The only reason why movie studios do this is greed. They're afraid they'll lose money if they put everything up as streaming. And it's ridiculous. For example, "The Expendables 2" is available streaming on Netflix... but the older film "The Expendables" isn't. What the hell, Hollywood?
They have to realize that for a large number of people, not having something available streaming or affordable means that they're just going to torrent it. They're losing money in the long run. You can't stop the signal.
Amazon is allowing publishers to "voluntarily" opt out of allowing their books to be TTS enabled. In other words, Amazon has caved and is allowing publishers to sell crippled versions of their books.
From the http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/zfs/wiki/issues page:
The trash does not empty on a ZFS volume. For now, you can workaround this by simply manually removing items from the.Trash directory
Regardless of the benefits, the FS needs to handle the basics before I'd consider trying it out.
Seriously, does anyone not in high school even use MySpace? I guess I'm officially an old fuddy-duddy, because I have never seen the appeal of hideously designed, non-IE browser crashing MySpace pages and the kids who use them.
I bought the expansion and played it for about two weeks. One day, I just didn't feel like logging in. Days went by... weeks went by... and I decided to cancel my account.
It basically boils down to two reasons:
1) More Of The Same: Kill critters, collect items, and get gold and shiny weapons or armor. Lather, rinse, repeat. I've been playing from the open beta, and the "new content" slowly felt like the same old thing after a while. I've grown tired of pressing the lever in my Skinner box, and the pellets aren't quite as tasty after eating them for two years.
2) Social Discord: I went from being a semi-hardcore player to a casual player in a so-called casual guild. Before BC hit we would run instances for fun or to help a guildie level an alt. We'd laugh it up on our Vent server and have a grand old time. Once BC hit, a core group of people - the guild leaders and their real-life friends - took off for level 70, leaving most of the casual players like myself behind. These guys have been friends for years and they either had or were willing to commit more time to the game than I was. And it's not much fun to be in a Vent channel with four or five guys who are running quests or instances that you won't be able to run until the following week, so the social aspect of the game diminished for me as well.
More of the same + level stratification = not fun anymore
They used to be tops of their markets, and everyone laughed when M$ tried to compete with them. Now Lotus is a memory, Palm is a close second, and Netscape went open source in order to offer an alternative to the clear winner of the "Browser Wars".
Oh, and let's not forget a little something called the XBOX and how we all laughed that it would ever be more popular than the PlayStation.
I don't want M$ to succeed; I'm just afraid that history will repeat itself yet again.
FairPlay is a DRM and thus, by definition, evil. But it is the lesser of two evils compared to MS's DRM. Five computers per iTunes account, five accounts per iPod, and the limits on burning playlists can be circumvented by adding a "bonus track". Most average users never bump into any of the limitations FairPlay puts on them.
Yeah, this sounds about as crazy as Apple getting into the MP3 player market. Apple had no history with selling music players. IT. MADE. THEM. MILLIONS!
QFT. MS really hit their stride with Windows 2000 and Office 2000. Every release since then has been geegaws, bells and whistles, plus umpteen million security holes and DRM out the wazoo.
I'll never use Unbox because I own a Mac and an iPod. I'm assuming Apple's version of buying movies online will work on Macs and Windows PCs running iTunes/QuickTime, which makes it more compatible than Unbox but leaves out "Plays for Sure" devices (and other non-Apple portables) and Linux boxes.
Why do Microsoft and Apple both insist on force-feeding customers their proprietary DRM solutions? If the recording, motion picture, and television industries insist on DRM for digital content, the very least these companies can do is settle on a standard format. But it looks like no one learned anything from the VHS vs Betamax years, so we have Windows Protected Media from MS and FairPlay from Apple, and we have the option of sinking thousands of dollars into HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Such a waste of time.
Ugh, Eudora is probably the worst email client I've ever used. The interface is far behind most other GUI email clients out there. Hell, you have to type commands in blank messages and CLICK THEM to make changes to the Mac client!
I've read Stephenson's essay, and as I recall it starts off pretty good but then turns to complete and utter crap at the end.
I deal with professors who love WordPerfect for DOS and hate Word because they think all those buttons are confusing when dot codes are so simple and easy. Yeah, dot codes are easy... once you've memorize them and used them for over 10 years....
I loved his essay on how, despite everything he's written in the Uplift novels, he is fairly certain that dolphins will never be able to talk to humans - even with genemod.
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The only reason why movie studios do this is greed. They're afraid they'll lose money if they put everything up as streaming. And it's ridiculous. For example, "The Expendables 2" is available streaming on Netflix... but the older film "The Expendables" isn't. What the hell, Hollywood? They have to realize that for a large number of people, not having something available streaming or affordable means that they're just going to torrent it. They're losing money in the long run. You can't stop the signal.
