not survive the trip.
Ergo, natural selection easily explains this, gradually, and over time. You just have to get out of the box you've put your imagination into in order to see it.
"Workstation" generally means you're using some sort of 3D application, pushing hundreds of millions (or billions) of textured, lit triangles around. I have a 2S/2P Opteron workstation with 8GB of RAM and two Quadro FX 3500 cards, and I use it with 3DSMax.
The difference in cards is subtle. Most gaming cards are tuned for ultimate speed (framerate) but perhaps not as much accuracy or quality. Workstation cards have things like hardware anti-aliasing of wireframes, a great feature when you're working with a huge model in wireframe mode. Textures are handled differently as well. Gaming cards tend to have smaller textures (again, for speed) than high-end rendering for movies or video. It's all in how the card is tuned. That's why gaming cards tend to perform lower at workstation tasks and high-end workstation cards tend to perform badly (or just plain hideous) at games.
Note how an NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 (a card costing nearly $3,000) gets spanked by an 8800GT (costing a little over $200) in games. Some people buy workstation cards for gaming thinking they are faster than gaming cards. It's the old "it costs more so it should run faster!" argument. A fool and his money are soon parted.
Anyway, there's one last dirty little secret in the workstation graphics card department: there is almost no hardware difference between a gaming card and a workstation card. In some cases there is no difference at all except the BIOS. There's a fellow called "Unwinder" over at www.guru3d.com who writes a program that will "softmod" a gaming card into a workstation card by strapping the BIOS. Benchmarks seem to show that a $200 gaming card softmodded into a $3,000 workstation card actually performs identically to the real $3,000 workstation card. This further bolsters the claim that NVIDIA and ATI are charging a ridiculous premium for their workstation cards.
I softmodded some gaming cards to workstation cards a few years back. Worked like a charm. However, it got to be more trouble than it was worth because NVIDIA kept trying to break the softmods with driver updates. You'd have to wait for Unwinder to update his program for the new driver before it would work again. For my next rig I bought real Quadros, just not the $3,000 ones:-).
Your bias is showing far more than anything you're perceiving on my end. HD-DVD has been utterly and totally unable to produce anything above three layers except under the most exacting laboratory conditions. Further, the specification for HD-DVD stopped at two layers. Three layers was added later in order to defuse Blu-ray's dual-layer 50GB marketing advantage. The horrendous downside of HD-DVD's "new" spec is that it would very likely not work on any existing HD-DVD player. It's not me saying this, it's the makers of the HD-DVD players that are saying this. Perhaps you're not listening.
Blu-ray, on the other hand, intended their format to scale to ten layers from the very beginning. Producing a disc cheaply and reliably with that many layers has proven vexing, but the optics within the players can handle it without upgrade (note: this is, of course, theoretical because nobody has tried it, but the spec is there for it). This is not the case with HD-DVD and never has been.
I'd like for you to provide evidence that a Blu-ray-only studio has produced an HD-DVD disc. What was the title? How was it purchased? Where was it purchased? When was it purchased?
Until you provide evidence that you've even been able to do what you claim, your argument is baseless. It's probably baseless anyway, but I'll at least give you a chance to back up one of your assertions...if you can.
I remember filling up my 1979 Monte Carlo (305 cu. in. V8) at the pump for 78 cents a gallon. This was circa 1988 or 1989.
Of course, that's nothing compared to the stories my parents used to tell me. They got gas for about a quarter a gallon, and that was at a full service gas station. I'd wager a goodly portion of folks reading this today don't even know what a "full service" station is. Or do they still have that silly law in New Jersey where drivers aren't allowed to pump their own gas?
The real fun thing to do, however, is to track gas prices and index them against inflation. You'll find the current $3/gallon pricing is not that far above what we should expect when inflation is factored in. In fact, up until about nine months ago, I believe gas was cheaper than it was back in the early 80's if you factored in inflation. Looking at it that way, we shouldn't marvel at how "expensive" gas is today, we should marvel at how cheap it was roughly a decade ago. We got kind of spoiled thinking we had a God-given right to $1.15/gallon gasoline. Increased world demand coupled with no major increases in refining capacity and limited oil exploration have put us exactly where we deserve to be. We have nobody to blame but ourselves.
Imagine if every media company released every disc in DVD, Blu-ray and HD-DVD (the cost to them is marginal.
