I'm fully aware nothing that I propose is ever going to happen Sorry to break this to you, but whilst political apathy on this issue may be a problem, it's not the main reason your suggestion should (and would) be ignored. It's because it's badly thought out and unworkable.
You don't have to be 100% successful with cutting them off the net. Just enough so that it's going to be very inconvenient for Russians to access anything outside of Russia. I don't believe that you'll be anywhere near 100% near successful; I believe that you'll just succeed in blocking everyday Russians, and the criminals will pay money to people to get them through.
Putin and the like will be quite happy to see ordinary Russians cut off from external sources of information; they've already tried to shut down as many dissenting voices as possible, but the Internet is harder to deal with. They'll also be able to paint it as Western aggression and mistreatment when they don't get things their way. Double whammy for them!
So even if you think that inconveniencing ordinary people in this way will indirectly pressure the Russian government, it won't. Quite the opposite.
At what point do we stop accepting their harboring of their criminals? There's gotta be a line somewhere. As I said, you assume criticism of your solution == non-acknowledgement of problem. This is not the case.
My post was a criticism of a transparently bad idea, and I had the gut reaction that it would be taken (by you or someone else) as a rejection of the problem itself.
Simply going with a bad and workable "solution" simply for the sake of doing something in the absence of a better idea is A Very Bad Thing. As I already pointed out, your solution would be *worse* than the problem anyway.
I suspect that people have already come up with better ideas than yours, which they (having greater insight into the issues) nevertheless concluded were flawed.
What needs [my emphasis] to happen is cutting Russia completely off the net. Cut them off at every peering point they have, and if someone (China) still continues routing Russian network traffic, block the Russian network traffic where it's being passed onto the responsible part of the Internet.
Really, do you actually think about the practicality or plausibility of implementing your ideas in the real world?
This not only *won't* happen (as you acknowledge) but *can't* heppen without locking down the US's (or whoever's) part of the Internet so much that the cure will be worse than the disease. Even if you stop direct links to the US net, you won't be able to stop every peering point between Russia and elsewhere. It's going to be impossible to stop indirect traffic. Criminals will just figure a way around your idea of blocking Russian traffic that hides their true location. Since they have access to lots of compromised PCs in numerous countries that's one obvious route. The other obvious solution is to cut a deal- "legal" or "illegal" by whatever measure- with a third party in a third country that isn't blocked. Good luck figuring which connections are legitimate and which are proxies for the criminals.
And even if you block all *those* countries, they'll do it in two hops via a fourth country- so unless you have a 100% agreement between "good countries" and they have a 100% watertight block against traffic from the "bad" countries, you can't do it.
I'll tell you now that (a) You won't get such an agreement and (b) If you did, you still wouldn't be able to make sure that those countries' defences were watertight to your standards. So the only way to get what you want is to block all non-US traffic (assuming you live in the US) to an incredible degree. And this still probably won't work.
Your naivety and the flaw in your argument can be summed up by this phrase:-
the responsible part of the Internet
As if the Internet can be obviously (and easily) partitioned off into "responsible" and "irresponsible" parts! Even if it could, so long as either "part" is too big too isolate completely from the other, you can't stop traffic flowing. Therefore, there's only *ONE* Internet.
And it's not like that; the whole thing is just shades of grey; the US part might be more "responsible" by your measure, but it's still far from perfect.
There just has to be a better way of protecting the network from bad actors who are hellbent on destroying it.
Yes, and your easier-to-come-up-with-on-Slashdot-than-it-is-to-actually-implement-it idea isn't one of them.
the next alternative is diplomatic isolation. They don't do something to curb the fastest growing criminal activity in the world, well, gee, Vladimir, you don't get to sit on the Security Council
Yeah, it's that simple when you're a tough-talking behind-the-keyboard would-be-diplomat/politician.
Bottom line, I'm not justifying what Russia is doing, or how they're behaving, but your solutions are naive and clumsy in the extreme. The West isn't going to isolate Russia further (which Putin would probably be quite happy with) and risk escalation of political and military tensions simply to stop some crime which- although admittedly serious and large-scale- still doesn't warrant anything like that risk.
ballrooms in Geneva and you can most certainly kiss that EU membership you so want goodbye forever. And don't even think of vacationing on those nice ski resorts on the Alps Russians are so fond of. Visa denied.
