It does have a higher bitrate, but the HD-DVD scripts actually run faster than the Blu-Ray interactivity stuff.
has more capacity,
HD-DVD has a triple-layer, 51-gig disc on the way. So, actually, HD-DVD has more capacity.
and all video releases have to be region free a year from initial release.
Which is still a far cry from not supporting region coding at all. With Blu-Ray, you're guaranteed to have region coding eventually, and more DRM crap now. With HD-DVD, you will never get region coding.
Price will come down more after time.
HD-DVD is cheap now.
So we get to wait. Again. Like for all the other Blu-Ray features. (Hint: Cheapest HD-DVD players all support, at a minimum, 128 megs of persistent storage, scripting, and an Internet connection. Not one of those is required by Blu-Ray, only supported, and at least some of it hasn't been done yet.)
HD-DVD has optional AACS encryption. You can burn an unencrypted HD-DVD, even on a dual-layer standard 9 gig DVD, and it will work. I think it won't let you access network or storage, which makes it not as useful or cool, but technically, the crypto is optional.
HD-DVD is also region-free. There is no option whatsoever for region coding. If you really wanted to, you could release a multi-region, encrypted HD-DVD which adapted based on the default language of the player, or even a GeoIP lookup if they have it plugged in to the Internet.
Blu-ray has mandatory AACS encryption, and the optional BD+, and as far as I know, absolutely no format cheaper than a single-layer Blu-Ray disc (25 gigs). So much for home recording.
Oh, and there are a large number of technical advantages to HD-DVD -- for one, there's a triple-layer disc coming, so it now beats Blu-Ray on capacity. But it's obvious that Warner doesn't care about the technical issues.
isn't blue ray (i refuse to go with the stupid spelling fad) better on a technical level anyway?
Not really. I thought so too, but in practice, HD-DVD wins. (And I'm not just saying this because of my job; for all I know, our company will be forced into Blu-Ray, or something completely different.)
What Blu-Ray has going for it (other than this latest blow) is capacity and bandwidth, and a ton of empty promises about features which are mostly not implemented. And capacity, at least, was rumored to be about killed by some triple-layer HD-DVD format, which would beat dual-layer Blu-Ray by a gig.
What HD-DVD has (had?) is price and features. Since people are pronouncing the format dead, I think I'm entitled to one last rant -- I am an HD-DVD developer.
So here's how it breaks down: Blu-Ray requires entirely new equipment to press. HD-DVD can modify existing DVD equipment. There have also been (barely) sub-$100 HD-DVD players at some point -- that's yet to happen for Blu-Ray, cheapest I've seen is a $200 drive (not a standalone player).
The price of the discs is mostly irrelevant, as now is really not the time to be buying discs to keep. But I would expect them to be cheaper, and there was also the strange run of dual-format (HD-DVD and standard DVD) discs -- literally two-sided, side A for HD, side B for DVD.
Now, as to the actual technologies... Note that I have not actually seen a Blu-Ray disc play, so all of this is from what I've heard my co-workers say, and I don't remember it incredibly well. But the HD-DVD information should be dead accurate.
To start with, Blu-Ray requires AACS, and supports region coding and something called "BD-Mark". Meanwhile, HD-DVD has optional AACS (though some features are inaccessible to unencrypted discs), and does not support region coding. So even if you hate Microsoft, as a geek, you really want HD-DVD to win, for that reason.
It also supports standard dual-layer DVDs as a medium. Same HD content, good codecs (VC1, h.264, etc), scripting, but if it fits in 9 gigs, you can burn it to a cheaper disc. I don't know if it actually supports single-layer DVDs (though I imagine it does), or CDs (though I doubt it). So, low-capacity all the way up to the proposed triple-layer makes it more flexible than Blu-Ray in terms of disc format.
Blu-Ray is Java. HD-DVD is JavaScript. Having used both languages, I'm amazed anyone would argue for Java, but people do. And it almost seemed logical -- I expected the Java to be faster, but it's not.
Let that sink in a moment. In the actual, real-world use, any Blu-Ray player other than the PS3 is slow as hell with simple menu animations. By "slow as hell", I mean you will actually see it redrawing each frame in blocks, for a tiny menu taking up maybe an eighth of the screen. HD-DVD, on the other hand... Well, I can make it slow, but not that slow. Half-second animations that take up half the screen are, at worst, a little jerky, but never do you see it redrawing in chunks like that.
Now, just guessing, but I suspect that Blu-Ray hands over more control to the Java itself -- that is, it is actual Java code doing those animations. Not so with HD-DVD -- I just tell it to change some property (x, y, width, height, opacity, etc) by some amount over some duration, and let the player handle the rest -- probably with native code, probably a good chunk of it in video hardware.
And, from what I've heard through the grapevine, Warner's actual tech people agree with me -- they'd much rather work with HD-DVD and with JavaScript. So this smells like an executive decision, made for strategic reasons, not technical ones, and certainly not with the consumer in mind.
