rather than duplicating frames as most 100hz does, it says "well if the ball is in the top left in frame one, and in the bottom right in the second, then it must be in the middle at the between point", it then inserts the additional frame accordingly. It works surprisingly well - in fact it can make it look so much more realistic that it looks fake sometimes Well, one of the main reasons that film and traditional interlaced analogue video look different is that film updates 24 or 25 (*) frames a second and video updates 50 (PAL) or 60 (NTSC) fields (half-frames) per second. (**)
So video really does have 50/60 fields-per-second motion resolution versus film's 24 or 25 frames, and that's one major cause of them looking different.
Now, if you have a system that invents interpolated frames then you're effectively increasing the motion resolution and this will inevitably give the material a more "video-like" look (presumably the effect is heightened if you go beyond traditional video's 50/60 fps and go up to 100 fps). Since most American dramas are shot on 24 fps film (see (*) again), increasing this to 50 or 100 frames per second will alter the appearance, making it more "video-like". It may be this that you think looks "so realistic it looks fake". Video is used for factual stuff, and by camcorders and so on. Drama is mostly shot on film and has a more "distant" and (ironically) less realistic look due- I'm guessing- to its lower motion resolution. So subconsciously you're probably used to this feel on non-factual material- and when it looks like video instead (as increasing the frame rate by interpolation will do) your brain says "something wrong".
It's also possible that the interpolation isn't consistent- if some objects get better motion-interpolation than others, the mixture may look slightly "wrong". I don't know- I haven't seen it.
(*) With PAL systems the pseudo-"whole"-frame rate is 25 fps, so most films are simply speeded up slightly. NTSC is more complex because it has 30 fps, and you can't speed up that much- a more complex process is used. But either way, transferring film to video still results in 24 or 25 complete frames per second- you don't get increased motion resolution because it wasn't there on the original source, and with PAL, the same frame is recorded onto odd and even-numbered video fields.
(**) Although one might think that 50 half-frames per second = 25 full frames = roughly the same, it doesn't work like that- since pre-digital video systems have no "memory", if an object has moved between the odd-numbered lines being recorded (field #1A) and the even lines being recorded (field #1B), then it will be in a different position.
Slight tangent, but apparently the "H" in HQV stands for Hollywood. I always thought that Hollywood came across as a kitsch, tacky and sleazy place, but even if you disagree with that, the problem is that most things *named after* Hollywood are cheesy, low-rent type things trying to grab a piece of its alleged glamour... like crap nail bars and hairdressing salons. You don't see Prada (for example) naming their stuff "Hollywood" in an attempt to impress people.
It makes the HQV product come across as cheap, and the fact that it reminds me of that stupid place is a strike against it. Adding the crap misspelling "optix" just makes it sound worse. Ugh.
I don't want to go too far into the details, but the processing I had in mind would be a combination of several ideas I'd been mulling over, many of which would require tracking a given object over several frames to average out noise, artifacting errors, and so on. And also to use simultaneous-equation-style processing on the multiple frames of the same object to increase the static resolution (or maybe this could be done more simply by aligning, overlaying and resharpening the multiple copies). Also ideas like more intelligently spotting the difference between genuine detail and pseudo-detail which comes from encoding/compression artifacts, and removing or repairing the latter. (Repair- or guessing what the most likely hi-res detail was that caused or was damaged by the artifact- might be one of those "easier said than done" computationally intensive tasks). Again, easier if you are looking at multiple frames.
I'm not an expert in this area, but I suspect those that are have probably come up with similar ideas. Whether they're doable in reasonable time, and in hardware is more open to question.
If it weren't for the evils of DRM, you could do your image-processing on commodity hardware for bugger all cost over however long it took to process the honking great output file. That's true for geeks, but I can't see Joe Public doing it. I had in mind something that would do all the necessary processing in hardware on an off-the-shelf unit at a price comparable to today's upscaling HDMI DVD players.
Even if true hi-def players took over, such a technology could still improve the picture quality of someone's existing standard-res DVD collection.
DVD really didn't take off until 3-4 years after it came out, when the players got really cheap. Which was my exact point! Even though the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD battle that everyone was excited about is supposedly all but over, the less interesting, but ultimately much bigger war- to get people to buy hi-def players at all- isn't. As I said, the quickest way to overcome that *is* to reduce the price.
Although I don't think it'll happen here, it'd be quite possible to end up with one side technically winning, but still doing badly. Who won out of DVD-A and SACD? Who cares, because neither grabbed a notable share of the market, and hi-def audio as a whole flopped commercially.
Personally, I don't think interest in HD as a whole will flop the way that hi-def audio flopped. That doesn't mean Blu Ray should rest on its laurels, however. The most obvious problem with keeping the price high would be that it slowed adoption (as you imply).
