I think a bit more science and research is needed before one draws the conclusion that our solar system is genuine. Heck, even a solar system
similar to ours for 1 in 100 millions solar system would indeed be interresting.
Yep, it would be interesting.
A current estimate of the number of stars in the (observable) universe sems to be 7 x 10^22 (70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000), give or take a few:)
This means that even if something similar to our solar system is one in 100 billion stars, there would be 700,000,000,000 of them out there!
I really like that big estimated number of stars - makes you feel a bit humble. Unfortunately it also means that it is very well possible for the universe to have billions of civilizations like ours, but all isolated, without any possibility of finding or chatting with another. Ever.
Yes, it is one of my absolute favourite short stories! It has the most powerful ending I've ever read.
Also, the phrase "There is another system" is from the movie Colossus, IMHO a quite scary piece on the "dangers of A.I" , and well worth checking out if you haven't seen it. The reference to correlations between gold price and men's beards is from the book "Friday" by Robert Heinlein. Worth reading, as all of his books, of course.:^)
Ah, but besides the claim that it speeded up the computer, it was a geniuine FPU emulator, right? Those can be useful for software that requires an FPU.
I actually made use of an MMX-emulator some year back, when I wanted to connect my webcam to a box in the closet (don't ask:^), and the webcam software required MMX-instructions, which my old Pentium didn't have. So, I used an MMX-wrapper that intercepted those opcodes and translated them to non-MMX-instructions.
Hehe, I just found both little gems on the web - the README file for 386to486 was a _lot_ funnier now than when I first read it... I love the part about "top notch..... ", and "...work loads take off your regular cpu..." Here it is....
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS TO RUN THIS PROGRAM:
o A 386 DX CPU with at least 1 MEG of Extended memory. o HIMEM.SYS / QEMM or any other EMM manager. o DOS 3.x or higher and/or Windows 3.1 (optional)
Welcome to a FIRST in PC TECHNOLOGY. Your computer is capable of doing much more than you think, and the companies that make them don't tell you everything. Well WE WILL. What if we told you that there is a program that converts your 386 DX into a real 486 DX/2 66 MHZ! You would say it's impossible, or it's another one of those HOAX PROGRAMS. Well you are wrong. In fact there are many programs out there that CLAIM to SPEED-UP your computer or increase your memory, but do they REALLY give results ? They either eat memory, behave strangely, and the result is not significant.
Well throw away all those programs, because 386TO486.COM is the right choice. Yes, this little program, under 22 K, will convert your 386 DX into a 486 DX/2 66 MHZ, SAFELY.
This program only works with 386 DX's, it does not support SX or 286 computers.
Now you might seem skeptic and think this is a joke. This program took 6 months to program, and was carefully studied by top notch programmers and debuggers. They have come up with a SAFE technique to do so.
We will not go into technical details, but we will attempt to explain. What this program does, is, it adds a mini TSR program into a protected memory area and this RESIDENT program acts as a CPU, it analyses the program being run and takes over the work, does its own calculations, compresses the program in memory, changes certain commands, all in realtime! All this frees up your regular CPU. So your regular CPU does its chores and the EMULATED CPU does its work too. It's like having a math co-processor, but in this case it's a CPU co-processor.
And it's not all!!! This TSR does more than free the load out of your CPU, it also features a graphic processor and sound processor. 2 independant built-in modules that take care of graphic manipulations in all modes including CGA, EGA, VGA, SVGA, XVGA, and modes up to 24 bit color. It's like having a seperate GRAPHIC CPU, so imagine all the work load taken off your regular CPU. It also features a built-in sound processor, that takes care of sound processing, for programs that use sound cards and PC SPEAKER as well.
The program also features a MATH CO PROCESSOR emulator, even better than Q387.EXE, it is as fast as the real math chip itself, this also is installed.
So with all these utilities in memory (TSR) it works to help free your CPU, it also changes your BIOS, setup and memory contents to configure it into a 486 66 so other programs can recognise it.
When we say it converts it into a 486 66, we really mean it!!! Your 386 DX 40 becomes 486 66 MHZ, tests have been made and we measured the CPU speed with different programs. Without this utility installed we got from 37.5 to 40 MHZ! With the utility installed we got an amazing 67.2 MHZ to 74 MHZ! Faster than the real 486 66 MHZ!!!
