You're assuming the OP has a big enough TV (and speakers) so that the Blu-ray difference is significant.
Lots of people own SD televisions or smallish sets capable of 720p and that's about it. For these people, that Blu-ray disk isn't going to provide a significantly better experience than streaming.
DRM needs to be turned on its head. Every day, people give up all kinds of personal information. I would like that to be protected by DRM that I control.
So, for example, if I don't like Facebook's latest privacy policy I should be able to revoke their right to my data. If I get tired of the grocery store tracking my purchasing habits, I should be able to turn it off with a click. Want to change physicians or insurance companies? It should be simple to block your old doctor or insurance company and grant access to your new doctor or insurance company.
The big content producers mostly want you to be able to do this as well. The big problem is that they want to be paid for it.
The formula is simple: if some action has value (like format shifting), they want to be paid.
This is why I think "DRM done right" is not possible. DRM *is* rights management. It's all about stopping you from freely using the content in arbitrary ways.
There are examples of successful DRM out there. The PS3 is probably the most biggest. The PS3 has been out a long time now and it's looking like the DRM isn't going to be cracked anytime soon. The machine is definitely in the second half of its life right now and the most high profile attack was geohot's ultimately useless hypervisor hack.
Most of the world isn't the target market for the iPhone. I was saying $3.25 / day is an affordable luxury for the people who buy the phone.
In other comments, people are saying the average iPhone purchaser has a household income of more than $100,000. I don't know if that's true or not (anybody have a source?), but I wouldn't be surprised.
You are 100% correct. You also represent a pretty small segment of the market.
Most people don't care that much about high quality video. DVD upscaled to HD resolutions is good enough for a lot of people. Netflix streaming quality is good enough for most people. The cable and satellite companies have conditioned people to be satisfied with an overcompressed, blocky picture. If you have a gargantuan screen, you will care but there just aren't that many of you out there. Most of the TV sold are under 50".
Bluray isn't going to go away, but I don't think it will ever sell as much as the DVD format has sold. Even if you could pick up a player for $25 and disks for $5 like you can with DVD, why collect disks when you can dial up Netflix and get just about any movie you want? (well, one day you will)
My kids watch horrible quality video on small and large screens all the time and they just don't care. I think that's pretty typical for the next generation.
Well, for some people, the iPhone is a tool that makes them more productive. There are some pretty compelling apps out there now and having a decent internet device available all the time can be darned useful.
For a lot of people, $1200 / year just isn't that much money. That's around $3.25 / day, a pretty affordable luxury.
I wouldn't assume that people buying new phones and other gadgets are the same people who are bitching about how much money other people have. It might be true, but I don't know that it is and I wouldn't make that assumption.
I don't see a huge problem with this. Anybody who publishes on the web knows that a client may choose to render the content in arbitrary ways. My browser doesn't have to pull all the images and frames.
I can see this being a big deal for people using screen readers. Apple should market the reader function as an accessibility feature. Why would you block a technology developed for your blind readers?
What do you mean by "dumbed down"? Are you talking about the polygon count? That's the only thing I can think of that would really matter and IMHO, the polygon count isn't all that important.
My favorite PS3 games right now are Little Big Planet and Mod Nation Racers and both are mediocre from a graphics point of view (720p).
And if there is sufficient competition, they won't succeed. In a functioning free market, the price of their service should approach the cost of offering it. If they are able to artificially restrict service, then it's obvious more competition is needed.
It's not like using STL makes code faster or less memory hungry
Sometimes it does. For example, compare the stl sort routine with qsort. The stl version is declared with a predicate method that can be made inline. The C version is passed a pointer to a predicate function that can't be inlined. So, the C++ version can eliminate a function call with each compare.
But this is library and compiler dependent. In theory you really need to know how your compiler and library perform. In practice, it's so mature that everybody is pretty fast these days.
I agree with you. I think you are preaching to the choir here. I was just saying not to be surprised that this happens.
So, if Facebook leaves the page up, they offend a whole bunch of people and perhaps lose some revenue and it might even damage their short and long term growth potential in a part of the world where there is still a lot of growing left to do. Or, they take it down, and offend a different bunch of people, and perhaps damage their short and long term prospects in a different part of the world.
I think the reality is that Facebook knows that like AOL and MySpace before them, something shinier will come along and they will start to decay almost instantly. Their investors understand the fickleness of the mob as well, and I'm sure taking profits now rather than gambling on more later must make sense at some level to them. After all, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Whoa, whoa, whoa... They are trying to improve ad revenue??!? Are you serious? The bastards must be stopped!!! I actually believed that they would never do evil. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Dude, you should totally start a facebook group to let people know what google is up to.
Jesus christ my blood's boiling. IMPROVE AD REVENUE!!! JUMBO JET???
they would rather take the "less free" way out once again to rake in as much cash as possible
What are you talking about? Facebook's goal is to make money for their investors. If they think taking the page down will be more profitable over some period of time, then of course that's what they will do.
