By the Gods man, you might want to consider not smoking things before posting. There is a quote, often attributed to Benito Mussolini though I've never seen it sourced: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." Fascism isn't about collectivism at all, it's about power. Fascism a system where you align the goals of the state and the corporation(s) to a specific end, often through war. Just because you call some organization "Joe's Communist Party for the Advancement of the Worker" doesn't mean that it is Communist. Heck the "National Socialist" part of the Nazism was there solely to attract voters (at first). You have to remember that Russia was really not "Communist" either, and I doubt we'll ever see a real communist state.
Human beings are too greedy to ever allow a true Communist state to be formed. I'm not saying that's good, or bad, just that it is. You can call this kind of law, or drug laws, fascism and it's true. The corporation has aligned the state to it's end, and that's not collectivism. Personally the idiots that try to link fascism to collectivism in the history books all make the same mistake: Fascist leaders, like all people of greed, are saying one thing and doing another. Communism calls for absolute equality, Stalinism (or Maoism) never had that. There are good reasons, but the simplest is that people are greedy.
Greed is fine, and Capitalism isn't terrible, but one must watch for the excesses to form. We've reached the point now where patent and copyright law have hit the "ludicrous" level. I wish a Zombie Jefferson would rise and b**ch-slap some of these idiots.
Copyright: 14+14 (if renewed)
What is this "Life + 70 years" of the author bull-puckey? Where is the incentive to create more vs release ad-nauseam? In a perfect copyright world, Disney wouldn't have total control over most of the Mickey films anymore, they'd be public domain. However the House of the Mouse could keep control of the character in general by releasing a new Mickey animation every 28 years. That's not so tough, is it?
Thomas Jefferson himself was not a fan of unlimited copyright (or patents), having seen how England used it to clamp down on opposition. He relented, wisely, and let it come in. Still, I wonder how he'd view it today.
LOL well I don't know what Toshiba's trying to pull. Retail establishments won't like them too much (see: gift cards, et al, to placate HD-DVD buyers)
Toshiba's got to think too:
DVD 2.0?
Super Up-Conversion?
Compatibility issues, being sandwiched between the 75$ up-convert regular DVD player and the likely 250$ Blu-ray player. These conditions alone will not be enviable.
I don't know if this is really a smart business decision for Toshiba, time will tell.
Personally I think they're f**ked on this initiative.
One of my friends might get a kick out of taking a virgin hard drive, intentionally borking (breaking) a load of Windows on it, saying that it doesn't work, and when they clone it they get the windows and such, and also several thousand single letter jpegs and word docs (kind of like DW2004 did when you had created a new sheet) just to take time.
Stupidity should be countered with the mockery of it.
What aren't you guys understanding? When vented properly the power brick doesn't heat up to the point where it catches fire. This guy had his brick in a tightly compact spot. The expelled heat was collecting in the area, and naturally, a small area will heat up much quicker than a larger one.
It's not like this guy had his brick out in the open and it caused a fire. No, he had it in a very tight spot which raised the overall temperature of the area enough to cause a fire.
Get this through your heads: The power brick in itself is not a life-threatening device. Improper care of said brick, much like every other electronic item on the market, can cause serious risk of damage or injury. This guy didn't take care of it properly and therefore, he greatly increased the risk.
What a dolt. My PC, Laptop, Blu-Ray player, DVD player, et al, all do better than that. If they overheat, they shut off. It might wreck the power supply, but it's last gasp is shutting off. Anyone know if it's part of UL that items do that?
Actually NASA needs more funds if anything. Talk about performing on a shoestring budget (comparatively). We could also end a great deal of subsidies (those to profitable companies) and use that money to fund challenge grant research in the University system. The university shares in the patent revenue with the US government, which puts half of the revenue going back into the challenge grant system, the remainder to the general fund...
Get America innovating again and keep corporations on their toes;)
"The joke being that almost all the Blu-ray players on the market right now are obsolete. BD Live has been part of the spec since November, but pretty much nothing supports it, and most Blu-ray players can't even be upgraded to support it. The PS3 is about the only safe bet right now."
Only if you care about chatting online a la Ratatouille or web based crap. Even a 1.1 player will do that stupid PiP commentary. I find this particular line of logic comical from HD-DVD supporters considering that their favored spec was pushing a vaporware disc size.
