I have to agree with you and expand a little. I don't think the PC will compete as it is at all, because the console gaming systems are so trimmed down just to what they're for. A console gaming system would suck for doing photoshop or website editing, or music or video editing (EyeCreate doesn't allow editing, no flames please).
Although they're both computing hardware, the PC doesn't compete with gaming consoles any more than it competes with DVD players or telephones. Sure, you can use your PC to watch DVDs and many people do, and you can use it to listen to music, and many do, and you can even use it to make phone calls, and many do, so why do people still buy $30 DVD players, $100 MP3 players and $5-500 cell phones regularly? Because they do their own jobs so well, and often much more efficiently by design.
I have a blog entry I wrote today about this subject as well if you're interested.
The only people who had it easier migrating to HD-DVD were the production houses stamping out discs. Dual-format HD-DVDs were available, but dual-format BD discs were also demonstrated (and there's no point to making either, I might add, as has been discussed elsewhere), so that's FUD.
BD has no trouble -- so trouble free is FUD.
At 48Mbit/s vs 30Mbit/s, there's a substantial difference in transfer rates, and I've seen movies with bitrates that hit 30Mbit/s myself. See this forum posting if you don't believe me. 40Mbit/s is the maximum video transfer rate for Blu-Ray Discs and with several movies on that list hitting 30Mbit/s for video alone, using AVC no less, that leaves no room for audio on an HD-DVD transfer. Also FUD.
With the BD-J Java implementation, Blu-Ray movies actually have the capacity for much more involved and powerful menu systems and interactive segments or games.
Oh and your best piece of sophistry yet was the ending, "Let's hope uploads will provide us with the promise of HD, because Blu-ray sure as hell will not" after claiming the quality between the two formats was equal. Blu-ray delivers just fine, and you admitted as much.
The only REAL advantage HD-DVD ever had was having the features from BD Profile 2 available from day 1. And since the vast majority of movie watchers don't have either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray in their homes yet, the early adopter Profile 1.0 woes don't actually affect that many people (and won't affect PS3 owners).
The issue isn't the capacity to think the way he does (although I would argue many people do not in fact have this capacity at all), but the will to do it, and the speed with which they do it. A security consultant who figures out why the camera system directly attached to the Internet with no password on an open port is a bad idea is only a useful one if they figure it out BEFORE it is connected to the Internet (or at least before its exploited).
Seeing the potential problems before the vast majority of others does is a gift, much like being able to take a good photograph. Sure, anyone can snap a photo. Now go try to sell your shots to National Geographic and tell me how it goes.
Aside from when they were implemented, most of those features also exist on BD.
For the record BD has two MOVIE related feature advantages over HD-DVD -- space and bandwidth. Disc transfer data rate is higher on BD, which allows for more complex scenes encoded at higher bitrates. That's not a minor difference.
No conspiracy required -- its called supply and demand. Demand has gone up now that the format war is over and supply hasn't caught up yet. By the time Christmas rolls around again there will probably be plenty of supply to drop prices very low now that manufacturers can almost guarantee themselves sales.
But no, everyone must do military service. That doesn't mean everyone over 16 is military anymore than it would mean the same thing in any other country with mandatory military service.
And even if you believe that to be true anyway, how about the under 16's getting killed by random rocket fire? You got a justification for that one? How about the persons who couldn't join the military because of disqualifications like maladies, vision problems, etc.? "Kill them all, let God sort it out"??
You missed the part where Britain promised the same land to both sides for assistance in the war and when both sides helped, they were stuck splitting the land between them, an agreement the Israelis signed under duress and the Palestinians did not. Legally speaking, Israel is the only one to have rights to the land, and that's frequently where they come from. That said, and read before you reply, the UK should never have drafted that agreement in the first place.
What I don't understand is why all these peaceniks want everyone to stop being mad over an injustice done to both parties by a 3rd party. Why should they? They were wronged, it would be nice if they tried to work together, but I see no legal imperative for them to do so. Historically, might has made right, that's why the lines are drawn on your map the way they are. Go look up a pre-WWII map sometime. Now find some 19th century ones. Why do you think the countries currently at war are fighting? It makes a lot of sense when you take colonialism into account.
I hate to break it to you, but science has probably killed just as many people in history as ignorance has. Good science or bad science, the same is true of religion, personal beliefs and a whole gamut of other ideological systems.
