Apparently there are companies out there who employ people to visit various blogs and forums and establish persona's at those sites. They get paid to promote stuff or I guess in this instance try to slam the door on someone.
I would say that I am an early adopter, bought one of the first plasma TV's to come out, usually buy the lastest and greatest computer's. I have given away over a dozen old ones to friends and family. Also the same with string of DVD players AMP's etc.. Am I in the market for one of these two media players? NO. Why not? It is a dead end technology. There is no point to it. By the time they finally settle on one format or the other the issue will be moot. People will be buying their HD movies off the net and storing it on 20GB flash thumb drives or Chinese High Capacity Discs or even the Holographic discs that are coming out soon.
Well SONY is saying that they are not going to signal degrade the first Blu-Ray movies out until market acceptance is in. Then they will lower the boom and turn it on consequently turning off HD on all the older HDTV sets.
Interesting concept, however they would need to standardize a lot of things between these worlds before it would be possible. I guess an XML format for items, knives would work in fantasy and tech relams, guns would work in tech relams but not in fantasy, similarly with potions and magic items. Magic swords would turn into plain swords in tech. High tech cyberswords into plain swords in fantasy. Characters would have to be broken down to some kind of XML format as well that would be compatible between relams. There will probably be problems with people using the transfers to 'hack' their characters capabilites. If it is easier to level up a character in one metaverse, what happens if you move it to a harder metaverse? Biggest obstacle I see would be the companies running the metaverses not wanting their paying customers to move off their systems. Why make it easier for their revenue stream to switch to a competitor?
Been a gamer all my life, probably considered an adult for 3 decades. Not a surprising statistic to me. What is surprising to me are the idiots in congress trying to pass all the restrictions on gaming. What will happen if they finally do pass those stupid laws is that someone will make lots of $$$ by opening Adult Gaming Stores, or better yet set up a franchise with liquor stores to sell adult games. I for one do not want Walmarts conservatism dictating what games I can or cannot play. Something Congress should note, that there are probably more adult gamers out there buying these games than there are kids. These are VOTERS!
Underlying problem is not piracy. DRM in Blu-Ray is not about piracy. Pirates do not care at all about resolution, they are content with VCD quality movies. They will not buy the movies nor will they watch it at the theaters. Its all about charging the people who do buy the movies multiple times for the same movie. ie Make sure that you pay for a version that plays on your PSP as well as for the copy you play at home, and pay extra for being able to put it on your own home network. It is also about controlling the market and keeping competitors out of the market.
SONY has not been getting it right for some time now. Their product lines has been going downhill for quite some time all because of their bean counters. They used to be somewhat good quality products now its just crap.
Hard disks are cheaper and faster. I currently backup to hard disks. I keep several 250 GB external USB disks just for that purpose. Its faster, has larger capacity, and its available at 1/2 the cost of Blu-Ray!
Its all from one source PTC that is orchastrating the purging anything they consider indecent on broacast TV for now. They will take aim at cable next.
Nothing to do with immorality, it is just that they do not get any of the tax revenue from that gambling. I would not be too surprised to find the big gambling syndicates in the US are sponsors of the bill. They were the ones trying to stop the Indian casino's.
Accordingly we should ban the WWF, American Football, 3/4's of the TV shows, a lot of the movies from Hollywood, every single toy pistol, sword etc..
To give you a clue, it just does not work. Kids will make toy weapons even if you do not buy them. Playing cops and robbers, cowboys and indians (of course that is not PC anymore) etc.. have kids trying to kill each other with their imagination. Now they are doing so on the net. Only thing different, is they do not need as much imagination.
Has anyone considered that NONE of their current games will probably work with Vista? This has nothing to do with DX9 compatibility, it has to do with DRM. The new driver structure in Vista will probably make all current DRM's fail. What is the current stance of the game publishers on this? Are they going to repatch all the games so that they will work with Vista or are we SOL?
What happens to business uses of blank media? Do you get a tax refund? Ie if your media is used for backup of your HD with no music or if you are using it in a corporation do you get a refund? Also can you take that tax as a deduction from your normal taxes?
No graphics card that you can buy today for your PC supports HDCP. There is absolutely no point in putting a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD on your computer to play movies. This is because of the DRM. You do not get any higher quality video on your current computer system with either format unless you upgrade your graphics cards to HDCP ones which you cannot buy right now. You also have to upgrade to Vista as well as well as buy a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player. You are also required to "Activate" your blu-Ray player. The DRM also means if you replace your Blu-Ray player you need to "Re-Activate" all your DRM'ed HD-DVD's or buy them again as the DRM ties the HD-DVD to your player. I find that rediculous, I have 10+ DVD players in my home and do not like the idea of buying a HD-DVD for each of the 3 entertainment systems in my home. I just spent $10K on a computer system with a 30" Dell monitor so I can watch movies as well as play games on it. My PC is now my 4th entertainment system. I do not know about everyone else but I am/was an early adopter getting the first plasma screen's etc.. But not with any of these DRM'ed crap.