Even if the Blu Ray camp could live with that (it'd probably make them more profit in the short term), it'd be a bad idea, simply because of the other understated factor- downloadable HD content. The market is moving that way anyway, and at this stage I reckon it's ultimately a much bigger- but less tangible- threat to Blu-Ray than the moribund HD-DVD.
In short, the battle's not over. Blu Ray faces threats from current-generation DVD and apathy on one side and the should-have-seen-it-coming threat of downloadable content bypassing their petty squabbles on the other.
The GGP was so wrong- Blu Ray players need to come down in price as much as ever.
If I was already out buying the movie on DVD, then I figured I may as well plunk down the extra $5 and get it in a combo format [..] Hell I might still get an HD DVD player anyways. I still haven't bought "The 300", and Wal-mart has a player with a bundled copy for $148 right now. Yes, but if- as appears almost inevitable now- HD-DVD really has lost the war and is killed off, you're still paying quite a lot of money to watch the few HD-DVD-compatible discs that you already have.
If you buy more discs, you're investing in a dead-end system, and when your original machine breaks down, you'll likely have to buy a secondhand player in a few years time if you want to keep watching your collection. Which might not have the benefits of newly-built (and Blu-Ray only) hi-def players- and what if you want to use them in your computer(s)?
And if you end up wanting to watch Blu Ray stuff, you'll end up forking out for that anyway, have two players cluttering up the place and (as above) effectively just be using the HD-DVD player for watching a few discs.
I'm not saying that you're necessarily wrong though- *if* they sold HD-DVD discs off cheaply enough, this may not matter if you get your money's worth of enjoyment from the system anyway. Particularly if you hadn't planned on buying Blu-Ray at present.
Oh, and remember that the "worth" of a movie is the minimum of either (a) the most you'd be willing to pay for it and (b) the lowest price you can get it for without too many drawbacks. So perhaps it's "worth" $30 based on the RRP, but what's its real worth? Then again, $30 doesn't sound too bad to me, so forget this last paragraph:-)
Now there isn't a reason to lower the cost of bluray players. Yes there is. Though many (but not all) overlooked it in favour of the more interesting Blu-Ray/HD-DVD rivalry, both players were fighting a bigger rival- existing DVD players and public apathy.
DVD became a runaway success because (a) it was cheap, and (b) it gave noticable picture-quality improvements and other advantages that could be enjoyed with existing setups.
Blu-Ray is not only relatively expensive, but it requires an HD set to make it worthwhile. Even those with HD sets could stick with upscaling DVD players. (*) And I suspect there are a significant proportion of people who rushed out and bought HD because it was the latest thing and they could boast about it to their friends, and haven't noticed that the picture from their $30 DVD player connected via the composite cable actually sucks:)
(*) In fact, it's a theory of mine that with improvements in dynamic image-processing technology (more than just upscaling), the picture quality from existing DVDs could be *far* improved. What I have in mind would require some fairly powerful chips doing intelligent analysis over multiple frames, and the cost would probably be horrendous at present- but I could see that changing. Then again, by the time that happens, Blu-Ray or some other HD rival will probably be established anyway. (OTOH, the same techniques could possibly be applied to HD sources to make them better *still*, so it might be worth pursuing anyway).
apparently the SilverLight installer is just some shady.exe Ho ho... but seriously- great idea:-
1) Create quiz so crap that everyone talks about it (but not so bad that it's obviously intentional).
2) Geeks want to see what quiz is really like (and quite honestly won't reject the chance to win $15,000 if it's going anyway).
3) Geeks happy because they think they got one up on The Man by not taking his quiz seriously. MS laughs because they got them to install Silverlight which was the main idea all along.
Not really; as others have commented, you still push it using your thumb, more like a traditional controller in that sense. If you want to argue that it's still a joystick; well, an old-fashioned 8-way digital controller is really just a super-flattened joystick, isn't it?
Which may technically be true, but the way that it's actually used is fundamentally different.
Wrong. I disagree with you that people who are not experts should stay silent on issues. There you go, putting words in my mouth again- that's not what I said. (This almost smacks of intentional misrepresentation, to be honest, but see below).
I actually said:-
I discourage people who don't know what they're talking about from talking as if they do. In other words, people who don't know about the law shouldn't say "the position is X, Y and Z" when they're just guessing or downright incorrect.
I'm quite happy for other people to discuss aspects of the law, just as I do. However, if I am in any doubt as to my understanding when I'm not an expert on a subject, I try to make this clear. Something along the lines of "AFAIK, this is what the law says, but I'm not an expert", so that I don't mislead people.
The whole reason for Slashdot and forums is that if you take enough people focusing on one subject, you usually get what amounts to a thesis (when you find all the important information/thoughts) on that subject. No, the whole reason for Slashdot is to report news that is of interest to nerds, and to give them a place to discuss it.