Playing the 'my belief system is more righteous than yours' card is just ignorance when you don't bother first admitting the historical and present faults of your own.
In case you need examples, parents not wanting to immunize their children may simply be aware that drug companies and doctors also claimed it was perfectly safe to give their children anti-depressants which it turned out were leading to suicide, a fact which drug company internal studies had already borne out, but which was hidden from the public.
How is someone then to decide which science they see around them is good or bad without simply making value judgments of their own? Would perfect science and logic be good? Perhaps you'd like to consider the plot of "I, Robot" again -- it might be considered scientifically logical by many to kill off the vast majority of civilization on the planet.
I'm not defending any of the above, but yours and other responses show a distinct lack of introspection I find disturbing in the scientific community.
Some games are really cruel and auto-aim to the body unless you personally aim directly at the head (in which case it snaps off the body for the headshot), like Drake's Fortune.
In a story-based game without an online component, I don't mind a little auto-aim as a preference, I just said its not necessary for a good FPS console game.
Most of the games include it IMHO because people who play console games suck at aiming with the sticks, not because its needed. Its not like PC gamers never use auto-aim bots (lol).
Yes indeed, look at climate change. I personally see it the other way around -- as soon as a few scientists came up with a doom and gloom story about the world ending any day because humanity is ruining it like so many great movies, they got flocks of followers and all detractors are burned at the stake.
What I find just as disturbing is how people who claim to be scientific feel so personally harmed, offended or scared by persons of alternate beliefs. Thinking someone is stupid is fine (although rude), but disregarding them as a human being is just ignorant.
I'm pretty open in my thinking and yet quite knowledgeable in some areas. If someone starts talking to me about how gremlins ate their cat, I'm going to think they're funny or nutty. If someone tells me that 480p looks better than 1080i, I'm going to tell them they're an idiot. If someone believes we might live inside something portrayed in the Matrix, they're free to do so, I can't prove them wrong, nor does it matter.
Why take personal offense to others disagreeing or thinking differently? Why be so bigoted? I'm no peacenik but I can't say I understand this need some people have to convert everyone to the "way of logic" (Spock much?).
Personally I have a harder time understanding you PC bigots. Of course, I should understand because I used to be one. Playing FPS games on the PS3 is completely different from when I tried (and failed) to do so on the PS2. Why? Sony increased the resolution of the sticks to have much higher sensitivity and with the HD output, I can get comparable-to-PC resolutions making good shooting possible again. Is aiming the same? No. Is auto-aim necessary? No. Can you still get headshots? Yes, and I often do.
Resistance: Fall of Man on the PS3 is a great example at 720p, Warhawk (a 3rd person shooter) is a very fun example at 1080p (but has auto-aim by default). In fact in some cases the ability to aim rapidly in traditional FPS style is completely taken away like in the Resident Evil series where you have to stand still to shoot and have a limited aim speed when doing so just to add to the horror.
As for relating to this article, Unreal plays very well on a PS3 (can't say I've tried on a 360, so I'm not comparing) and although many two-joystick users suck at aiming, that doesn't make it impossible nor unacceptable. Its just a new skill to acquire and IMHO the only downfall is in needing another finger for weapon switching (which Resistance: Fall of Man assigns to R2 so you don't have to take your thumbs off the sticks).
In the future, feel free to stick up for your platform's superiority, but the FUD smells bad.
You're forgetting the disturbing Western trend that the accused are guilty of crimes before a trial even happens.
TV shows like Law and Order state in their introduction voice-over that the DAs "prosecute offenders" not suspects.
Police on shows like Cops routinely justify their overzealous use of power with no regard for citizens' rights (including questioning without Mirandizing them).
People should be ashamed that they've turned on each other and decided they can be judge and jury based on facts heard third and fourth party through the Internet.
Let someone have their day in court then feel free to judge based on the facts.
It may very well be, but Ctrl+Alt+N is even faster (which I mapped to notepad years ago). Ditto for Ctrl+Alt+E for explorer and Ctrl+Alt+F for finding files. Ctrl+Alt+L is also great for locking the screen, and I know I use Ctrl+Shift+M for creating a new Message frequently. Alt-Tab cycles through open apps much faster than voice and none of the above annoy your neighbours.
Now, if you spend a high percentage of your computer time alone, then that last point may not be relevant but I really don't want to listen to more than the keys clicking from my coworkers, nor do I need my music confusing the microphone, and I tend to be using my computer while talking on the phone to clients and suppliers regularly in which cases swapping between client and computer on my mic would annoying and possibly very very bad.
