I agree it is crazy optimistic to expect parity this year. 2 or 3 years would be my estimate. But the FUD is a little out of proportion.
Media price FUD:
Everyone moans about the price of disks. Buy at Amazon. Disks are already average about $4 more than DVD and they have sales all the time.
Right now Amazon is having buy 2 get one free, bringing the average close to around $17. Anyone paying $30 for a BD is an idiot.
Player price FUD:
$400 seems to be everyones entry level price (with sales hitting close to $300). I paid $400+ for just about every first player I got (DVD/CD/VHS Hi-Fi) and those were dollars worth a lot more than todays. $300 to $400 is nothing I will think twice over. Prices are falling just as fast as they did for DVD. Sure BD won't take over the market till they hit $100 (the price where I bought for my mother/grandmother), but $300 would not be a big deal to anyone who just spent $1000+ on a 1080p screen and would like some HD for it.
Profile FUD:
Please can we stop the nonsense about profile 1.0 players, not playing new disks. 1.0 was the initial profile (aka grace period profile) It plays all movies, all standard extras, anything DVD would do. 1.1 is the last mandatory profile (aka final standard profile) adds capability for Picture in Picture extras (Yipee). 2.0 is optional and adds BD live crap. Ability to connect to the internet to download garbage (trailer games etc..)
They all play all movies and all standard extras. The new ones just add dubious junk like PIP and internet.
Upscaling FUD:
I laugh almost every time I read someone saying upscaling is good enough. Like upscaling somehow makes new detail or something. No matter what you do, you will get an upscaled image on a higher resolution screen. Aside from broken deinterlacing, upscaling is trivial and does not match up with true HD in any way.
Download FUD:
This one is even funnier. Downloads will kill DVD long before it dents Blu Ray. Quality/bandwidth/restrictions/ etc will all keep this much further out of the mainstream than Blu Ray.
I agree Parity is a couple of years off, but more from inertia, than the typical FUD.
90%+ LCD monitors are TN screens like the low end iMacs. They all claim 16+Million colors. The Panel itself is a LG.Philips LM201WE3(teardowns online). The manufacture web says it is 16.7million colors with FRC.
This would only affect the clueless. It was widely complained about that apple switched to TN panel on the 20" as soon as the Aluminum iMacs came out. It is not a hidden fact, you can tell by the viewing angle specs.
Apple will probably fight this one, because there is a chance the laptops did not have FRC dithering (many laptop screens don't) and thus did not have millions of colors, OTOH the FRC dithering panels are classed as having millions of colors industry wide, and the viewing angles were quoted to industry standards in the spec that would make it clear to anyone who knew or cared about display or even asked anyone for advice that these were TN panels.
In fact you would have to be living under a rock to not know, but that won't stop some people for trying for a small cash grab and lawyers from trying for a big one.
This programs seems to have wrecked my VPN tunnel to work. I don't know how to prove it, but now at night, starting a month ago, my VPN, repeatedly drops. I can no longer trust reliability when I need it most. But when I try it early the next morning it works fine.
I am also with a third party ISP and they pay $20/month per customer, just to have that customers traffic delivered to their connection hub, where they then supply the interenet bandwidth.
Bell is interfering with customer traffic before it even has a chance to connect to the internet.
Unless you're doing pro or semi-pro audio work, an Intel chipset with on-board HDA audio will be more than fine for what you want to do.
A sound card is a waste of money for most people these days unless you have special requirement.
I have been using MB digital outputs to Denon receiver for about 5 years now (since my first Nforce MB). I will never buy another sound card. Pointless waste of money.
I see no sense at all buy an expensive sound card and expensive computer speakers to go with it. Stick with MB sounds and buy a receiver and real speakers for about the same price.
If you really want to cheap out, buy some inexpensive speakers and hook them up to the MB analog outs. It is not that bad for the price.
For over a month I have been wondering what has happened to my Contivity VPN Tunnel to work, it repeatedly fails to setup, drops connections within minutes of setting up right when I need it most (early evening after work). Yet early each morning when I get up, it is working perfectly. It was working perfectly for months previously at all hours.
I left Bell Sympatico DSL long ago due to poor service and I am with a 3rd party DSL provider. It never occurred to me that Bell would be throttling my traffic at a 3rd party ISP.