"Oh, and the other joke is that BD Live just brings Blu-ray up to (nearly) the same level as HD DVD. Yes, at the time WHV threw its weight behind Blu-ray, Blu-ray was both more expensive than HD DVD, and less powerful (capacity excepting.)"
Oh please. You couldn't get lossless audio on HD-DVD without sacrificing something else. HD-DVD was also a great deal closer to the edge of it's capability, whereas the BDA pushed spec has more room to grow.
"Great decision Hollywood. You went for the format that's out of most people's price range, that's unlikely to be in people's price range for a while, and which had less features (and thus less clear advantages over DVD) than HD DVD. In practice, I suspect you've doomed HD media to a niche, while the vast majority stick with DVD for movies they want to own, and PPV and the various download services for content they want to see in HD.
I still find the decision incomprehensible."
This was a patent royalty war so get over it. The BDA wanted to break the Toshiba stranglehold over DVD royalties, Toshiba wanted to protect them. That's why HD-DVD was "cheaper" (that and the fact that Toshiba was selling them at a loss in an attempt to grab market / mind share) in the end. Toshiba was willing to use a lower capacity disc, knuckle under to a Microsoft codec (which the BDA ultimately left in as optional, but not many discs will use), and use a less powerful disc language. So in the end, the feature "checkbox" war wasn't about you the consumer, or even the studios (although BD has less regions than your beloved DVD), or quality Hi-Def movies. Nope, it was about Toshiba rejecting BD as the DVD successor all in the name of filthy lucre then trying to spoil the party with their own format. Heck Toshiba's new push for "Super Up-Conversion" only exists now because they lost the Hi-Def format war.
Why don't you get over the price as well. DVD in year 2-3 was 600$+ for a good player. Unless you wanted a 4 bit DAC that left you with artifacts on-screen. Those you could get for 450$-500$. I was there at the beginning of DVD with crappy transfers, desync'd audio, screwy players, et al. If anything, early BD has done better than early DVD.
Don't hold your breath waiting for Hi-Def downloads either. For all the crowing about how codecs get better, file sizes still manage to magically increase. I think it's got something to do with the resolution increasing... Of course you're free to live in fantasy land. Me? I think we've got at least 1 more physical format beyond Blu-Ray before we have the installed base for HD Downloads.
Don't count on it. Now there isn't a reason to lower the cost of bluray players. Expect them to remain about the same price til next year.
I'm sick of this "price is so insurmountable" bullcrap. I'll tell you what price equals if you do your homework. Price = Build Quality. You still have to do your homework mind you. You do have to buy into the earlier part of the curve. Still, look at the following items:
Computers, people cry about them being a grand for the full package. I bought my first one for 3k and it wasn't anything but the main desktop. No monitor, keyboard, mouse, et al. Sure it had a 486 DX2/66, a whopping 16MB memory, 30gb HDD, 8MB video, SB16ASP SCSI2, and SCSI CDROM, but it cost too much compared to today's standards. Oh wait, my 3 yr old niece just had had it die on her in November. I bought it over a decade earlier. You're really lucky to get 3 years out of a standard off-the-shelf one today.
My first VCR was a VHS NEC. That thing worked for 2+ decades. Sure I spent 388 dollars on it, which was a good deal at the time. It outlasted 3 - 99$ and 1 - 150$ player. I'm on my last 150$ player right now (when this one dies, it's no more VCR).
My first DVD player (and my dad's) are Toshiba's (2105's) @ 500 bucks a piece. Still playing. I've bought (and my mother in particular) a couple of the 99$ players with name brands (Panasonic, Samsung, et al) on them, none has lasted very long.
Why is this? The nearest thing I can figure is that when these items were first engineered, no one knew the life cycle. Not only that, but they (the engineers) were over-engineering to allow for longevity to the early adopter. I really count it as the engineer playing CYOA. No denying it though, the more junkable something becomes, the less work that goes into it, and sure as heck the less they care about anything but the warranty period. For all the computer jocks: What's the real difference between Enterprise drives and Home drives that accounts for the warranty difference? What's the difference between Certified and Non-Certified memory? Why do people even bother with Satellite or Cable HD (other than PPV) when OTA HD is far superior with a good tuner (e.g. Samsung DTB-H260F)? My dad watched the ?Direct TV? NFL HD thing at a friend's house, and I brought in my tuner for a comparison on the same TV, and in a blind test they both were 110% positive that the Satellite was better, except it was the Tuner, and they were amazed that the little box did better.