HD-DVD also has a much stronger base of what's required. Even in those sub-$100 players, you get:
An ethernet port
128 megs of flash
Picture-in-picture support (muxed into the main video, or downloaded)
Not if you also want lossless audio, or have a longer movie with a lot of detail. Then you have to make sacrifices.
Were it just rumors, or is there a triple-layer HD-DVD format coming out?
If so, that kills the sheer capacity advantage -- it's 51 gigs, so actually slightly larger than Blu-Ray. There might still be a bitrate advantage, though.
Yes, it is telling. It shows what it takes to form and hold together not only a successful government, but the #1 country and the most powerful coalition of states in human history.
Awe, the crass trash talking fool, all got his feelings hurt, I'm sorry.... I believe that you owe the comic book lady an sincere apology.
Who, me? Are you serious?
Maybe you were talking about this guy, who has since been modded -1 Troll. But that is not me. I entered this conversation with this comment, which has since been modded +5 Insightful, and I really, honestly don't see how it was "crass" or "trash talking".
But maybe I'm wrong. If I've said something crass, can you point it out for me?
You just can't take what you so freely dish out, how typical.
That actually sounds more like you right now. Defending those poor feminists from stereotypes, but when I point out your flaw, you attack.
I honestly did not intend for this to be a fight. I meant for you to take a step back and learn something about yourself. Not for me, but because it would make you a more effective person.
Perhaps, but you will never meet one (feminist BB that is), and one is extremely more likely to run across a man who is a rapist, murder, a liar, 'insecure about their own masculinity' or living in their parents basement.
Stereotypes all the same. You're far more likely to run across decent, well-meaning, mostly well-adjusted people than you are to run across rapist, murderers, or people living in their parents' basement.
I actually don't know anyone who lives in their parents' basement. Nor do I know of anyone who does. Maybe I'll never meet one?
OK, but what if the simulation creators just don't care if we find out, or for some other reason don't mind if we do? Why are you assuming they necessarily would?
I'm not assuming anything, which is kind of the point. I'm just pointing out possibilities.
Alright, suppose you do find this proof, in the form of something that does not make sense unless the Universe is simulated.
Then, two months later, someone comes out with a new theory which explains your discrepancies without having to resort to a simulated Universe.
My main point, though, was that you could not prove conclusively one way or another, and specifically, that you absolutely cannot prove that you are not in a simulated Universe. And I'm not really convinced that you can come up with sufficient "evidence" one way or another, either, because pretty much any indication of a simulated Universe could simply be weirdness on the part of our Universe, whereas any indication of a "real" Universe could simply be lack of understanding of just how good a simulation is possible.
But the thing is, they converted. Compelling argument or not.
But what does that prove, if there's no argument?
Your original comment suggested that one might set out to disprove Christianity and arrive at the conclusion that it's all true, but I'm curious how. Certainly, if Christianity could be shown to be true, I'd want to believe. I mean, no matter how skeptical I might have been, I don't want to burn in Hell, right?
Besides, Pascal's Wager might not be logically sound, it is a simple statement intended to surmise how a person could come to a conclusion.
It's more than one statement. It's an attempt to define, logically, why one might believe, and why one should believe.
As for the the two possibilities you gave, remember these people converted to Christianity, thus the option being limited to the Judeo-Christian God.
Nope. See, if Pascal converted to Christianity because of his wager, then it is flawed. Why didn't he convert to, say, Satanism?
It wouldn't work because the source alone isn't enough.
To teach? Maybe not, but it's a start.
It's Fedora. The rest are simply applications. So...try to set this thing up with a fresh Fedora. Or even Edbuntu. You'd see the problem pretty quickly.
I don't see it... given that these "simply applications" are a large part of the point.
Apparently you don't get it. It is "WIFI". They're using standard wireless frequencies and protocols. There's nothing magical about it. Anyone can listen in.
Yeah, their neighbor, the sheep herder, is going to have a laptop with AirPwn on it.
I'm not really sure how you can do ad-hoc wireless networking (this "mesh" concept) and expect it to be secure.
You continue to show little grasp of technology. I suggest you look into amatuer radio sometime...not to say amatuer radio gear is the solution, but it will give you a clue.
Dismissive and not helpful. I am not saying the technology doesn't exist, but I do think the XO is an easier solution, and probably cheaper.
But hey, if you think you can do it better, go do it. Maybe Intel would be interested.
I can access Wikipeida with an old cell phone. What's your point?
How big is the screen on that cell phone? What's the resolution?
How about the interface?
Unless we're talking about iPhones (which are quite a bit more expensive than the XO), what's your point?
Secondly, Wikipedia is the worst thing to use to educate. It probably wouldn't be in their language
Close enough. No, it wouldn't be it Quetchua, but Spanish is the language of education in Peru.
Regardless, Wikipedia was just an example. Suppose they do want to learn English -- there are resources online, and tons of text to practice on.
