Anywhere you can interact with people is a chance of meeting like-minded people - whether that be online or in the real physical world.
My (now) wife and I met in the early 00's on an MSN chat group (the ones MS shut down wholesale.. something about internet predators...). Ended up we had friends in common (closed friends that dated, we had hung out with each others' friends), I had even played a battle of the bands at her highschool and played music with people she knew quite well.. yet we had never met. Due to our lives changing at that time (in university, losing touch with old high school friends) we probably wouldn't have ever met if we hadn't met online. Sure we may have rubbed shoulders at some bars/clubs in town (and she frequented a club I worked at in university), but we probably wouldn't have actually "met" and discovered everything we have in common.
We ended up moving in together, finishing university together, buying a condo, getting married, buying a house.. now we're as happy as can be. One could say it was thanks to Microsoft (of course that wouldn't make up for the day to day headaches I have thanks to MS...net CF on WinCE is my daily hell).
Well apparently grammar rants aren't obligatory. I keep hitting F5 wondering who long it will be until someone points out the glaring issue with the summary.
In America, distributing classified documents is illegal.
Not true. It's illegal to initially leak them if you have clearance. Republishing them is not... note that the New York Times has republished most of the leak; has Mastercard stopped doing business with them?
Also of note is that the New York Times is an American company doing business in America. So it definitely falls under american laws.
Mr Assange? Neither American nor residing in America, yet the US government feels a need to prevent Mastercard from doing business with him.
It's a slippery slope. Next thing you know the US gov doesn't like the Prime Minister of France, so they tell Paypal and Mastercard to prevent all payments outgoing to France to hurt the country economically. Of course Paypal and Mastercard would stand up against such a request.. or would they?
I want a AR-15 full-auto sear and selector assembly, and it seems like it would be way less risky to make one then to buy one.
If 3D printers printed metal, that may be true. Of course, some of the now-entry-level "home" CNC machines can do this
Really? How is it safer to build a full-auto sear for your gun then go buy one than just going to buy one? Is having a full auto weapon a prerequisite to buying one?
That's like it being cheaper to bake your own cake then buy one. Yeah you saved money on the second cake, but do you really need two cakes? And why does the bakery give you a discount for being able to bake a cake? Seems pretty silly to me.
In this case, it's not relevant, however, since it's not a recipe in question..
Obviously I didn't RTFA before posting.
Definitely copyright infringement.
"the internet" != "public domain"
The audacity of the editor is unbelievable:
You as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me!
Bahahahahaha, yeah. Rather than claiming you didn't plagiarize the article (like you average person caught plagiarizing would do) instead admit to stealing it, but claim you made it better and that somehow makes the original author in debt to you. Super smart. I assume this editor is really well educated. Probably at least two art degrees!
Recipes do not fall under copyright (at least the list of ingredients and quantities). They can't directly copy your layout and can't copy any artwork or photography associated with the recipe, but the recipe itself is fair game.
Being on the web has nothing to do with public domain. It should be obvious to anyone that something being on the internet does not make it public domain. Such a claim is beyond ignorant.
You think that the EV's are being powered by unicorn tears? No. It is coal.
Depends on where you live.
Exactly. I hate the coal argument as it doesn't apply to me. Where I live 80% of the power is hydro electric and the rest is natural gas fired thermal (i.e. no coal).
Sure a large portion of the US is coal fired, but so what? It is easier to control emissions of plants (compared to individual vehicle emissions) and there are plans to move forward with cleaner power sources aren't there? Not going to electric because current power generation in some areas is not clean is a ridiculous argument. Yes it isn't clean now, but it makes a better path for the future. Electric vehicles create motivation for cleaner power plants.
There's too much hassle in learning the system and becoming proficient in it. I use Swype which is phenomenal - it's fast and hardly requires any learning if you know the qwerty keyboard.