That's not even touching the Dilbert joke "DELETE ALL FILES NOW... CONFIRM! lmao."
Voice activated computing has its places, but I have a higher hope for eye-twitch monitoring (the computer being aware of where you're looking on your screen) than voice activation or the above reasons.
Of course you can. The amount of FUD surrounding Blu-Ray is phenomenal. The BD players I know of play DVDs, encrypted or otherwise, BD movies, encrypted or otherwise and even some other file types in some cases.
My Playstation 3 quite happily plays high definition content over my network using its DLNA (UPnP) functionality which for all it knows could be ripped HD-DVD discs.
Speaking of FUD and Sony, the PS3 quite happily rips CDs to its hard drive and then lets you copy them off to memory sticks, etc. if you want. They've also demonstrated a feature whereby a BD movie can be ripped to be played on your PSP on the go (although not without DRM of some kind obviously).
I hate responding to trolls... and that's exactly what you are, but learn some grammar. That 2% rate is the nearly impossible _perfect_ usage scenario and has no basis in real-life usage. The _average_ usage stats are the ones I quoted. In case you can't do the math, aids contraction rate measured in person years was only 7x lower with condom usage. That's not exactly impressive.
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I run E17 when I'm not in Gnome on my high-horsepower machine, and Blackbox on my system-monitoring lots-of-SSH-windows machine.
With E17 I run a Gnome Panel (yes, a sin) and use the mini-commander applet therein.
An Epplet that had the same functionality would probably be simple to write now that I think about it.
I have to agree with you and expand a little. I don't think the PC will compete as it is at all, because the console gaming systems are so trimmed down just to what they're for. A console gaming system would suck for doing photoshop or website editing, or music or video editing (EyeCreate doesn't allow editing, no flames please).
Although they're both computing hardware, the PC doesn't compete with gaming consoles any more than it competes with DVD players or telephones. Sure, you can use your PC to watch DVDs and many people do, and you can use it to listen to music, and many do, and you can even use it to make phone calls, and many do, so why do people still buy $30 DVD players, $100 MP3 players and $5-500 cell phones regularly? Because they do their own jobs so well, and often much more efficiently by design.
I have a blog entry I wrote today about this subject as well if you're interested.
Wake me up when JavaScript isn't taking the same bad trip down bloat ware lane that VisualBasic did back in the day.
Okay, I seriously call you on FUD now.
The only people who had it easier migrating to HD-DVD were the production houses stamping out discs. Dual-format HD-DVDs were available, but dual-format BD discs were also demonstrated (and there's no point to making either, I might add, as has been discussed elsewhere), so that's FUD.
BD has no trouble -- so trouble free is FUD.
At 48Mbit/s vs 30Mbit/s, there's a substantial difference in transfer rates, and I've seen movies with bitrates that hit 30Mbit/s myself. See this forum posting if you don't believe me. 40Mbit/s is the maximum video transfer rate for Blu-Ray Discs and with several movies on that list hitting 30Mbit/s for video alone, using AVC no less, that leaves no room for audio on an HD-DVD transfer. Also FUD.
With the BD-J Java implementation, Blu-Ray movies actually have the capacity for much more involved and powerful menu systems and interactive segments or games.
Oh and your best piece of sophistry yet was the ending, "Let's hope uploads will provide us with the promise of HD, because Blu-ray sure as hell will not" after claiming the quality between the two formats was equal. Blu-ray delivers just fine, and you admitted as much.
The only REAL advantage HD-DVD ever had was having the features from BD Profile 2 available from day 1. And since the vast majority of movie watchers don't have either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray in their homes yet, the early adopter Profile 1.0 woes don't actually affect that many people (and won't affect PS3 owners).
I keep fluttering between Blackbox for rapid-response older desktops and Enlightenment for sheer beauty.
Every now and then I wish for better Nautilus integration in either, or even better, something better than Nautilus.
(Yes, feel free to make suggestions).
The issue isn't the capacity to think the way he does (although I would argue many people do not in fact have this capacity at all), but the will to do it, and the speed with which they do it. A security consultant who figures out why the camera system directly attached to the Internet with no password on an open port is a bad idea is only a useful one if they figure it out BEFORE it is connected to the Internet (or at least before its exploited).