And you have access to pricing figures for the studios to back up this "cost to them is marginal" argument, I would assume? Of course you don't. Such data is not published. Your are speculating out your wazoo, and you are wrong.
HD-DVD's most-trumpeted advantage is its ability to make use of existing DVD production facilities with only minor refits. No need to scrap the entire production line, you just upgrade it a bit. Blu-ray is fundamentally different in disc construction and has no such advantage. This was a conscious choice on the part of Sony. They sacrificed backwards compatibility of production equipment to get a more advanced disc structure. In this they have succeeded, as Blu-ray has scaled to 200GB capacities on an eight-layer disc in the lab. HD-DVD has scaled to 51GB with triple-layer discs in the lab. There is no comparison.
Studios that produce in both formats have to pay production houses to stamp them. The production houses have a choice of going exclusive with one format or gearing up to produce both.
The former situation requires the studios to negotiate separately with two production facilities, but (and here is the key) they're effectively splitting the number of discs produced in half for each facility. This hurts the studio's buying power just like it would hurt anyone else: more quantity equals lower prices. For disc production this is particularly acute because there is a very high cost to create the line to produce even one disc. The more discs you can stamp on that line, the cheaper it gets on a per-disc basis.
The latter situation requires the production house to foot the bill for two very different (and mutually incompatible) production lines. This is no small cost, and that cost is passed on to the studios when they order a run of discs.
So, no matter how you play it, your statement that "it doesn't cost more to do both formats" is completely without merit. It does cost more, more to author (HD-DVD and Blu-ray authoring tools are both incompatible and very expensive), more to produce (as outlined above), more to distribute (remember, two different kinds of packaging), and more to stock (there's only so much shelf space in stores).
This kind of lets the air out of your whole its-a-corporate-conspiracy argument, doesn't it?
MSFT is selling Vista for 2-4 times what XP went for.
Not true at all. My corporate licensing rates on a per-license basis show Vista Business coming in at exactly the same price point as WinXP. I don't know who you're getting your pricing from, but they're taking you for a huge ride if you're paying 400% more for Vista than you did for XP. Heck, even the retail pricing is similar.
On the other hand, if you've got some sort of ideological axe to grind against MS, you might've tried comparing something silly like XP Home with Vista Ultimate in order to get your ridiculous price differential. I'd like to believe you're not one of the slobbering, frothing, anti-MS zealots Slashdot is so rabidly famous for, so I'm going to assume you're just getting bum pricing from whatever vendor you're using. Given your comments, though, I'm thinking that's not the case with you, is it?
DVD's work fine on smaller screens, but have you ever tried to watch good 'ole SD video on a set with a 65" screen? It's horrific. Even Superbit DVD's look crappy when shown on a medium-sized screen.
SIDE NOTE:Yes, 65" is a medium-sized screen these days, albeit at the high end of medium. Big screens can be well over 100" with a projector, and that's not as expensive as it was just a short while ago. 1080p LCD projectors can be had for well under $10,000. Heck, you can find them for under $5,000 if you don't mind compromising on quality a little bit. "Small" screens are in the 30"-46" range these days. Compare this with $25K for a nice CRT projector barely a decade ago.
Anyway, to get back to it, I've heard the old "DVD's are good enough" and the equally-old "but my player upconverts to 1080p" arguments. Both only hold true if you've got a relatively small or SD-only set. The majority of sets being sold today, right now, just down the street at a Circuit City or its equivalent, are 46" or bigger. 46" is about as big as you can make it before DVD's start showing their inferiority to HD, so we're already at the point where the bottom-level sets are bumping the detail limits of DVD's. For people who care about video quality (even those who only care slightly more than average), DVD's are not good enough, especially if you've seen a title done well in HD on a nice display.
Slashdot Mirror
Before you get crazy calling things my own logic, you should make sure you're basing that on what I actually said, and not what you thought I meant.
Gosh, I am so sorry. I was going under the assumption that you were moderately effective in communicating your thought processes. Now I see how wrong I was. Instead of questioning your logic, I should've just torn you a new one on your pathetic communications skills.
Anyway, your "revised" point still makes no sense at all. You think this is "an unreasonable measure, since it is likely to produce 100% false positives." Now let's examine the logic of that statement...assuming, of course, that it's what you really meant to say this time instead of something you're going to retroactively redact in your next response.
Just how do you think it's "likely to produce 100% false positives?" What data do you have to back up this assertion? Perhaps you should've said "likely to produce mostly false positives" and that might've been something I would let pass. But since you want to be such a stickler for words, I just can't in good faith let it go without a challenge. So, step up and defend your point, sir! Or not...