Early on in a curve price counts a heck of a lot more than most people think... My 2105 will probably die right about when I buy a brand new 400-500 dollar BD 2.0 player, or it'll just be reattached to the TV it was originally hooked up to instead of the new LCD. Is it foolproof? No. There were more than a few DVD players out there with poor quality DAC's that I avoided. I couldn't get my first choice for XMas (a Sony model receiving stellar freakin' ratings) so I settled on the one I did for us. I do that with everything I buy. I'm not impulsive. I won't be buying a Samsung BD 1400 from the press it's gotten. The PS3 seems like a good choice thus far, but I'll wait for the 2.0 profile to arrive for it (and see what people say). My Dad could get a 1.0 or 1.1 player and never care, he'll just use it for the movies anyway. I'll probably get him one of the Panasonic 30's or whatever is their qualified successor this christmas.
I didn't care which side won really. I'm just glad that one is effectively dead. Long live, well in consumer electronics terms anyway, Blu Ray. Sorry HD DVD, but I didn't know ye anyway.
"Corporate sponsorship of research doesn't automatically invalidate that research..."
No, but when it's AT&T you look 3 times because this is the same company that lied about the impact Net users had on the phone circuit system so they could try and get per minute charges levied. For those not in the know:
In the 90's the now AT&T phone company claimed that Internet users whom stayed online were a danger to the system as they took up so many resources. In Wisconsin they tried to get per minute charges levied against people whom used the net. Why? Well you have to travel back in time a bit and realize the Bell business model was "by the call" for local calls. If you made 5 calls a month instead of 50, you were costing them money. Fortunately some college kids, UC Berkeley I believe, bought some used phone company hardware and showed that creating the dial-tone was the drain on the system, thus net users whom stayed connect for long periods of time actually used less resources than your typical phone caller. Why? Net users might make 3 or 4 calls a day (Internet had started going unlimited) while the typical home user might make twice that (unless they had teenagers, then all bets were off).
I actually trust the cable company more than a phone company, and I don't trust the cable company much.
I don't know if Comcast could possibly be as bad as AT&T (formerly SBC, SBC Ameritech, and separately Southwestern Bell and Ameritech.) I can't speak for Southwestern Bell, but Ameritech was a pretty lousy phone company, though not of Qwest (US West) proportions.
God knows why the judge bought the doomsday scenario and didn't take the copper away from the Bells and form separate (but impossible to own by the Bell's) companies. Hell, it's not like they paid to build big chunks of their precious networks...
FYI: I'd give this a try, but I expect that in the end, it'll just be another sub-unit in the TV, Phone, and Internet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly
Well that and the fact that loss amount assumes that (as they do in BSA software piracy estimates) that everyone who has the item on the HDD would be willing to pay for it in a perfect world.
Yeah, I'd pay to see the movie Alexander. Yeah I'd pay to see it after my soon to be relatives came back from it and went "I want the 2 hours of my life back I spent there." Wow that's bad.
Most music bores me. So that cuts that off.
Make decent stuff and I'll pay for it. I'll pay for V for Vendetta, I'll pay for Inside Man, I'll even pay for Kings X. I won't pay attention to the rest thank you.
"It IS a bluff. I've received the spam today (I expect my spamfilters will catch it from now on, now that they've seen it) and I've never even heard of bluesecurity, let alone signed up with them. I expect the spammers are just spamming every single email they can get their hands on, while DOSing bluesecurity.com. I highly doubt they were actually able to compromise anything."
Precisely. Althought it's possible blue was/.'ed too. Ironically enough, I posted the email at work I received and several other non-frog members received it. They succeeded in driving them to download and join the frog.
The best advertising money can't buy.
Hmm, while I understand I also remember Cable and DSL companies not playing nice. Threats of "high-bandwidth" users to their business model. Let's not forget how quickly most of them decided to hand over names that were using IP addresses at specific times.