Everything is automatic and temporary, once you turn off your computer everything is reset. When you run the program it will read your configuration and adjust itself accordingly. This utility takes away NO MEMORY, it resides in a special unused portion of your memory, and it is fully compatible with ANY DOS version, any WINDOWS version, any other TSR's in memory, other memory managers, and 100% of all the programs out there.
So we hope you understand the principle around this, it uses very complex programming code to acheive this. And it's more than just an emulation, your system becomes a real 66 MHZ SYSTEM! An
...back in the (somewhat older) days when I spent most of my time in front of my beloved Compam 386 computer, I stumbled upon a bit of software called "386to486", which promised to instantly convert my 386 chip to a 486 chip. This was my first PC, and I didn't know much about it, but I was still a bit skeptical and very curious about how such a program could work.. So I checked the README file, which enlightened me on the subject with something along the lines of:
COMPUTER MAKERS DON'T TELL YOU EVERYTHING! THERE'S SECRET TRICKS THAT CAN BE USED TO CONVERT YOUR 386 into a 486!
Now, conviced it was just a hoax, or something worse, I tried the program. (I didn't really care about my data - the harddrive was dropped into the ground - multiple times, and the poor few working sectors I had only contained data I had copied from floppies anyway), The program happily told me the magical transformation was complete. I fired up MSD.EXE to check - no change in identification. Still a 386. I ran a benchmark program, which didn't show any change from before. Just to try, I ran the magic software again - this time I got the text "Your computer is already a 486!". At least the programmers thought about that. Well, no bigger disappointment, since I didn't really expected anything useful to happen. I never found out if it was a virus either...
Years later - a new little utility turned up on the BBSes I frequented - it was called 486toPentium, and the cheerful description of the file was "FROM THE GUYS WHO BROUGHT YOU 386to486"
A system that perpetually collects information presented in a language that easily conveys the attributes and logical relationships between different objects and concepts. (Scratches beard.)
Make the system distributed and let people run their own information collecting agents. Every home computer becomes a part of the network of logical relationships, each with a tiny piece to contribute to the puzzle. My computer could have complete information about the workings of combustion engines - what parts they consist of, and their relationships.
When someone requests information about car manufacturing, some relevant part of it will be retrieved from my store.
Now, let's make the system ask us for help, when information is missing. Let the system start drawing own conclusions from the facts it gathered, and tell us when it needs something filled in. As it grows, more and more complex queries could be answered.
Q: CAN THE EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING BE REVERSED? A: THERE IS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER
Or how about:
A: TO REDUCE GLOBAL WARMING, FIRST WE MUST... ??... !!... -- THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM --
Oh, at least I hope the network will be able to finally find the true correlation between the price of gold and the length of men's beards.
As of Skype for Linux version 0.9.0.14, the options to configure the soundcard settings from inside the program are still missing.
For those (like me) who use two different soundcards (webcam microphone + internal soundcard) for sound input and output, there's something called skype_dsp_hijacker, which uses an LD_PRELOAD trick to redirect sound I/O to another device. I wrote a small patch for this useful wrapper to enable use of separate devices.
Perhaps I misunderstood the title of the article - I think the use of the word "myths" is misleading, since almost none of the points brought up are verifiable, but merely the author's opinion.
Some examples:
Just my humble comments on an otherwise quite interesting read.:^)
2. "Open source lets you get under the hood and fix problems"
The idea seems to be that Open Source is better than closed source because you can "tinker" with the code. But how many people actually do this? Hardly anybody in real life. In reality, it's generally very, very difficult to fix real bugs in anything but the most trivial Open Source software. I know that I have rarely done it, and I am an experienced developer.
Not sure where this comes from - I never heard anyone recommend OSS on the basis that anyone can fire up their editor and happily fix bugs in any software in minutes, because it's Open Source.
The advantage that Open Source has over closed, proprietary source because of its "tinker friendliness" still holds true, irregardless of the author's conclusion that it is "very, very difficult" to fix problems in OSS. The source code is still available, right?. This means that it is at least possible for someone motivated enough to try and fix it. You just don't have that when the source code not is avaliable (legally).
Just because the percentage of users actually contributing their own patches is low, doesn't mean that the advantage of source code availability is reduced. To me this sounds a bit like "Oh, they say that this brand of car can be driven faster than the other brand, but since almost no-one is skilled enough to push the car to those speeds, it's a myth."