The fact that on technical matters, an acceptably high proportion of the Slashdot userbase is knowledgable enough to discuss things insightfully (and in most cases to make clear which comments are misleading) is a happy side effect.
I don't think it had any such lofty Web-2.0-style ambitions when it started, and I still don't think it would describe itself in such a pompous manner.
On the other hand, when the proportion of people who have any real knowledge of the subject drops below a certain threshold, this doesn't work. That's what happens with discussions on how the law *actually* works. Geeks think they can work round their ignorance of how the law *actually* works by making unstated assumptions and assuming they can logically deduce these things.
The only way to actually know how the law actually works is to find out about it. (How it *should* work is a different kettle of fish... but I repeat myself).
The people who modded you most likely agree with your first sentence, but Slashdot karma is so fickle that trumpeting one post as being "the truth" because it was modded up is ludicrous. You're putting words in my mouth again (most likely out of ignorance). I didn't claim that it was " "the truth" " (double quotes- me quoting you *pretending* to quote me). I said that you were the only person who *still* seemed to have trouble understanding what I said.
Keep calling me stupid because I disagree with you. I think you genuinely believe that.
In truth, I'm calling you stupid because I genuinely think it's the only plausible explanation as to why you don't seem to understand things even after they've been explicitly and repeatedly stated in plain English.
I could assume that you were intentionally trying to misrepresent what I was saying in order to score points. However, if you were really that smart, you would have done a better job of making yourself look good... besides which, "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity".
Anyway, arguing with you is like banging one's head against a brick wall.
Well, just to make you happy (which is odd, because I find you rude and dislike you just from your two posts) You bluntly accused me of talking "BS" based on a lazy and/or stupid misinterpretation of my position (if you actually bothered to read it). Quite honestly, I'd have been justified in being a lot ruder.
What I still take away from it is that you discourage people who are not lawyers from commenting on points of law No, I discourage people who don't know what they're talking about from talking as if they do. A lot of people around here assume that because they know a lot about science, computers or IT that their cleverness makes them experts in other areas. Whereas it's quite clear from the evidence that this is not the case. I could go into more detail, but I'd just be repeating what I already said.
Anyway, going by your woeful response to my original post what you "take away from something" bears **** all reflection to what was actually said.
I do not see any clear declaration that law should be easily understood by any reasonable person off the street. Well, duh. That's not the point I was making in my original post.
I agreed with *your* subsequent comment that this was a desirable thing (despite my criticism of everything else you said). Is there a problem with doing this?
If your intent was as you stated in your reply, I have some advice for you: learn to write and speak so that people can easily understand your position. Without wanting to blow my own trumpet, my comment was modded +5, and you were the only one (apparently) who misunderstood it.
Quit trying to turn the tables and attack me to cover your own stupidity and/or laziness.
If he was, he'd still be better-qualified to talk about how the law works than 99.9% of the people contributing to this and similar Slashdot discussions. BS. Law should make sense. In other words, [snip snip] Society makes the law, so why shouldn't a member of that society be able to understand it and explain it? Nice one- you totally missed the point! I stated quite explicitly that I was discussing how the law actually was, and NOT how it *should* be.
I also made clear that discussing how the law *should* operate is a valid and desirable point of discussion... but that this should *not* be confused with or presented as how the law *actually* operates, regardless of how much we'd like it to be so (footnote *2 above).
And then (irony of ironies) I criticised people who presented their opinion of how the law should operate as being how the law actually operates.... or genuinely didn't know the difference. And you still missed the point!
And don't try to weasel out of this by saying you didn't mean that. You accused me of talking "BS", so it's clear that you disagreed with what I was saying.... or what you thought I was saying, which isn't the same at all.
It was there in plain English, for ****'s sake! I'm trying to figure out if (a) You actually read what you were replying to, (b) You "read" it, but made some kneejerk assumptions about what I was saying and didn't actually pay attention, or (c) You're just stupid. I don't know which.
Sad thing is, I agree with your point that laws *should* make sense to the man in the steet. But unlike you, I know that the way things should be isn't always the way that they are.
You must be a first year law student Valdrax. If he was, he'd still be better-qualified to talk about how the law works than 99.9% of the people contributing to this and similar Slashdot discussions.
The problem is that although some people here probably know what they're talking about, it's hard to judge which ones they are without spending more time than it's worth sorting them out from the undeclared IANALs. (Skip to the final paragraph for the main point minus the waffle).
You have to ask yourself- what level of knowledge is this person arguing from? Do they even understand the basics of what they're discussing? If so, do they understand the finer points and exceptions that apply to "corner cases" such as this one? Unless you already know the law pretty well (I don't), it's often impossible to judge- and whilst I'm no expert and don't pretend to be one, I don't intend to be a blind man being led by another overconfident but equally blind man.