What looks really interesting the IBM supoena's to HP, M$, SUN and Baystar. When the house of cards SCO builds finally gets blown away, will it reveal itself as a FUD campaign by those 4? If so does it open up those companies for lawsuits by IBM, RedHat, etc..?
Joe six pack has no clue and will probably shell out and buy said HD-DVD/Blu-Ray and plug it into his SDTV and not know the difference. Early adopters with HD ready TV's, unless they have sets that go over 480p know they do not need to buy HD-DVD's or Blu-Ray because they do not get any additional resolution from the devices and get more DRM for higher cost. ie all they are paying for is DRM as their sets do not support 720p or 1080p. I belive anyone whose sets currently supports 1080p has units that support HDCP. Its the ones with 720p/1080i that have a problem.
The MPAA has forced a requirement that DVD manufacturers not enable any upscaling of standard DVD to 720p or 1080i on the analog outputs. So our sets work from the analog 480p signal and upscales from that. The DVD players would have upscaled the 480p digital image they deinterlaced and presented that to our TV sets. Better picture quality for the consumer, lost in the name of MPAA profits. So folks with analog 720p/1080i TV sets have been screwed by the MPAA since they got their sets.
Is the lock to a single player in HD-DVD and Blu-Ray an attempt to stop piracy or an attempt to kill the DVD rental business? I think it is an attempt by movie studios to muscle their way into the DVD rental business. ie creating a technical monopoly.
I had a run in with the filters before. I usually use stripe or stripe7 as my handle even in games that I play online. On Shattered Galaxy [www.sgalaxy.com], I used to go by stripe in their 2-3 years of beta. Then when they went commercial, I found out that it was a banned name! Turns out anything with strip in it was banned. Similarly Grape gets banned because it had rape in it. What gets banned is getting rediculous. What next? Banning capital A because it might be used to spell Allah? What about local slang, Randy is a common name I see in the US. In the UK it's slang for someone who is sexually excited. Does that mean all Randy's are soon to be banned in the UK? or worldwide?
Nothing to fear if you are innocent, then the police should have no reason to fear that every one of those cameras and everyone of the camera's that records any kind of police action be made public. Any action a police officer takes will be required to be on camera and available for judicial review. If they are doing nothing wrong they have nothing to worry about.
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Apparently there are companies out there who employ people to visit various blogs and forums and establish persona's at those sites. They get paid to promote stuff or I guess in this instance try to slam the door on someone.
A moonbase Telescope would be real science, so it won't be built.
What about all that bad electricity from your Home electronics and PC's?
I would say that I am an early adopter, bought one of the first plasma TV's to come out, usually buy the lastest and greatest computer's. I have given away over a dozen old ones to friends and family. Also the same with string of DVD players AMP's etc.. Am I in the market for one of these two media players? NO. Why not? It is a dead end technology. There is no point to it. By the time they finally settle on one format or the other the issue will be moot. People will be buying their HD movies off the net and storing it on 20GB flash thumb drives or Chinese High Capacity Discs or even the Holographic discs that are coming out soon.
Well SONY is saying that they are not going to signal degrade the first Blu-Ray movies out until market acceptance is in. Then they will lower the boom and turn it on consequently turning off HD on all the older HDTV sets.
Interesting concept, however they would need to standardize a lot of things between these worlds before it would be possible. I guess an XML format for items, knives would work in fantasy and tech relams, guns would work in tech relams but not in fantasy, similarly with potions and magic items. Magic swords would turn into plain swords in tech. High tech cyberswords into plain swords in fantasy. Characters would have to be broken down to some kind of XML format as well that would be compatible between relams. There will probably be problems with people using the transfers to 'hack' their characters capabilites. If it is easier to level up a character in one metaverse, what happens if you move it to a harder metaverse? Biggest obstacle I see would be the companies running the metaverses not wanting their paying customers to move off their systems. Why make it easier for their revenue stream to switch to a competitor?
Been a gamer all my life, probably considered an adult for 3 decades. Not a surprising statistic to me. What is surprising to me are the idiots in congress trying to pass all the restrictions on gaming. What will happen if they finally do pass those stupid laws is that someone will make lots of $$$ by opening Adult Gaming Stores, or better yet set up a franchise with liquor stores to sell adult games. I for one do not want Walmarts conservatism dictating what games I can or cannot play. Something Congress should note, that there are probably more adult gamers out there buying these games than there are kids. These are VOTERS!
Underlying problem is not piracy. DRM in Blu-Ray is not about piracy. Pirates do not care at all about resolution, they are content with VCD quality movies. They will not buy the movies nor will they watch it at the theaters. Its all about charging the people who do buy the movies multiple times for the same movie. ie Make sure that you pay for a version that plays on your PSP as well as for the copy you play at home, and pay extra for being able to put it on your own home network. It is also about controlling the market and keeping competitors out of the market.
SONY has not been getting it right for some time now. Their product lines has been going downhill for quite some time all because of their bean counters. They used to be somewhat good quality products now its just crap.