And you're being unreasonably dense. The OLPC doesn't have new technology. This kind of screen is the first I've seen in a mass-produced device, true, but it's not magical.
Strawman. I didn't say it's magical. I do believe it's much better than a cell phone.
Hint: Hand cranked generators have been around for YEARS!
So?
Here's the point: As far as size is concerned, there relationship between size and usefulness is not linear. Either things need to be small (hand sized), or reasonably sized (laptop sized).
For kids, this is apparently the right size.
The area in between is not useful, and has failed multiple times in the market.
For adults. Your point?
If it's a toy, take the kids. If it's the wonder platform you think it is, take mine.
You talk to them, then.
At the very least, it is inspirational.
The XO isn't being taken seriously, which is why people are dropping out of the program like flies. It was an interesting experiment, but it failed.
It failed to produce what you apparently expected. It's not a laptop for grownups, it doesn't do things that would be considered essential if we were talking about, say, high school in middle-class America. But that doesn't make it a toy or a failure.
You see, it succeeded in its actual goals. (In fact, that story was on Slashdot recently. Try reading that TFA, too.)
That is, there are more men writing comics because there are more boys reading comics?
I mean, not that I mind it -- I do feel that soap opera emo trash doesn't help anyone, and I am a guy, after all. But I wonder, is there something about the medium itself that would prevent soap opera emo trash from succeeding?
Oh, I guarantee that women like that exist. There is simply too much diversity in the world for them not to. It's the principle of "If you can think of something, it already exists on the Internet, and there's probably already fetish porn about it."
But while I wouldn't call you a "Nazi Socialist PC ball buster", look what you did here: "men who are insecure about their own masculinity."
I don't disagree that it's possible to be feminist without being a feminazi, and you may even be right that the feminazi is a myth. But I've seen women propagate and participate in that myth.
When attacking others for their intolerance or prejudice, it helps to not be showing your own prejudice in the same breath. (Not even going to start with the "crawl out of your parent's basement" comment.)
For CDs, that is still true. For DVDs, not so much. And I imagine it would apply to any of the bastardized CDs (Sony rootkit, etc).
This is because, as I said in my other comment on this thread, the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent copy protection. It doesn't matter that what you're going to do with it constitutes fair use; the act of circumvention is itself illegal.
So, in theory, if you have a CD with the Sony Rootkit on it, you're not allowed to rip it, because to do so, you'd have to "circumvent" the DRM by disabling AutoRun, or by using Mac or Linux.
This should hold for EULAs, also. All they have to do is provide built-in DRM which you have to go through to do anything. Then, they don't even have to declare what you can and can't do in legal terms -- anything the DRM explicitly allows you to do is legal, anything else is not.
And that, boys and girls, is the real reason for the War on Piracy: Control.
When the "liberal masses" wake up, seeing your "negro" tags everywhere would likely remind them that racism still exists. It would thus work against you.
In fact, I often wonder that people wrap GPL'd software in the same "I Accept" boxes on Windows installers, for instance. Not only is there no need to accept the GPL to run a single copy of the software, but there'd be no point.
I realize this is slightly offtopic, but I often hear words like "militaristic" used to describe the GPL, people reacting by going to BSD licenses and such. But any version of the GPL, even v3, does not take away any rights that you have under copyright law. It only gives you additional rights that you didn't have before (like that "site license").
Now, other things (EULAs) are generally trying to limit your rights under copyright law. I'm fairly sure that the only way this can work is if you were given an opportunity to read and accept/decline the license before money was exchanged. It is also where the whole "Windows Refund" concept came from -- people discovered some language in the Windows EULA which says that you can deny the license, return your copy, and get your money back. At the time, this made a lot of sense -- you couldn't buy a laptop without Windows, and you weren't really given the option to read the license before you brought that laptop home, so at the very least, they should be forced to take the entire laptop back -- at best, they take the copy of Windows back and give you a refund.
Before the DMCA, I believe all of what you just described was acceptable as "fair use".
After the DMCA, it's still alright for actual CDs, but many other things (movies) are copy protected, and it is illegal to break copy protection for any reason.
Anyway, I have yet to see a compelling argument by an atheist who converted. The most compelling was Pascal's Wager, which is not logically sound -- it only works if the only possibilities are Judeo-Christian-God or no Judeo-Christian-God, and does not account for other religions one might believe in if one were to wager.
While it may be more difficult to believe if you're brought up in a religion, and while it couldn't really be backed by science, I can imagine that one could believe everything was just randomly thrown together.
No, I don't think any religious people have problems with Evolution unless they are also a Creationist. Creationism is something which is really not compatible with evolution, or with dinosaur bones, unless you just handwave it off as "God can plant whatever evidence He wants."
Ultimately, it boils down to this. A computer, no matter how advanced, must be finite in scope.
Why?