Seeing the potential problems before the vast majority of others does is a gift, much like being able to take a good photograph. Sure, anyone can snap a photo. Now go try to sell your shots to National Geographic and tell me how it goes.
Get back to me when you've written a better book, made a more well-circulated mailing list, and have more or better security insights than he does.
Until then, he really does get the genius points.
Aside from when they were implemented, most of those features also exist on BD.
For the record BD has two MOVIE related feature advantages over HD-DVD -- space and bandwidth. Disc transfer data rate is higher on BD, which allows for more complex scenes encoded at higher bitrates. That's not a minor difference.
No conspiracy required -- its called supply and demand. Demand has gone up now that the format war is over and supply hasn't caught up yet. By the time Christmas rolls around again there will probably be plenty of supply to drop prices very low now that manufacturers can almost guarantee themselves sales.
I'd be watching out for that knock on the door any day now.
Civilians are NEVER a legitimate target to a moral person. An acceptable casualty of war in some cases, but never a target.
Thought puzzle:
Who drew the border lines?
Were they mighty?
Were they the ones at war, or the ones with the power?
Next question.
Sorry everyone for feeding the troll ...
But no, everyone must do military service. That doesn't mean everyone over 16 is military anymore than it would mean the same thing in any other country with mandatory military service.
And even if you believe that to be true anyway, how about the under 16's getting killed by random rocket fire? You got a justification for that one? How about the persons who couldn't join the military because of disqualifications like maladies, vision problems, etc.? "Kill them all, let God sort it out"??
You missed the part where Britain promised the same land to both sides for assistance in the war and when both sides helped, they were stuck splitting the land between them, an agreement the Israelis signed under duress and the Palestinians did not. Legally speaking, Israel is the only one to have rights to the land, and that's frequently where they come from. That said, and read before you reply, the UK should never have drafted that agreement in the first place.
What I don't understand is why all these peaceniks want everyone to stop being mad over an injustice done to both parties by a 3rd party. Why should they? They were wronged, it would be nice if they tried to work together, but I see no legal imperative for them to do so. Historically, might has made right, that's why the lines are drawn on your map the way they are. Go look up a pre-WWII map sometime. Now find some 19th century ones. Why do you think the countries currently at war are fighting? It makes a lot of sense when you take colonialism into account.
I hate to break it to you, but science has probably killed just as many people in history as ignorance has. Good science or bad science, the same is true of religion, personal beliefs and a whole gamut of other ideological systems.
Playing the 'my belief system is more righteous than yours' card is just ignorance when you don't bother first admitting the historical and present faults of your own.
In case you need examples, parents not wanting to immunize their children may simply be aware that drug companies and doctors also claimed it was perfectly safe to give their children anti-depressants which it turned out were leading to suicide, a fact which drug company internal studies had already borne out, but which was hidden from the public.
How is someone then to decide which science they see around them is good or bad without simply making value judgments of their own? Would perfect science and logic be good? Perhaps you'd like to consider the plot of "I, Robot" again -- it might be considered scientifically logical by many to kill off the vast majority of civilization on the planet.
I'm not defending any of the above, but yours and other responses show a distinct lack of introspection I find disturbing in the scientific community.
There are a lot of people in the world who believe that unarmed Israeli civilians somehow deserve to be shelled.
Those same people frequently believe that armed rebel terrorists firing the rockets at them do not deserve to be shot back at by the Israeli military.
I don't understand it myself, but I'll tell you when I do.
The Motorola Razr commercials are likely to get those phones banned next ;-)
Some games are really cruel and auto-aim to the body unless you personally aim directly at the head (in which case it snaps off the body for the headshot), like Drake's Fortune.
In a story-based game without an online component, I don't mind a little auto-aim as a preference, I just said its not necessary for a good FPS console game.
Most of the games include it IMHO because people who play console games suck at aiming with the sticks, not because its needed. Its not like PC gamers never use auto-aim bots (lol).
Yes indeed, look at climate change. I personally see it the other way around -- as soon as a few scientists came up with a doom and gloom story about the world ending any day because humanity is ruining it like so many great movies, they got flocks of followers and all detractors are burned at the stake.
What I find just as disturbing is how people who claim to be scientific feel so personally harmed, offended or scared by persons of alternate beliefs. Thinking someone is stupid is fine (although rude), but disregarding them as a human being is just ignorant.