So, since you're destined to lose on this particular point, I'll cut to the chase: this method of detection is likely to produce more false positives than real ones. That being said, 99 false positives will not kill you, but 1 missed positive just might. I'm sure, in your infinite wisdom and all-seeing, all-knowing omniscience, you are perfectly happy to pretend that you're comfortable that 1% might escape detection.
Me, on the other hand...I want to have that extra bit of assurance, especially since the "misery" of those false positives is trivial beyond compare. Think about this for a moment if you can actually bring yourself to do so: you are arguing that it's more trouble to get stopped in a manner no more insidious than your average traffic stop than it is to get blown up by a dirty bomb. If they took this guy (and his cat), carted them off to jail, held them without charges, beat them into a confession, gave them a mock trial, and executed them both, I'd say your objections had a leg to stand on. None of that happened. Instead, the guy was stopped, the police asked some questions, and life went on.
I'll go even further with this oh-so-appropriate analogy: if you had a fatal disease and the best known cure only had a 1% success rate, would you complain that it's too much trouble to try the cure? Or would you instead beat the doctor's door down and demand the cure (probably at government taxpayer expense, given your disposition on this issue, but I digress)? Nuclear terrorism is something we must fight with all available cures, so long as those cures do not erode our basic freedoms in any reasonable way.
The number of people in this country who are likely to be stopped because they've had radiation therapy (or because their co-traveling pets have) is shockingly, amazingly, pathetically, dismissively, undeniably small. Your willingness to argue so unsuccessfully on behalf of such a tiny minority certainly makes you the most compassionate person on the planet, but it doesn't gain you any recognition in the intelligence department. Somehow, I doubt you're doing it "for them." No, you're doing it for you because you have a bone to pick, an axe to grind, and a chip on your shoulder so big it's blocking your vision. I said it before and I'll say it again: methinks thou dost protest too much.
Now, you're also very likely to use the tired old canard of "there are more effective ways of doing this job without encroaching on our freedoms." Putting the "encroachment" angle aside for a moment, why don't you try putting some meat on those bones? If you think you have a better idea on how to catch rogue nuclear material moving across this country -- a method that has fewer false positives, less false negatives, or a combination of the two, all without encroaching on
Richard Armitage was the Deputy Secretary of State under Colin Powell.
So, you agree then that I'm right and you're wrong.
Thus your claim that Bush was somehow behind this rings quite hollow.
I made no such claim. I said that a member of the Bush administration leaked the name, which you just confirmed. I generally make it a policy not to argue with blithering idiots, but for you I'll make an exception. Here, let me walk you through it so you don't get lost this time: I never stated Armitage was not a member of the administration. You made that up. You conjured it out of thin air in a attempt to beat me over the head with it. The problem with your strategy is that it's not only stupid, it's ineffective. You should try picking something your opponent actually said and beat them over the head with it. Instead, you've taken your insubstantial argument and tried to use it to allude to a link between Bush and the Plame affair. Don't play coy and don't try being disingenuous. We both know that was what you were aiming -- yet failing -- to do, so just own up to it and be done. Otherwise your comment, instead of merely being wrong, was pointless. So, which would you rather be, stupid or pointless? Either way, it doesn't look too good for you at this point, bub.
There is no direct link from Bush to Plame, there never was such a link, and there never will be such a link...except in your overly-imaginative-yet-tragically-undersized cranium. Sorry, it seems I broke your argument. Hope you kept the receipt. Toodles. It's been fun poking you with a sharp stick, but I really do have talented, worthwhile debaters elsewhere who have something interesting to say, and I don't have time to mess with junior-league wannabees like you tonight.
How difficult is this to grasp?
Richard Armitage leaked her name (and probably others as well).
Richard Armitage was a member of the Bush administration.
Richard Armitage was the Deputy Secretary of State under Colin Powell. Powell's disagreements with the Administration's foreign policy are well known (one reason why he vacated the post), and Armitage shared these same viewpoints. To call Armitage a member of the Bush Administration is correct in the sense that he worked there, but you're trying to paint him as some sort of Bush sympathizer doing his master's bidding. Perhaps it would help if your patsy were actually sympathetic to the Bush cause, but he was not and still isn't. Thus your claim that Bush was somehow behind this rings quite hollow.