It is bound by the properties of physical state
Understand, the question is not whether there's some "real world" out there, very much like our own, with a giant supercomputing continent churning away simulating us, and a big giant "Intel Inside" logo on the front of it.
The question is whether we are a simulation. If we were, we'd have absolutely no clue what physical properties the "real world" might have. Thus, we'd have no clue what limitations a "computer" in the Real World might have.
This is a constraint any simulator must have - it must be able to simulate finite time in finite time.
I find that a similar assumption. While we do have time in this universe, it's relativistic, and it's closely related to space. A simulator might well have an infinite amount of time to play with.
Physical systems are bound by other laws. It's unclear what laws of nature must hold true for all universes within the multiverse - laws so fundamental that even if the universe was simulated, the simulator must also adhere to those laws. However, some such laws almost certainly exist.
Again, why? Why must these laws exist, and if they do exist, why must they apply to any simulator?
If you can show that time is quantized but that you cannot predict that from first principles alone, then you've an excellent case for a simulator.
Well, that's like Mercury. You cannot predict Mercury's movements from first principles alone... until General Relativity. So you could, you just didn't know how.
So you'd have to prove both that time is quantized and that this could not be defined from first principles.
Besides which: Energy is quantized. Spacetime sort of is (Planck). Matter, too, sort of is (atoms, etc). Why are these less of a case than quantized time?
Likewise, if you can show from first principles alone that there is a single facet of the Universe which cannot be modeled by anything simpler than itself, you've again a strong argument against a simulator.
I'm not sure why "can't be modeled by anything simpler than itself" is an argument against. Certainly a simulator could be more complex -- as much more complex as we like?
But we've sort of ignored the point: Can you currently recite, from memory, every experiment which leads to the conclusions you've drawn? Are you simultaneously aware of all your interpretation and extrapolation to get from that point to those conclusions?
Imagine, for a moment, that your memory might be altered at any point along this process -- from when the experiments happen (whether you do them yourself or not) to when you say "Therefore, the Universe is not simulated!"
Your argument, you see, really only holds true if you assume your own sanity, and that requires assuming your brain is somehow exempt from the simulation. So if I do accept all your arguments (and I'm not really in a position to evaluate them properly -- I don't know enough physics, and I'm sleep-deprived)... I think all you can really prove is that you're not a sane brain in a jar -- in other words, that The Matrix is not literally true, and thus, that the machine doing the simulation must exist in a much weirder reality than we do.
Nope. They won't. Children don't produce much code. Once their mind is more developed to handle the abstract thought needed for programming, their hands will have long outgrown the keyboard.
Based on my experience with kids, you'd be surprised. (Although that may be true with the way the current American education system is.)
Right....magic key....give me one of those so I can crank out a new kernel more easily.
Would you prefer I call it a "special key", or a "function key" or something?
It is a "show the source" button. Every app on the machine comes with source code, so why wouldn't this work?
You'd bet wrong.
The Trinity Test was in 1945. They had more powerful computers than the OLPC in 1945??
I'd bet they wished they had speed on their first-stage gentoo build. By the time it would finish, they would have outgrown the keyboard.
Now I know you're trolling. A large part of the value of the XO is in its software, but of all the possible distros to replace it with, I think Gentoo is the worst choice.
After all, who needs the security, anyway? Big brother won't care at all.
You are missing the point: NO WIFI. Do you get it now?
There is not some Linksys router sitting in the middle of the fucking desert just waiting for an Afghan kid to walk by with a laptop.
No. Not really. Maybe back in the 20th century it would.
Considering it didn't exist then, and still isn't common now (even in your cell phone), you're being unreasonably cynical.
So...it's dorky. It won't be taken seriously.
It will, and it is.
Puh-leaze, Cracker. Are you really that bigoted to think these people have never seen a computer before?
Actually, I've been to Peru. Many of them have, and many of them have not. The most expensive piece of equipment I saw in the Lareys valley was a boom box.
But fine, let's be pedantic: First computer anyone in that village has ever owned, or had exclusive access to for more than an hour or so at a time.
Mmmm...kay. You do realize that erecting a basic radio tower is pretty trivial, don't you? And patching it through to a first-world network wouldn't be difficult.
So, where does the basic radio tower come from? Where does it get its power? How does it patch in to a first-world network, if there is one anywhere close by?
And talking to people directly is one of the best forms of communication? It seems it would be a heck of a lot more useful than this toy.
Let's see... I'll just tell the class to phone Wikipedia, and... Oh, what's that? Wikipedia is a website, full of text? Who'd have guessed?
And between a "powerful" phone with a tiny screen, glare issues, and a dead battery, and this "toy", I wonder which will be more useful for reading (and editing) webpages? Nevermind that it does pictures and video (not sure about voice).
There is no hand crank for the XO.
Yes there is, it's just not actually part of the laptop anymore.
Guess what? If you shrink an XO, you get something with a fraction of the communication capabilities of cell phone!