Oh noes!!!!!11111
And that's why you're neither a diplomat or a politician. You think that such petty retribution would work and Putin would say "You're right! I'll do exactly what you say". Not a bloody chance. This is just the Slashdot equivalent of some guy down the pub/bar saying how he'd put the world to rights.
Putin would set his face against the West further (wh
Why would I have Canadian bills in the first place if I didn't, you know, get them in exchange for some other currency or actually live in Canada? You know, I wasn't taking this entirely seriously because I didn't believe for one moment that you were actually sitting there making paper aeroplanes out of Canadian bills, only that you were trolling or joking:)
Canadian "dollars" are so worthless I've recently been making paper airplanes out of the Canadian bills I have and throwing them out a window to see how far they fly. Not very far, but I'm not that great at making paper airplanes. I'll take as many of those Canadian dollars off your hands as you have for 25 US cents each. Now, isn't that generous? (^_^)
That should be enough to buy some really good plane-making paper *and* you'll have enough left over to buy some aspirin. Which obviously you'll need to sooth the headache you get from repeatedly banging your head after you find out that the Canadian dollar has been hovering around parity with the US dollar for quite a while now:-P
Sweet! Now I'll be able to download all the music you buy off P2P networks for free!
Like I'm ever paying copyright companies for digital media files. I'd rather burn my money. Disregarding the moral issues on either side of the argument, two reasons I'd pay for music downloads are that
Assuming whatever I want is already available, it's often less hassle than tracking down songs via P2P (in rarer cases) and waiting for them to become available from a single uploader, and
If it's a known-bitrate transfer from a known existing source, it also saves me wasted time "auditioning" which version to keep from various downloaded copies (some of which are better quality than others)
OTOH, iTunes isn't "perfect" quality either though. I've had stuff downloaded from them (which I couldn't find on P2P anyway) which had digital "clicks" in it. Actually, I've even had minor digital pops/clicks in quite a few CDs I've bought (they remained even when played back on different players. It's not like it was a recent loudness-compressed let's-get-this-recording-to-the-16-bit-volume-limit release either, I had this problem with the 1994 reissue of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon".). So it's possible that either iTunes had bad error-compensation when ripping from the CD source and/or that a major non-correctable flaw was present on the CD *or* that the CD's master itself was flawed.
In either case, WTF is going on there? I don't expect digital flaws- even minor ones- on stuff from iTunes, and I certainly don't expect them on my CDs!
Well the desktop systems for Linux keep getting better and better , so what's the problem . Linux works great for the desktop . If you look at the newest window managers , it has all the stuff Windows has , and then some more. The "problem" is that when people discuss the "year of Linux on the desktop", they basically mean its market share and are implying that desktop Linux will reach some breakthrough point for mainstream use. People have been saying this every year for the best part of a decade, and it hasn't happened yet.
They need a different business model, it's over. There's some truth in this. Personally I still think it's desirable (from a moral and pragmatic perspective) that there's *some* mechanism in place- direct or indirect, legal and/or market-driven- to ensure that people are able to reap the rewards of intellectual effort that would not have taken place without some *potential* reward, just as happens with physical labour.
Not that I'm implying anyone is owed a living any more than someone creating a building is owed a profit if no-one wants to buy it. Only if someone wants to reap the benefit of someone else's effort, physical or intellectual, should they pay. Obviously, the nature of intellectual property and effort isn't the same as its physical counterparts, so the reward mechanisms shouldn't necessarily work the same way.
Nor would I imply that such paid efforts be protected from competition; if someone else creates a "free" alternative that doesn't unreasonably rely upon unauthorised use of the first guy's effort, then that's fair. In fact, it's notable that those (ostensibly) in favour of a capitalist free market scream foul and make comparisons with communism when others make the decision- which they have the perfect right to- to release their work for free, or under certain terms.
Were they implying that people should be *forced* to charge for something or release it under conditions that suit them? Tut, tut. Not such a free market then, is it? Not that I agree with a 100% free market in every area, but I don't expect those that do to be hypocrites about it.
They were water-sellers and now it rains every day, it's no use telling people it's 'forbidden' to reach down and drink from a puddle you must buy the water from us. On the other hand, this is a crap analogy. Software relies upon people to create it; the water falling from the sky comes from nature- i.e. it exists anyway. The people collecting it aren't relying on the efforts of the water company without paying- in fact, they're totally bypassing them.