I'm pretty open in my thinking and yet quite knowledgeable in some areas. If someone starts talking to me about how gremlins ate their cat, I'm going to think they're funny or nutty. If someone tells me that 480p looks better than 1080i, I'm going to tell them they're an idiot. If someone believes we might live inside something portrayed in the Matrix, they're free to do so, I can't prove them wrong, nor does it matter.
Why take personal offense to others disagreeing or thinking differently? Why be so bigoted? I'm no peacenik but I can't say I understand this need some people have to convert everyone to the "way of logic" (Spock much?).
Personally I have a harder time understanding you PC bigots. Of course, I should understand because I used to be one. Playing FPS games on the PS3 is completely different from when I tried (and failed) to do so on the PS2. Why? Sony increased the resolution of the sticks to have much higher sensitivity and with the HD output, I can get comparable-to-PC resolutions making good shooting possible again. Is aiming the same? No. Is auto-aim necessary? No. Can you still get headshots? Yes, and I often do.
Resistance: Fall of Man on the PS3 is a great example at 720p, Warhawk (a 3rd person shooter) is a very fun example at 1080p (but has auto-aim by default). In fact in some cases the ability to aim rapidly in traditional FPS style is completely taken away like in the Resident Evil series where you have to stand still to shoot and have a limited aim speed when doing so just to add to the horror.
As for relating to this article, Unreal plays very well on a PS3 (can't say I've tried on a 360, so I'm not comparing) and although many two-joystick users suck at aiming, that doesn't make it impossible nor unacceptable. Its just a new skill to acquire and IMHO the only downfall is in needing another finger for weapon switching (which Resistance: Fall of Man assigns to R2 so you don't have to take your thumbs off the sticks).
In the future, feel free to stick up for your platform's superiority, but the FUD smells bad.
You're forgetting the disturbing Western trend that the accused are guilty of crimes before a trial even happens.
TV shows like Law and Order state in their introduction voice-over that the DAs "prosecute offenders" not suspects.
Police on shows like Cops routinely justify their overzealous use of power with no regard for citizens' rights (including questioning without Mirandizing them).
People should be ashamed that they've turned on each other and decided they can be judge and jury based on facts heard third and fourth party through the Internet.
Let someone have their day in court then feel free to judge based on the facts.
It may very well be, but Ctrl+Alt+N is even faster (which I mapped to notepad years ago). Ditto for Ctrl+Alt+E for explorer and Ctrl+Alt+F for finding files. Ctrl+Alt+L is also great for locking the screen, and I know I use Ctrl+Shift+M for creating a new Message frequently. Alt-Tab cycles through open apps much faster than voice and none of the above annoy your neighbours.
... CONFIRM! lmao."
Now, if you spend a high percentage of your computer time alone, then that last point may not be relevant but I really don't want to listen to more than the keys clicking from my coworkers, nor do I need my music confusing the microphone, and I tend to be using my computer while talking on the phone to clients and suppliers regularly in which cases swapping between client and computer on my mic would annoying and possibly very very bad.
That's not even touching the Dilbert joke "DELETE ALL FILES NOW
Voice activated computing has its places, but I have a higher hope for eye-twitch monitoring (the computer being aware of where you're looking on your screen) than voice activation or the above reasons.
Of course you can. The amount of FUD surrounding Blu-Ray is phenomenal. The BD players I know of play DVDs, encrypted or otherwise, BD movies, encrypted or otherwise and even some other file types in some cases.
My Playstation 3 quite happily plays high definition content over my network using its DLNA (UPnP) functionality which for all it knows could be ripped HD-DVD discs.
Speaking of FUD and Sony, the PS3 quite happily rips CDs to its hard drive and then lets you copy them off to memory sticks, etc. if you want. They've also demonstrated a feature whereby a BD movie can be ripped to be played on your PSP on the go (although not without DRM of some kind obviously).
See also Sony vs. Microsoft round 1.
I hate responding to trolls ... and that's exactly what you are, but learn some grammar. That 2% rate is the nearly impossible _perfect_ usage scenario and has no basis in real-life usage. The _average_ usage stats are the ones I quoted. In case you can't do the math, aids contraction rate measured in person years was only 7x lower with condom usage. That's not exactly impressive.
Thanks for the summary -- that was much quicker to read than the original article (which I gave up on after the second page of verbosity).
I use LUKS on my USB drives on my Linux boxes, and I understand there's a way to use it from Windows as well although I haven't tried yet.