4. "Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software"
People rant on and on about how much MS Windows sucks, and it's true, it does in many respects. But it's also true that in many respects, Windows kicks Linux's ass in terms of usability and GUI refinements. It's widely recognized that the Linux desktop is still a work in progress playing catch-up to Microsoft, and people continually wage religious wars on each other's OSS projects.
Come on. I don't think I ever heard someone even on Slashdot seriously put forward the idea that Open Source "always is better, just because."
Not really sure where this argument is going. Shall I read it as "The idea that open source always is better is wrong, because some proprieraty alternatives do stuff better." Hmm. Again, only the most fundamentalist zealot would not know this.
6. "More choice is always better"
[...] For example, a new Linux user has to choose between all these different packages (e.g. which desktop) without knowing anything about either choice, or else just admit defeat and click "All", which results in a bloated system. Reducing the choices would reduce the bloat and clutter that seems to be in danger of overtaking the Linux of today - how many CD's are there now in the average distribution? [...]
This is a comment on distributions, and _not_ Open Source in general. Reducing the number of choices (or at least putting them under some "advanced options") in the most "user-friendly" distributions may be a good idea.
Re:Where is Progressive Rock?
on
IT's Musical Habits
·
· Score: 2, Informative
It's right here, in my music collection.:)
How about bands like Eloy, Birth Control, Frumpy, Jane, Nektar, Focus, Camel, Ars Nova - not to mention more or less heavy spacerock (Ash Ra Tempel, Monster Magnet, Omnia Opera, and my absolute favorite band, Hawkwind)...
1) programable tab completion - yes folks there is more to tab completion besides beeping all the time. When I hit cd fooTAB the list of completions only shows _directories_ beginning with foo
"Bash" also supports programmable tab completion - it's possible to do stuff such as:
Tab completion after the command...
... unzip, which will only complete filenames ending with ".zip"
... kill, will give you a full list of PID's to kill.
... killall, will complete process names.
... ping, telnet, ftp, will complete to entries in/etc/hosts
... insmod, will complete module names to be loaded.
... rmmod, will complete to loaded modules to unload.
And my favorite:
apt-get install, which will complete to packages known to apt
There are lots more of them, and of course, since it's programmable, more can be added to suite ones needs.
As far as I can tell (I've seen the movie lots of times, but my memory may still fail me on the details) - yes, it's from a scene where THX is going through a torture-like examination, and the guys operating the consoles that is doing the nasty work to THX's brain is pointing out "interesting" effects when they turn the knobs and dials, while showing little care or emotional response to THX's agonies.
No, it doesn't. I can't tell, however, if that's due to the fact that my primitive culture hasn't (yet) been directly exposed to the horribly high level of terrorist threats that others have been these recent years, or if we, even without being threatened, eventually will start implementing such privacy-eroding measures as we evolve and turn less primitive.:^)
anyways, do they check digital cameras? that little SD card can hold more than photos...
One should not forget that cameras also can be used to photograph screenfuls of hexdumps.
Data can also be converted to strobes of light and pulsed out through the Caps Lock-led, into a receiver cunningly hidden in the fabric of ones clothing.
A full body search, including a cavity search should be mandatory at every workplace, at any time an employee enters the premises (including returning from lunch breaks).
Don't forget to check that those eyeballs aren't in fact high-tech camera implants still photographing hexdumps, after the employee left the camera (presumably recovered from a cavity search) at the security checkpoint.
I may be overly cautious, and of course, if it is the same version of the compiler, a cross compiler should generate exactly the same code as a native compiler, given identical input.
But the fact that half of the code is cross compiled on a different operating system still makes me a bit cautious about the end result, and when it comes to important systems, well, I try to err on the side of caution.:^)
And I've compiled the Linux kernel with distcc splitting the load over two different architectures - one Intel box running Linux, and one UltraSPARC running Solaris (with a cross-compiling GCC).
No problems. That I noticed. Wouldn't compile a production system kernel this way, though.:)
With a fast enough system (and lots of RAM), each display could run its own VMWare (or equivalent) instance, which means its own (virtual:^) reset button, BIOS settings, harddrives and all..
This would also make it possible for each user to run a different OS.
It may be that only one sync is necessary to get the data to the disk.
But since I've heard many times that on some systems, the first sync merely schedules dirty pages for writing, while the second sync won't return until the first sync has completed (buffers actually flushed), I've always gone for the safer bet.