Partly because if you shrink it, you miss the point.
It matters. A lot more than you might think.
Let's see... Do I take your word on that? Or a Peruvian kid's?
Instead I found a toy that could have been designed by Leap Frog or Fischer-Price in a fraction of the time.
-1 Flamebait. When have they ever built a computer?
Nonsense. OLPC wasn't started for business reasons, it was started for philanthropic reasons.
"in the market" was a figure of speech. The question is one of viability of a particular area, even assuming you can get this thing wholly funded from elsewhere. (And they are giving away ClassmatePCs.)
Nonsense. Negroponte started shouting his idea to the four winds before there was solid analysis to support the notion that a $100 laptop could be produced.
I am talking about a specific geographic area being viable. You know, "Hey, this town here seems to have a lot of bright young kids, and their parents are all for it, we've got teachers on board to train to use computers..."
Nonsense. Many companies have been waiting for the strategic time when the cost of components matches the purchasing power of poorer countries. That is now only barely possible.
Irrelevant in light of those two points: That Classmate may be given away, and that I'm talking about a specific geographic area (or country, etc).
Nonsense. It takes a couple years to bring a PC product like that to market.
Again, missing the point. Missing it by this much means I must not have been clear; I'll have to go read my original post.
They have it available already, don't they? And if they don't, who's to say that scenario won't work once both products are viable?
I realize it is all the rage on Slashdot to re-iterate the groupthink that Classmate was begat of a conspiracy between Intel and Microsoft, but it is not. Classmate is an Intel product. The version of Classmate that can run Windows is more expensive because it must have more flash and more RAM.
I knew about the more money/flash/RAM angle, but let me check...
No, you're right. Can't find a link to Microsoft, other than various other completely unverified stories, like Microsoft offering to "upgrade" some country to the Windows version of the Classmate. But I'm not sure I could find the comment that suggested that, even, so I was completely wrong on that.
Apparently, Peru did go OLPC, at least in part. There were some very heartwarming stories about remote Peruvian villages, in which kids have had the laptops for six months now.
Am I missing something, though? Did they do some tiny pilot OLPC project, and then switch to ClassmatePC?
Slashdot Mirror
HD-DVD is also still evolving, and Blu-Ray is also a standard, albeit more tightly controlled by Sony than HD-DVD is by anyone.
It does have a higher bitrate, but the HD-DVD scripts actually run faster than the Blu-Ray interactivity stuff.
HD-DVD has a triple-layer, 51-gig disc on the way. So, actually, HD-DVD has more capacity.
Which is still a far cry from not supporting region coding at all. With Blu-Ray, you're guaranteed to have region coding eventually, and more DRM crap now. With HD-DVD, you will never get region coding.
HD-DVD is cheap now.
So we get to wait. Again. Like for all the other Blu-Ray features. (Hint: Cheapest HD-DVD players all support, at a minimum, 128 megs of persistent storage, scripting, and an Internet connection. Not one of those is required by Blu-Ray, only supported, and at least some of it hasn't been done yet.)
HD-DVD has optional AACS encryption. You can burn an unencrypted HD-DVD, even on a dual-layer standard 9 gig DVD, and it will work. I think it won't let you access network or storage, which makes it not as useful or cool, but technically, the crypto is optional.
HD-DVD is also region-free. There is no option whatsoever for region coding. If you really wanted to, you could release a multi-region, encrypted HD-DVD which adapted based on the default language of the player, or even a GeoIP lookup if they have it plugged in to the Internet.
Blu-ray has mandatory AACS encryption, and the optional BD+, and as far as I know, absolutely no format cheaper than a single-layer Blu-Ray disc (25 gigs). So much for home recording.
Oh, and there are a large number of technical advantages to HD-DVD -- for one, there's a triple-layer disc coming, so it now beats Blu-Ray on capacity. But it's obvious that Warner doesn't care about the technical issues.
Not really. I thought so too, but in practice, HD-DVD wins. (And I'm not just saying this because of my job; for all I know, our company will be forced into Blu-Ray, or something completely different.)
What Blu-Ray has going for it (other than this latest blow) is capacity and bandwidth, and a ton of empty promises about features which are mostly not implemented. And capacity, at least, was rumored to be about killed by some triple-layer HD-DVD format, which would beat dual-layer Blu-Ray by a gig.
What HD-DVD has (had?) is price and features. Since people are pronouncing the format dead, I think I'm entitled to one last rant -- I am an HD-DVD developer.
So here's how it breaks down: Blu-Ray requires entirely new equipment to press. HD-DVD can modify existing DVD equipment. There have also been (barely) sub-$100 HD-DVD players at some point -- that's yet to happen for Blu-Ray, cheapest I've seen is a $200 drive (not a standalone player).
The price of the discs is mostly irrelevant, as now is really not the time to be buying discs to keep. But I would expect them to be cheaper, and there was also the strange run of dual-format (HD-DVD and standard DVD) discs -- literally two-sided, side A for HD, side B for DVD.