In all honesty, *any* Slashdot discussion about the finer points of law will quickly become an intellectual wankfest that mixes up basic misunderstanding, myths, attempts to reason out what the law actually is (*1) and assumptions that the way the law *should* be is the way that it actually is. (*2)
The law does have intellectual consistency, but not in the way that Slashdot-style pseudo-logic can be applied to it. Otherwise, engineers would make great lawyers and vice versa.
(*1) No, you can't always logically deduce what the law actually is through logic- particularly not corner cases. The law is what the law is, even when it doesn't always make sense. It's an example of the conceit that you can apply geek/engineer-style logic to any field. In a way, this is the same point as *2 below.
(*2) Yes, the law sometimes sucks and is stupid- and it's perfectly valid to discuss its flaws and how it should behave. But the fact remains- you *can't* assume that the way it *should* be, or even the way that "common sense" (or some convoluted pseudo-intellectual Slashdot argument) says it should be is the way that it actually is.
To cut the above short, threads like this are basically useless for shedding light rather than heat, because the majority of contributors are IANALs who'll try to (incorrectly) apply pseudo-logical reason to cover their lack of legal expertise.
Read George Orwell's essay on this topic. Going by his dislike of overused, cliched phrases expressed in that essay, today's "businessspeak" (mindless repetition of words and phrases that have long since been driven into the ground by thoughtless, banal, stupid repetition) would have him spinning in his grave so much that we could use him as a form of renewable energy.
The solution is obvious. We need to think outside the box and raise the bar when it comes to language... someone needs to step up to the plate and bring something new to the table. I'm thinking of someone I have synergy with, not just the type that goes for the low-hanging fruit.
Ooh.... he's spinning nicely. Another couple of Orwells and we'll have enough electricity to power the world:)
BBC's "I.T. Crowd," "The IT Crowd" isn't a BBC show; it's made for Channel 4. Why do Americans seem to assume that every British TV show is made by the BBC?
Eh, that's not really malevolent, don't feel guilty. They'd just put it down to some pesky geek kid and reset it.
More annoying to put a delay in the program that simulates the default BASIC prompt (or whatever), does nothing for three or four minutes and *then* makes a horrible sound- and prints an error message designed to scare the technophobe sales people and customers.
Or you could have it do this when the first inquisitive customer presses a key. You, obviously, would be observing from a plausible safe distance:)
Clarification:-
So, copy protection code could request data from the "same"-numbered sector and check its contents on successive reads. [..] it would sooner or later get the "other" sector, and know that it was a genuine (nonstandard factory-made) disc. (Because the "same"-numbered sector contained different data on successive reads- something not normally possible on a healthy disc- it would "know" that there were actually two different sectors with the same number).
When such a disc was copied by an ordinary drive (even on a sector-by-sector basis) it would see one of the sectors first and only copy that. Even knowing about the copy protection and how it works wouldn't help us- we still *can't* write write duplicate-numbered sectors even if we want to. (**) Hence all requests for data from sector number "X" would return the same result no matter how many successive reads were done, and the code would never proceed past the copy-protection stage.
The majority of the copy protection routines on the Apple//e depended on nuances of a combination of hardware and software not just software. [..] A good fraction of copy-protected files could not even be made into a standard.dsk image, and thus would be most likely lost as the original magnetic media fades Here's a good example on the 8-bit Atari computers.
Many game disks used special nonstandard physical formatting that ordinary Atari drives *could not* replicate (*). One example was use of duplicate sector numbers. My memory on this isn't perfect, and I'm filling in the gaps with guesswork, but IIRC it relied on having two sectors with different contents that were given duplicate numbers.
When the drive was told "read sector X", it'd be semi-random which of the two arrived under the read head first. So, copy protection code could request data from the "same"-numbered sector and check its contents on successive reads. By the law of averages- possibly with some timing randomisation to help things- it would sooner or later get the "other" sector, and know that it was a genuine (nonstandard factory-made) disc.
When such a disc was copied by an ordinary drive (even on a sector-by-sector basis) it would see one of the sectors first and only copy that. Even knowing about the copy protection and how it works wouldn't help us- we still *can't* write write duplicate-numbered sectors even if we want to. (**)
The drive could *read* these and other weird formats- albeit sometimes in a backward way that wasn't always healthy for the drive- but there was no physical way to replicate the nonstandard structure using a plain Atari drive.
(*) Reason being that the Atari floppy drives were "smart" (relatively speaking), and the logic that handled physical formatting of the magnetic structure was built-in to the drive's circuitry. You could start formatting a disk, turn the computer off, and the drive would complete the physical format, although it wouldn't write the filesystem.
Therefore (*IIRC*) the physical disk formatting that you could create with the drives was limited to those that the drive's circuitry- and hardware- was designed to handle. I'm not sure if there were any sneaky ways around this- getting low-level or pseudo-low-level access to the formatting circuitry- without actually modifying the drive itself. I *do* know that there were many circuit boards for the 1050 drive that improved its performance and let it copy more disks.