The trade off is a steeper learning curve for a system that doesn't require direct attention to use. With swipe you must look at the keyboard. The theory with 8pen is that once you are proficient you can do it without looking at the screen (much like touch typing).
Imagine this scenario: you are chatting with someone and also typing on your phone at the same time. Contrived but I do that on my computer when someone comes into my office (finish what I was typing while talking to them). With 8pen you should be able to look away from your phone and finish what you are writing, with swype that would be extremely difficult (due to the accuracy required). With 8pen you only need to remember the center point (which could be marked with a dot in future hardware if it gets adopted), with swype you need to know the relative position of all the characters.
..And seeing how he only wanted a loosening of their restrictions, it seems he knows why as well.
OR he isn't concerned about the other restrictions because they don't apply to him. A smart person would question all restrictions that don't seem related to the crime, your average person will only be concerned with ones that directly affect them.
Imagine the restrictions were:
-flying in a hot air ballon
-guided fishing trips along the amazon
-eating hot dogs
Most people would internally think, "Heh, I'd never do that shit anyhow.. joke's on them." in regards to the first two but yell, "Hell naw, ya can't take 'way my HOTDOGS!"
Ubuntu installation found all drivers (even wireless!) for my wife's HP laptop with a Broadcom wireless chip (and that was 3 years ago on a fairly new laptop).
Really? Until 10.4 I have always wrestled with wireless drivers for my wife's laptop (uses a broadcom chip). I've been wrestling with broadcom drivers for a decade it seems (then they finally opened their specs).
Especially in the lowend segment. Now an inexpensive netbook has enough "oomph" for most users daily tasks. It used to be that even a entry level user would have to check specs to make sure the computer would run whatever software they wanted to run. Now caring about specs and performance is left to high-end gamers.
I've seen this in companies as well (refusing to give pay increases that would match wages elsewhere), however I have also seen a few companies that understand the value of paying their staff well.
If you pay your good employees above the going rate and provide competitive or top tier benefits then it is no longer a factor for low moral or "jumping ship". Aside from the moral issue and retaining valuable employees, turnover is costly and many businesses don't understand how costly. If you lose someone due to low wages the replacement will most likely expect the wages your recently lost employee left for. Rather than just paying the lost employee those wages you are costing the company hiring costs (i.e. finding someone), the risk of a new hire (could not work out, and you'll have to rehire), low initial productivity due to training/getting them up-to-speed (at my company it can take 3 months+ for a dev to get going full-speed) etc
In the end it would have been cheaper to just pay your valued employees a competitive wage than risk losing them to another company that pays more.
I have recently found myself in the position of leaving for better wages. Yearly reviews are coming up and my current wage is 86% of what I could be making elsewhere (by pure gross wage), and my current pension/retirement options are not even close to what is offered elsewhere (off the cuff including pensions it would be 75% of what I could be getting elsewhere). If my wage increase comes up short I'll be jumping ship. I enjoy my work, coworkers etc, but there aren't enough intangible benefits to settle for a wage that is not competitive.
To any HR people that may read this a warning: I won't be telling anyone in management about my plan to leave before hand. Why? Aside from the fact we had a discussion the previous year about competitive wages and how they still had leaps to catch up on my wage there is the more important point that it won't do any good. It will be taken as a threat no matter how I deliver the fact that my wage isn't competitive and will receive the response a threat generally receives in a company.
If a business isn't in the practice of keeping up with what going rates are then a single employee isn't going to change their mind on the matter. It has to come from top down not bottom up. Some companies are proactive (I have friends that work as such companies) and they have a mature employee base (i.e. low turn-over), better productivity and better overall company morale. Of course it's a bit of a chicken and egg issue. If you start out paying good wages and your company is profitable it's easy to maintain that state, if you start with underpaying your employees the extra costs that incurs makes it difficult to move from that state so they just perpetually run that way (until they go under).
While it may not have new release TV shows (at this time), it serves me quite well for entertainment and only cost $8/month. What would that buy me on AppleTV or Google TV? Not as much media to watch, that's for sure.