Syncing three times is also a popular way of doing it. I've also noticed that the number of syncs I perform before reboot -f'ing correlates to the amount of coffee I've had.:^)
I've done this a couple of times when something needed to be fixed and no-one remembered the root password. Since the system is in a very basic state after starting with init=/bin/bash, it's probably a good idea to only fix the absolutely necessary stuff in order to make a real startup.
Besides, if you downscale HD content, it is no longer (H)igh (D)efinition, is it? Just get the standard resolution material and cease the discussion if that is the case.
If HD-DVD will eventually replace DVD's completely, as someone suggested they may do, that is not an option.
Those who don't care about the "HD"-part will still rip and spread (because now HD-DVD has replaced DVD's) resized transcodings of the movies. Do you mean that transcoding an HD-DVD-rip to XVID/whatever will make the copy look worse than transcoding from a lower quality material (normal DVD?)
Still, using file sizes as an argument for HD-DVD rips being inherently "safe" from being ripped and spread over the net, is not a good one, I think.
As for the myth of downloading movies, the amount of physical storage required for a movie will make downloading impractical. In light of bandwidth and monthly data-transfer caps being imposed by some ISPs, it'll take you a couple of months worth of bandwidth allotment to download a single flick.
I am pretty sure something very similar to that was said against against the possibility of ripped DVD movies being "available on the net for download."
Slashdot Mirror
I think a bit more science and research is needed before one draws the conclusion that our solar system is genuine. Heck, even a solar system similar to ours for 1 in 100 millions solar system would indeed be interresting.
:)
Yep, it would be interesting.
A current estimate of the number of stars in the (observable) universe sems to be 7 x 10^22 (70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000), give or take a few
This means that even if something similar to our solar system is one in 100 billion stars, there would be 700,000,000,000 of them out there!
I really like that big estimated number of stars - makes you feel a bit humble. Unfortunately it also means that it is very well possible for the universe to have billions of civilizations like ours, but all isolated, without any possibility of finding or chatting with another. Ever.
Yes, it is one of my absolute favourite short stories! It has the most powerful ending I've ever read.
:^)
Also, the phrase "There is another system" is from the movie Colossus, IMHO a quite scary piece on the "dangers of A.I" , and well worth checking out if you haven't seen it. The reference to correlations between gold price and men's beards is from the book "Friday" by Robert Heinlein. Worth reading, as all of his books, of course.
Ah, but besides the claim that it speeded up the computer, it was a geniuine FPU emulator, right? Those can be useful for software that requires an FPU.
:^), and the webcam software required MMX-instructions, which my old Pentium didn't have. So, I used an MMX-wrapper that intercepted those opcodes and translated them to non-MMX-instructions.
I actually made use of an MMX-emulator some year back, when I wanted to connect my webcam to a box in the closet (don't ask
Thanx, I found it - see my reply to myself. I just couldn't resist posting that "dame" funny README-file.
i p
:^)
Also found the other one: http://www.computercraft.com/progs/486topentium.z
Some day I'll dig out an old 386 from my closet, and do a two-step Pentium upgrade by running both programs in sequence.
...back in the (somewhat older) days when I spent most of my time in front of my beloved Compam 386 computer, I stumbled upon a bit of software called "386to486", which promised to instantly convert my 386 chip to a 486 chip. This was my first PC, and I didn't know much about it, but I was still a bit skeptical and very curious about how such a program could work.. So I checked the README file, which enlightened me on the subject with something along the lines of:
:^)
COMPUTER MAKERS DON'T TELL YOU EVERYTHING! THERE'S SECRET TRICKS THAT CAN BE USED TO CONVERT YOUR 386 into a 486!
Now, conviced it was just a hoax, or something worse, I tried the program. (I didn't really care about my data - the harddrive was dropped into the ground - multiple times, and the poor few working sectors I had only contained data I had copied from floppies anyway), The program happily told me the magical transformation was complete. I fired up MSD.EXE to check - no change in identification. Still a 386. I ran a benchmark program, which didn't show any change from before. Just to try, I ran the magic software again - this time I got the text "Your computer is already a 486!". At least the programmers thought about that. Well, no bigger disappointment, since I didn't really expected anything useful to happen. I never found out if it was a virus either...
Years later - a new little utility turned up on the BBSes I frequented - it was called 486toPentium, and the cheerful description of the file was "FROM THE GUYS WHO BROUGHT YOU 386to486"
Amazing!