The facts are explicitly not on your side in this statement. This has been reported in every major newspaper and on every news station. It is a matter of easily accessible public record. If that's the case and it's so cut and dried, perhaps you'll be so kind as to point out what facts are not on my side. Armitage was the source of the leak, as confirmed by Woodward, Armitage, and the special investigative council. Plame was not on the CIA's payroll as a covert agent at the time Armitage leaked her name, nor has it been confirmed that she was in the prior five years which constitutes the legal definition of "covert." Wilson has published a book which covers Plame's "covert" career in detail. Armitage was the Deputy Secretary of State under Colin Powell, and both of them were critics of Bush foreign policy despite being members of the administration.
Please, by all means, try your best to find fault with any of the above. If the best you can do is say that it's true because you heard it on the news somewhere, you've got a lot to learn about how to effectively debate your point.
Right. I mean there's been so many dirty bombs going off all over the place that it's totally worth inconveniencing medical and veterinary cancer patients...
Your post shows a shocking lack of perspective. Have you even considered that the reason there haven't been dirty bombs going off all over the place could be because we have such sensors in place?
Taken literally, your idea means that we should abandon all pro-active measures to prevent any and all kinds of violence or other crimes. Why do we need police? I've never been mugged. Why do we need a military? I've never been invaded. Why do we need anything preventative at all in this world? What you're suggesting is tantamount to "Since all the criminals are locked up in prison, there's no crime, so why do we need prisons if there's no crime?" Such a stance is patently absurd, yet you somehow find it logical. Amazing. Hopefully you're not of voting age.
As for your claim that it's "inconveniencing medical and veterinary cancer patients," I'll throw a little of your own logic right back at you: this can't possibly be inconveniencing that many people because this is the first time I've ever heard of it.
Methinks thou dost protest too much.
My cat just received treatment for a benign thyroid tumor causing hyperthyroidism. It cost a bloody fortune (US$1,100) but it was either that or medicate him twice a day for the rest of his life (euthanasia was not open to consideration). The clinic was RadioCat in Marietta, GA. Take a look at their logo and tell me if it doesn't bring back memories of Napster's...but I digress.
The clinic kept him for three days after the treatment, both to observe and to let some of the radioactivity die down. After he came home, we had to keep him separate from our other cats (we have five total). We were cautioned not to dispose of his litter in the trash; it should be flushed. The clinic said the county dumps have radiological sensors that scan everything going into the dump, and the litter would definitely set off the sensors. It would cause an investigation that would have the trash company trace back where that particular trash truck picked up garbage from and could cause a lot of unneeded trouble. We were advised not to hold the cat for more than 20-30 minutes per day and to wash our hands thoroughly after any contact with the cat.
I knew our pet would be "hot" when he came home, but I had no idea the cat could set off a roadside sensor. Either this fellow didn't let the lab keep the cat for the required 3-4 days before transporting him or the sensor was amazingly sensitive. If so, I'm actually quite happy about it. If somebody is transporting a radioactive cat is found, they're detected, nobody gets their fur in a fluff, and everybody goes their way. If somebody is transporting a dirty bomb or components thereof, they're detected and law enforcement deals with it. I see nothing here to complain about.
Valerie Plame. The Federal government basically said: if you speak out against us, we're going to use all our powers to make your lives miserable. And the fact that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage -- a vocal critic of the Bush administration -- admitted to leaking Plame's name -- not Karl Rove, Cheney, or anyone else in Bush's "close advisers" group -- doesn't matter one little bit to you, does it? Bob Woodward, the reporter that broke the Plame story, admitted under oath that Armitage was his source. Armitage himself came out and admitted he was the source as well after he was assured of immunity.
I'm sure it also doesn't matter that Plame herself could not verify she fit the definition of a "covert agent" -- this while under oath and testifying in front of the Congressional inquiry. The CIA itself could not verify she had covert status at the time of the disclosure, and in the meantime Plame's neighbors testified she made no secret of her work at the CIA. Seems she wasn't particularly eager to keep her work under wraps at all...at least, not until it was politically convenient to do so.
Also, let's not forget that Plame was made so "miserable" (to use your adjective) at being "outed" that, in order to avoid more public intrusion into her life, her husband wrote a book about the whole affair and loudly promoted it on a nationwide book tour. Plame herself has delivered paid speaking engagements on the affair. She's making far more money now than she ever did for the CIA. Yep, nothing but misery here. But don't let that get in the way of you screaming, frothing, and vituperating that it's all the fault of some vast right-wing Bush Conspiracy(tm).
