Blockbuster needs to work out a deal w/ the MPAA to burn DVDs at their stores. This way you have access to the entire catalog of thousands of DVDs immediately.
You are so right. This would also allow them to make late fees more lenient, since there would be no shortage of little round plastic disks to worry about.
They could even let you keep them as long as you wanted, or forever, so long as you had $20 on deposit for each DVD you had out at one time. If they were burning DVDs locally they could advertise this as an option instead of a shame-ridden penalty for "losing" the disc. I think a lot of people who only intended to rent would end up buying DVDs at $20 each from Blockbuster, which should be pretty lucrative. Nothing like nudging consumers into accidentally spending money.
Direct to computer downloads will prosper the day everyone gets a 100Mbit connection. Until then, the only people that will bother downloading movies will be the ones not paying for it.
I don't see why. I have downloaded shows that looked great at 1 Mbit/s. Let's triple that to be safe. 3 Mbit/s is still less than I see fairly regularly during downloads. (That's still only half the bitrate of a DVD, but DVD compression isn't the most advanced, either). Why would 100 Mbits to each home be necessary?
I do think ISPs would have to beef up so more users could use that much bandwidth concurrently. But they already did the hard part of laying fiber to within a few blocks of most residences.
eBay took off because it was a new way to sell things. Whatever Google might come up with that might challenge eBay's supremacy, it's not going to be another auction site. To become the next killer app, they need to invent some completely new way of selling online -- not just a variation on what eBay does.
First, realize that ebay was by no means the first auction site on the Internet. There were many others, some worse, some probably better. Through some combination of good execution and luck, ebay grasped the natural monopoly slot.
Second, your comment is ironic with respect to google, because they struggled for years to sell or license their search technology. Nobody would give them the time of day, because there were many entrenched search engines already. Search was thought to be an bland commodity.
The space program in general might be an interesting R&D venture, but I'd rather see my tax dollars going to research to find cheaper, more efficient water purifying techniques, or treatments to stop the spread of AIDS, or perscription drugs, or (ad. nauseum).
My vote is for developing better energy sources. (And I don't mean ANWR).
See in the banking industry we run these "penetration scans" all the time, that are TOTALY WORTHLESS.
What!? I thought they paid Robert Redford good money for high-end penetration testing employing exotic technical and social engineering attacks with a crack team including minorities and handicapped individuals.
Sometimes I think slashdot saves the jucier stories for busier times of the day/week. It's no fun to join a discussion that fissled out 4 hours ago. The news sites don't have this problem.
That's a fabulous idea, except currently they have no liability that would necessitate insurance! Fake charges are pushed back on retailers.
Considering the credit card companies are paragons of individual responsibility and have no qualms about charging a $40 late fee for a payment 1 day late, what should their liability be for this sort of collosal screw-up?
On the other hand, we could always ask the "responsible" adults who take out these credit cards to actually take responsibility for once and only take out and use credit they can afford to pay back?
It's counterintuitive, but I don't think this is what the creditors want, really.
Yes, they would like everybody to be in debt up to their eyeballs and still get 100% repayment, but the simple fact is some percentage of people who borrow to the max will have a period of unemployment, or divorce, or health problems, or simply get discouraged and choose to flake out.
Getting closer to 100% repayment would require significantly lower levels of personal debt and higher savings. It works out better for creditors, and perhaps even for the GDP of nations, to keep individuals highly motivated - on the edge of financial disaster. The ocassional losses are more than compensated by high balances at high interest.
Creditors like to take on this victim complex whenever somebody fails to repay. But in fact, all investments have risk, including loaning money to people through credit cards. That level of risk is already reflected in the high interest rates that borrowers pay on the cards. Why do companies offer these risky "payday loans"? Because the usurious interest rates and penalty fees more than make up for the losses.
Creditors also like to blame deadbeats for placing an extra burden on the rest of us good, hardworking and honest citizens. But this too is mostly false, since people are placed in different pools depending on their payment history. Those with significant credit history blemishes are already paying sky-high interest rates - a sort of security against the credit, which they will never get back even if they are perfect borrowers for the rest of their lives.