At this point I'm not interested in apple tv or google tv. If I want new tv shows cable is still a better deal (or simply torrenting them.. it isn't illegal everywhere btw, we don't all live in the US). Netflix lets me watch all the older movies and tv series I want to watch more conveniently than brick and mortar renting and much cheaper than renting via brick and mortar or AppleTV or Google TV.
Hemp DOES capture more carbon than trees and is used for most of the same things wood fiber is used for. Industrial hemp does not get "burned" as it is harvested before any flowering and is extremely low in THC even if it flowers. Anyone who thinks otherwise has bought into drug propaganda (which is just a distraction from why hemp isn't grown in the US).
The sugar/corn industry parallels this. There is a lot of money tied up in subsidizing the corn industry (at the cost of american health). Profits of a particular industry are put above all else, in essence banning any competition.
I swear I read that as "The production has struggled recently with issues with Unicorns"
I know it's the ultimate paradox. On one hand the original story didn't have unicorns on the other hand they are totally awesome.
I can totally see how that would hold up production. If you're going to do unicorns you want to do them right and not just CG them in after the fact because you changed your mind and decided the movie would be that much more awesome with them.
We should change our behaviour, but also scrub the atmosphere from the carbon we dumped in it over the last 150 years.
True, but genetically modified trees as the answer?
Why not plant something that captures more carbon naturally like.. I dunno.. hemp? You know the plant that can be used for textiles, paper, oil etc.
Of course that would compete with the cotton industry.. and you couldn't have that. Just as you couldn't have sugar compete with corn production (even if the over-usage of HFCS is negatively affecting your population).
Well, considering the Prius would probably need a couple of JATO bottles to reach 205 mph, I bet this thing still wins.
Exactly.. less CO2 than a prius when...? When the prius is going 205mph? If that's the metric then it's vacuously true.
It's obviously not less than a prius idling as the prius generally doesn't idle (if it's sitting still the engine is off). So what is the prius doing that it creates more CO2? Running the tiny gas engine at top rpm as hard as it can?
I used to buy a lot more music on iTunes when it was 99 cents but now, with variable pricing, virtually all songs on the Canadian iTunes are 1.29 CAD each so I have stopped buying so much.
What really sucks is you can only vote with your wallet by not paying, in which case they just blame reduced sales on piracy.
I wish there was a way to put your money where your mouth is and have a "Buy At $X", so you could refuse the song at $1.29 but make a binding offer to buy it at $0.99 that month (there would need to be some kind of time limit to the offer). That would create realistic metrics of what people are willing to pay and give the seller the opportunity to accept the offers. You could calculate pricing elasticity a lot more accurately that way and maximize profit (you CAN make more money by selling for less, especially when you have infinite supply.. for some reason the music industry doesn't get this).
I'd say netbooks aren't and weren't overblown, they filled and still fill a niche in the market that regular laptops don't and tablets can't.
Yup. For the service guys at my work netbooks have been a blessing. They can take them to the field easily to attach to in field equipment. They are light and rugged enough for field work and are so cost effective that it becomes possible to carry a backup unit that gets left in the truck or hotel in case of failure. For the stuff they do a laptop is overkill (in both processing power and size + weight) and for the cost of a decently rugged laptop you can buy a bunch of netbooks.
I almost bought my wife a netbook for her blog surfing (to replace the aging bulky laptop she currently uses), but I'm glad I waited as an Android based tablet fits her usage even better (and costs less). I'm holding on a bit before jumping as I haven't seen enough reviews yet, but something like this $168 china sourced Android 2.1 tablet would probably suit her perfectly. I'm waiting on seeing some reviews before I pull the trigger on that particular one. At that cheap it's I can justify some risk.. but I'd like to read at least one review to mitigate the risk of it being complete junk.