I totally agree with your last paragraph. These are my biggest ebook peeves.
I want one story beginning to end
Me too. Just because I have lots of choices doesn't mean I have a problem selecting just one to read.
The Ipad wont make one iota of difference to print media, much in the same way as the Kindle didn't or the Nook didn't.
If the publisher's didn't care about the Kindle at all, there wouldn't have been that big standoff with Amazon last year. And people like your boss are going to keep reading from paper because it's hard to change old habits. Young people, on the other hand, are reading from screens constantly. It's this generation that will change everything.
Electronic readers are a distraction right now but I think it's clear that it won't be that way forever. I personally prefer reading from a screen , but that's probably mostly a function of where and how I read.
I know music lovers who are totally perplexed at how content people are listening to poorly mixed musing encoded in a lossy format with crappy earbuds. In a few years (or maybe more) I think book and library lovers will be frustrated with how content people are to read from a glowing screen.
Problem is, Microsoft is probably better at hardware than software as well. I guess if you are talking about comparative advantage, then yeah, Microsoft probably should do the software if Nokia is their partner. Frankly, it doesn't sound like a very good match to me.
they wouldn't stop me from throwing 128 pages of bound paper into a briefcase on a travel day
And the guy sitting beside you on the plane will have every book ever published, entire magazine collections, and the means to search them, clip them, and annotate them on his tablet. I hope you don't have far to travel, because 86 of those 128 pages you are lugging around are advertisements.
Only a very few magazines have a substantial lifetime. When you look at the numbers, almost 4 new magazines are launched each week. So asking if they have a future is a bit silly. They never have had a future.
Your numbers assume that every person is the same as any other from an advertiser's point of view and that simply isn't true. This is just a guess, but I bet the iPad owning demographic is very desirable for advertisers. These are people who have disposable income and they aren't afraid to dispose of it.
Those 10,000 iPad readers may be worth much, much more than the same number of print readers.
What really matters in this game is where advertisers are willing to buy ads.
Slashdot Mirror
You're assuming the OP has a big enough TV (and speakers) so that the Blu-ray difference is significant.
Lots of people own SD televisions or smallish sets capable of 720p and that's about it. For these people, that Blu-ray disk isn't going to provide a significantly better experience than streaming.
DRM needs to be turned on its head. Every day, people give up all kinds of personal information. I would like that to be protected by DRM that I control.
So, for example, if I don't like Facebook's latest privacy policy I should be able to revoke their right to my data. If I get tired of the grocery store tracking my purchasing habits, I should be able to turn it off with a click. Want to change physicians or insurance companies? It should be simple to block your old doctor or insurance company and grant access to your new doctor or insurance company.
The big content producers mostly want you to be able to do this as well. The big problem is that they want to be paid for it.
The formula is simple: if some action has value (like format shifting), they want to be paid.
This is why I think "DRM done right" is not possible. DRM *is* rights management. It's all about stopping you from freely using the content in arbitrary ways.
How would you define "done right"?
There are examples of successful DRM out there. The PS3 is probably the most biggest. The PS3 has been out a long time now and it's looking like the DRM isn't going to be cracked anytime soon. The machine is definitely in the second half of its life right now and the most high profile attack was geohot's ultimately useless hypervisor hack.
Most of the world isn't the target market for the iPhone. I was saying $3.25 / day is an affordable luxury for the people who buy the phone.
In other comments, people are saying the average iPhone purchaser has a household income of more than $100,000. I don't know if that's true or not (anybody have a source?), but I wouldn't be surprised.
You are 100% correct. You also represent a pretty small segment of the market.
Most people don't care that much about high quality video. DVD upscaled to HD resolutions is good enough for a lot of people. Netflix streaming quality is good enough for most people. The cable and satellite companies have conditioned people to be satisfied with an overcompressed, blocky picture. If you have a gargantuan screen, you will care but there just aren't that many of you out there. Most of the TV sold are under 50".
Bluray isn't going to go away, but I don't think it will ever sell as much as the DVD format has sold. Even if you could pick up a player for $25 and disks for $5 like you can with DVD, why collect disks when you can dial up Netflix and get just about any movie you want? (well, one day you will)
My kids watch horrible quality video on small and large screens all the time and they just don't care. I think that's pretty typical for the next generation.
Well, for some people, the iPhone is a tool that makes them more productive. There are some pretty compelling apps out there now and having a decent internet device available all the time can be darned useful.
For a lot of people, $1200 / year just isn't that much money. That's around $3.25 / day, a pretty affordable luxury.
I wouldn't assume that people buying new phones and other gadgets are the same people who are bitching about how much money other people have. It might be true, but I don't know that it is and I wouldn't make that assumption.
Wanna see something you can't unsee? Play Uno on your XBox online.