Now, as to the actual technologies... Note that I have not actually seen a Blu-Ray disc play, so all of this is from what I've heard my co-workers say, and I don't remember it incredibly well. But the HD-DVD information should be dead accurate.
To start with, Blu-Ray requires AACS, and supports region coding and something called "BD-Mark". Meanwhile, HD-DVD has optional AACS (though some features are inaccessible to unencrypted discs), and does not support region coding. So even if you hate Microsoft, as a geek, you really want HD-DVD to win, for that reason.
It also supports standard dual-layer DVDs as a medium. Same HD content, good codecs (VC1, h.264, etc), scripting, but if it fits in 9 gigs, you can burn it to a cheaper disc. I don't know if it actually supports single-layer DVDs (though I imagine it does), or CDs (though I doubt it). So, low-capacity all the way up to the proposed triple-layer makes it more flexible than Blu-Ray in terms of disc format.
Blu-Ray is Java. HD-DVD is JavaScript. Having used both languages, I'm amazed anyone would argue for Java, but people do. And it almost seemed logical -- I expected the Java to be faster, but it's not.
Let that sink in a moment. In the actual, real-world use, any Blu-Ray player other than the PS3 is slow as hell with simple menu animations. By "slow as hell", I mean you will actually see it redrawing each frame in blocks, for a tiny menu taking up maybe an eighth of the screen. HD-DVD, on the other hand... Well, I can make it slow, but not that slow. Half-second animations that take up half the screen are, at worst, a little jerky, but never do you see it redrawing in chunks like that.
Now, just guessing, but I suspect that Blu-Ray hands over more control to the Java itself -- that is, it is actual Java code doing those animations. Not so with HD-DVD -- I just tell it to change some property (x, y, width, height, opacity, etc) by some amount over some duration, and let the player handle the rest -- probably with native code, probably a good chunk of it in video hardware.
And, from what I've heard through the grapevine, Warner's actual tech people agree with me -- they'd much rather work with HD-DVD and with JavaScript. So this smells like an executive decision, made for strategic reasons, not technical ones, and certainly not with the consumer in mind.
HD-DVD also has a much stronger base of what's required. Even in those sub-$100 players, you get:
Were it just rumors, or is there a triple-layer HD-DVD format coming out?
If so, that kills the sheer capacity advantage -- it's 51 gigs, so actually slightly larger than Blu-Ray. There might still be a bitrate advantage, though.
It's just a flesh wound!
You obviously haven't read your history.
And you've got a very strange definition of "successful government".
Who, me? Are you serious?
Maybe you were talking about this guy, who has since been modded -1 Troll. But that is not me. I entered this conversation with this comment, which has since been modded +5 Insightful, and I really, honestly don't see how it was "crass" or "trash talking".
But maybe I'm wrong. If I've said something crass, can you point it out for me?
That actually sounds more like you right now. Defending those poor feminists from stereotypes, but when I point out your flaw, you attack.
I honestly did not intend for this to be a fight. I meant for you to take a step back and learn something about yourself. Not for me, but because it would make you a more effective person.
Stereotypes all the same. You're far more likely to run across decent, well-meaning, mostly well-adjusted people than you are to run across rapist, murderers, or people living in their parents' basement.
I actually don't know anyone who lives in their parents' basement. Nor do I know of anyone who does. Maybe I'll never meet one?
I'm not assuming anything, which is kind of the point. I'm just pointing out possibilities.
Alright, suppose you do find this proof, in the form of something that does not make sense unless the Universe is simulated.
Then, two months later, someone comes out with a new theory which explains your discrepancies without having to resort to a simulated Universe.
My main point, though, was that you could not prove conclusively one way or another, and specifically, that you absolutely cannot prove that you are not in a simulated Universe. And I'm not really convinced that you can come up with sufficient "evidence" one way or another, either, because pretty much any indication of a simulated Universe could simply be weirdness on the part of our Universe, whereas any indication of a "real" Universe could simply be lack of understanding of just how good a simulation is possible.
But what does that prove, if there's no argument?
Your original comment suggested that one might set out to disprove Christianity and arrive at the conclusion that it's all true, but I'm curious how. Certainly, if Christianity could be shown to be true, I'd want to believe. I mean, no matter how skeptical I might have been, I don't want to burn in Hell, right?
It's more than one statement. It's an attempt to define, logically, why one might believe, and why one should believe.
Nope. See, if Pascal converted to Christianity because of his wager, then it is flawed. Why didn't he convert to, say, Satanism?
To teach? Maybe not, but it's a start.
I don't see it... given that these "simply applications" are a large part of the point.
Yeah, their neighbor, the sheep herder, is going to have a laptop with AirPwn on it.
I'm not really sure how you can do ad-hoc wireless networking (this "mesh" concept) and expect it to be secure.