I'm excited about the proliferation of low cost tablets. There are a lot of usage scenarios that they suit better than any other form factor (just as there are niche uses for netbooks). Let's face it, most people don't need the power of a full blown desktop or laptop. As a software developer that likes playing with media (RAW photos, movies etc) I DO need the horsepower, but for people like my wife or situations like my coworkers that just need to run configuration applications a netbook or tablet fits the bill perfectly.
I don't think "pure digital" is going to catch on for quite some time.
How can it when it's not readily available? That's like saying, "I don't think pure electric cars will catch on for quite some time." Of course not, there aren't any consumer level electric cars available. The market hasn't really been tested yet, so it's a little early to assume it will be slow to catch on.
Some people are still going to want everything a Blu-Ray disk provides. The extras, the commentary, etc. Digital downloads, from what I have seen, don't do this.
There is nothing stopping online services from offering the same extras available on a physical copy. If it isn't being offered it's being witheld by choice. It's an artificial limitation.. if that is one item actually limiting the consumer (you'd have to show me data to convince me it is as I think you are just projecting..), then it can be offered as well.
..I still prefer to have a physical copy. With limited programs that can play back ripped Blu-Rays with full menu support, sometimes it's just easier to pop it in a Blu-Ray player and enjoy.
Fair enough.. but that's you projecting. Because you think it's easier to pop a disc in you assume everyone thinks that. How is something like apple tv not easier (from a use perspective)? Find what you want, click go.. it goes. No getting up off your ass necessary (whether it be to go to the store or to the mailbox). You can do it all from the comfort of your couch without even having to get up to put a piece of media into a player. As long as your remote is within reach you're good to go.
Slashdot Mirror
Anywhere you can interact with people is a chance of meeting like-minded people - whether that be online or in the real physical world.
.net CF on WinCE is my daily hell).
My (now) wife and I met in the early 00's on an MSN chat group (the ones MS shut down wholesale.. something about internet predators...). Ended up we had friends in common (closed friends that dated, we had hung out with each others' friends), I had even played a battle of the bands at her highschool and played music with people she knew quite well.. yet we had never met. Due to our lives changing at that time (in university, losing touch with old high school friends) we probably wouldn't have ever met if we hadn't met online. Sure we may have rubbed shoulders at some bars/clubs in town (and she frequented a club I worked at in university), but we probably wouldn't have actually "met" and discovered everything we have in common.
We ended up moving in together, finishing university together, buying a condo, getting married, buying a house.. now we're as happy as can be. One could say it was thanks to Microsoft (of course that wouldn't make up for the day to day headaches I have thanks to MS..
Well apparently grammar rants aren't obligatory. I keep hitting F5 wondering who long it will be until someone points out the glaring issue with the summary.
In America, distributing classified documents is illegal.
Not true. It's illegal to initially leak them if you have clearance. Republishing them is not... note that the New York Times has republished most of the leak; has Mastercard stopped doing business with them?
Also of note is that the New York Times is an American company doing business in America. So it definitely falls under american laws.
Mr Assange? Neither American nor residing in America, yet the US government feels a need to prevent Mastercard from doing business with him.
It's a slippery slope. Next thing you know the US gov doesn't like the Prime Minister of France, so they tell Paypal and Mastercard to prevent all payments outgoing to France to hurt the country economically. Of course Paypal and Mastercard would stand up against such a request.. or would they?
You do realize my entire post was pointing fun at the GP's misuse of the word then right?
I want a AR-15 full-auto sear and selector assembly, and it seems like it would be way less risky to make one then to buy one.
If 3D printers printed metal, that may be true. Of course, some of the now-entry-level "home" CNC machines can do this
Really? How is it safer to build a full-auto sear for your gun then go buy one than just going to buy one? Is having a full auto weapon a prerequisite to buying one?
That's like it being cheaper to bake your own cake then buy one. Yeah you saved money on the second cake, but do you really need two cakes? And why does the bakery give you a discount for being able to bake a cake? Seems pretty silly to me.