The year of Linux Desktop! This is bordering on a parody of itself now- any more and it'll become a Slashdot cliche like Natalie Portman, Soviet Russia and friends.
It's been said every year for almost ten years, so can we call it the decade of Linux on the desktop instead?;-)
Suggestion - post to this thread if you think likewise, and we can take an opportunity to express displeasure at screwing up a discussion system due to an utterly misguided attempt at threading adverts in amongst our own posts. I agree entirely, and I wonder how far this encroachment of adverts into discussions
BUY TECHNO-TOSS AT THINKGEEK NOW!
will go. Makes you wonder how it can get any worse than
BetaMax? The industry standard for ages in profesional video. No. The broadcast version, Betacam was derived from Betamax, but they're not identical.
There are (AFAIK) two physical cassette-shell sizes used by Betacam. The original cassette shell is identical to Betamax, layout-wise.
In fact, cassettes for the original Betacam were effectively identical to Betamax ones (supposed manufacturing tolerances aside) and they used the same tape formulation. So far so good- however, even then, although the cassette layout and tape used were effectively identical, the recorded signal was *not* interchangable. In other words, the physical format of early Betacam tapes was identical to Betamax, but the recorded signal was incompatible.
Later improved versions of Betacam used metal-particle tape. Their recordings could be played back in older Betacam machines, but despite the identical layout, attempting to use them *at all* in a Betamax machine would damage the heads which were not physically designed for metal tape.
There are still newer, digital versions of Betacam. It goes without saying that regardless of whether the cassettes fit physically, the recorded signal will not be compatible with an old analogue Betamax recorder.
There also exists a larger Betacam cassette shell used with some versions- that won't fit at all!
In short, Betacam is derived from Betamax, and there are levels of physical compatibility between some of the cassettes. But that's as far as it goes- they're not the same, they're not 100% compatible, and they never were.
Actually, no...my VHS movies look like crap now because the tapes wear out. Luckily, I never saw the point in wanting to own a copy of a movie that I'd only watch a few times over the span of several years, so the financial loss was not meaningful. Now, I can just rent HD movies through my Apple TV or Xbox 360. Surely by definition then, if you aren't going to watch them more than a handful of times, they won't wear out? And if you watch them enough that they *do*, then you've probably still got your money's worth- certainly moreso than if you'd rented them.
I'm not defending VHS in the face of DVD which looks better, and (if you look after it) always should. Nor if someone brought up the issue would I deny that VHS might degrade over time... but that's not the same as "wearing out".
On one hand they go and do bone-headed things like putting rootkits on cds, then they turn around and offer kits to install Linux on PS2s and even support Linux out of the box on a PS3. IIRC and AFAIK, the main reason for Linux on the PS2 and PS3 isn't because Sony are the hobbyist/hacker's friend. It's because they want to be able to legally classify them as a computer instead of a console for the puposes of importing it into the EU. This is because the rules/duties/whatever for "computers" are more favourable than those for "consoles".
So was CD, DVD, 3'5", Cassettes, 8 tracks, records, LPs, VHS etc... All from consortium which took licensing fees Wrong- part of the reason that Philips' Compact Cassette became *the* standard audio cassette format was that Sony talked them into licensing the patents for free.
It's also interesting to note that there were several other cassette-tape systems (i.e. those which used the same idea of miniaturising reel-to-reel tapes and storing it in a cassette) developed during the late-1950s and early-1960s. And yet virtually all of them had sunk without trace by the late 1960s.
Its closest rivals were the dictaphone microcassette and 8-track cartridge. The latter was successful in a somewhat different and niche market (dictation), although ironically the Compact Cassette had originally been intended for dictation before the quality improved enough for it to be used for music. The 8-track cartridge (which is also a tape cassette, although it uses a single-direction tape loop instead of a reel-to-reel arrangement) did reasonably well during the 1960s and 1970s in the US, but I don't know how well it did elsewhere. AFAIK it definitely wasn't a big success in the UK.
(I can't comment on its early-1970s heyday, but I grew up in the UK during the early-1980s, and I have *never* seen one firsthand or even been aware of a notable market for them. Even accounting for it being in decline in the US then, if it had been a success here, I'd have at least come across them. The most I ever saw of 8-track was an advertisement for the format on the inside-sleeve of a couple of my parents' early-1970s LPs, and an "also available on 8-track" message on a couple of 1970s cassettes I had).
