You can see how having all the DVDs, AVIs, etc in one place that is accesible from everywhere is convenient.
Oh, I can see the convenience. I just don't think it's worth the money. I guess that it would take you all of five or ten minutes to get out of bed and walk downstairs to pick a movie to watch. That ten minutes of time is not worth the costs of buying, installing, configuring and maintaining a media storage center.
So, I take it you haven't ripped any of your CDs to MP3/AAC/WMA/ogg/etc.? 'Cause, you know, it's just so easy to walk over to your wall, pull down a CD, pop it in your player...:-)
Nah, it's way too much of a hassle. I travel away from my home four days a week. When I am home, the last thing I want to do is spend time f**king around with a computer. And, yeah, those warnings are annoying, but, other than for Disney movies, I usually only have to put up with two or three previews (Disney tends to give you about five or six).
as a TiVo owner
I am an owner, too. I like the idea of flipping through shows on a viewer. However, there are only a few shows I want the thing to record. I have to admit, once TiVo starts giving us pop-up commercials in 2005, I will probably consider other forms of DVR technology, but then only to record individual TV shows.
I hate taking out these fragile things and moving them into and out of the player
Well, then get one of those CD "Books" (with flippable plasic see-through slots). They hold hundreds of Music or Movie disks. Or, you could do this
.
"Show me all the Harrison Ford movies I have" or "what comedies have I not watched in the last six months"
OK. That definitely shows a difference in lifestyle here. There is no way you could pay me enough money to sit through another Harrison Ford movie. His acting is so wooden, he makes Keanu Reeves look talented.:) Seriously, I simply do not have the time to watch hundreds of movies. I am away from home four days a week. When I am home, I'd rather play with my kid and/or hang out with my wife and a bottle of wine. Sometimes, that does involve a movie. Other times, that involves taking the kid somewhere. Just a difference in lifestyle.
When the kid reaches his teenage years in about 12 years or so, I may end up buying some sort of media center, because by then, he won't want to hang out with me. But, in the meantime, I'm not spending the money.
Add a field to a DVD Profiler database which would allow in home guests to search your DB, find the movie, then just click "play" instead of trying to find it on a shelf somewhere.
It sounds cool, but by transfering all of your movies to hard drive, aren't you going "backwards" with your storage technology? At every client I have ever worked at, they take a nightly backup of all their hard drives. They store those nightly backups locally for a few days. After those few days are up, they transfer those backups to some other media (disk, tape, etc.) and ship those backups to another location for safe keeping.
Why do my clients do this? Because they know that most of the data that they have stored is not useful after a few days. And, they know that the other media is generally safer than a hard-drive. They keep the long term storage off-site for DR purposes, or if there is a sudden need to look at some nightly backup from 18 months previous.
What you appear to be saying here is that you are willing to take up a full Terabyte of storage space in order to keep 300 to 500 movies for the occasional usage of a home "guest". I do not see the overall benefits for three main reasons:
The hard drive is not nearly as safe or reliable as keeping the movie stored on the DVD itself
I don't see the cost-benefit of having a home movie DB for 300 movies when there are only 365 days in the year. Given the number of new movies that come out on DVD each week, you will probably never be able to watch your entire database.
Finally, most homeowners are already paying for homeowners insurance. I have all of my music Compact Discs identified for my insurer. If I owned 400 movies, I would identify them, as well. There is no need for backup, because I am paying insurance to protect my investment.
Now, I have to admit, the choice to put all of your movies on a nicely indexed hard-drive is entirely up to you. Your reasons for doing so are probably justifiable from your point of view. If you have the money, the time and the desire to do this, then I say "Go for it." I just do not understand your reasoning, and I probably never will.
But aren't they already available "on demand"? One day, you say to yourself, "Hey, I want to watch Used Cars again! I have only seen it fifteen times!" You simply walk over to the DVD case, pull out the movie you want to see, and plop it into the DVD player. Voila, it's playing on your TV!.
Or, have we all reached the point where actually standing up and walking over to the DVD case is just too much work?