And (getting back to the parent's reply), if a standard disk image relies on the "normal" expected disk layout and doesn't include support for nonstandard physical hacks like duplicate sectors *and* the emulator doesn't replicate the pseudo-random timing/read issues of the physical drive rotation, then you can't replicate- let alone run- a copy protected program on one.
(**) The obvious route around this, of course, is to simply bypass or disable the code that checks for copy protection. Easier said than done maybe, but certainly doable- after all, you have to be able to read the program to load it, and once that's done it's a question of finding the protection and rewriting the hacked version to an ordinary disc.
Great, another nerd sitting behind a keyboard instantly solves a problem that countless expert minds haven't been able to! Setting the world to rights is so simple.... as countless taxi drivers and guys in bars will tell you.
If this can happen to the Middle East, it can happen to Russia. That only applies if Russia is connected to the Internet in the same way, and by the same number of cables.
This is final proof that Russia can be cut off from "the internet". The fact that the Middle East (not Russia) temporarily (not permanently) lost much of its capacity (was not totally cut off) constitutes "proof" of something completely different?
I already posted a response to a ten-a-penny idea to solve the problems of Russian phishing, explaining that while anyone of average intelligence could come up with stuff like this off the top of their head, a minute's thought would explain why it won't work in practice. I won't repeat all that here, but much of it applies.
Basically, the criminals (the part that's causing us a problem) are making enough money to pay someone to find other routes out of Russia by whatever method. (And penalising ordinary Russians to indirectly pressure their government into solving the crime problem wouldn't work either, for reasons I explain in the linked subthread).
Does this mean I can now go kill several people and leave a few burned CD's for their families as compensation and continue with my day? Don't know about that principle in general, but it would certainly be valid if the people you killed worked for the RIAA or their lawyers.
Disclaimer for lawyers and/or fuckwitted and/or humour-impaired readers (*): No, I'm not seriously suggesting this, I just like the ring of poetic justice in it.
(*) "But I repeat myself"... thank you, Mark Twain.
I was going to point out that this was one time that ASC-se man couldn't legitimately be modded "-1:Offtopic", but in the meantime someone else has +1:Informatived him instead(!)
I have to admit that this is one troll I actually have a soft spot for; the ASCII representation is pretty clever (even down to the use of exclamation mark) and the text for the infamous link always makes some effort at tying itself in with the discussion.
And anyway, why would drug companies deliberately try kill people? Isn't it obvious? It's a conspiracy to kill all the black people/Muslims/whatever, maaaaaaaaaan.
Slashdot Mirror
So video really does have 50/60 fields-per-second motion resolution versus film's 24 or 25 frames, and that's one major cause of them looking different.
Now, if you have a system that invents interpolated frames then you're effectively increasing the motion resolution and this will inevitably give the material a more "video-like" look (presumably the effect is heightened if you go beyond traditional video's 50/60 fps and go up to 100 fps). Since most American dramas are shot on 24 fps film (see (*) again), increasing this to 50 or 100 frames per second will alter the appearance, making it more "video-like". It may be this that you think looks "so realistic it looks fake". Video is used for factual stuff, and by camcorders and so on. Drama is mostly shot on film and has a more "distant" and (ironically) less realistic look due- I'm guessing- to its lower motion resolution. So subconsciously you're probably used to this feel on non-factual material- and when it looks like video instead (as increasing the frame rate by interpolation will do) your brain says "something wrong".
It's also possible that the interpolation isn't consistent- if some objects get better motion-interpolation than others, the mixture may look slightly "wrong". I don't know- I haven't seen it.
(*) With PAL systems the pseudo-"whole"-frame rate is 25 fps, so most films are simply speeded up slightly. NTSC is more complex because it has 30 fps, and you can't speed up that much- a more complex process is used. But either way, transferring film to video still results in 24 or 25 complete frames per second- you don't get increased motion resolution because it wasn't there on the original source, and with PAL, the same frame is recorded onto odd and even-numbered video fields.
(**) Although one might think that 50 half-frames per second = 25 full frames = roughly the same, it doesn't work like that- since pre-digital video systems have no "memory", if an object has moved between the odd-numbered lines being recorded (field #1A) and the even lines being recorded (field #1B), then it will be in a different position.
Slight tangent, but apparently the "H" in HQV stands for Hollywood. I always thought that Hollywood came across as a kitsch, tacky and sleazy place, but even if you disagree with that, the problem is that most things *named after* Hollywood are cheesy, low-rent type things trying to grab a piece of its alleged glamour... like crap nail bars and hairdressing salons. You don't see Prada (for example) naming their stuff "Hollywood" in an attempt to impress people.