I actually would prefer that the local governments be in charge of getting high-speed wire/fiber to premises and let telco/cable companies/internet providers lease them to sell me service.
I say this for two reasons: 1) Local communities will probably get FTP out faster than any idiotic phone or cable company. Not entirely due to the idiocy, but because the smaller scale allows them to put it in smaller areas using a community bond. This allows high-speed to go where other companies wouldn't see the "need vs profit".
2) It would force these monsters to actually have, you know, good customer service. Right now most of them know you can't do -Expletive- or change. Many times one or two guys are the only real game in town. So you have a choice of a bad phone company or a bad cable company (in the areas of CS especially)and that's technically if you're lucky! Imagine if you could actually choose between six or seven big and little ones. Maybe then they wouldn't be such twits with their corporate policies.
Hmm, in my smallish town of 75k, we have 1 cable company and 1 real DSL provider and 4 more that sell from that 1 provider. Note: none of them can sell for less than the 1 "real" DSL provider because that twit is the line owner and thus sets the contract rates. Rates which, amazingly enough, somehow end up with everyone at about the same price, plus or minus 1$.
"And who do you think pays for the maintenance of the cable?!? The phone companies spend millions of dollars every year making sure that the cable the runs to your house is free from defects. This year alone, El Nino has cost SBC over 70 million dollars in extra cable and service repairs here in California."
So they want to whine about maintaining cable they didn't pay for and people pay monthly to maintain. Don't forget they have insurance for a reason too. The argument you're using here, and they use often, is quite false.
"Another point which I'm sure you are unaware is that back before the divestiture in 1984, almost all cable in between central offices was copper. Since then, most if not all phone companies have upgraded their inter-office cable to fiber which is far more reliable. Also, the investment in a telephone network is not in the cable alone. In an era where we are consistently challenging Moore's Law, investment in faster transport technologies has been a requirement to keep up the pace. Very little of the government purchased network even exists in its original form compared to what is currently employed."
Wrong. Every month Americans "donate" their tax dollars to upgrade and maintain that network. Honestly the "divestiture" in 1984 should have ended up with the government owning the lines and every single telco leasing them. Wow, maybe we would have had competition.
Incidentally, if you didn't notice, the Bells have lagged behind nearly every speed service because they refused to change their model. They consistently have high prices (comparatively) and poor customer service. If cable hadn't come around we'd all probably still be trying to get ISDN to work right.
"Don't get me wrong though, I disagree with SBCs tactics to stifile competition but as a service company, very few are able to compete in reliability."
In voice communications, yes, they are very reliable. As far as data goes, sorry, in the Midwest they pretty much suck hind end. If the poor potzer customer of mine is on analog especially. You can hear the noise, but they still won't fix it because it passes the voice test.
I have ZERO tolerance for this crap (but am not suprised by it).
I also have ZERO sympathy for any phone company. They act like THEY paid for the copper and fiber. Maybe in the last couple of years they paid for some, but our tax dollars (possibly going back to your grandparents generation) paid for MOST of the cabling in this country.
At least cable companies paid for their own dang lines. Though their bloodsucking sometimes too.
In the end, Texans should act like Texans and shoot these thieves.
Two things:
1) Gaming, I play many games and most don't have Linux clients.
2) Work, they're on the MS Bandwagon (never mind that Ruby Gemstone is Unix based) with 2k in nearly every site. They don't have any software that isn't windows based to control Ruby (although Verifone might).
3)The new security system in win98 which, if you want to remotely log into it, you have to run a windows box for their client software.
Otherwise I'd dump windoze in a second.
"Resizing NTFS partitions, to my knowledge, is not possible with any Linux installer, and if it is made possible, MS can threaten to sue those who implement it over their NTFS patents (as they have done in the past), as well as alter the standard unpredictably."
My memory may be faulty on this but...
Isn't NTFS actually based on the old OS/2 file system (HPFS?) that MS and IBM were co-developing? If maybe IBM has partial license to NTFS, maybe a cross-license? Interesting thought.
The hard part is that MS does change stuff at the drop of a hat, while purporting to support open standards. MS never met a standard it didn't want to "extend."