Also, you read slashdot, for crying out loud. Slashdot is more or less a blog, and as a "news source" is a joke amongst the people that shape the technology that slashdot writes about. So, maybe you shouldn't be posting about accountability here.
Ah, but you are assuming that I actually give credibility and accountability to most anything I see on slashdot. I don't give accountability to most posters (including myself). I do give some accountability to some of the linked stories that are submitted, but that depends on what the source of the story is. If it appears to come from a source that has some built in credibility or accountability (such as The Economist or Foreign Policy), I give it a bit of credibility. If the source of the story is some geeks personal web-log, I will make every effort to find two or three verifications before I give it any credence.
In other words, I do make an effort to "Protect myself".
My comment was more based on the fact the O.P. appears to give credibility to those of us that refer to ourselves as "lucabrasi" or "CmdrTaco" on a public forum. I was pointing out that most postings on blogs are pretty much anonymous and therefore, should be taken with a grain of salt. Anonynimity lends itself to exaggeration.
Signed editorials run in most major newspapers on a daily basis.
Not to be too nit-picky, but, in most newspapers, an unsigned editorial is different than a signed opinion piece.
An opinion piece is usually siegned by a syndicated columnist like George Will or William Safire (although there may be situations where individuals sign a one-time opinion piece).
An editorial, which is unsigned, is theoretically the combined opinion of the individual newspapers editorial board. In my local paper, that includes the newspaper owner, the editor-in-chief and some associate and deputy editors. The editorial ideally includes some sort of consensus among all of the persons on the editorial board. Editorials are written by committee, to take in the various points of view that are inherent in an editorial board. That is why, for most newspapers, editorials are usually bland and sometimes even a bit contradictory.
Anonymity and lack of accountability can have their advantages.
Uh, I hope you are making a joke. Today, we don't have accountability on the internet and much of what passes for "news" is simply rumor or urban legend.
Who don't believe there was any level of fraud relevant enough to even have any possibility of altering the outcome of the election. If you want to believe those people are just shutting up "for the good of the country" or some other bullshit, be my guest.
And, what about my post makes you think that I believe there was any significant fraud in the election. If you re-read my post, you will find that I did not inlcude an accusation of voter fraud in my post. Please do not put words in my mouth.
My point was twofold:
You Assumed that the Berkley study was calling 'Fraud'. It does not call fraud. It points out what appear to be statistical anomolies that have a strong correlation to the use of electronic voting machines. That is not saying 'Fraud!". You read it and assumed they were screaming fraud. They weren't. If they did, they would be performing a disservice to the profession of Statistical Analysis.
You pulled a series of individuals to back up your defense of the election without providing any evidence that these people actually reviewed the election evidence in detail and, if they did, if they used scientific methods to back up their statements. Simply appearing on ABC news does not make a person into an expert.
Now that you have me started, let me point out that your support of two particular Bills before US Congress is admirable. I agree that there should be a paper trail. But, Congess did NOT provide significant funding for the new machines during the 2004 election (most States had to pick up the tab themselves). If Congress is going to require a paper trail, they damn well better provide the funding.
Doug Chapin, a nonpartisan election analyst, What exactly is his methodology and how did he draw his conclusions? and who examined his data and methods?
That's what I thought. Kind of like saying "Mike Hunt, a noted standup-philosopher stated that Plato was full of shit."
And, on top of that, the original article said nothing about "fraud", so I don't know why the Poster gave us about 10 paragraphs on voter fraud. And, he was modded "interesting"! I wonder if the moderators actually read either the article or the text of this poster.
Here's a transcript of what happened when they first used this guy's transporter:
[Fred tries to digitize the pig-lizard. It arrives on the transporter pad inside-out]
Jason Nesmith: What? What was that?
Alexander Dane: Uh, nothing.
Jason Nesmith: I heard some squealing or something.
Gwen DeMarco: Oh, no. Everything's fine.
Teb: But the animal is inside out.
Jason Nesmith: I heard that! It turned inside out?
[the pig-lizard explodes]
Teb: And it exploded.
Jason Nesmith: Did I just hear that the animal turned inside out, and then it EXPLODED?