In this case, it's not relevant, however, since it's not a recipe in question..
Obviously I didn't RTFA before posting.
Definitely copyright infringement.
"the internet" != "public domain"
The audacity of the editor is unbelievable:
You as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me!
Bahahahahaha, yeah. Rather than claiming you didn't plagiarize the article (like you average person caught plagiarizing would do) instead admit to stealing it, but claim you made it better and that somehow makes the original author in debt to you. Super smart. I assume this editor is really well educated. Probably at least two art degrees!
Exactly. Mod parent up.
Recipes do not fall under copyright (at least the list of ingredients and quantities). They can't directly copy your layout and can't copy any artwork or photography associated with the recipe, but the recipe itself is fair game.
Being on the web has nothing to do with public domain. It should be obvious to anyone that something being on the internet does not make it public domain. Such a claim is beyond ignorant.
Just like chorded keyboards.
Yeah, I agree it most likely won't catch on.
You think that the EV's are being powered by unicorn tears? No. It is coal.
Depends on where you live.
Exactly. I hate the coal argument as it doesn't apply to me. Where I live 80% of the power is hydro electric and the rest is natural gas fired thermal (i.e. no coal).
Sure a large portion of the US is coal fired, but so what? It is easier to control emissions of plants (compared to individual vehicle emissions) and there are plans to move forward with cleaner power sources aren't there? Not going to electric because current power generation in some areas is not clean is a ridiculous argument. Yes it isn't clean now, but it makes a better path for the future. Electric vehicles create motivation for cleaner power plants.
There's too much hassle in learning the system and becoming proficient in it. I use Swype which is phenomenal - it's fast and hardly requires any learning if you know the qwerty keyboard.
The trade off is a steeper learning curve for a system that doesn't require direct attention to use. With swipe you must look at the keyboard. The theory with 8pen is that once you are proficient you can do it without looking at the screen (much like touch typing).
Imagine this scenario: you are chatting with someone and also typing on your phone at the same time. Contrived but I do that on my computer when someone comes into my office (finish what I was typing while talking to them). With 8pen you should be able to look away from your phone and finish what you are writing, with swype that would be extremely difficult (due to the accuracy required). With 8pen you only need to remember the center point (which could be marked with a dot in future hardware if it gets adopted), with swype you need to know the relative position of all the characters.
..And seeing how he only wanted a loosening of their restrictions, it seems he knows why as well.
OR he isn't concerned about the other restrictions because they don't apply to him. A smart person would question all restrictions that don't seem related to the crime, your average person will only be concerned with ones that directly affect them.
Imagine the restrictions were:
-flying in a hot air ballon
-guided fishing trips along the amazon
-eating hot dogs
Most people would internally think, "Heh, I'd never do that shit anyhow.. joke's on them." in regards to the first two but yell, "Hell naw, ya can't take 'way my HOTDOGS!"
As opposed discussing how to coordinate efforts to stop human rights violations.
Where's the money in that?
Ubuntu installation found all drivers (even wireless!) for my wife's HP laptop with a Broadcom wireless chip (and that was 3 years ago on a fairly new laptop).
Really? Until 10.4 I have always wrestled with wireless drivers for my wife's laptop (uses a broadcom chip). I've been wrestling with broadcom drivers for a decade it seems (then they finally opened their specs).
That's because it matters less each day.
Especially in the lowend segment. Now an inexpensive netbook has enough "oomph" for most users daily tasks. It used to be that even a entry level user would have to check specs to make sure the computer would run whatever software they wanted to run. Now caring about specs and performance is left to high-end gamers.
I suppose this may be where Apple's liquid metal purchase will come into the picture.
That's the spirit! Make the iPhone cases out of mercury. It will solve a multitude of problems!
I've seen this in companies as well (refusing to give pay increases that would match wages elsewhere), however I have also seen a few companies that understand the value of paying their staff well.