Check out the enjoyable idea on the Register here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archiv e/19953 . tml
Slashdot Mirror
By the Gods man, you might want to consider not smoking things before posting. There is a quote, often attributed to Benito Mussolini though I've never seen it sourced: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." Fascism isn't about collectivism at all, it's about power. Fascism a system where you align the goals of the state and the corporation(s) to a specific end, often through war. Just because you call some organization "Joe's Communist Party for the Advancement of the Worker" doesn't mean that it is Communist. Heck the "National Socialist" part of the Nazism was there solely to attract voters (at first). You have to remember that Russia was really not "Communist" either, and I doubt we'll ever see a real communist state.
Human beings are too greedy to ever allow a true Communist state to be formed. I'm not saying that's good, or bad, just that it is. You can call this kind of law, or drug laws, fascism and it's true. The corporation has aligned the state to it's end, and that's not collectivism. Personally the idiots that try to link fascism to collectivism in the history books all make the same mistake: Fascist leaders, like all people of greed, are saying one thing and doing another. Communism calls for absolute equality, Stalinism (or Maoism) never had that. There are good reasons, but the simplest is that people are greedy.
Greed is fine, and Capitalism isn't terrible, but one must watch for the excesses to form. We've reached the point now where patent and copyright law have hit the "ludicrous" level. I wish a Zombie Jefferson would rise and b**ch-slap some of these idiots.
Copyright: 14+14 (if renewed)
What is this "Life + 70 years" of the author bull-puckey? Where is the incentive to create more vs release ad-nauseam? In a perfect copyright world, Disney wouldn't have total control over most of the Mickey films anymore, they'd be public domain. However the House of the Mouse could keep control of the character in general by releasing a new Mickey animation every 28 years. That's not so tough, is it?
Thomas Jefferson himself was not a fan of unlimited copyright (or patents), having seen how England used it to clamp down on opposition. He relented, wisely, and let it come in. Still, I wonder how he'd view it today.
LOL well I don't know what Toshiba's trying to pull. Retail establishments won't like them too much (see: gift cards, et al, to placate HD-DVD buyers)
Toshiba's got to think too: DVD 2.0? Super Up-Conversion?
Compatibility issues, being sandwiched between the 75$ up-convert regular DVD player and the likely 250$ Blu-ray player. These conditions alone will not be enviable.
I don't know if this is really a smart business decision for Toshiba, time will tell. Personally I think they're f**ked on this initiative.
One of my friends might get a kick out of taking a virgin hard drive, intentionally borking (breaking) a load of Windows on it, saying that it doesn't work, and when they clone it they get the windows and such, and also several thousand single letter jpegs and word docs (kind of like DW2004 did when you had created a new sheet) just to take time.
Stupidity should be countered with the mockery of it.
What aren't you guys understanding? When vented properly the power brick doesn't heat up to the point where it catches fire. This guy had his brick in a tightly compact spot. The expelled heat was collecting in the area, and naturally, a small area will heat up much quicker than a larger one. It's not like this guy had his brick out in the open and it caused a fire. No, he had it in a very tight spot which raised the overall temperature of the area enough to cause a fire. Get this through your heads: The power brick in itself is not a life-threatening device. Improper care of said brick, much like every other electronic item on the market, can cause serious risk of damage or injury. This guy didn't take care of it properly and therefore, he greatly increased the risk.
What a dolt. My PC, Laptop, Blu-Ray player, DVD player, et al, all do better than that. If they overheat, they shut off. It might wreck the power supply, but it's last gasp is shutting off. Anyone know if it's part of UL that items do that?
Actually NASA needs more funds if anything. Talk about performing on a shoestring budget (comparatively). We could also end a great deal of subsidies (those to profitable companies) and use that money to fund challenge grant research in the University system. The university shares in the patent revenue with the US government, which puts half of the revenue going back into the challenge grant system, the remainder to the general fund... Get America innovating again and keep corporations on their toes ;)
"The joke being that almost all the Blu-ray players on the market right now are obsolete. BD Live has been part of the spec since November, but pretty much nothing supports it, and most Blu-ray players can't even be upgraded to support it. The PS3 is about the only safe bet right now."
Only if you care about chatting online a la Ratatouille or web based crap. Even a 1.1 player will do that stupid PiP commentary. I find this particular line of logic comical from HD-DVD supporters considering that their favored spec was pushing a vaporware disc size.