I don't remember the exact results but most people don't have a problem burying thousands of tons of nuclear waste under a mountain.
I'm sure you are coorect. However, if you narrow that question down to residents of the State of Nevada, my hunch is that the results would be slightly different.
a terabyte file server in the basement sometime next year, for backup and general house data storage.
General house data storage? What the hell kind of system are you running in your house? The Jamie Stock Exchange?
I know of a Fortune 500 company that creates one Gig of data a day on it's ERP system. And, they are complaining that 1 Gig a day is far too much data. It would take them about three years (more or less) to fill up your terabyte system. OTOH, If you want, I could have them contact you, they are looking for disk space right now.:)
Looks like we have a perpetrator of un-American Activities in our midst. Quick! Somebody trace his IP address and somebody else call the Department of Justice!
You are choosing to watch content whose creation and delivery is funded in large part by advertising revenues. What funds it if that model is completely broken?
Well, economist Joseph Schumpeter came up with the theory of "creative destruction". In short, every now and then, a new innovation destroys the old economic model (think TiVo or, in the retail field, think Wal-Mart). The capitalist society comes up with a new way to respond to that innovation. In the case of TiVo, it appears that they will now have pop-up ads. In the case of Wal-Mart, you now see Sears and KMart merging. However, TiVo started the revolution, and now they are trying to take a step backwards. Unfortunately for them, there is a good chance the revolution is about to pass TiVo right by.
What does that do for the Advertisers? Well, they better figure something out, otherwise, their economic model completely falls apart. In a capitalist society (which the US claims to be), it is up to the advertisers to figure their way out of this mess. If the advertisers don't figure it out, you'll see less money flowing to the TV networks and, a potential reduction in TV show budgets. Now, wouldn't THAT be a disaster! Those overpaid actors and network executives would start losing money. Oh well. If Hollywood isn't providing me with dumb entertainment, my entertainment dollar will go elsewhere.
Creative Destruction. It's time that advertisers re-read their college economics textbooks. In short, I don't care about the advertisers, nor do I care about how the networks make money. In our economy, their problems are not my problems.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, I can see the convenience. I just don't think it's worth the money. I guess that it would take you all of five or ten minutes to get out of bed and walk downstairs to pick a movie to watch. That ten minutes of time is not worth the costs of buying, installing, configuring and maintaining a media storage center.
Nah, it's way too much of a hassle. I travel away from my home four days a week. When I am home, the last thing I want to do is spend time f**king around with a computer. And, yeah, those warnings are annoying, but, other than for Disney movies, I usually only have to put up with two or three previews (Disney tends to give you about five or six).
as a TiVo ownerI am an owner, too. I like the idea of flipping through shows on a viewer. However, there are only a few shows I want the thing to record. I have to admit, once TiVo starts giving us pop-up commercials in 2005, I will probably consider other forms of DVR technology, but then only to record individual TV shows.
I hate taking out these fragile things and moving them into and out of the playerWell, then get one of those CD "Books" (with flippable plasic see-through slots). They hold hundreds of Music or Movie disks. Or, you could do this
. "Show me all the Harrison Ford movies I have" or "what comedies have I not watched in the last six months"OK. That definitely shows a difference in lifestyle here. There is no way you could pay me enough money to sit through another Harrison Ford movie. His acting is so wooden, he makes Keanu Reeves look talented. :) Seriously, I simply do not have the time to watch hundreds of movies. I am away from home four days a week. When I am home, I'd rather play with my kid and/or hang out with my wife and a bottle of wine. Sometimes, that does involve a movie. Other times, that involves taking the kid somewhere. Just a difference in lifestyle.
When the kid reaches his teenage years in about 12 years or so, I may end up buying some sort of media center, because by then, he won't want to hang out with me. But, in the meantime, I'm not spending the money.
It sounds cool, but by transfering all of your movies to hard drive, aren't you going "backwards" with your storage technology? At every client I have ever worked at, they take a nightly backup of all their hard drives. They store those nightly backups locally for a few days. After those few days are up, they transfer those backups to some other media (disk, tape, etc.) and ship those backups to another location for safe keeping.