And in case you're wondering, no, I don't have bad credit. But I do have only so much pity for the credit card companies, with their crocodile tears, as they demand bankruptcy reform (favorable to themselves, of course) while socking away truckloads of profit. If our law were really putting creditors in an unfair disadvantage, credit would be hard to get, and that would be a problem. Instead, payday loan outfits are sprouting on every corner like mushrooms, and college students with no income can get as many credit cards as they like. That doesn't sound like an under-profitable industry to me.
Well, I did say "as good as the human ear can discern...until somebody has some actual evidence to the contrary." By that, I mean something like a double-blind test showing that somebody can hear the difference.
Nevertheless, my thoughts on your comment: if somebody can't hear a 24 KHz sine wave, then they sure can't hear 24 KHz details on a lower frequency tone, i.e. the stuff that would require 48KHz samples to capture.
Unfortunately for me the question is pretty much moot. Only in my early 30s, my frequency response is already degraded. My kids and wife notice things like keys jangling that I do not. I can hardly hear the alarms on some wristwatches, so I'm pretty sure I don't need 192 KHz SACD.
And for all of those out there who keep saying that you would never bow to such a request, that's only because you will never have the chance to. If somebody told you if you cooperated with the laws of a country you did not agree with you could make millions or billions more dollars, you would do it.
First one to complete this quote, with attribution, wins a prize:
"Why me? Why not the local policemen, thousands of them? They would have been shot if they had refused to...
Please show EXACTLY where I said that "Microsoft must trample on the rights of the Chinese people".
Let's settle it right now, then: do you think Microsoft ought to trample on the rights of the Chinese people, if that's what's required to maximize shareholder value?
I wish the automakers would sell cars with quality amps and speakers (since those don't change much and installation is a real issue), but with no head unit. They are always overpriced and a generation behind.
I hope that anything that out'dos CDs come back to a smaller, more portable format as the cassettes, but not their penchance for falling apart after too much sun.
I honestly don't think there will ever be another format as good as CD. The sound quality is as good as the human ear can discern (and I will continue to believe so until somebody has some actual evidence to the contrary), CDs last a very long time (unless exposed to sun) and the song files are easily extracted (thanks to an accident of history). The Internet itself could obviously be a better distribution medium than CD, but it isn't thanks to DRM.
As for actual day-to-day usage (since you mentioned portability), I don't think it matters much, since I see it as just a distribution format. Once you transfer it to your HTPC, IPod, etc., you don't see the CD again until you get some other music storage device.
Fact is, McDonald's cheeseburgers have 310 calories, 12g fat (6 saturated), and 40mg cholesterol.
Ah, but who eats only one of those little cheeseburgers?
I admit, I've always liked them, from the smooth bun, to the thin little pickles, to the chopped up onions. I don't think they've changed a thing in my lifetime.
Film is not good. Besides the grain, what bothers me is the flicker, and the picture moving around. Now let's talk about the horror of a film print that's been run a few dozen times already.
It may be a little bit distasteful in its invasion of privacy, but it is no more unconstitutional than cameras at intersections or strip searches at the airport.
...which are also things I'd like to see come up for a vote. I know I'd vote against them.
Ha! You think "spreadsheet" is a PAPER related term? True, some kids were in the habit of using spreadsheet papers. Only because they didn't know REAL spreadsheets were written on papyri. But the REALLY REAL men used stone tablets and clay blobs.
I'm still most productive with my PalmOS-based Sony Clie. It does everything I want, is easy to use and has been very stable.
How can this be? I have the Clie TH55, and the software is very unstable. Even doing a "find" causes the machine to reset. The web browser requires occasional resets. The HP48 emulator I installed locked the thing up so hard it wouldn't reset until the batteries ran dead.
It's sad, because the TH55 hardware itself is kick-butt. But my next "palm" will be Windows-based.
the big iron Unix is where apple needs to get to if they want to say a botique provider.
Huh? Why don't they just switch over to commercial fishing instead. Apple and big iron? Where do you get this stuff. OSX is not a server OS by any means.
Slashdot Mirror
They could even let you keep them as long as you wanted, or forever, so long as you had $20 on deposit for each DVD you had out at one time. If they were burning DVDs locally they could advertise this as an option instead of a shame-ridden penalty for "losing" the disc. I think a lot of people who only intended to rent would end up buying DVDs at $20 each from Blockbuster, which should be pretty lucrative. Nothing like nudging consumers into accidentally spending money.