"Oh, and the other joke is that BD Live just brings Blu-ray up to (nearly) the same level as HD DVD. Yes, at the time WHV threw its weight behind Blu-ray, Blu-ray was both more expensive than HD DVD, and less powerful (capacity excepting.)"
Oh please. You couldn't get lossless audio on HD-DVD without sacrificing something else. HD-DVD was also a great deal closer to the edge of it's capability, whereas the BDA pushed spec has more room to grow.
"Great decision Hollywood. You went for the format that's out of most people's price range, that's unlikely to be in people's price range for a while, and which had less features (and thus less clear advantages over DVD) than HD DVD. In practice, I suspect you've doomed HD media to a niche, while the vast majority stick with DVD for movies they want to own, and PPV and the various download services for content they want to see in HD.
I still find the decision incomprehensible."
This was a patent royalty war so get over it. The BDA wanted to break the Toshiba stranglehold over DVD royalties, Toshiba wanted to protect them. That's why HD-DVD was "cheaper" (that and the fact that Toshiba was selling them at a loss in an attempt to grab market / mind share) in the end. Toshiba was willing to use a lower capacity disc, knuckle under to a Microsoft codec (which the BDA ultimately left in as optional, but not many discs will use), and use a less powerful disc language. So in the end, the feature "checkbox" war wasn't about you the consumer, or even the studios (although BD has less regions than your beloved DVD), or quality Hi-Def movies. Nope, it was about Toshiba rejecting BD as the DVD successor all in the name of filthy lucre then trying to spoil the party with their own format. Heck Toshiba's new push for "Super Up-Conversion" only exists now because they lost the Hi-Def format war.
Why don't you get over the price as well. DVD in year 2-3 was 600$+ for a good player. Unless you wanted a 4 bit DAC that left you with artifacts on-screen. Those you could get for 450$-500$. I was there at the beginning of DVD with crappy transfers, desync'd audio, screwy players, et al. If anything, early BD has done better than early DVD.
Don't hold your breath waiting for Hi-Def downloads either. For all the crowing about how codecs get better, file sizes still manage to magically increase. I think it's got something to do with the resolution increasing... Of course you're free to live in fantasy land. Me? I think we've got at least 1 more physical format beyond Blu-Ray before we have the installed base for HD Downloads.
I'm sick of this "price is so insurmountable" bullcrap. I'll tell you what price equals if you do your homework. Price = Build Quality. You still have to do your homework mind you. You do have to buy into the earlier part of the curve. Still, look at the following items:
Computers, people cry about them being a grand for the full package. I bought my first one for 3k and it wasn't anything but the main desktop. No monitor, keyboard, mouse, et al. Sure it had a 486 DX2/66, a whopping 16MB memory, 30gb HDD, 8MB video, SB16ASP SCSI2, and SCSI CDROM, but it cost too much compared to today's standards. Oh wait, my 3 yr old niece just had had it die on her in November. I bought it over a decade earlier. You're really lucky to get 3 years out of a standard off-the-shelf one today.
My first VCR was a VHS NEC. That thing worked for 2+ decades. Sure I spent 388 dollars on it, which was a good deal at the time. It outlasted 3 - 99$ and 1 - 150$ player. I'm on my last 150$ player right now (when this one dies, it's no more VCR).
My first DVD player (and my dad's) are Toshiba's (2105's) @ 500 bucks a piece. Still playing. I've bought (and my mother in particular) a couple of the 99$ players with name brands (Panasonic, Samsung, et al) on them, none has lasted very long.
Why is this? The nearest thing I can figure is that when these items were first engineered, no one knew the life cycle. Not only that, but they (the engineers) were over-engineering to allow for longevity to the early adopter. I really count it as the engineer playing CYOA. No denying it though, the more junkable something becomes, the less work that goes into it, and sure as heck the less they care about anything but the warranty period. For all the computer jocks: What's the real difference between Enterprise drives and Home drives that accounts for the warranty difference? What's the difference between Certified and Non-Certified memory? Why do people even bother with Satellite or Cable HD (other than PPV) when OTA HD is far superior with a good tuner (e.g. Samsung DTB-H260F)? My dad watched the ?Direct TV? NFL HD thing at a friend's house, and I brought in my tuner for a comparison on the same TV, and in a blind test they both were 110% positive that the Satellite was better, except it was the Tuner, and they were amazed that the little box did better.