Bell might get some sympathy by claiming they are only hampering those nasty file sharing bandwidth hogs, but it appears to me they are messing up just about everything. My connection to work is now completely unreliable.
I believe the only recourse I now have to offer my complaint to Bell is to Cancel/downgrade any remaining Bell service I have(Phone, Sat TV, Cellular), and tell the call center drone to record my reason why they are losing the revenue.
Is there anyway I can prove my VPN work connection is being interfered with by Bell??
For the most part a game machine doesn't need Blu Ray, but I think Microsoft will have Blu Ray drive (within 12 months) to cover the check boxes in their marketing drive against Sony.
Without the Blu Ray drive option, they give up a perceived advantage, that they previously covered with the HD-DVD drive.
Microsoft can have it both ways. Most users won't buy the add on, and MS will get to continue with their downloading service as the choice for the future of viewing.
But to shut down the argument, they will have a drive and they will say again that it is an option which means that unlike sony they aren't forcing it on you.
The more Blu Ray takes off as a format, the bigger this perceived lack will be noted. It is in Microsofts interest to put the BD driver out there ASAP, to end this line of discussion before it really gets off the ground. The drive isn't to make money from, or even to cover a real need. It covers what may be perceived as an increasingly important checkbox.
I consider this a marketing expense and nothing more. I will be surprised if Microsoft doesn't spend the money on this.
On most tech forums there are vastly greater numbers of Apple bashers, that are far more annoying than the Apple fanatics who are relatively rare. Even the staff at some forums get their jollies bashing Apple.
Here is typical of a forum I was reading just today: "What the numbers do if anything are further inflate the already over inflated egos of the typical MAC worshiping effete snob zealots."
Prior to this post it was only mainly minor diggs at Apple/users in general, not one person had said anything pro-mac it was largely an Apple Bash fest started by the sites staff (Site starts with [H]). I see ten times as much of this PC owner hatred of Apple/Macs/Mac owners than I do of any kind of mac zealotry. The PC zealots also seem a lot more mean spirited.
I don't own a single Apple product, but I might buy one someday. I don't think I will turn into some kind of Maniac on that day. I have worked with about 7 flavors of UNIX over the years and I have Unbuntu installed at home right now along with WinXP. I like the idea of a well packaged and supported UNIX for the home, so OSX sounds alright with me. Neither worthy of zealous adoration nor zealous denigration.
Other than that I have seen fanatics of every stripe since getting on the net. The first flame fests I remember were between users of Gravis Ultrasound and Creative sound cards. Or lately the big one was HD DVD vs Blu Ray which was quite silly since the formats delivered essentially the same results. In the end this is wasted time and hot air.
It might just be my perception, but it is seems the net is becoming more and more the host of unreasoned thinking. It seems to be supporting conspiracy theory based thinking. Vast number of people believe wacko things that are reinforced by finding like minded wackos online. Things like the CIA being responsible for bringing down the twin towers on 9/11.
I find/. one of the semi-sane message boards left, where I occasionally learn something.
It jumped the shark for me when they did the flash forward and Apollo donned the fat suit, Admiral Adama and Starbuck grew some extra hair, then in one or two episodes and 5 minutes on a treadmill and everyone was back to their normal appearance. It wasn't just the appearances, it just felt too contrived, too many characters behaved out of character to make that flash forward work. Tack on a bunch of really lame pointless standalone eps (boxing anyone?). Plus characters doing extraordinarily lame(traitorous) things without consequence (Helo sabotaging the bio weapon).
Zero to do with religion. As others have pointed out, religion was heavy from day one and IMO is a draw for those of us that like unfolding mythology.
In the first two seasons of BSG I told everyone it was the best show on TV. I don't even talk about it anymore. Hope it ends with ideas unlike waste of time that was season 3.
This is largely rumor and speculation, so none of these "details" reflect anything concrete, not to mention it is not even clear that this is any different that any other subscription model.
First paragraph FTA: "or it could come as a monthly charge. " Which is like every other lame pay to play your music model.
Also it doesn't matter what Apple wants,the industry is not going to let you fill your 60GB ipod for a one time fee of $20.
When the dust settles Apple might run of those subscriptions models, but that has already been rumored for quite some time and who cares anyway.
I looked at the graph, it looks like a whole lot of nothing. Minor retail fluctuations with a blip up after the holidays. I would expect that of most products.