If you pay your good employees above the going rate and provide competitive or top tier benefits then it is no longer a factor for low moral or "jumping ship". Aside from the moral issue and retaining valuable employees, turnover is costly and many businesses don't understand how costly. If you lose someone due to low wages the replacement will most likely expect the wages your recently lost employee left for. Rather than just paying the lost employee those wages you are costing the company hiring costs (i.e. finding someone), the risk of a new hire (could not work out, and you'll have to rehire), low initial productivity due to training/getting them up-to-speed (at my company it can take 3 months+ for a dev to get going full-speed) etc
In the end it would have been cheaper to just pay your valued employees a competitive wage than risk losing them to another company that pays more.
I have recently found myself in the position of leaving for better wages. Yearly reviews are coming up and my current wage is 86% of what I could be making elsewhere (by pure gross wage), and my current pension/retirement options are not even close to what is offered elsewhere (off the cuff including pensions it would be 75% of what I could be getting elsewhere). If my wage increase comes up short I'll be jumping ship. I enjoy my work, coworkers etc, but there aren't enough intangible benefits to settle for a wage that is not competitive.
To any HR people that may read this a warning: I won't be telling anyone in management about my plan to leave before hand. Why? Aside from the fact we had a discussion the previous year about competitive wages and how they still had leaps to catch up on my wage there is the more important point that it won't do any good. It will be taken as a threat no matter how I deliver the fact that my wage isn't competitive and will receive the response a threat generally receives in a company.
If a business isn't in the practice of keeping up with what going rates are then a single employee isn't going to change their mind on the matter. It has to come from top down not bottom up. Some companies are proactive (I have friends that work as such companies) and they have a mature employee base (i.e. low turn-over), better productivity and better overall company morale. Of course it's a bit of a chicken and egg issue. If you start out paying good wages and your company is profitable it's easy to maintain that state, if you start with underpaying your employees the extra costs that incurs makes it difficult to move from that state so they just perpetually run that way (until they go under).
Hulu. I can watch new episodes of most of the shows I care about the day after they air.
Which is great if you live in the US. Hulu isn't available in Canada.
While it may not have new release TV shows (at this time), it serves me quite well for entertainment and only cost $8/month. What would that buy me on AppleTV or Google TV? Not as much media to watch, that's for sure.
At this point I'm not interested in apple tv or google tv. If I want new tv shows cable is still a better deal (or simply torrenting them.. it isn't illegal everywhere btw, we don't all live in the US). Netflix lets me watch all the older movies and tv series I want to watch more conveniently than brick and mortar renting and much cheaper than renting via brick and mortar or AppleTV or Google TV.
This being modded as flamebait is ridiculous.
Hemp DOES capture more carbon than trees and is used for most of the same things wood fiber is used for. Industrial hemp does not get "burned" as it is harvested before any flowering and is extremely low in THC even if it flowers. Anyone who thinks otherwise has bought into drug propaganda (which is just a distraction from why hemp isn't grown in the US).
The sugar/corn industry parallels this. There is a lot of money tied up in subsidizing the corn industry (at the cost of american health). Profits of a particular industry are put above all else, in essence banning any competition.
I swear I read that as "The production has struggled recently with issues with Unicorns"
I know it's the ultimate paradox. On one hand the original story didn't have unicorns on the other hand they are totally awesome.
I can totally see how that would hold up production. If you're going to do unicorns you want to do them right and not just CG them in after the fact because you changed your mind and decided the movie would be that much more awesome with them.
We should change our behaviour, but also scrub the atmosphere from the carbon we dumped in it over the last 150 years.
True, but genetically modified trees as the answer?
Why not plant something that captures more carbon naturally like.. I dunno.. hemp? You know the plant that can be used for textiles, paper, oil etc.
Of course that would compete with the cotton industry.. and you couldn't have that. Just as you couldn't have sugar compete with corn production (even if the over-usage of HFCS is negatively affecting your population).