I do think ISPs would have to beef up so more users could use that much bandwidth concurrently. But they already did the hard part of laying fiber to within a few blocks of most residences.
Oh, good, there's nothing at stake except billions of dollars. I guess we're safe then, because greed never causes problems.
Second, your comment is ironic with respect to google, because they struggled for years to sell or license their search technology. Nobody would give them the time of day, because there were many entrenched search engines already. Search was thought to be an bland commodity.
Still, ebay's advantage as the incumbent is huge.
Compared to what? Windows and MacOS don't give you any detail remotely comparable to a changelog. Compared to BSD, I suppose you may have a point.
Gaining information is an important step in making a decision. Asking Slashdot is an easy way to do that.
Sometimes I think slashdot saves the jucier stories for busier times of the day/week. It's no fun to join a discussion that fissled out 4 hours ago. The news sites don't have this problem.
Considering the credit card companies are paragons of individual responsibility and have no qualms about charging a $40 late fee for a payment 1 day late, what should their liability be for this sort of collosal screw-up?
Yes, they would like everybody to be in debt up to their eyeballs and still get 100% repayment, but the simple fact is some percentage of people who borrow to the max will have a period of unemployment, or divorce, or health problems, or simply get discouraged and choose to flake out.
Getting closer to 100% repayment would require significantly lower levels of personal debt and higher savings. It works out better for creditors, and perhaps even for the GDP of nations, to keep individuals highly motivated - on the edge of financial disaster. The ocassional losses are more than compensated by high balances at high interest.
Creditors like to take on this victim complex whenever somebody fails to repay. But in fact, all investments have risk, including loaning money to people through credit cards. That level of risk is already reflected in the high interest rates that borrowers pay on the cards. Why do companies offer these risky "payday loans"? Because the usurious interest rates and penalty fees more than make up for the losses.
Creditors also like to blame deadbeats for placing an extra burden on the rest of us good, hardworking and honest citizens. But this too is mostly false, since people are placed in different pools depending on their payment history. Those with significant credit history blemishes are already paying sky-high interest rates - a sort of security against the credit, which they will never get back even if they are perfect borrowers for the rest of their lives.
And in case you're wondering, no, I don't have bad credit. But I do have only so much pity for the credit card companies, with their crocodile tears, as they demand bankruptcy reform (favorable to themselves, of course) while socking away truckloads of profit. If our law were really putting creditors in an unfair disadvantage, credit would be hard to get, and that would be a problem. Instead, payday loan outfits are sprouting on every corner like mushrooms, and college students with no income can get as many credit cards as they like. That doesn't sound like an under-profitable industry to me.
Nevertheless, my thoughts on your comment: if somebody can't hear a 24 KHz sine wave, then they sure can't hear 24 KHz details on a lower frequency tone, i.e. the stuff that would require 48KHz samples to capture.
Unfortunately for me the question is pretty much moot. Only in my early 30s, my frequency response is already degraded. My kids and wife notice things like keys jangling that I do not. I can hardly hear the alarms on some wristwatches, so I'm pretty sure I don't need 192 KHz SACD.
I wish the automakers would sell cars with quality amps and speakers (since those don't change much and installation is a real issue), but with no head unit. They are always overpriced and a generation behind.
As for actual day-to-day usage (since you mentioned portability), I don't think it matters much, since I see it as just a distribution format. Once you transfer it to your HTPC, IPod, etc., you don't see the CD again until you get some other music storage device.
I admit, I've always liked them, from the smooth bun, to the thin little pickles, to the chopped up onions. I don't think they've changed a thing in my lifetime.
Film is not good. Besides the grain, what bothers me is the flicker, and the picture moving around. Now let's talk about the horror of a film print that's been run a few dozen times already.
I admit, I scan my kids' portraits and team photos into my personal digital photo library.
Or to paraphrase Tom Clancy (IIRC), cancer treatment kills you, but it kills the cancer a little bit faster.
Ha! You think "spreadsheet" is a PAPER related term? True, some kids were in the habit of using spreadsheet papers. Only because they didn't know REAL spreadsheets were written on papyri. But the REALLY REAL men used stone tablets and clay blobs.
It's sad, because the TH55 hardware itself is kick-butt. But my next "palm" will be Windows-based.
Am I the only one surprised by these results? I think of OO as a dog performance-wise, yet somehow it came out on top.