It makes the HQV product come across as cheap, and the fact that it reminds me of that stupid place is a strike against it. Adding the crap misspelling "optix" just makes it sound worse. Ugh.
I don't want to go too far into the details, but the processing I had in mind would be a combination of several ideas I'd been mulling over, many of which would require tracking a given object over several frames to average out noise, artifacting errors, and so on. And also to use simultaneous-equation-style processing on the multiple frames of the same object to increase the static resolution (or maybe this could be done more simply by aligning, overlaying and resharpening the multiple copies). Also ideas like more intelligently spotting the difference between genuine detail and pseudo-detail which comes from encoding/compression artifacts, and removing or repairing the latter. (Repair- or guessing what the most likely hi-res detail was that caused or was damaged by the artifact- might be one of those "easier said than done" computationally intensive tasks). Again, easier if you are looking at multiple frames.
I'm not an expert in this area, but I suspect those that are have probably come up with similar ideas. Whether they're doable in reasonable time, and in hardware is more open to question.
Even if true hi-def players took over, such a technology could still improve the picture quality of someone's existing standard-res DVD collection.
Although I don't think it'll happen here, it'd be quite possible to end up with one side technically winning, but still doing badly. Who won out of DVD-A and SACD? Who cares, because neither grabbed a notable share of the market, and hi-def audio as a whole flopped commercially.
Personally, I don't think interest in HD as a whole will flop the way that hi-def audio flopped. That doesn't mean Blu Ray should rest on its laurels, however. The most obvious problem with keeping the price high would be that it slowed adoption (as you imply).
Even if the Blu Ray camp could live with that (it'd probably make them more profit in the short term), it'd be a bad idea, simply because of the other understated factor- downloadable HD content. The market is moving that way anyway, and at this stage I reckon it's ultimately a much bigger- but less tangible- threat to Blu-Ray than the moribund HD-DVD.
In short, the battle's not over. Blu Ray faces threats from current-generation DVD and apathy on one side and the should-have-seen-it-coming threat of downloadable content bypassing their petty squabbles on the other.
The GGP was so wrong- Blu Ray players need to come down in price as much as ever.
If you buy more discs, you're investing in a dead-end system, and when your original machine breaks down, you'll likely have to buy a secondhand player in a few years time if you want to keep watching your collection. Which might not have the benefits of newly-built (and Blu-Ray only) hi-def players- and what if you want to use them in your computer(s)?
And if you end up wanting to watch Blu Ray stuff, you'll end up forking out for that anyway, have two players cluttering up the place and (as above) effectively just be using the HD-DVD player for watching a few discs.
I'm not saying that you're necessarily wrong though- *if* they sold HD-DVD discs off cheaply enough, this may not matter if you get your money's worth of enjoyment from the system anyway. Particularly if you hadn't planned on buying Blu-Ray at present.
Oh, and remember that the "worth" of a movie is the minimum of either (a) the most you'd be willing to pay for it and (b) the lowest price you can get it for without too many drawbacks. So perhaps it's "worth" $30 based on the RRP, but what's its real worth? Then again, $30 doesn't sound too bad to me, so forget this last paragraph
DVD became a runaway success because (a) it was cheap, and (b) it gave noticable picture-quality improvements and other advantages that could be enjoyed with existing setups.
Blu-Ray is not only relatively expensive, but it requires an HD set to make it worthwhile. Even those with HD sets could stick with upscaling DVD players. (*) And I suspect there are a significant proportion of people who rushed out and bought HD because it was the latest thing and they could boast about it to their friends, and haven't noticed that the picture from their $30 DVD player connected via the composite cable actually sucks
(*) In fact, it's a theory of mine that with improvements in dynamic image-processing technology (more than just upscaling), the picture quality from existing DVDs could be *far* improved. What I have in mind would require some fairly powerful chips doing intelligent analysis over multiple frames, and the cost would probably be horrendous at present- but I could see that changing. Then again, by the time that happens, Blu-Ray or some other HD rival will probably be established anyway. (OTOH, the same techniques could possibly be applied to HD sources to make them better *still*, so it might be worth pursuing anyway).
1) Create quiz so crap that everyone talks about it (but not so bad that it's obviously intentional).
2) Geeks want to see what quiz is really like (and quite honestly won't reject the chance to win $15,000 if it's going anyway).
3) Geeks happy because they think they got one up on The Man by not taking his quiz seriously. MS laughs because they got them to install Silverlight which was the main idea all along.
Not really; as others have commented, you still push it using your thumb, more like a traditional controller in that sense. If you want to argue that it's still a joystick; well, an old-fashioned 8-way digital controller is really just a super-flattened joystick, isn't it?
Which may technically be true, but the way that it's actually used is fundamentally different.
