So now my DVD player has to be connected to the Internet? isnt that what killed DiVX?
Yep. TFA doesn't give a lot of detail about how the download is supposed to work, but if it's necessary each time, you can't play your ultra high DVDs anywhere you don't happen to have an internet connection -- traveling, for instance, and there's always the issue of losing your investment in media if the service providing the keys goes out of business.
In other words, all the reasons for not buying DiVX also apply. I wouldn't touch this with the proverbial ten foot pole.
The DVD play has to have a connection to the internet in order to decrypt and play the disc? Wow, that sounds awfully familiar. Where have I heard that before?
Hm. the "terraforming venus" wiki entry said that Venus lacked a magnetic field like Mars. I made the leap that Venus must have a solid core, like Mars. My mistake.
Venus is really not that far off either. It just needed a slightly different orbit. (And a molten core, I guess.)
And a Moon, and an Ocean.
Oceans could come from comet impacts, and a moon can be captured. I'm not an astrophysicist, but these two things don't seem outside the realm of possibility.
This is the biggest issue. Our current methods are designed to find large planets in close orbits. Finding a planet like Earth would take 3-5 years as you need to capture several transits to confirm the existence of an exoplanet. Planets like Jupiter or Saturn would take decades using current methods.
It's worse than that. We are in general detecting large planets in close orbits where the orbital plane is edge-on to the observer, or the planet is massive enough or close enough to cause a detectable wobble. Earth-size planets in the goldilocks zone with orbits that were not edge-on to us would be extremely difficult to detect.
However, while I have to admit that it is a pretty ballsy move to have your OS serve you ads, it's not like no one saw this one coming. I was wondering when I'd have Windows 10, "sponsored by Square Enix and Coca-Cola". It seems that it has now arrived. Welcome to the future.
Welcome to the past. They tried this shit with Active Desktop "channels" in a Windows 95 add-on and part of the core install of Windows 98
Wow, Active Desktop. Enabled by default in...windows 98? 98SE? And the most common error in the OS, even more common than... well, all the other errors, was a long pause where the system wouldn't respond, followed by the Active Desktop Recovery screen. The first thing I did when working on any PC was turn that crap off. (The second was to disable browse master. Or maybe that was Win95...)
I don't have a problem with static ads. I sometimes even click on them. Especially the T-shirt ads with pretty girls.
But pop-overs, pop-unders, those "cute" little ads that float across content, any ads that make noise, video ads that play without me asking them to, and *anything* that covers up the content, *THAT'S* the problem. It's THOSE guys who are ruining things for all the other advertisers, by making adblockers necessary. It's not the adblocking companies. They're just filling a need. It's undisciplined advertisers that *create* the need. And this is not even counting the trojan horses ("your flash version it out of date!!!") and scareware popups.
Sure, if there were only two or three static ads per page, there are some geeks out there that would block them on a matter of principle. But the point is, most of us wouldn't bother. It's when ads become intrusive that adblockers become interesting to the masses.
Don't forget Blade Runner. I prefer the original theatrical release with Ford's monotone narration.
Sometimes directors need intervention. (Always if they're George Lucas or Peter Jackson)
I was ok with the narration, it helped us follow what was going on, but the theatrical ending sucked. Scott's original ending kicked ass. Sometimes I wish we could see the film we want to see. For instance, the original Star Wars with the additional "enhanced" Falcon scenes (which really did add to the flow) but no other "enhancements".
I have a Laserdisc set too, The problem is that because its a 2.35:1 image matted onto a 4:3 frame, the actual content uses a pathetically small number of rows. I had done the math and it was something like 200 rows out of the ~480 because of the letterboxing.
You sure it wasn't anamorphic? Many letterbox laserdiscs were. Blade Runner, for instance. It still used a small number of lines on an NTSC TV, but had the potential for more detail if'n them there Hi Daffynition TVs ever took off. (But then, we went to component video which Laserdiscs didn't have, so we needed to re-buy the title in DVD anyway.)
Historical footnote: Per my decades-old memory, there were two types of letterboxing on laserdiscs -- Hard Mat and Anamorphic. Hard Mat was an NTSC frame with black bars on the top and bottom. The content is hard-limited to about 200 rows as you said. Anamorphic means the film is stretched to use the entire NTSC frame, and then mashed down to its original aspect ratio on playback. In theory, a high end laserdisc player with a (expensive) line doubler playing a Criterion anamorphic laserdisc could almost approach... a $29.95... chinese dvd player playing... you know, never mind. Things really have improved in the last couple decades.
Anyway, only a hack would hard mat a major motion picture like Star Wars. But this is George Lucas we're a'talkin' about.
"The" LaserDisc Version? I have three of the versions myself, but I don't know how many LaserDisc versions there are in total.
I was going to say the same thing. My second laserdisc (the first was The Princess Bride) was a used (former rental) CAV copy of the original film. It was horrible. pan-and-scan, and from a dirty print. I later got the remastered version, but I remember there was another in between those.