When trying to have an objective, reasoned debate about policy, it's always unhelpful to use politically-charged, inflammatory language like "domestic spying." The name makes it seem like the government is flying around in black helicopters in the dead of night, spying in you windows and reading your mail. The reality is nothing of the sort and is being taken completely out of context.
Are conversations between two U.S.-based citizens being monitored? Absolutely not. Are conversations initiated in the U.S. to overseas destinations being monitored? Absolutely not. Are general conversations originating outside the U.S. to U.S.-based destinations being monitored? Absolutely not. Are conversations originating from known or suspected terrorist organizations to U.S.-based destinations being monitored? Yes, they are. This is not "domestic spying," this is anti-terrorist intelligence gathering.
I strongly believe the authorities in the U.S. should obtain warrants for this type of activity (if for no other reason than conformity to procedure) but I am not against the activity itself one little bit. If someone overseas is plotting and/or coordinating with assets already in place in this country, I want my government to know about it and take an active stance to thwart it. This debate would be much better served if people would place their ideological biases aside and examine this issue without Bush Derangement Syndrome (from the left) or Liberal Condemnation Disorder (from the right) ruining their judgement.
in which more than 120 Palestinians were killed. And these poor, pitiful, peace-loving Palestinian's were crouching in abject horror and total defenselessness as the warmongering Israeli death squads butchered 120 babies suckling at their mother's breasts, right? Or could it be that most -- very likely all -- of these 120 Palestinian's also just happened to be trying to murder Israeli's with AK-47's, rocket attacks, bombings, or the occasional random school shooting in a Jewish seminary. Nah, that couldn't be anything remotely close to the truth or you wouldn't have omitted such an important fact from your logical, unbiased, totally reasonable assessment of the situation. After all, everyone knows that Israel receives so much international praise and support when it engages in these military operations. One is amazed they haven't nuked their surrounding Arabian neighbors (you know, the peace-loving ones chanting "Death to Israel! Death to the Jews!" in their mosques on a daily basis) just for the sheer fun of it by now.
Now, if you can take your blinders off for just a moment, try reversing the current situation just a bit and see how absurd your argument is. The Israeli's have nukes. The Arabs don't. Many Arab regimes have vowed to "wipe Israel off the map" and most of their people celebrated it the streets on 9/11 and a few days ago when that Islamic nutcase shot up the school. One can't help but wonder not at why Israel is so "brutal" but instead why it is so restrained by not annihilating those nearby who are constantly calling for, praying for, and working towards Israel's annihilation. I can assure you that if the Arab regimes had the military power (i.e. nukes) that Israel now has, and if Israel lacked them, there would be very few Jews left to complain about the situation, and the Arab's wouldn't give two damns what the "international community" thought about it anymore than they do right now. Jews be glowing grains of dust blowing across the desert sands. Think about that next time you try to paint these poor, pitiful, oppressed people (so bad off that apparently their own Egyptian brethren won't allow them in, unlike Israel) as the victims. They are far, far, far from being innocent. Their current situation and suffering is almost entirely of their own making due to their total inability to tolerate a religion or culture other than their own.
Also, has anyone of you ever seen the damage katyushas make? Calling those things rockets or spending money to intercept them is ludicrous.
I would imagine that if one of them fell on you, or perhaps one of them fell on your five-year-old daughter who was playing in your back yard, blowing her body apart, tearing limbs off and flinging them tens of meters away, spattering blood, bone, and brain over a similar area, you'd find them less ludicrous.
The fact that people defend or otherwise apologize for the monsters using these weapons, all while claiming God loves them more for every Jew they kill, is a constant reminder of what a demented world we live in.
Still, I have no doubt that a garden-variety BD+ hack will appear in fairly short order. There are too many people out there trying to break it, and too much ego on the line for the person or group who gets to it first.
Remember how compact discs which broke the spec weren't allowed to be labeled with the philips CD logo? You're going to see Blu-Ray on anything burned to a Blu-Ray disc, whether it will play in anything in particular or not.
And if you'll recall, every time someone has tried anything like this, it's always either been hideously easy to crack or it's been a compatibility nightmare that backfires. Retrofitting a completely different DRM scheme onto an existing format is almost impossible for these two reasons.