A system that perpetually collects information presented in a language that easily conveys the attributes and logical relationships between different objects and concepts. (Scratches beard.)
... !! ... -- THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM --
Make the system distributed and let people run their own information collecting agents. Every home computer becomes a part of the network of logical relationships, each with a tiny piece to contribute to the puzzle. My computer could have complete information about the workings of combustion engines - what parts they consist of, and their relationships.
When someone requests information about car manufacturing, some relevant part of it will be retrieved from my store.
Now, let's make the system ask us for help, when information is missing. Let the system start drawing own conclusions from the facts it gathered, and tell us when it needs something filled in. As it grows, more and more complex queries could be answered.
Q: CAN THE EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING BE REVERSED?
A: THERE IS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER
Or how about:
A: TO REDUCE GLOBAL WARMING, FIRST WE MUST... ??
Oh, at least I hope the network will be able to finally find the true correlation between the price of gold and the length of men's beards.
As of Skype for Linux version 0.9.0.14, the options to configure the soundcard settings from inside the program are still missing.
:)
For those (like me) who use two different soundcards (webcam microphone + internal soundcard) for sound input and output, there's something called skype_dsp_hijacker, which uses an LD_PRELOAD trick to redirect sound I/O to another device. I wrote a small patch for this useful wrapper to enable use of separate devices.
It's located at http://195.38.3.142/skype/
Do tell me if you find it useful!
Perhaps I misunderstood the title of the article - I think the use of the word "myths" is misleading, since almost none of the points brought up are verifiable, but merely the author's opinion.
:^)
2. "Open source lets you get under the hood and fix problems"
Some examples:
Just my humble comments on an otherwise quite interesting read.
The idea seems to be that Open Source is better than closed source because you can "tinker" with the code. But how many people actually do this? Hardly anybody in real life. In reality, it's generally very, very difficult to fix real bugs in anything but the most trivial Open Source software. I know that I have rarely done it, and I am an experienced developer.
Not sure where this comes from - I never heard anyone recommend OSS on the basis that anyone can fire up their editor and happily fix bugs in any software in minutes, because it's Open Source.
The advantage that Open Source has over closed, proprietary source because of its "tinker friendliness" still holds true, irregardless of the author's conclusion that it is "very, very difficult" to fix problems in OSS. The source code is still available, right?. This means that it is at least possible for someone motivated enough to try and fix it. You just don't have that when the source code not is avaliable (legally).
Just because the percentage of users actually contributing their own patches is low, doesn't mean that the advantage of source code availability is reduced. To me this sounds a bit like "Oh, they say that this brand of car can be driven faster than the other brand, but since almost no-one is skilled enough to push the car to those speeds, it's a myth."
4. "Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software" People rant on and on about how much MS Windows sucks, and it's true, it does in many respects. But it's also true that in many respects, Windows kicks Linux's ass in terms of usability and GUI refinements. It's widely recognized that the Linux desktop is still a work in progress playing catch-up to Microsoft, and people continually wage religious wars on each other's OSS projects.
Come on. I don't think I ever heard someone even on Slashdot seriously put forward the idea that Open Source "always is better, just because."
Not really sure where this argument is going. Shall I read it as "The idea that open source always is better is wrong, because some proprieraty alternatives do stuff better." Hmm. Again, only the most fundamentalist zealot would not know this.
6. "More choice is always better"
[...] For example, a new Linux user has to choose between all these different packages (e.g. which desktop) without knowing anything about either choice, or else just admit defeat and click "All", which results in a bloated system. Reducing the choices would reduce the bloat and clutter that seems to be in danger of overtaking the Linux of today - how many CD's are there now in the average distribution? [...]
This is a comment on distributions, and _not_ Open Source in general. Reducing the number of choices (or at least putting them under some "advanced options") in the most "user-friendly" distributions may be a good idea.
It's right here, in my music collection. :)
How about bands like Eloy, Birth Control, Frumpy, Jane, Nektar, Focus, Camel, Ars Nova - not to mention more or less heavy spacerock (Ash Ra Tempel, Monster Magnet, Omnia Opera, and my absolute favorite band, Hawkwind)...
If you haven't already, check out this excellent webpage, with hundreds of reviews of progressive bands.
1) programable tab completion - yes folks there is more to tab completion besides beeping all the time. When I hit cd fooTAB the list of completions only shows _directories_ beginning with foo
...