Dismissive and not helpful. I am not saying the technology doesn't exist, but I do think the XO is an easier solution, and probably cheaper.
But hey, if you think you can do it better, go do it. Maybe Intel would be interested.
How big is the screen on that cell phone? What's the resolution?
How about the interface?
Unless we're talking about iPhones (which are quite a bit more expensive than the XO), what's your point?
Close enough. No, it wouldn't be it Quetchua, but Spanish is the language of education in Peru.
Regardless, Wikipedia was just an example. Suppose they do want to learn English -- there are resources online, and tons of text to practice on.
Strawman. I didn't say it's magical. I do believe it's much better than a cell phone.
So?
For kids, this is apparently the right size.
For adults. Your point?
You talk to them, then.
At the very least, it is inspirational.
It failed to produce what you apparently expected. It's not a laptop for grownups, it doesn't do things that would be considered essential if we were talking about, say, high school in middle-class America. But that doesn't make it a toy or a failure.
You see, it succeeded in its actual goals. (In fact, that story was on Slashdot recently. Try reading that TFA, too.)
It's a boy's club because it's a boy's club?
That is, there are more men writing comics because there are more boys reading comics?
I mean, not that I mind it -- I do feel that soap opera emo trash doesn't help anyone, and I am a guy, after all. But I wonder, is there something about the medium itself that would prevent soap opera emo trash from succeeding?
Oh, I guarantee that women like that exist. There is simply too much diversity in the world for them not to. It's the principle of "If you can think of something, it already exists on the Internet, and there's probably already fetish porn about it."
But while I wouldn't call you a "Nazi Socialist PC ball buster", look what you did here: "men who are insecure about their own masculinity."
I don't disagree that it's possible to be feminist without being a feminazi, and you may even be right that the feminazi is a myth. But I've seen women propagate and participate in that myth.
When attacking others for their intolerance or prejudice, it helps to not be showing your own prejudice in the same breath. (Not even going to start with the "crawl out of your parent's basement" comment.)
For CDs, that is still true. For DVDs, not so much. And I imagine it would apply to any of the bastardized CDs (Sony rootkit, etc).
This is because, as I said in my other comment on this thread, the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent copy protection. It doesn't matter that what you're going to do with it constitutes fair use; the act of circumvention is itself illegal.
So, in theory, if you have a CD with the Sony Rootkit on it, you're not allowed to rip it, because to do so, you'd have to "circumvent" the DRM by disabling AutoRun, or by using Mac or Linux.
This should hold for EULAs, also. All they have to do is provide built-in DRM which you have to go through to do anything. Then, they don't even have to declare what you can and can't do in legal terms -- anything the DRM explicitly allows you to do is legal, anything else is not.
And that, boys and girls, is the real reason for the War on Piracy: Control.
When the "liberal masses" wake up, seeing your "negro" tags everywhere would likely remind them that racism still exists. It would thus work against you.
Also, define "cultural threat"?
In fact, I often wonder that people wrap GPL'd software in the same "I Accept" boxes on Windows installers, for instance. Not only is there no need to accept the GPL to run a single copy of the software, but there'd be no point.
I realize this is slightly offtopic, but I often hear words like "militaristic" used to describe the GPL, people reacting by going to BSD licenses and such. But any version of the GPL, even v3, does not take away any rights that you have under copyright law. It only gives you additional rights that you didn't have before (like that "site license").
Now, other things (EULAs) are generally trying to limit your rights under copyright law. I'm fairly sure that the only way this can work is if you were given an opportunity to read and accept/decline the license before money was exchanged. It is also where the whole "Windows Refund" concept came from -- people discovered some language in the Windows EULA which says that you can deny the license, return your copy, and get your money back. At the time, this made a lot of sense -- you couldn't buy a laptop without Windows, and you weren't really given the option to read the license before you brought that laptop home, so at the very least, they should be forced to take the entire laptop back -- at best, they take the copy of Windows back and give you a refund.
Before the DMCA, I believe all of what you just described was acceptable as "fair use".
After the DMCA, it's still alright for actual CDs, but many other things (movies) are copy protected, and it is illegal to break copy protection for any reason.
I don't know if the peak bandwidth is changing with it, but there are now triple-layer HD-DVDs, which are actually slightly larger than Blu-Ray discs.
Assuming there is a correct conclusion.
Anyway, I have yet to see a compelling argument by an atheist who converted. The most compelling was Pascal's Wager, which is not logically sound -- it only works if the only possibilities are Judeo-Christian-God or no Judeo-Christian-God, and does not account for other religions one might believe in if one were to wager.
While it may be more difficult to believe if you're brought up in a religion, and while it couldn't really be backed by science, I can imagine that one could believe everything was just randomly thrown together.
No, I don't think any religious people have problems with Evolution unless they are also a Creationist. Creationism is something which is really not compatible with evolution, or with dinosaur bones, unless you just handwave it off as "God can plant whatever evidence He wants."