In short, the Compact Cassette was a runaway success that ultimately flattened any competition. Even the 1970s attempt to create a hi-fi cassette (Sony's Elcaset) flopped, probably because improvements in the Compact Cassette coupled with its ubiquity overcame any remaining limitations.
Question is, would the Compact Cassette have won if the patents hadn't been free? Even if it had, would it have had such a large market in terms of absolute size, and would its rival formats have captured more than a miniscule share of the market, even if only for a few years?
(*) Yes, Wikipedia says this, but I've seen the same story reported elsewhere from clearly non-WP-derived- and more in-depth- sources.
When I first looked at this, I was trying to figure out how one goes about composting Novell on a cell phone. I wouldn't have thought that possible. Have they released the latest versions of Netware and SuSE Linux on biodegradable DVDs, or were you suggesting an unusual alternative to burial for deceased Novell employees?
(Sorry, couldn't contrive the mobile phone into this lame reply).
with encryption technology more accessible than ever I think that the whole effort will be a waste of resources. ¾çäæfds "Offtopic"? Is the person who modded this humourless, or just stupid?
So, if someone were to create a Slashdot.us site, Slashdot would have to file against them. If they didn't, slashdot would become a generic term like aspirin that anyone could use. How do you explain this then? Uh.... that would be because it's not called "Slashdot" or anything remotely resembling it. *rolls eyes*
You make some interesting points, but what level of knowledge do you consider reasonable for a consumer? Should they have to consider the in-depth implications of everything they eat?
Should people with peanut allergies have to check every food they eat, even if it's labelled? Will every ingredient in every processed food notify the person of its genetically-modified status and what the implications of that might be? Or will they simply contain a little footnote saying "see our website for full details about this ingredient"?
I don't want to sound like all these are direct attacks on what you're saying- merely to make the point that the "give people the information and let them choose" free-market approach does have some practical issues and raises a number of questions.
Oh, and we were chatting with some guests the other day about a funny YouTube thing we had seen. They wanted to see it. Voila, I pull it up on my HDTV in my living room using just my remote. No PC. No computer. No putting down the beer and walking into my office to watch it on my PC monitor. That's nice, but to be honest, I can't imagine how bad the low-res artifacted scuzziness of YouTube is going to look on an HDTV.
Real men lick their fingers and stick them across the outputs of the player, doing the decryption in their head, and visualizing the output in their mind. Anything less is for posers. Mod this up:) Even if it does remain lost in the mass of posts, I'm bookmarking it so it can get credit some other time...!
A beta player at 1/3 price is still not going to move much. You mean today.... of course it won't; few want new VCRs, Beta tapes are hard to get hold of, the machines will be out of date, and 1/3 of the typical price of a Beta VCR before it was discontinued is probably still 2-3 times more expensive than a new dirt-cheap VHS VCR?
Or did you mean immediately following its discontinuation? I can imagine that quite a *lot* of people would have said "eh, sod it, don't care about rentals, can still buy blank tapes and record stuff on it, does what I need almost as well as VHS, and I'll happily buy that at $200 instead of $600."
What constitutes the "old days"? I remember 20 years ago (get off my lawn, etc....), game scores out of 10 or 100 were heavily skewed towards the top of the scale. Pretty much anything at or below 5/10 or 50-60% (the figure you give, and in the middle of the range) would be poor and not worth buying.
This is open to interpretation, but I learned that (probably implicitly from reviewers comments, and the relative scores of other games), you could roughly consider 6 out of 10 as clearly below average, 7 out of 10 as alright, but nothing spectacular, 8 out of 10 as "good", and 9 or 10 as brilliant or outstanding. Although this was mostly how my relatively staid Atari 8-bit mag did it, magazines for other computers followed a similar pattern.
I remember reading a column in an early-1990s Amiga magazine complaining about game scores creeping into the mid-90s, and the pressure from games publishers.
So, the "old days" weren't always as you remember them.
Nostalgia is no excuse for supporting a crappy format. No, no, no! Go back and reread what I said:-
In general though, if you'd never grown up with- and got used to- these defects, they'd just strike you as annoying, and I don't want to romanticise vinyl damage I wasn't saying that we should keep vinyl because these defects are "warm" or "nice" or whatever... and, as I said, I mainly was a cassette kid.