... unzip, which will only complete filenames ending with ".zip"
... kill, will give you a full list of PID's to kill.
... killall, will complete process names.
... ping, telnet, ftp, will complete to entries in /etc/hosts
... insmod, will complete module names to be loaded.
... rmmod, will complete to loaded modules to unload.
"Bash" also supports programmable tab completion - it's possible to do stuff such as:
Tab completion after the command
And my favorite:
apt-get install, which will complete to packages known to apt
There are lots more of them, and of course, since it's programmable, more can be added to suite ones needs.
Same here.
"Oh, look, now I cut myself..."
** (Could be considered spoilers below....)
As far as I can tell (I've seen the movie lots of times, but my memory may still fail me on the details) - yes, it's from a scene where THX is going through a torture-like examination, and the guys operating the consoles that is doing the nasty work to THX's brain is pointing out "interesting" effects when they turn the knobs and dials, while showing little care or emotional response to THX's agonies.
It's the opposite of figuratively being literally syphoned.
D'oh.
No, it doesn't. I can't tell, however, if that's due to the fact that my primitive culture hasn't (yet) been directly exposed to the horribly high level of terrorist threats that others have been these recent years, or if we, even without being threatened, eventually will start implementing such privacy-eroding measures as we evolve and turn less primitive. :^)
anyways, do they check digital cameras? that little SD card can hold more than photos...
One should not forget that cameras also can be used to photograph screenfuls of hexdumps.
Data can also be converted to strobes of light and pulsed out through the Caps Lock-led, into a receiver cunningly hidden in the fabric of ones clothing.
A full body search, including a cavity search should be mandatory at every workplace, at any time an employee enters the premises (including returning from lunch breaks).
Don't forget to check that those eyeballs aren't in fact high-tech camera implants still photographing hexdumps, after the employee left the camera (presumably recovered from a cavity search) at the security checkpoint.
I may be overly cautious, and of course, if it is the same version of the compiler, a cross compiler should generate exactly the same code as a native compiler, given identical input.
:^)
But the fact that half of the code is cross compiled on a different operating system still makes me a bit cautious about the end result, and when it comes to important systems, well, I try to err on the side of caution.
And I've compiled the Linux kernel with distcc splitting the load over two different architectures - one Intel box running Linux, and one UltraSPARC running Solaris (with a cross-compiling GCC).
:)
No problems. That I noticed. Wouldn't compile a production system kernel this way, though.
With a fast enough system (and lots of RAM), each display could run its own VMWare (or equivalent) instance, which means its own (virtual :^) reset button, BIOS settings, harddrives and all..
This would also make it possible for each user to run a different OS.
It may be that only one sync is necessary to get the data to the disk.
:^)
But since I've heard many times that on some systems, the first sync merely schedules dirty pages for writing, while the second sync won't return until the first sync has completed (buffers actually flushed), I've always gone for the safer bet.
Syncing three times is also a popular way of doing it. I've also noticed that the number of syncs I perform before reboot -f'ing correlates to the amount of coffee I've had.
A shorter way of expressing your helpful tip, is to humbly offer this link anytime a question deserves such a response:
:^)
www.fuckinggoogleit.com
Besides, if you downscale HD content, it is no longer (H)igh (D)efinition, is it? Just get the standard resolution material and cease the discussion if that is the case.
If HD-DVD will eventually replace DVD's completely, as someone suggested they may do, that is not an option.
Those who don't care about the "HD"-part will still rip and spread (because now HD-DVD has replaced DVD's) resized transcodings of the movies. Do you mean that transcoding an HD-DVD-rip to XVID/whatever will make the copy look worse than transcoding from a lower quality material (normal DVD?)
Still, using file sizes as an argument for HD-DVD rips being inherently "safe" from being ripped and spread over the net, is not a good one, I think.
But people downloading movies from the net usually aren't that picky about the quality being as good as the original medium (at least I'm not).
If the usual XVID DVD-rip = downscaled, much less size, and less detail, why shouldn't this be true of HD-DVD-rips too?
As for the myth of downloading movies, the amount of physical storage required for a movie will make downloading impractical. In light of bandwidth and monthly data-transfer caps being imposed by some ISPs, it'll take you a couple of months worth of bandwidth allotment to download a single flick.
I am pretty sure something very similar to that was said against against the possibility of ripped DVD movies being "available on the net for download."