I thought I would check one of the high marks they are using as Evidence:
I looked at the Sharp BDHP20U listed as having jumped to $440. I checked amazon where it is show a LIST PRICE of $399 and selling price of $350. Only $90 different? Maybe Amazon is an outlier? Dell $329, Every retailer I have heard of was under $400.
The only number higher were listing of something called "storefront"? with a price of $100 more than list??
Anyway even if the graph was correct, it looks like a whole lot of nothing, but to top it, the data itself seems suspect. Have a look for yourself.
Bottom line nothing to see here. Just another attempt to stir up the dead war for TG page hits.
It could simply be that most hard driving type A folks destined for heart attacks, have less interest in Cats. Giving them a Cat wouldn't lower their actual risk.
Cat ownership may have nothing to do with it. It just may be that calm easy going folks buy more cats, and hard drivers don't. In the absence of the cats their rate of heart attack may be unchanged, you would just need another mechanism to identify them.
I really agree with Tim here. This was the perfect opportunity to transition to 64bit. Most compatibility issues with Vista are Vista related, not 64 bit related. This would have given us more access to memory beyond 2GB and accelerated 64bit application development and might have even given me a reason to go with Vista. If you are breaking a lot of drivers and programs anyway, why not got 64bit at the same time and gain some benefit in the process. Heck Apple managed to swap to a whole new CPU architecture with minimal pain. You need to have stones to move forward.
But by giving everyone a choice again and all the OEMs pushing 32bit, there is practically no movement to 64bit and practically no new capabilities exercised, no 64 bit games. etc..
Another thing is MS should have upped the minimum HW requirements for Vista. 64bit processor 1Gig memory and graphics capable of at least running the interface. That is how bad Intel Integrated is. It can't even run Vistas bloated interface (hence lawsuit). No surprise it can't run games.
There should be some kind of game certification as well and the bar needs to be high enough that Intel Integrated fails even the minimum standard.
It needs to be made absolutely clear than standard integrated graphics are incapable of running games.
I don't think analogies apply here, this is nothing like Lindburg, this is so far beyond that.
Even without resupply and a likely limited lifespan (say two years) I would do it.
Face it, most of us will lead mundane 9 to 5 insignificant lives and will likely die a forgotten death lingering in a hospital bed. Why wouldn't you trade that for a chance to blaze a completely new trail for humanity, to truly go, where no one has gone before.
I am sure there are a lot of scientist who trade the rest of their life for 2 years studying Mars in person.
Besides that, he is talking about sending company, resupply etc.
On top of that, this would be a volunteer mission. I don't quite get the nervous nellies who have a problem with someone else making this choice. It might not be for them, but they should at least be able to realize that for some this is an inspirational idea.
I just can't believe the amount hand wringing over this.
Though I think it is immediately clear that this will never be done because of the tender sensibilities of the public. If even the slashdot crowd are getting bent out of shape, the general public would frothing at the mouth.
We seem to be becoming a world of spineless weepy nannies.
As I posted in another comment. This rumor was started by a disgruntled HD-DVD fan Don Lindich. As far as I can tell he is the only source and has since removed all reference to it on his blog. No collaborating information has ever been found. This looks much more like a bitter HD-DVD fan seeing conspiracies instead of reality.
There was complete flat denial by a company officer of Warner (President of home entertainment division). That is the kind of thing that would be criminally actionable if he were lying. Why would he lie. Absolutely everything points to them doing this.
There were several stories before Christmas saying that Warner would likely go Sony based on disk sales leadership.
In many ways the defection doesn't come as a surprise and accomplished exactly what Warner stated as goals, a quick end to the format war and the confusion it brought:
Tsujihara says the studio took no pay-offs to exclusively back Blu-ray. He emphatically denied reports that the studio had received anywhere from $250 to $500 million in exchange for dropping its HD DVD format support in a post-announcement conference call. Warner's only incentive to drop its HD DVD format, according to the exec, was to ensure growth of the "category" and the long-term health of the industry. Now against flat clear denial by the company officer involved in the decision, what shred of evidence is there that these payments happened for just doing the logical thing in their own best interest.
The net has turned into a cesspool of swirling conspiracy theories base on rumor. Find something more than a bitter HD-DVD fan rumor and there might be something to talk about.