Well, considering the Prius would probably need a couple of JATO bottles to reach 205 mph, I bet this thing still wins.
Exactly.. less CO2 than a prius when ...? When the prius is going 205mph? If that's the metric then it's vacuously true.
It's obviously not less than a prius idling as the prius generally doesn't idle (if it's sitting still the engine is off). So what is the prius doing that it creates more CO2? Running the tiny gas engine at top rpm as hard as it can?
I used to buy a lot more music on iTunes when it was 99 cents but now, with variable pricing, virtually all songs on the Canadian iTunes are 1.29 CAD each so I have stopped buying so much.
What really sucks is you can only vote with your wallet by not paying, in which case they just blame reduced sales on piracy.
I wish there was a way to put your money where your mouth is and have a "Buy At $X", so you could refuse the song at $1.29 but make a binding offer to buy it at $0.99 that month (there would need to be some kind of time limit to the offer). That would create realistic metrics of what people are willing to pay and give the seller the opportunity to accept the offers. You could calculate pricing elasticity a lot more accurately that way and maximize profit (you CAN make more money by selling for less, especially when you have infinite supply.. for some reason the music industry doesn't get this).
I'd say netbooks aren't and weren't overblown, they filled and still fill a niche in the market that regular laptops don't and tablets can't.
Yup. For the service guys at my work netbooks have been a blessing. They can take them to the field easily to attach to in field equipment. They are light and rugged enough for field work and are so cost effective that it becomes possible to carry a backup unit that gets left in the truck or hotel in case of failure. For the stuff they do a laptop is overkill (in both processing power and size + weight) and for the cost of a decently rugged laptop you can buy a bunch of netbooks.
I almost bought my wife a netbook for her blog surfing (to replace the aging bulky laptop she currently uses), but I'm glad I waited as an Android based tablet fits her usage even better (and costs less). I'm holding on a bit before jumping as I haven't seen enough reviews yet, but something like this $168 china sourced Android 2.1 tablet would probably suit her perfectly. I'm waiting on seeing some reviews before I pull the trigger on that particular one. At that cheap it's I can justify some risk.. but I'd like to read at least one review to mitigate the risk of it being complete junk.
I'm excited about the proliferation of low cost tablets. There are a lot of usage scenarios that they suit better than any other form factor (just as there are niche uses for netbooks). Let's face it, most people don't need the power of a full blown desktop or laptop. As a software developer that likes playing with media (RAW photos, movies etc) I DO need the horsepower, but for people like my wife or situations like my coworkers that just need to run configuration applications a netbook or tablet fits the bill perfectly.
I don't think "pure digital" is going to catch on for quite some time.
How can it when it's not readily available? That's like saying, "I don't think pure electric cars will catch on for quite some time." Of course not, there aren't any consumer level electric cars available. The market hasn't really been tested yet, so it's a little early to assume it will be slow to catch on.
Some people are still going to want everything a Blu-Ray disk provides. The extras, the commentary, etc. Digital downloads, from what I have seen, don't do this.
There is nothing stopping online services from offering the same extras available on a physical copy. If it isn't being offered it's being witheld by choice. It's an artificial limitation.. if that is one item actually limiting the consumer (you'd have to show me data to convince me it is as I think you are just projecting..), then it can be offered as well.
..I still prefer to have a physical copy. With limited programs that can play back ripped Blu-Rays with full menu support, sometimes it's just easier to pop it in a Blu-Ray player and enjoy.
Fair enough.. but that's you projecting. Because you think it's easier to pop a disc in you assume everyone thinks that. How is something like apple tv not easier (from a use perspective)? Find what you want, click go.. it goes. No getting up off your ass necessary (whether it be to go to the store or to the mailbox). You can do it all from the comfort of your couch without even having to get up to put a piece of media into a player. As long as your remote is within reach you're good to go.