I don't see a huge problem with this. Anybody who publishes on the web knows that a client may choose to render the content in arbitrary ways. My browser doesn't have to pull all the images and frames.
I can see this being a big deal for people using screen readers. Apple should market the reader function as an accessibility feature. Why would you block a technology developed for your blind readers?
Cory
What do you mean by "dumbed down"? Are you talking about the polygon count? That's the only thing I can think of that would really matter and IMHO, the polygon count isn't all that important.
My favorite PS3 games right now are Little Big Planet and Mod Nation Racers and both are mediocre from a graphics point of view (720p).
ec
Lots. I once followed the money trail all the way back to Juan Valdez and his donkey.
And if there is sufficient competition, they won't succeed. In a functioning free market, the price of their service should approach the cost of offering it. If they are able to artificially restrict service, then it's obvious more competition is needed.
Has anyone here ever been to Mongolia
Ha! The person who said that has been watching WKRP reruns. I think it was Venus Flytrap who used that argument.
Why do you say mutations aren't random? Are you talking about all mutations or successful mutations?
I thought of a second good example: smart pointers.
Something like Boost's scoped_ptr is simple, as fast as, and no more memory hungry than a built-in pointer.
It's not like using STL makes code faster or less memory hungry
Sometimes it does. For example, compare the stl sort routine with qsort. The stl version is declared with a predicate method that can be made inline. The C version is passed a pointer to a predicate function that can't be inlined. So, the C++ version can eliminate a function call with each compare.
But this is library and compiler dependent. In theory you really need to know how your compiler and library perform. In practice, it's so mature that everybody is pretty fast these days.
I agree with you. I think you are preaching to the choir here. I was just saying not to be surprised that this happens.
So, if Facebook leaves the page up, they offend a whole bunch of people and perhaps lose some revenue and it might even damage their short and long term growth potential in a part of the world where there is still a lot of growing left to do. Or, they take it down, and offend a different bunch of people, and perhaps damage their short and long term prospects in a different part of the world.
I think the reality is that Facebook knows that like AOL and MySpace before them, something shinier will come along and they will start to decay almost instantly. Their investors understand the fickleness of the mob as well, and I'm sure taking profits now rather than gambling on more later must make sense at some level to them. After all, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Whoa, whoa, whoa... They are trying to improve ad revenue??!? Are you serious? The bastards must be stopped!!! I actually believed that they would never do evil. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Dude, you should totally start a facebook group to let people know what google is up to.
Jesus christ my blood's boiling. IMPROVE AD REVENUE!!! JUMBO JET???
they would rather take the "less free" way out once again to rake in as much cash as possible
What are you talking about? Facebook's goal is to make money for their investors. If they think taking the page down will be more profitable over some period of time, then of course that's what they will do.
It is about intention in the Netherlands: you do not have to succeed to break the law.
Are you implying Google's intent is to actually change something on your website?
I totally agree with your last paragraph. These are my biggest ebook peeves.
I want one story beginning to end
Me too. Just because I have lots of choices doesn't mean I have a problem selecting just one to read.
The Ipad wont make one iota of difference to print media, much in the same way as the Kindle didn't or the Nook didn't.
If the publisher's didn't care about the Kindle at all, there wouldn't have been that big standoff with Amazon last year. And people like your boss are going to keep reading from paper because it's hard to change old habits. Young people, on the other hand, are reading from screens constantly. It's this generation that will change everything.
Electronic readers are a distraction right now but I think it's clear that it won't be that way forever. I personally prefer reading from a screen , but that's probably mostly a function of where and how I read.
I know music lovers who are totally perplexed at how content people are listening to poorly mixed musing encoded in a lossy format with crappy earbuds. In a few years (or maybe more) I think book and library lovers will be frustrated with how content people are to read from a glowing screen.
Problem is, Microsoft is probably better at hardware than software as well. I guess if you are talking about comparative advantage, then yeah, Microsoft probably should do the software if Nokia is their partner. Frankly, it doesn't sound like a very good match to me.
they wouldn't stop me from throwing 128 pages of bound paper into a briefcase on a travel day
And the guy sitting beside you on the plane will have every book ever published, entire magazine collections, and the means to search them, clip them, and annotate them on his tablet. I hope you don't have far to travel, because 86 of those 128 pages you are lugging around are advertisements.
Only a very few magazines have a substantial lifetime. When you look at the numbers, almost 4 new magazines are launched each week. So asking if they have a future is a bit silly. They never have had a future.
Your numbers assume that every person is the same as any other from an advertiser's point of view and that simply isn't true. This is just a guess, but I bet the iPad owning demographic is very desirable for advertisers. These are people who have disposable income and they aren't afraid to dispose of it.
Those 10,000 iPad readers may be worth much, much more than the same number of print readers.
What really matters in this game is where advertisers are willing to buy ads.