But in certain cases, where I've got used to a certain LP (or recording of one), it doesn't change the fact that these are things that are (in a minor way) part of the song for me. And in the example I gave, the jump at the start of the song- good or bad- changes the musical structure of the intro.
To that end, I'm one of those freaks on Usenet who clean up old vinyl & post the MP3s to a waiting world, Nice one!
but never for stuff that's available on CD, because that's usually pointless. I agree- transferring records is more hassle than you'd expect, and in my case, the results have still been disappointing. I guess if you have loads of vinyl to transfer, it makes spending time on the initial setup and learning things worth it, but there's no point if it's available on a decent CD.
Slashdot Mirror
Putin and the like will be quite happy to see ordinary Russians cut off from external sources of information; they've already tried to shut down as many dissenting voices as possible, but the Internet is harder to deal with. They'll also be able to paint it as Western aggression and mistreatment when they don't get things their way. Double whammy for them!
So even if you think that inconveniencing ordinary people in this way will indirectly pressure the Russian government, it won't. Quite the opposite. At what point do we stop accepting their harboring of their criminals? There's gotta be a line somewhere. As I said, you assume criticism of your solution == non-acknowledgement of problem. This is not the case.
My post was a criticism of a transparently bad idea, and I had the gut reaction that it would be taken (by you or someone else) as a rejection of the problem itself.
Simply going with a bad and workable "solution" simply for the sake of doing something in the absence of a better idea is A Very Bad Thing. As I already pointed out, your solution would be *worse* than the problem anyway.
I suspect that people have already come up with better ideas than yours, which they (having greater insight into the issues) nevertheless concluded were flawed.
What needs [my emphasis] to happen is cutting Russia completely off the net. Cut them off at every peering point they have, and if someone (China) still continues routing Russian network traffic, block the Russian network traffic where it's being passed onto the responsible part of the Internet.
Really, do you actually think about the practicality or plausibility of implementing your ideas in the real world?
This not only *won't* happen (as you acknowledge) but *can't* heppen without locking down the US's (or whoever's) part of the Internet so much that the cure will be worse than the disease. Even if you stop direct links to the US net, you won't be able to stop every peering point between Russia and elsewhere. It's going to be impossible to stop indirect traffic. Criminals will just figure a way around your idea of blocking Russian traffic that hides their true location. Since they have access to lots of compromised PCs in numerous countries that's one obvious route. The other obvious solution is to cut a deal- "legal" or "illegal" by whatever measure- with a third party in a third country that isn't blocked. Good luck figuring which connections are legitimate and which are proxies for the criminals.
And even if you block all *those* countries, they'll do it in two hops via a fourth country- so unless you have a 100% agreement between "good countries" and they have a 100% watertight block against traffic from the "bad" countries, you can't do it.
I'll tell you now that (a) You won't get such an agreement and (b) If you did, you still wouldn't be able to make sure that those countries' defences were watertight to your standards. So the only way to get what you want is to block all non-US traffic (assuming you live in the US) to an incredible degree. And this still probably won't work.
Your naivety and the flaw in your argument can be summed up by this phrase:-
the responsible part of the Internet
As if the Internet can be obviously (and easily) partitioned off into "responsible" and "irresponsible" parts! Even if it could, so long as either "part" is too big too isolate completely from the other, you can't stop traffic flowing. Therefore, there's only *ONE* Internet.
And it's not like that; the whole thing is just shades of grey; the US part might be more "responsible" by your measure, but it's still far from perfect.
There just has to be a better way of protecting the network from bad actors who are hellbent on destroying it.
Yes, and your easier-to-come-up-with-on-Slashdot-than-it-is-to-actually-implement-it idea isn't one of them.
the next alternative is diplomatic isolation. They don't do something to curb the fastest growing criminal activity in the world, well, gee, Vladimir, you don't get to sit on the Security Council
Yeah, it's that simple when you're a tough-talking behind-the-keyboard would-be-diplomat/politician.
Bottom line, I'm not justifying what Russia is doing, or how they're behaving, but your solutions are naive and clumsy in the extreme. The West isn't going to isolate Russia further (which Putin would probably be quite happy with) and risk escalation of political and military tensions simply to stop some crime which- although admittedly serious and large-scale- still doesn't warrant anything like that risk.
ballrooms in Geneva and you can most certainly kiss that EU membership you so want goodbye forever. And don't even think of vacationing on those nice ski resorts on the Alps Russians are so fond of. Visa denied.