> *shrug* Obviously not scientific, but I can say from my own personal experience that I know several people who have moved from Android to iPhone for various reasons but I have honestly never met anyone who has gone the other way.
I think this is partly because it's difficult to migrate off the iPhone. Everything lives in itunes, and the iphone/itunes paring is intentionally difficult to exploit. Apple has every business reason to keep things locked down as much as possible and no reason at all to make it easy to migrate. With the Android phone, on the other hand, I just plug it into the laptop and my files appear in a browser, both the system memory and SD card, which makes migrating stuff to a different phone dead simple. (I have family photos on the current phone that have made the transition from Blackberry Tour to Droid X to Razr HD to Samsung Note. Drag and drop, even across vendors.) I stay with Android because I want to, not because I have to.
Although the hardware and vendor have changed over the years. The first Samsung Galaxys were crap, and during that time I stayed with Motorola. (Whereas, if you had the "You're Holding It Wrong" model of iPhone, you didn't have anywhere else to go.) Now I have a phone (Galaxy Note 3) which has more capability than I can use, and I suspect I'll keep it until it doesn't work anymore. When is the last time you heard an iPhone user say "I'll keep this phone until it doesn't work anymore"? The intention is only to keep it until the next tiny, trendy improvement comes out.
BTW, do you know how long it takes to recharge a Note 3? I timed it -- about 35 seconds. Power off, pop off the back, pop out the battery, push in a new battery, pop the back on, power on.
Probably because the summary and headline ware written to attract attention, and they did.
True I guess. But it's like so much of "news" these days. A headline that's begging to be clicked on, but then there's nothing there. What you'd expect for those websites with tens of advertisements, click-overs and click-unders, ("Fourteen minor league third basemen with insanely hot wives! Number six will give you a hernia!) but not what you'd expect in what was ostensibly a geek news site.
Again, this is what editors are supposedly for. But.... I guess not. I'd go somewhere else for news, but where else is there?
Slashdot Mirror
So now my DVD player has to be connected to the Internet? isnt that what killed DiVX?
Yep. TFA doesn't give a lot of detail about how the download is supposed to work, but if it's necessary each time, you can't play your ultra high DVDs anywhere you don't happen to have an internet connection -- traveling, for instance, and there's always the issue of losing your investment in media if the service providing the keys goes out of business.
In other words, all the reasons for not buying DiVX also apply. I wouldn't touch this with the proverbial ten foot pole.
The DVD play has to have a connection to the internet in order to decrypt and play the disc? Wow, that sounds awfully familiar. Where have I heard that before?
I know at least two people who would respond to TFA with "Wow. Bonus."
Those are the machines I refuse to work on anymore. Those guys will click on anything, like Chip the Sales Associate.
There are 253 million cars in the US on the road. So 0.2% of the total. What a calamity.
But if you say "half a million cars" without providing context, it seems like more than it is, which I believe was the intention.
"People hit by falling pianos up 100% this year."
Hm. the "terraforming venus" wiki entry said that Venus lacked a magnetic field like Mars. I made the leap that Venus must have a solid core, like Mars. My mistake.
That sounds like a fun life.
Venus is really not that far off either. It just needed a slightly different orbit. (And a molten core, I guess.)
And a Moon, and an Ocean.
Oceans could come from comet impacts, and a moon can be captured. I'm not an astrophysicist, but these two things don't seem outside the realm of possibility.
...somebody funded this? I really need to get into research.
How's your math?
This is the biggest issue. Our current methods are designed to find large planets in close orbits. Finding a planet like Earth would take 3-5 years as you need to capture several transits to confirm the existence of an exoplanet. Planets like Jupiter or Saturn would take decades using current methods.
It's worse than that. We are in general detecting large planets in close orbits where the orbital plane is edge-on to the observer, or the planet is massive enough or close enough to cause a detectable wobble. Earth-size planets in the goldilocks zone with orbits that were not edge-on to us would be extremely difficult to detect.
Well, sure, when the alarmists are in charge of the measurements.
If earth is such an uncommon place to live in, then maybe we, in fact, are the extremophiles
Yeah, but... from where?
Venus is really not that far off either. It just needed a slightly different orbit. (And a molten core, I guess.)
Wait until the ads try to install stuff. Sure, you know better than to click "ok", but what about mother-in-law?
I guess the expectations of PC users are a lot lower now.
Personally, I'm sticking with Windows 7 until I can figure out how to get my apps running on Mint.
Welcome to the past. They tried this shit with Active Desktop "channels" in a Windows 95 add-on and part of the core install of Windows 98
Wow, Active Desktop. Enabled by default in ...windows 98? 98SE? And the most common error in the OS, even more common than... well, all the other errors, was a long pause where the system wouldn't respond, followed by the Active Desktop Recovery screen. The first thing I did when working on any PC was turn that crap off. (The second was to disable browse master. Or maybe that was Win95...)
That takes me back. Or is it forward?