So, to use your example, once BD+ is cracked (and it will be, and the crack will become widespread just like DeCSS), Sony can either do minor revisions of BD+ (which will again get cracked) and retain compatibility with the millions of existing player, or Sony could completely revamp BD+ (BD++?) and break all existing players. Obviously the latter is an untenable position.
Now, Blu-ray players do have the "advantage" of allowing firmware upgrades to "support" newer encryption schemes. However, Sony cannot overuse this idea. Consumers are used to their stuff just working. Having to frequently update your player every time somebody cracks Sony's encryption just isn't practical in the long run. Consumers will rebel, or there will be a massive negative PR backlash. If Sony wants to drive customers to downloaded content, this is the surest way to do it, and they know that.
DRM will continue to be an annoyance in the short-term, but nothing more. Real pirates (China-based mass duplicators) will continue to bypass it. P2P will get around it. In the end, it will be no more effective or annoying than DeCSS.
One thing to note: there is a very beneficial side-effect to the end of the format war. The more players that are sold, the more difficult it will be for Sony to make the alterations you're so afraid of. Now that HD-DVD is dead, Blu-ray sales should pick up all that slack, effectively doubling its adoption rate. Regardless of what you think of Sony and its policies, mass adoption of its hardware locks Sony into a format. This is a Good Thing(tm), as we have all the time in the world to crack it.
It's ironic... the cheapest crap DVD players from China will play anything vaguely resembling an optical disc with files vaguely resembling a standard published somewhere just fine, but expensive high-end players even choke on discs they're SUPPOSED to be able to play. I had a friend with the exact same problem... the $600+ Denon he had in his living room refused to play anything from a DVD+R, but the $129 no-name player from WalMart in the bedroom worked just fine (this was a few years ago, as you can tell from the prices). You are so right on the money. You have no idea how many tortured conversations I've had with idiot clients that went something like this:
Client: The DVD your sent me is worthless! It doesn't work! Send me another one!
Me: Sir, what brand player do you have?
C: It's a Marantz, their top of the line! Your product is crap! I want a new DVD!
Me: Sir, the Marantz players are not compatible with DVD-R/RW or DVD+R/RW media, and they do not properly implement the full DVD specification. It's not our disc, it's your player.
C: [frothing] That's impossible! It's the most expensive player on the planet! I paid $8,000 for that DVD player! It's made of precious metals! It has to be the best because it costs the most! Your product is the problem! I demand a new disc!
Me: Sir, there's nothing we can do to make it play on your Marantz. If you call Marantz they will confirm it will not play burned media. I suggest you go purchase a cheap $99 upscaling DVD player at Wal-Mart. It will play our discs just fine and with a quaility indistinguishable from your Marantz.
C: [completely unhinged] That's insane! How could a $69 player work better than my platinum-encased $8,000 Marantz? It must be your disc at fault!
Eventually I convince the client that reality does indeed exist. They try the cheap player. They see it work. They try the same disc in their gold-plated uber-player and it doesn't work. They feel like complete asses for spending that kind of dough on a DVD player. Next client, please.
Barnum was right.
Granted, such titles will eventually exist, but they likely won't happen until there's a sufficient critical mass of 2.0 players in consumer hands.
Also, just in case you were unaware of it, a good number of DVD players (yes, good old fashioned standard-def DVD players) do not properly implement the full DVD specification. You may recall the kerfuffle about "The Abyss: Special Edition" and the initial issue of "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace," both of which had significant compatibility issues with top name-brand players. It turned out that player manufacturers had skimped on putting all the features in place because nobody ever expected anyone to make a DVD that used every feature. I have a small company I run that makes custom DVD's with advanced features and I still find clients with incompatible players -- in some cases, players they just purchased! Denon's seem to be the worst, followed by Marantz and Pioneer.
Lastly, Profile 2.0 titles should be playable on Profile 1.1 players but without the 2.0-specific features. Looking at what 2.0 brings to the table over 1.1, I have to say that it's nothing the average movie viewer is going to horribly miss. How many of us want to dynamically interact with a movie while we're watching it? It's a movie, not a video game. Most movie buffs (myself included) just want a great picture with great sound and some nice extras (commentary, making-of documentary, etc.). Having pop-ups all over my movie is just damned annoying.
While I think you were speaking tongue in cheek, I don't think that has any real bearing on it. The specifications for doing the softmods are well understood by the parties writing the modding software (i.e. Unwinder). There's even been speculation that Unwinder is either a current or former NVIDIA employee, although I think that might be stretching it a bit.