Early on in a curve price counts a heck of a lot more than most people think... My 2105 will probably die right about when I buy a brand new 400-500 dollar BD 2.0 player, or it'll just be reattached to the TV it was originally hooked up to instead of the new LCD. Is it foolproof? No. There were more than a few DVD players out there with poor quality DAC's that I avoided. I couldn't get my first choice for XMas (a Sony model receiving stellar freakin' ratings) so I settled on the one I did for us. I do that with everything I buy. I'm not impulsive. I won't be buying a Samsung BD 1400 from the press it's gotten. The PS3 seems like a good choice thus far, but I'll wait for the 2.0 profile to arrive for it (and see what people say). My Dad could get a 1.0 or 1.1 player and never care, he'll just use it for the movies anyway. I'll probably get him one of the Panasonic 30's or whatever is their qualified successor this christmas.
I didn't care which side won really. I'm just glad that one is effectively dead. Long live, well in consumer electronics terms anyway, Blu Ray. Sorry HD DVD, but I didn't know ye anyway.
No kidding.
"Corporate sponsorship of research doesn't automatically invalidate that research..."
No, but when it's AT&T you look 3 times because this is the same company that lied about the impact Net users had on the phone circuit system so they could try and get per minute charges levied. For those not in the know:
In the 90's the now AT&T phone company claimed that Internet users whom stayed online were a danger to the system as they took up so many resources. In Wisconsin they tried to get per minute charges levied against people whom used the net. Why? Well you have to travel back in time a bit and realize the Bell business model was "by the call" for local calls. If you made 5 calls a month instead of 50, you were costing them money. Fortunately some college kids, UC Berkeley I believe, bought some used phone company hardware and showed that creating the dial-tone was the drain on the system, thus net users whom stayed connect for long periods of time actually used less resources than your typical phone caller. Why? Net users might make 3 or 4 calls a day (Internet had started going unlimited) while the typical home user might make twice that (unless they had teenagers, then all bets were off).
I actually trust the cable company more than a phone company, and I don't trust the cable company much.
If people followed the rules and reported their purchases, this would be a non-issue. People didn't, welcome to the new taxes.
I don't know if Comcast could possibly be as bad as AT&T (formerly SBC, SBC Ameritech, and separately Southwestern Bell and Ameritech.) I can't speak for Southwestern Bell, but Ameritech was a pretty lousy phone company, though not of Qwest (US West) proportions. God knows why the judge bought the doomsday scenario and didn't take the copper away from the Bells and form separate (but impossible to own by the Bell's) companies. Hell, it's not like they paid to build big chunks of their precious networks... FYI: I'd give this a try, but I expect that in the end, it'll just be another sub-unit in the TV, Phone, and Internet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly
Well that and the fact that loss amount assumes that (as they do in BSA software piracy estimates) that everyone who has the item on the HDD would be willing to pay for it in a perfect world. Yeah, I'd pay to see the movie Alexander. Yeah I'd pay to see it after my soon to be relatives came back from it and went "I want the 2 hours of my life back I spent there." Wow that's bad. Most music bores me. So that cuts that off. Make decent stuff and I'll pay for it. I'll pay for V for Vendetta, I'll pay for Inside Man, I'll even pay for Kings X. I won't pay attention to the rest thank you.
"It IS a bluff. I've received the spam today (I expect my spamfilters will catch it from now on, now that they've seen it) and I've never even heard of bluesecurity, let alone signed up with them. I expect the spammers are just spamming every single email they can get their hands on, while DOSing bluesecurity.com. I highly doubt they were actually able to compromise anything." Precisely. Althought it's possible blue was /.'ed too. Ironically enough, I posted the email at work I received and several other non-frog members received it. They succeeded in driving them to download and join the frog.
The best advertising money can't buy.
Hmm, while I understand I also remember Cable and DSL companies not playing nice. Threats of "high-bandwidth" users to their business model. Let's not forget how quickly most of them decided to hand over names that were using IP addresses at specific times.