Hard disks are cheaper and faster. I currently backup to hard disks. I keep several 250 GB external USB disks just for that purpose. Its faster, has larger capacity, and its available at 1/2 the cost of Blu-Ray!
Its all from one source PTC that is orchastrating the purging anything they consider indecent on broacast TV for now. They will take aim at cable next.
Nothing to do with immorality, it is just that they do not get any of the tax revenue from that gambling. I would not be too surprised to find the big gambling syndicates in the US are sponsors of the bill. They were the ones trying to stop the Indian casino's.
Odds are very good that dual booting into WinXP on a IntelMac has been available and running in Apple since the IntelMac was first released.
All my ebooks are exclusively baen ones. Have not tried any other sources. Then again most of the hardcopy books I buy are Baen books anyway. :)
Accordingly we should ban the WWF, American Football, 3/4's of the TV shows, a lot of the movies from Hollywood, every single toy pistol, sword etc..
To give you a clue, it just does not work. Kids will make toy weapons even if you do not buy them. Playing cops and robbers, cowboys and indians (of course that is not PC anymore) etc.. have kids trying to kill each other with their imagination. Now they are doing so on the net. Only thing different, is they do not need as much imagination.
Has anyone considered that NONE of their current games will probably work with Vista? This has nothing to do with DX9 compatibility, it has to do with DRM. The new driver structure in Vista will probably make all current DRM's fail. What is the current stance of the game publishers on this? Are they going to repatch all the games so that they will work with Vista or are we SOL?
What happens to business uses of blank media? Do you get a tax refund? Ie if your media is used for backup of your HD with no music or if you are using it in a corporation do you get a refund? Also can you take that tax as a deduction from your normal taxes?
Same reason the SONY a hardware company owns movie studios. This is not too far of a stretch as Jobs is supposed to own like 40% of Disney.
No graphics card that you can buy today for your PC supports HDCP. There is absolutely no point in putting a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD on your computer to play movies. This is because of the DRM. You do not get any higher quality video on your current computer system with either format unless you upgrade your graphics cards to HDCP ones which you cannot buy right now. You also have to upgrade to Vista as well as well as buy a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player. You are also required to "Activate" your blu-Ray player. The DRM also means if you replace your Blu-Ray player you need to "Re-Activate" all your DRM'ed HD-DVD's or buy them again as the DRM ties the HD-DVD to your player. I find that rediculous, I have 10+ DVD players in my home and do not like the idea of buying a HD-DVD for each of the 3 entertainment systems in my home. I just spent $10K on a computer system with a 30" Dell monitor so I can watch movies as well as play games on it. My PC is now my 4th entertainment system. I do not know about everyone else but I am/was an early adopter getting the first plasma screen's etc.. But not with any of these DRM'ed crap.
What looks really interesting the IBM supoena's to HP, M$, SUN and Baystar. When the house of cards SCO builds finally gets blown away, will it reveal itself as a FUD campaign by those 4? If so does it open up those companies for lawsuits by IBM, RedHat, etc..?
Joe six pack has no clue and will probably shell out and buy said HD-DVD/Blu-Ray and plug it into his SDTV and not know the difference. Early adopters with HD ready TV's, unless they have sets that go over 480p know they do not need to buy HD-DVD's or Blu-Ray because they do not get any additional resolution from the devices and get more DRM for higher cost. ie all they are paying for is DRM as their sets do not support 720p or 1080p. I belive anyone whose sets currently supports 1080p has units that support HDCP. Its the ones with 720p/1080i that have a problem.
The MPAA has forced a requirement that DVD manufacturers not enable any upscaling of standard DVD to 720p or 1080i on the analog outputs. So our sets work from the analog 480p signal and upscales from that. The DVD players would have upscaled the 480p digital image they deinterlaced and presented that to our TV sets. Better picture quality for the consumer, lost in the name of MPAA profits. So folks with analog 720p/1080i TV sets have been screwed by the MPAA since they got their sets.
Is the lock to a single player in HD-DVD and Blu-Ray an attempt to stop piracy or an attempt to kill the DVD rental business? I think it is an attempt by movie studios to muscle their way into the DVD rental business. ie creating a technical monopoly.
Its a RPG, ie explore strange new landscapes, meet new and interesting people, then kill them and steal their loot.
I had a run in with the filters before. I usually use stripe or stripe7 as my handle even in games that I play online. On Shattered Galaxy [www.sgalaxy.com], I used to go by stripe in their 2-3 years of beta. Then when they went commercial, I found out that it was a banned name! Turns out anything with strip in it was banned. Similarly Grape gets banned because it had rape in it. What gets banned is getting rediculous. What next? Banning capital A because it might be used to spell Allah? What about local slang, Randy is a common name I see in the US. In the UK it's slang for someone who is sexually excited. Does that mean all Randy's are soon to be banned in the UK? or worldwide?
Nothing to fear if you are innocent, then the police should have no reason to fear that every one of those cameras and everyone of the camera's that records any kind of police action be made public. Any action a police officer takes will be required to be on camera and available for judicial review. If they are doing nothing wrong they have nothing to worry about.