There are some things in nature, that gradual evolution over vast amounts of time cannot deal with.
I present an alternate hypothesis: millions of Plover's set out for some distant island. Some made it, millions perished. Those that made it had chicks which inherited the distinction. Lather, rinse, repeat until all surviving Plovers are also part of the same group that goes to the same island every year. Natural selection would tend to automatically "tune" the animal to have a specific amount of fat, as would flocking behavior, because natural selection tends to favor efficiency when possible. A fatter bird would require more food -- thus more foraging and greater chances of being eaten by a predator -- and more energy expended to carry that fat. A skinnier bird would not survive the trip.
Ergo, natural selection easily explains this, gradually, and over time. You just have to get out of the box you've put your imagination into in order to see it.
"Workstation" generally means you're using some sort of 3D application, pushing hundreds of millions (or billions) of textured, lit triangles around. I have a 2S/2P Opteron workstation with 8GB of RAM and two Quadro FX 3500 cards, and I use it with 3DSMax.
:-).
The difference in cards is subtle. Most gaming cards are tuned for ultimate speed (framerate) but perhaps not as much accuracy or quality. Workstation cards have things like hardware anti-aliasing of wireframes, a great feature when you're working with a huge model in wireframe mode. Textures are handled differently as well. Gaming cards tend to have smaller textures (again, for speed) than high-end rendering for movies or video. It's all in how the card is tuned. That's why gaming cards tend to perform lower at workstation tasks and high-end workstation cards tend to perform badly (or just plain hideous) at games.
Note how an NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 (a card costing nearly $3,000) gets spanked by an 8800GT (costing a little over $200) in games. Some people buy workstation cards for gaming thinking they are faster than gaming cards. It's the old "it costs more so it should run faster!" argument. A fool and his money are soon parted.
Anyway, there's one last dirty little secret in the workstation graphics card department: there is almost no hardware difference between a gaming card and a workstation card. In some cases there is no difference at all except the BIOS. There's a fellow called "Unwinder" over at www.guru3d.com who writes a program that will "softmod" a gaming card into a workstation card by strapping the BIOS. Benchmarks seem to show that a $200 gaming card softmodded into a $3,000 workstation card actually performs identically to the real $3,000 workstation card. This further bolsters the claim that NVIDIA and ATI are charging a ridiculous premium for their workstation cards.
I softmodded some gaming cards to workstation cards a few years back. Worked like a charm. However, it got to be more trouble than it was worth because NVIDIA kept trying to break the softmods with driver updates. You'd have to wait for Unwinder to update his program for the new driver before it would work again. For my next rig I bought real Quadros, just not the $3,000 ones
Your bias is showing far more than anything you're perceiving on my end. HD-DVD has been utterly and totally unable to produce anything above three layers except under the most exacting laboratory conditions. Further, the specification for HD-DVD stopped at two layers. Three layers was added later in order to defuse Blu-ray's dual-layer 50GB marketing advantage. The horrendous downside of HD-DVD's "new" spec is that it would very likely not work on any existing HD-DVD player. It's not me saying this, it's the makers of the HD-DVD players that are saying this. Perhaps you're not listening.
Blu-ray, on the other hand, intended their format to scale to ten layers from the very beginning. Producing a disc cheaply and reliably with that many layers has proven vexing, but the optics within the players can handle it without upgrade (note: this is, of course, theoretical because nobody has tried it, but the spec is there for it). This is not the case with HD-DVD and never has been.
Sorry, I'm not doing your job for you. If you're too lazy to back yourself up, I have no time to waste on you.
I'd like for you to provide evidence that a Blu-ray-only studio has produced an HD-DVD disc. What was the title? How was it purchased? Where was it purchased? When was it purchased?
Until you provide evidence that you've even been able to do what you claim, your argument is baseless. It's probably baseless anyway, but I'll at least give you a chance to back up one of your assertions...if you can.
I remember filling up my 1979 Monte Carlo (305 cu. in. V8) at the pump for 78 cents a gallon. This was circa 1988 or 1989.
Of course, that's nothing compared to the stories my parents used to tell me. They got gas for about a quarter a gallon, and that was at a full service gas station. I'd wager a goodly portion of folks reading this today don't even know what a "full service" station is. Or do they still have that silly law in New Jersey where drivers aren't allowed to pump their own gas?