Oh noes!!!!!11111
And that's why you're neither a diplomat or a politician. You think that such petty retribution would work and Putin would say "You're right! I'll do exactly what you say". Not a bloody chance. This is just the Slashdot equivalent of some guy down the pub/bar saying how he'd put the world to rights.
Putin would set his face against the West further (wh
That should be enough to buy some really good plane-making paper *and* you'll have enough left over to buy some aspirin. Which obviously you'll need to sooth the headache you get from repeatedly banging your head after you find out that the Canadian dollar has been hovering around parity with the US dollar for quite a while now
- Assuming whatever I want is already available, it's often less hassle than tracking down songs via P2P (in rarer cases) and waiting for them to become available from a single uploader, and
- If it's a known-bitrate transfer from a known existing source, it also saves me wasted time "auditioning" which version to keep from various downloaded copies (some of which are better quality than others)
OTOH, iTunes isn't "perfect" quality either though. I've had stuff downloaded from them (which I couldn't find on P2P anyway) which had digital "clicks" in it. Actually, I've even had minor digital pops/clicks in quite a few CDs I've bought (they remained even when played back on different players. It's not like it was a recent loudness-compressed let's-get-this-recording-to-the-16-bit-volume-limit release either, I had this problem with the 1994 reissue of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon".). So it's possible that either iTunes had bad error-compensation when ripping from the CD source and/or that a major non-correctable flaw was present on the CD *or* that the CD's master itself was flawed.In either case, WTF is going on there? I don't expect digital flaws- even minor ones- on stuff from iTunes, and I certainly don't expect them on my CDs!
Not that I'm implying anyone is owed a living any more than someone creating a building is owed a profit if no-one wants to buy it. Only if someone wants to reap the benefit of someone else's effort, physical or intellectual, should they pay. Obviously, the nature of intellectual property and effort isn't the same as its physical counterparts, so the reward mechanisms shouldn't necessarily work the same way.
Nor would I imply that such paid efforts be protected from competition; if someone else creates a "free" alternative that doesn't unreasonably rely upon unauthorised use of the first guy's effort, then that's fair. In fact, it's notable that those (ostensibly) in favour of a capitalist free market scream foul and make comparisons with communism when others make the decision- which they have the perfect right to- to release their work for free, or under certain terms.
Were they implying that people should be *forced* to charge for something or release it under conditions that suit them? Tut, tut. Not such a free market then, is it? Not that I agree with a 100% free market in every area, but I don't expect those that do to be hypocrites about it. They were water-sellers and now it rains every day, it's no use telling people it's 'forbidden' to reach down and drink from a puddle you must buy the water from us. On the other hand, this is a crap analogy. Software relies upon people to create it; the water falling from the sky comes from nature- i.e. it exists anyway. The people collecting it aren't relying on the efforts of the water company without paying- in fact, they're totally bypassing them.
It's been said every year for almost ten years, so can we call it the decade of Linux on the desktop instead?
BUY TECHNO-TOSS AT THINKGEEK NOW!
will go. Makes you wonder how it can get any worse than
GREAT HOSTING DEALS AT RACKSPACE!
that.
Ah, thanks for putting me straight on that one. I'm glad I added "IIRC" and "AFAIK" :)
There are (AFAIK) two physical cassette-shell sizes used by Betacam. The original cassette shell is identical to Betamax, layout-wise.
In fact, cassettes for the original Betacam were effectively identical to Betamax ones (supposed manufacturing tolerances aside) and they used the same tape formulation. So far so good- however, even then, although the cassette layout and tape used were effectively identical, the recorded signal was *not* interchangable. In other words, the physical format of early Betacam tapes was identical to Betamax, but the recorded signal was incompatible.
Later improved versions of Betacam used metal-particle tape. Their recordings could be played back in older Betacam machines, but despite the identical layout, attempting to use them *at all* in a Betamax machine would damage the heads which were not physically designed for metal tape.
There are still newer, digital versions of Betacam. It goes without saying that regardless of whether the cassettes fit physically, the recorded signal will not be compatible with an old analogue Betamax recorder.
There also exists a larger Betacam cassette shell used with some versions- that won't fit at all!
In short, Betacam is derived from Betamax, and there are levels of physical compatibility between some of the cassettes. But that's as far as it goes- they're not the same, they're not 100% compatible, and they never were.