I don't have a problem with static ads. I sometimes even click on them. Especially the T-shirt ads with pretty girls.
But pop-overs, pop-unders, those "cute" little ads that float across content, any ads that make noise, video ads that play without me asking them to, and *anything* that covers up the content, *THAT'S* the problem. It's THOSE guys who are ruining things for all the other advertisers, by making adblockers necessary. It's not the adblocking companies. They're just filling a need. It's undisciplined advertisers that *create* the need. And this is not even counting the trojan horses ("your flash version it out of date!!!") and scareware popups.
Sure, if there were only two or three static ads per page, there are some geeks out there that would block them on a matter of principle. But the point is, most of us wouldn't bother. It's when ads become intrusive that adblockers become interesting to the masses.
Interesting idea. If a cut was made that had no Endor scenes, or only the scenes where they capture the base, what would the movie be like?
Don't forget Blade Runner.
I prefer the original theatrical release with Ford's monotone narration.
Sometimes directors need intervention. (Always if they're George Lucas or Peter Jackson)
I was ok with the narration, it helped us follow what was going on, but the theatrical ending sucked. Scott's original ending kicked ass. Sometimes I wish we could see the film we want to see. For instance, the original Star Wars with the additional "enhanced" Falcon scenes (which really did add to the flow) but no other "enhancements".
Fortunately, I never saw the "NOOOOOOoooo" "wessa free!" version. I never intend to. My childhood has taken enough hits.
I have a Laserdisc set too, The problem is that because its a 2.35:1 image matted onto a 4:3 frame, the actual content uses a pathetically small number of rows. I had done the math and it was something like 200 rows out of the ~480 because of the letterboxing.
You sure it wasn't anamorphic? Many letterbox laserdiscs were. Blade Runner, for instance. It still used a small number of lines on an NTSC TV, but had the potential for more detail if'n them there Hi Daffynition TVs ever took off. (But then, we went to component video which Laserdiscs didn't have, so we needed to re-buy the title in DVD anyway.)
Historical footnote: Per my decades-old memory, there were two types of letterboxing on laserdiscs -- Hard Mat and Anamorphic. Hard Mat was an NTSC frame with black bars on the top and bottom. The content is hard-limited to about 200 rows as you said. Anamorphic means the film is stretched to use the entire NTSC frame, and then mashed down to its original aspect ratio on playback. In theory, a high end laserdisc player with a (expensive) line doubler playing a Criterion anamorphic laserdisc could almost approach... a $29.95 ... chinese dvd player playing ... you know, never mind. Things really have improved in the last couple decades.
Anyway, only a hack would hard mat a major motion picture like Star Wars. But this is George Lucas we're a'talkin' about.
"The" LaserDisc Version? I have three of the versions myself, but I don't know how many LaserDisc versions there are in total.
I was going to say the same thing. My second laserdisc (the first was The Princess Bride) was a used (former rental) CAV copy of the original film. It was horrible. pan-and-scan, and from a dirty print. I later got the remastered version, but I remember there was another in between those.
> *shrug* Obviously not scientific, but I can say from my own personal experience that I know several people who have moved from Android to iPhone for various reasons but I have honestly never met anyone who has gone the other way.
I think this is partly because it's difficult to migrate off the iPhone. Everything lives in itunes, and the iphone/itunes paring is intentionally difficult to exploit. Apple has every business reason to keep things locked down as much as possible and no reason at all to make it easy to migrate. With the Android phone, on the other hand, I just plug it into the laptop and my files appear in a browser, both the system memory and SD card, which makes migrating stuff to a different phone dead simple. (I have family photos on the current phone that have made the transition from Blackberry Tour to Droid X to Razr HD to Samsung Note. Drag and drop, even across vendors.) I stay with Android because I want to, not because I have to.
Although the hardware and vendor have changed over the years. The first Samsung Galaxys were crap, and during that time I stayed with Motorola. (Whereas, if you had the "You're Holding It Wrong" model of iPhone, you didn't have anywhere else to go.) Now I have a phone (Galaxy Note 3) which has more capability than I can use, and I suspect I'll keep it until it doesn't work anymore. When is the last time you heard an iPhone user say "I'll keep this phone until it doesn't work anymore"? The intention is only to keep it until the next tiny, trendy improvement comes out.
BTW, do you know how long it takes to recharge a Note 3? I timed it -- about 35 seconds. Power off, pop off the back, pop out the battery, push in a new battery, pop the back on, power on.
Yeah. Unfortunately, Blackberry isn't doing very well right now.
Probably because the summary and headline ware written to attract attention, and they did.
True I guess. But it's like so much of "news" these days. A headline that's begging to be clicked on, but then there's nothing there. What you'd expect for those websites with tens of advertisements, click-overs and click-unders, ("Fourteen minor league third basemen with insanely hot wives! Number six will give you a hernia!) but not what you'd expect in what was ostensibly a geek news site.
Again, this is what editors are supposedly for. But.... I guess not. I'd go somewhere else for news, but where else is there?