Why do my clients do this? Because they know that most of the data that they have stored is not useful after a few days. And, they know that the other media is generally safer than a hard-drive. They keep the long term storage off-site for DR purposes, or if there is a sudden need to look at some nightly backup from 18 months previous.
What you appear to be saying here is that you are willing to take up a full Terabyte of storage space in order to keep 300 to 500 movies for the occasional usage of a home "guest". I do not see the overall benefits for three main reasons:
The hard drive is not nearly as safe or reliable as keeping the movie stored on the DVD itself
I don't see the cost-benefit of having a home movie DB for 300 movies when there are only 365 days in the year. Given the number of new movies that come out on DVD each week, you will probably never be able to watch your entire database.
Finally, most homeowners are already paying for homeowners insurance. I have all of my music Compact Discs identified for my insurer. If I owned 400 movies, I would identify them, as well. There is no need for backup, because I am paying insurance to protect my investment.
Now, I have to admit, the choice to put all of your movies on a nicely indexed hard-drive is entirely up to you. Your reasons for doing so are probably justifiable from your point of view. If you have the money, the time and the desire to do this, then I say "Go for it." I just do not understand your reasoning, and I probably never will.
...Or maybe DVD ROM. There are other media besides hard drive.
Maybe I am missing something here, why don't you just move all of your jpeg files to CD-ROM? That would free up about 400 G of disk space.
But aren't they already available "on demand"? One day, you say to yourself, "Hey, I want to watch Used Cars again! I have only seen it fifteen times!" You simply walk over to the DVD case, pull out the movie you want to see, and plop it into the DVD player. Voila, it's playing on your TV!.
Or, have we all reached the point where actually standing up and walking over to the DVD case is just too much work?
Ah, but you are assuming that I actually give credibility and accountability to most anything I see on slashdot. I don't give accountability to most posters (including myself). I do give some accountability to some of the linked stories that are submitted, but that depends on what the source of the story is. If it appears to come from a source that has some built in credibility or accountability (such as The Economist or Foreign Policy), I give it a bit of credibility. If the source of the story is some geeks personal web-log, I will make every effort to find two or three verifications before I give it any credence.
In other words, I do make an effort to "Protect myself".
My comment was more based on the fact the O.P. appears to give credibility to those of us that refer to ourselves as "lucabrasi" or "CmdrTaco" on a public forum. I was pointing out that most postings on blogs are pretty much anonymous and therefore, should be taken with a grain of salt. Anonynimity lends itself to exaggeration.
It makes sense to Yoda.
Yoda: Ahhh! A great warrior. (laughs and shakes his head) Wars not make one great.
Not to be too nit-picky, but, in most newspapers, an unsigned editorial is different than a signed opinion piece.
An opinion piece is usually siegned by a syndicated columnist like George Will or William Safire (although there may be situations where individuals sign a one-time opinion piece).
An editorial, which is unsigned, is theoretically the combined opinion of the individual newspapers editorial board. In my local paper, that includes the newspaper owner, the editor-in-chief and some associate and deputy editors. The editorial ideally includes some sort of consensus among all of the persons on the editorial board. Editorials are written by committee, to take in the various points of view that are inherent in an editorial board. That is why, for most newspapers, editorials are usually bland and sometimes even a bit contradictory.
Uh, I hope you are making a joke. Today, we don't have accountability on the internet and much of what passes for "news" is simply rumor or urban legend.
Foreign Policy magazine is being linked to from Slashdot? What's next? Martha Stewart Living?
I agree with you. I thought it was Yoda, too. In addition, I thought his name was Mr. Spock, not Dr. Spock.
At first, I thought that you said pornography.
And, what about my post makes you think that I believe there was any significant fraud in the election. If you re-read my post, you will find that I did not inlcude an accusation of voter fraud in my post. Please do not put words in my mouth.