I'm not defending VHS in the face of DVD which looks better, and (if you look after it) always should. Nor if someone brought up the issue would I deny that VHS might degrade over time... but that's not the same as "wearing out".
It's also interesting to note that there were several other cassette-tape systems (i.e. those which used the same idea of miniaturising reel-to-reel tapes and storing it in a cassette) developed during the late-1950s and early-1960s. And yet virtually all of them had sunk without trace by the late 1960s.
Its closest rivals were the dictaphone microcassette and 8-track cartridge. The latter was successful in a somewhat different and niche market (dictation), although ironically the Compact Cassette had originally been intended for dictation before the quality improved enough for it to be used for music. The 8-track cartridge (which is also a tape cassette, although it uses a single-direction tape loop instead of a reel-to-reel arrangement) did reasonably well during the 1960s and 1970s in the US, but I don't know how well it did elsewhere. AFAIK it definitely wasn't a big success in the UK.
(I can't comment on its early-1970s heyday, but I grew up in the UK during the early-1980s, and I have *never* seen one firsthand or even been aware of a notable market for them. Even accounting for it being in decline in the US then, if it had been a success here, I'd have at least come across them. The most I ever saw of 8-track was an advertisement for the format on the inside-sleeve of a couple of my parents' early-1970s LPs, and an "also available on 8-track" message on a couple of 1970s cassettes I had).
In short, the Compact Cassette was a runaway success that ultimately flattened any competition. Even the 1970s attempt to create a hi-fi cassette (Sony's Elcaset) flopped, probably because improvements in the Compact Cassette coupled with its ubiquity overcame any remaining limitations.
Question is, would the Compact Cassette have won if the patents hadn't been free? Even if it had, would it have had such a large market in terms of absolute size, and would its rival formats have captured more than a miniscule share of the market, even if only for a few years?
(*) Yes, Wikipedia says this, but I've seen the same story reported elsewhere from clearly non-WP-derived- and more in-depth- sources.
(Sorry, couldn't contrive the mobile phone into this lame reply).
You make some interesting points, but what level of knowledge do you consider reasonable for a consumer? Should they have to consider the in-depth implications of everything they eat?
Should people with peanut allergies have to check every food they eat, even if it's labelled? Will every ingredient in every processed food notify the person of its genetically-modified status and what the implications of that might be? Or will they simply contain a little footnote saying "see our website for full details about this ingredient"?
I don't want to sound like all these are direct attacks on what you're saying- merely to make the point that the "give people the information and let them choose" free-market approach does have some practical issues and raises a number of questions.
Or did you mean immediately following its discontinuation? I can imagine that quite a *lot* of people would have said "eh, sod it, don't care about rentals, can still buy blank tapes and record stuff on it, does what I need almost as well as VHS, and I'll happily buy that at $200 instead of $600."
What constitutes the "old days"? I remember 20 years ago (get off my lawn, etc....), game scores out of 10 or 100 were heavily skewed towards the top of the scale. Pretty much anything at or below 5/10 or 50-60% (the figure you give, and in the middle of the range) would be poor and not worth buying.
This is open to interpretation, but I learned that (probably implicitly from reviewers comments, and the relative scores of other games), you could roughly consider 6 out of 10 as clearly below average, 7 out of 10 as alright, but nothing spectacular, 8 out of 10 as "good", and 9 or 10 as brilliant or outstanding. Although this was mostly how my relatively staid Atari 8-bit mag did it, magazines for other computers followed a similar pattern.
I remember reading a column in an early-1990s Amiga magazine complaining about game scores creeping into the mid-90s, and the pressure from games publishers.
So, the "old days" weren't always as you remember them.
But in certain cases, where I've got used to a certain LP (or recording of one), it doesn't change the fact that these are things that are (in a minor way) part of the song for me. And in the example I gave, the jump at the start of the song- good or bad- changes the musical structure of the intro. To that end, I'm one of those freaks on Usenet who clean up old vinyl & post the MP3s to a waiting world, Nice one! but never for stuff that's available on CD, because that's usually pointless. I agree- transferring records is more hassle than you'd expect, and in my case, the results have still been disappointing. I guess if you have loads of vinyl to transfer, it makes spending time on the initial setup and learning things worth it, but there's no point if it's available on a decent CD.