I actually would prefer that the local governments be in charge of getting high-speed wire/fiber to premises and let telco/cable companies/internet providers lease them to sell me service.
I say this for two reasons:
1) Local communities will probably get FTP out faster than any idiotic phone or cable company. Not entirely due to the idiocy, but because the smaller scale allows them to put it in smaller areas using a community bond. This allows high-speed to go where other companies wouldn't see the "need vs profit".
2) It would force these monsters to actually have, you know, good customer service. Right now most of them know you can't do -Expletive- or change. Many times one or two guys are the only real game in town. So you have a choice of a bad phone company or a bad cable company (in the areas of CS especially)and that's technically if you're lucky! Imagine if you could actually choose between six or seven big and little ones. Maybe then they wouldn't be such twits with their corporate policies.
Hmm, in my smallish town of 75k, we have 1 cable company and 1 real DSL provider and 4 more that sell from that 1 provider. Note: none of them can sell for less than the 1 "real" DSL provider because that twit is the line owner and thus sets the contract rates. Rates which, amazingly enough, somehow end up with everyone at about the same price, plus or minus 1$.
All hail (bad) consumer choice...
"And who do you think pays for the maintenance of the cable?!? The phone companies spend millions of dollars every year making sure that the cable the runs to your house is free from defects. This year alone, El Nino has cost SBC over 70 million dollars in extra cable and service repairs here in California."
So they want to whine about maintaining cable they didn't pay for and people pay monthly to maintain. Don't forget they have insurance for a reason too. The argument you're using here, and they use often, is quite false.
"Another point which I'm sure you are unaware is that back before the divestiture in 1984, almost all cable in between central offices was copper. Since then, most if not all phone companies have upgraded their inter-office cable to fiber which is far more reliable. Also, the investment in a telephone network is not in the cable alone. In an era where we are consistently challenging Moore's Law, investment in faster transport technologies has been a requirement to keep up the pace. Very little of the government purchased network even exists in its original form compared to what is currently employed."
Wrong. Every month Americans "donate" their tax dollars to upgrade and maintain that network. Honestly the "divestiture" in 1984 should have ended up with the government owning the lines and every single telco leasing them. Wow, maybe we would have had competition.
Incidentally, if you didn't notice, the Bells have lagged behind nearly every speed service because they refused to change their model. They consistently have high prices (comparatively) and poor customer service. If cable hadn't come around we'd all probably still be trying to get ISDN to work right.
"Don't get me wrong though, I disagree with SBCs tactics to stifile competition but as a service company, very few are able to compete in reliability."
In voice communications, yes, they are very reliable. As far as data goes, sorry, in the Midwest they pretty much suck hind end. If the poor potzer customer of mine is on analog especially. You can hear the noise, but they still won't fix it because it passes the voice test.
I have ZERO tolerance for this crap (but am not suprised by it). I also have ZERO sympathy for any phone company. They act like THEY paid for the copper and fiber. Maybe in the last couple of years they paid for some, but our tax dollars (possibly going back to your grandparents generation) paid for MOST of the cabling in this country. At least cable companies paid for their own dang lines. Though their bloodsucking sometimes too. In the end, Texans should act like Texans and shoot these thieves.
Two things: 1) Gaming, I play many games and most don't have Linux clients. 2) Work, they're on the MS Bandwagon (never mind that Ruby Gemstone is Unix based) with 2k in nearly every site. They don't have any software that isn't windows based to control Ruby (although Verifone might). 3)The new security system in win98 which, if you want to remotely log into it, you have to run a windows box for their client software. Otherwise I'd dump windoze in a second.
"Resizing NTFS partitions, to my knowledge, is not possible with any Linux installer, and if it is made possible, MS can threaten to sue those who implement it over their NTFS patents (as they have done in the past), as well as alter the standard unpredictably."
v e/19953 . tml
;P
My memory may be faulty on this but...
Isn't NTFS actually based on the old OS/2 file system (HPFS?) that MS and IBM were co-developing? If maybe IBM has partial license to NTFS, maybe a cross-license? Interesting thought.
The hard part is that MS does change stuff at the drop of a hat, while purporting to support open standards. MS never met a standard it didn't want to "extend."
Check out the enjoyable idea on the Register here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archi
Any MS employees wanna stick in some GPL
Inglix
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