I actually said:- I discourage people who don't know what they're talking about from talking as if they do. In other words, people who don't know about the law shouldn't say "the position is X, Y and Z" when they're just guessing or downright incorrect.
I'm quite happy for other people to discuss aspects of the law, just as I do. However, if I am in any doubt as to my understanding when I'm not an expert on a subject, I try to make this clear. Something along the lines of "AFAIK, this is what the law says, but I'm not an expert", so that I don't mislead people. The whole reason for Slashdot and forums is that if you take enough people focusing on one subject, you usually get what amounts to a thesis (when you find all the important information/thoughts) on that subject. No, the whole reason for Slashdot is to report news that is of interest to nerds, and to give them a place to discuss it.
The fact that on technical matters, an acceptably high proportion of the Slashdot userbase is knowledgable enough to discuss things insightfully (and in most cases to make clear which comments are misleading) is a happy side effect.
I don't think it had any such lofty Web-2.0-style ambitions when it started, and I still don't think it would describe itself in such a pompous manner.
On the other hand, when the proportion of people who have any real knowledge of the subject drops below a certain threshold, this doesn't work. That's what happens with discussions on how the law *actually* works. Geeks think they can work round their ignorance of how the law *actually* works by making unstated assumptions and assuming they can logically deduce these things.
The only way to actually know how the law actually works is to find out about it. (How it *should* work is a different kettle of fish... but I repeat myself). The people who modded you most likely agree with your first sentence, but Slashdot karma is so fickle that trumpeting one post as being "the truth" because it was modded up is ludicrous. You're putting words in my mouth again (most likely out of ignorance). I didn't claim that it was " "the truth" " (double quotes- me quoting you *pretending* to quote me). I said that you were the only person who *still* seemed to have trouble understanding what I said. Keep calling me stupid because I disagree with you. I think you genuinely believe that.
In truth, I'm calling you stupid because I genuinely think it's the only plausible explanation as to why you don't seem to understand things even after they've been explicitly and repeatedly stated in plain English.
I could assume that you were intentionally trying to misrepresent what I was saying in order to score points. However, if you were really that smart, you would have done a better job of making yourself look good... besides which, "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity".
Anyway, arguing with you is like banging one's head against a brick wall.
Anyway, going by your woeful response to my original post what you "take away from something" bears **** all reflection to what was actually said. I do not see any clear declaration that law should be easily understood by any reasonable person off the street. Well, duh. That's not the point I was making in my original post.
I agreed with *your* subsequent comment that this was a desirable thing (despite my criticism of everything else you said). Is there a problem with doing this? If your intent was as you stated in your reply, I have some advice for you: learn to write and speak so that people can easily understand your position. Without wanting to blow my own trumpet, my comment was modded +5, and you were the only one (apparently) who misunderstood it.
Quit trying to turn the tables and attack me to cover your own stupidity and/or laziness.
I also made clear that discussing how the law *should* operate is a valid and desirable point of discussion... but that this should *not* be confused with or presented as how the law *actually* operates, regardless of how much we'd like it to be so (footnote *2 above).
And then (irony of ironies) I criticised people who presented their opinion of how the law should operate as being how the law actually operates.... or genuinely didn't know the difference. And you still missed the point! And don't try to weasel out of this by saying you didn't mean that. You accused me of talking "BS", so it's clear that you disagreed with what I was saying.... or what you thought I was saying, which isn't the same at all.
It was there in plain English, for ****'s sake! I'm trying to figure out if (a) You actually read what you were replying to, (b) You "read" it, but made some kneejerk assumptions about what I was saying and didn't actually pay attention, or (c) You're just stupid. I don't know which.
Sad thing is, I agree with your point that laws *should* make sense to the man in the steet. But unlike you, I know that the way things should be isn't always the way that they are.
The problem is that although some people here probably know what they're talking about, it's hard to judge which ones they are without spending more time than it's worth sorting them out from the undeclared IANALs. (Skip to the final paragraph for the main point minus the waffle).
You have to ask yourself- what level of knowledge is this person arguing from? Do they even understand the basics of what they're discussing? If so, do they understand the finer points and exceptions that apply to "corner cases" such as this one? Unless you already know the law pretty well (I don't), it's often impossible to judge- and whilst I'm no expert and don't pretend to be one, I don't intend to be a blind man being led by another overconfident but equally blind man.
In all honesty, *any* Slashdot discussion about the finer points of law will quickly become an intellectual wankfest that mixes up basic misunderstanding, myths, attempts to reason out what the law actually is (*1) and assumptions that the way the law *should* be is the way that it actually is. (*2)
The law does have intellectual consistency, but not in the way that Slashdot-style pseudo-logic can be applied to it. Otherwise, engineers would make great lawyers and vice versa.
(*1) No, you can't always logically deduce what the law actually is through logic- particularly not corner cases. The law is what the law is, even when it doesn't always make sense. It's an example of the conceit that you can apply geek/engineer-style logic to any field. In a way, this is the same point as *2 below.