Amazon is allowing publishers to "voluntarily" opt out of allowing their books to be TTS enabled. In other words, Amazon has caved and is allowing publishers to sell crippled versions of their books.
Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick!
You've got my vote!
From the http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/zfs/wiki/issues page: The trash does not empty on a ZFS volume. For now, you can workaround this by simply manually removing items from the .Trash directory
Regardless of the benefits, the FS needs to handle the basics before I'd consider trying it out.
Since all these problems are being caused by Vista, shouldn't you stop using MS products?
Seriously, does anyone not in high school even use MySpace? I guess I'm officially an old fuddy-duddy, because I have never seen the appeal of hideously designed, non-IE browser crashing MySpace pages and the kids who use them.
But is he using any Vaz?
There are a lot of decaffeinated brands out there that are just as tasty as the real thing.
It basically boils down to two reasons:
1) More Of The Same: Kill critters, collect items, and get gold and shiny weapons or armor. Lather, rinse, repeat. I've been playing from the open beta, and the "new content" slowly felt like the same old thing after a while. I've grown tired of pressing the lever in my Skinner box, and the pellets aren't quite as tasty after eating them for two years.
2) Social Discord: I went from being a semi-hardcore player to a casual player in a so-called casual guild. Before BC hit we would run instances for fun or to help a guildie level an alt. We'd laugh it up on our Vent server and have a grand old time. Once BC hit, a core group of people - the guild leaders and their real-life friends - took off for level 70, leaving most of the casual players like myself behind. These guys have been friends for years and they either had or were willing to commit more time to the game than I was. And it's not much fun to be in a Vent channel with four or five guys who are running quests or instances that you won't be able to run until the following week, so the social aspect of the game diminished for me as well.
More of the same + level stratification = not fun anymore
They used to be tops of their markets, and everyone laughed when M$ tried to compete with them. Now Lotus is a memory, Palm is a close second, and Netscape went open source in order to offer an alternative to the clear winner of the "Browser Wars". Oh, and let's not forget a little something called the XBOX and how we all laughed that it would ever be more popular than the PlayStation. I don't want M$ to succeed; I'm just afraid that history will repeat itself yet again.
Conservative Vote Counting Procedure 1. CORRUPT THE SYSTEM EVERY STEP OF THE WAY (they win)
FairPlay is a DRM and thus, by definition, evil. But it is the lesser of two evils compared to MS's DRM. Five computers per iTunes account, five accounts per iPod, and the limits on burning playlists can be circumvented by adding a "bonus track". Most average users never bump into any of the limitations FairPlay puts on them.
Yeah, this sounds about as crazy as Apple getting into the MP3 player market. Apple had no history with selling music players. IT. MADE. THEM. MILLIONS!
Why should I care what the Viet Cong want to invest in?
QFT. MS really hit their stride with Windows 2000 and Office 2000. Every release since then has been geegaws, bells and whistles, plus umpteen million security holes and DRM out the wazoo.
I'm actually more concerned with displaying 272 lines of resolution on anything larger than a 20" monitor.
Protected H.264/AVC0 640x272 (Widescreen format, probably just 640x480 with the black bars eliminated)
That's what I was afraid of. Anything 16:9 will look like arse on an HDTV.
I'll never use Unbox because I own a Mac and an iPod. I'm assuming Apple's version of buying movies online will work on Macs and Windows PCs running iTunes/QuickTime, which makes it more compatible than Unbox but leaves out "Plays for Sure" devices (and other non-Apple portables) and Linux boxes.
Why do Microsoft and Apple both insist on force-feeding customers their proprietary DRM solutions? If the recording, motion picture, and television industries insist on DRM for digital content, the very least these companies can do is settle on a standard format. But it looks like no one learned anything from the VHS vs Betamax years, so we have Windows Protected Media from MS and FairPlay from Apple, and we have the option of sinking thousands of dollars into HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Such a waste of time.
Yeah, if I wanted to run Windows XP and buy a Plays for Sure device, that'd be great.
No Mac or Linux versions? Don't care.
Ugh, Eudora is probably the worst email client I've ever used. The interface is far behind most other GUI email clients out there. Hell, you have to type commands in blank messages and CLICK THEM to make changes to the Mac client!
Give me Mail.app on the Mac any day.
I've read Stephenson's essay, and as I recall it starts off pretty good but then turns to complete and utter crap at the end.
I deal with professors who love WordPerfect for DOS and hate Word because they think all those buttons are confusing when dot codes are so simple and easy. Yeah, dot codes are easy... once you've memorize them and used them for over 10 years....
The Director's Cut of ST:TMP is watchable to say the least. It's a decent film. I cannot watch more than 3min of STV:TFF without vomiting.
I loved his essay on how, despite everything he's written in the Uplift novels, he is fairly certain that dolphins will never be able to talk to humans - even with genemod.