Which means I have to choose between the perfect keyboard and the perfect OS (Linux). I want them both, damnit!
(Alright, Linux isn't perfect, but it's closer (for me) than OS X will ever be.)
Why?
Understand, the question is not whether there's some "real world" out there, very much like our own, with a giant supercomputing continent churning away simulating us, and a big giant "Intel Inside" logo on the front of it.
The question is whether we are a simulation. If we were, we'd have absolutely no clue what physical properties the "real world" might have. Thus, we'd have no clue what limitations a "computer" in the Real World might have.
I find that a similar assumption. While we do have time in this universe, it's relativistic, and it's closely related to space. A simulator might well have an infinite amount of time to play with.
Again, why? Why must these laws exist, and if they do exist, why must they apply to any simulator?
Well, that's like Mercury. You cannot predict Mercury's movements from first principles alone... until General Relativity. So you could, you just didn't know how.
So you'd have to prove both that time is quantized and that this could not be defined from first principles.
Besides which: Energy is quantized. Spacetime sort of is (Planck). Matter, too, sort of is (atoms, etc). Why are these less of a case than quantized time?
I'm not sure why "can't be modeled by anything simpler than itself" is an argument against. Certainly a simulator could be more complex -- as much more complex as we like?
But we've sort of ignored the point: Can you currently recite, from memory, every experiment which leads to the conclusions you've drawn? Are you simultaneously aware of all your interpretation and extrapolation to get from that point to those conclusions?
Imagine, for a moment, that your memory might be altered at any point along this process -- from when the experiments happen (whether you do them yourself or not) to when you say "Therefore, the Universe is not simulated!"
Your argument, you see, really only holds true if you assume your own sanity, and that requires assuming your brain is somehow exempt from the simulation. So if I do accept all your arguments (and I'm not really in a position to evaluate them properly -- I don't know enough physics, and I'm sleep-deprived)... I think all you can really prove is that you're not a sane brain in a jar -- in other words, that The Matrix is not literally true, and thus, that the machine doing the simulation must exist in a much weirder reality than we do.
Based on my experience with kids, you'd be surprised. (Although that may be true with the way the current American education system is.)
Would you prefer I call it a "special key", or a "function key" or something?
It is a "show the source" button. Every app on the machine comes with source code, so why wouldn't this work?
The Trinity Test was in 1945. They had more powerful computers than the OLPC in 1945??
Now I know you're trolling. A large part of the value of the XO is in its software, but of all the possible distros to replace it with, I think Gentoo is the worst choice.
You are missing the point: NO WIFI. Do you get it now?
There is not some Linksys router sitting in the middle of the fucking desert just waiting for an Afghan kid to walk by with a laptop.
Considering it didn't exist then, and still isn't common now (even in your cell phone), you're being unreasonably cynical.
It will, and it is.
Actually, I've been to Peru. Many of them have, and many of them have not. The most expensive piece of equipment I saw in the Lareys valley was a boom box.
But fine, let's be pedantic: First computer anyone in that village has ever owned, or had exclusive access to for more than an hour or so at a time.
So, where does the basic radio tower come from? Where does it get its power? How does it patch in to a first-world network, if there is one anywhere close by?
Let's see... I'll just tell the class to phone Wikipedia, and... Oh, what's that? Wikipedia is a website, full of text? Who'd have guessed?
And between a "powerful" phone with a tiny screen, glare issues, and a dead battery, and this "toy", I wonder which will be more useful for reading (and editing) webpages? Nevermind that it does pictures and video (not sure about voice).
Yes there is, it's just not actually part of the laptop anymore.
Partly because if you shrink it, you miss the point.
Let's see... Do I take your word on that? Or a Peruvian kid's?
-1 Flamebait. When have they ever built a computer?
"in the market" was a figure of speech. The question is one of viability of a particular area, even assuming you can get this thing wholly funded from elsewhere. (And they are giving away ClassmatePCs.)
I am talking about a specific geographic area being viable. You know, "Hey, this town here seems to have a lot of bright young kids, and their parents are all for it, we've got teachers on board to train to use computers..."
Irrelevant in light of those two points: That Classmate may be given away, and that I'm talking about a specific geographic area (or country, etc).
Again, missing the point. Missing it by this much means I must not have been clear; I'll have to go read my original post.
They have it available already, don't they? And if they don't, who's to say that scenario won't work once both products are viable?
I knew about the more money/flash/RAM angle, but let me check...
No, you're right. Can't find a link to Microsoft, other than various other completely unverified stories, like Microsoft offering to "upgrade" some country to the Windows version of the Classmate. But I'm not sure I could find the comment that suggested that, even, so I was completely wrong on that.
Apparently, Peru did go OLPC, at least in part. There were some very heartwarming stories about remote Peruvian villages, in which kids have had the laptops for six months now.
Am I missing something, though? Did they do some tiny pilot OLPC project, and then switch to ClassmatePC?