(*2) Yes, the law sometimes sucks and is stupid- and it's perfectly valid to discuss its flaws and how it should behave. But the fact remains- you *can't* assume that the way it *should* be, or even the way that "common sense" (or some convoluted pseudo-intellectual Slashdot argument) says it should be is the way that it actually is.
To cut the above short, threads like this are basically useless for shedding light rather than heat, because the majority of contributors are IANALs who'll try to (incorrectly) apply pseudo-logical reason to cover their lack of legal expertise.
The solution is obvious. We need to think outside the box and raise the bar when it comes to language... someone needs to step up to the plate and bring something new to the table. I'm thinking of someone I have synergy with, not just the type that goes for the low-hanging fruit.
Ooh.... he's spinning nicely. Another couple of Orwells and we'll have enough electricity to power the world
Slightly offtopic, but I love the advert in the middle of all that:- It's finally here, after long fucking waiting !!
2-3 player playable violent crash - boom - bAng game
Eh, that's not really malevolent, don't feel guilty. They'd just put it down to some pesky geek kid and reset it.
:)
More annoying to put a delay in the program that simulates the default BASIC prompt (or whatever), does nothing for three or four minutes and *then* makes a horrible sound- and prints an error message designed to scare the technophobe sales people and customers.
Or you could have it do this when the first inquisitive customer presses a key. You, obviously, would be observing from a plausible safe distance
Many game disks used special nonstandard physical formatting that ordinary Atari drives *could not* replicate (*). One example was use of duplicate sector numbers. My memory on this isn't perfect, and I'm filling in the gaps with guesswork, but IIRC it relied on having two sectors with different contents that were given duplicate numbers.
When the drive was told "read sector X", it'd be semi-random which of the two arrived under the read head first. So, copy protection code could request data from the "same"-numbered sector and check its contents on successive reads. By the law of averages- possibly with some timing randomisation to help things- it would sooner or later get the "other" sector, and know that it was a genuine (nonstandard factory-made) disc.
When such a disc was copied by an ordinary drive (even on a sector-by-sector basis) it would see one of the sectors first and only copy that. Even knowing about the copy protection and how it works wouldn't help us- we still *can't* write write duplicate-numbered sectors even if we want to. (**)
The drive could *read* these and other weird formats- albeit sometimes in a backward way that wasn't always healthy for the drive- but there was no physical way to replicate the nonstandard structure using a plain Atari drive.
(*) Reason being that the Atari floppy drives were "smart" (relatively speaking), and the logic that handled physical formatting of the magnetic structure was built-in to the drive's circuitry. You could start formatting a disk, turn the computer off, and the drive would complete the physical format, although it wouldn't write the filesystem.
Therefore (*IIRC*) the physical disk formatting that you could create with the drives was limited to those that the drive's circuitry- and hardware- was designed to handle. I'm not sure if there were any sneaky ways around this- getting low-level or pseudo-low-level access to the formatting circuitry- without actually modifying the drive itself. I *do* know that there were many circuit boards for the 1050 drive that improved its performance and let it copy more disks.
And (getting back to the parent's reply), if a standard disk image relies on the "normal" expected disk layout and doesn't include support for nonstandard physical hacks like duplicate sectors *and* the emulator doesn't replicate the pseudo-random timing/read issues of the physical drive rotation, then you can't replicate- let alone run- a copy protected program on one.
(**) The obvious route around this, of course, is to simply bypass or disable the code that checks for copy protection. Easier said than done maybe, but certainly doable- after all, you have to be able to read the program to load it, and once that's done it's a question of finding the protection and rewriting the hacked version to an ordinary disc.
I already posted a response to a ten-a-penny idea to solve the problems of Russian phishing, explaining that while anyone of average intelligence could come up with stuff like this off the top of their head, a minute's thought would explain why it won't work in practice. I won't repeat all that here, but much of it applies.
Basically, the criminals (the part that's causing us a problem) are making enough money to pay someone to find other routes out of Russia by whatever method. (And penalising ordinary Russians to indirectly pressure their government into solving the crime problem wouldn't work either, for reasons I explain in the linked subthread).
Disclaimer for lawyers and/or fuckwitted and/or humour-impaired readers (*): No, I'm not seriously suggesting this, I just like the ring of poetic justice in it.
(*) "But I repeat myself"... thank you, Mark Twain.
I was going to point out that this was one time that ASC-se man couldn't legitimately be modded "-1:Offtopic", but in the meantime someone else has +1:Informatived him instead(!)
I have to admit that this is one troll I actually have a soft spot for; the ASCII representation is pretty clever (even down to the use of exclamation mark) and the text for the infamous link always makes some effort at tying itself in with the discussion.
I can't believe I just said all that.