The real fun thing to do, however, is to track gas prices and index them against inflation. You'll find the current $3/gallon pricing is not that far above what we should expect when inflation is factored in. In fact, up until about nine months ago, I believe gas was cheaper than it was back in the early 80's if you factored in inflation. Looking at it that way, we shouldn't marvel at how "expensive" gas is today, we should marvel at how cheap it was roughly a decade ago. We got kind of spoiled thinking we had a God-given right to $1.15/gallon gasoline. Increased world demand coupled with no major increases in refining capacity and limited oil exploration have put us exactly where we deserve to be. We have nobody to blame but ourselves.
Imagine if every media company released every disc in DVD, Blu-ray and HD-DVD (the cost to them is marginal.
And you have access to pricing figures for the studios to back up this "cost to them is marginal" argument, I would assume? Of course you don't. Such data is not published. Your are speculating out your wazoo, and you are wrong.
HD-DVD's most-trumpeted advantage is its ability to make use of existing DVD production facilities with only minor refits. No need to scrap the entire production line, you just upgrade it a bit. Blu-ray is fundamentally different in disc construction and has no such advantage. This was a conscious choice on the part of Sony. They sacrificed backwards compatibility of production equipment to get a more advanced disc structure. In this they have succeeded, as Blu-ray has scaled to 200GB capacities on an eight-layer disc in the lab. HD-DVD has scaled to 51GB with triple-layer discs in the lab. There is no comparison.
Studios that produce in both formats have to pay production houses to stamp them. The production houses have a choice of going exclusive with one format or gearing up to produce both.
The former situation requires the studios to negotiate separately with two production facilities, but (and here is the key) they're effectively splitting the number of discs produced in half for each facility. This hurts the studio's buying power just like it would hurt anyone else: more quantity equals lower prices. For disc production this is particularly acute because there is a very high cost to create the line to produce even one disc. The more discs you can stamp on that line, the cheaper it gets on a per-disc basis.
The latter situation requires the production house to foot the bill for two very different (and mutually incompatible) production lines. This is no small cost, and that cost is passed on to the studios when they order a run of discs.
So, no matter how you play it, your statement that "it doesn't cost more to do both formats" is completely without merit. It does cost more, more to author (HD-DVD and Blu-ray authoring tools are both incompatible and very expensive), more to produce (as outlined above), more to distribute (remember, two different kinds of packaging), and more to stock (there's only so much shelf space in stores).
This kind of lets the air out of your whole its-a-corporate-conspiracy argument, doesn't it?
MSFT is selling Vista for 2-4 times what XP went for.
Not true at all. My corporate licensing rates on a per-license basis show Vista Business coming in at exactly the same price point as WinXP. I don't know who you're getting your pricing from, but they're taking you for a huge ride if you're paying 400% more for Vista than you did for XP. Heck, even the retail pricing is similar.
On the other hand, if you've got some sort of ideological axe to grind against MS, you might've tried comparing something silly like XP Home with Vista Ultimate in order to get your ridiculous price differential. I'd like to believe you're not one of the slobbering, frothing, anti-MS zealots Slashdot is so rabidly famous for, so I'm going to assume you're just getting bum pricing from whatever vendor you're using. Given your comments, though, I'm thinking that's not the case with you, is it?
DVD's work fine on smaller screens, but have you ever tried to watch good 'ole SD video on a set with a 65" screen? It's horrific. Even Superbit DVD's look crappy when shown on a medium-sized screen.
SIDE NOTE:Yes, 65" is a medium-sized screen these days, albeit at the high end of medium. Big screens can be well over 100" with a projector, and that's not as expensive as it was just a short while ago. 1080p LCD projectors can be had for well under $10,000. Heck, you can find them for under $5,000 if you don't mind compromising on quality a little bit. "Small" screens are in the 30"-46" range these days. Compare this with $25K for a nice CRT projector barely a decade ago.
Anyway, to get back to it, I've heard the old "DVD's are good enough" and the equally-old "but my player upconverts to 1080p" arguments. Both only hold true if you've got a relatively small or SD-only set. The majority of sets being sold today, right now, just down the street at a Circuit City or its equivalent, are 46" or bigger. 46" is about as big as you can make it before DVD's start showing their inferiority to HD, so we're already at the point where the bottom-level sets are bumping the detail limits of DVD's. For people who care about video quality (even those who only care slightly more than average), DVD's are not good enough, especially if you've seen a title done well in HD on a nice display.