My point was twofold:
You Assumed that the Berkley study was calling 'Fraud'. It does not call fraud. It points out what appear to be statistical anomolies that have a strong correlation to the use of electronic voting machines. That is not saying 'Fraud!". You read it and assumed they were screaming fraud. They weren't. If they did, they would be performing a disservice to the profession of Statistical Analysis.
You pulled a series of individuals to back up your defense of the election without providing any evidence that these people actually reviewed the election evidence in detail and, if they did, if they used scientific methods to back up their statements. Simply appearing on ABC news does not make a person into an expert.
Now that you have me started, let me point out that your support of two particular Bills before US Congress is admirable. I agree that there should be a paper trail. But, Congess did NOT provide significant funding for the new machines during the 2004 election (most States had to pick up the tab themselves). If Congress is going to require a paper trail, they damn well better provide the funding.
What exactly is his methodology and how did he draw his conclusions? and who examined his data and methods?
That's what I thought. Kind of like saying "Mike Hunt, a noted standup-philosopher stated that Plato was full of shit."
And, on top of that, the original article said nothing about "fraud", so I don't know why the Poster gave us about 10 paragraphs on voter fraud. And, he was modded "interesting"! I wonder if the moderators actually read either the article or the text of this poster.
What's the point in having rules if you can't break 'em once in a while?
Here's a transcript of what happened when they first used this guy's transporter:
[Fred tries to digitize the pig-lizard. It arrives on the transporter pad inside-out]
Jason Nesmith: What? What was that?
Alexander Dane: Uh, nothing.
Jason Nesmith: I heard some squealing or something.
Gwen DeMarco: Oh, no. Everything's fine.
Teb: But the animal is inside out.
Jason Nesmith: I heard that! It turned inside out?
[the pig-lizard explodes]
Teb: And it exploded.
Jason Nesmith: Did I just hear that the animal turned inside out, and then it EXPLODED?
Uh....'correct'.
I'm sure you are coorect. However, if you narrow that question down to residents of the State of Nevada, my hunch is that the results would be slightly different.
When I read his comment, I didn't think of costs. Instead, I had a vision of the NASA Space Shuttle Challenger exploding in our own atmosphere.
Then, I thought to myself, "Good thing the Challenger wasn't filled with twenty individual rods of radioactive waste when it exploded."
I know this is Off Topic, but I have a question:
a terabyte file server in the basement sometime next year, for backup and general house data storage.General house data storage? What the hell kind of system are you running in your house? The Jamie Stock Exchange?
I know of a Fortune 500 company that creates one Gig of data a day on it's ERP system. And, they are complaining that 1 Gig a day is far too much data. It would take them about three years (more or less) to fill up your terabyte system. OTOH, If you want, I could have them contact you, they are looking for disk space right now. :)
Somebody else watches that show? That makes two of us.
Looks like we have a perpetrator of un-American Activities in our midst. Quick! Somebody trace his IP address and somebody else call the Department of Justice!
Well, economist Joseph Schumpeter came up with the theory of "creative destruction". In short, every now and then, a new innovation destroys the old economic model (think TiVo or, in the retail field, think Wal-Mart). The capitalist society comes up with a new way to respond to that innovation. In the case of TiVo, it appears that they will now have pop-up ads. In the case of Wal-Mart, you now see Sears and KMart merging. However, TiVo started the revolution, and now they are trying to take a step backwards. Unfortunately for them, there is a good chance the revolution is about to pass TiVo right by.
What does that do for the Advertisers? Well, they better figure something out, otherwise, their economic model completely falls apart. In a capitalist society (which the US claims to be), it is up to the advertisers to figure their way out of this mess. If the advertisers don't figure it out, you'll see less money flowing to the TV networks and, a potential reduction in TV show budgets. Now, wouldn't THAT be a disaster! Those overpaid actors and network executives would start losing money. Oh well. If Hollywood isn't providing me with dumb entertainment, my entertainment dollar will go elsewhere.
Creative Destruction. It's time that advertisers re-read their college economics textbooks. In short, I don't care about the advertisers, nor do I care about how the networks make money. In our economy, their problems are not my problems.
When you are finished with your tin-foil hat can I borrow it for a moment? I have to write a paper on the JFK assassination.