Better disk sales for every single week of 2007 might have a little something to do with. Blu Ray was winning in every measurable way before CES/Warner announcement against HD-DVDs legless and armless black knight.
Warner going Blu-ray ended war quickly (what they wanted to accomplish). Warner going HD-DVD would have dragged it out for years (what no one wanted).
It is hard to imagine that they even considered going HD-DVD, if they had the goal of ending the war quickly, it would have taken something less than 1 second to recognize the only choice leading to that outcome.
The Original source is Dan Lindich, he has since edited the story to remove all references to money changing hands. Read some of his blog, he hates Blu-Ray with a passion and has always recommended HD-DVD, still doesn't recommend Blu-ray, even it won the format war, here is his now eidited story: http://www.soundadviceblog.com/?p=758
From Digital bits: "As it happens, I've actually spoken about this today with Fox's senior VP of corporate and marketing communications, Steve Feldstein, who echoed something Warner's Ron Sanders has also said in recent days: "The kind of money they're talking about [in these stories] isn't worth jeopardizing a multi-billion dollar business." In other words, payoffs would not have impacted Fox and Warner's decisions. Feldstein also told me that when The Pittsburgh Post Gazette piece broke, he contacted Lindich immediately to let him know that he was being misled by someone. When Don posted the same piece on his own blog, it was edited to reflect this. Specifically, the references to $120 million and $500 million payoffs were gone - something that's worthy of note." http://www.thedigitalbits.com/mytwocentsa149.html
Basically bitter Fan can't see writing on wall, sees conspiracy instead.
The facts were Blu Ray disks outsold HD-DVD disks for every single week of 2007, by the last weeks of 2007 there were more standalone Blu Ray players sold than HD-DVD players sold, despite HD-DVD being massively cheaper. HD-DVD was toast before Warner announced.
Slashdot, all the quality of Digg, without the quantity.
Some little details that show HD-DVD was aldready dead.
Weeks before the announcement, they did not even capture 50% of the hardware sales. That is with much cheaper players and excluding the PS3.
Look at the hardware at CES, which has nothing to do with Warner announcement, everyone and there dog was building a Blu Ray machine. Toshiba was alone against the industry on their sinking ship.
The Warner announcement is just the final nail in the coffin. The booth shots were hilarious, you could almost hear the crickets in the HD-DVD booth.
Which sites nail bad games? I notice long, long ago that you almost never see a bad car review at any of the big pages. I read "Edmunds" now, they don't seem afraid to say something sucks. Or "The truth about cars", it is rare when they say anything is good.
I saw "A new hope" when I was 12 years old. It was the perfect matching of audience maturity to film making. The wonder/comedy/romance balance was just right for a 12 years old.
When I saw "The empire strikes back", I had grown slightly more adult and so had the series, it was again almost a perfect match.
Then "Return on the Jedi" and I was now a more cynical young adult. The series had not kept pace. Silly antics and cutsey toy ewoks sullied what could have been a brilliant trilogy capper if the original writing/directing team were kept in place, and someone kept George from going backwards.I thought this was bad, but little did I know...
So a combo of me growing up and George aiming younger and lower. The sharked jumped at ROTJ.
The special edition tweaks were lame. Not just Han turning from calculating badass to a typical good two shoes hero, but all the lame overdone insertions of random creatures all over the landscape. Bleh. But this is more of footnote you can ignore.
The new trilogy: Seriously this was garbage by almost any standard. It sold because of mega marketing dollars and because we are suckers for nostalgia. Though I waited for the 1 and 2 to hit video or TV broadcast,because even the previews were painful to watch. I saw 3 in the theater and it was meh.
So ROTJ jumped the shark, but it got mind boggling worse from there.
I don't know what "Modern" ultracaps you are talking about, but I recently looked up a bunch and the energy density is 1/10 that of batteries AT BEST.
So if you want to replace a 1KG laptop battery, you are looking at at least 10KGs of modern ultra capacitors to replace it.
Yes it will be great when they get parity with chemical batteries or even half parity with batteries, but we have been hearing that kind of hype for years, absolutely nothing has been demonstrated anywhere near those levels and it remains hype at this time. Increasingly tiresome hype from my perspective.
I realize they are being used in some applications.
But what they keep promising is parity with chemical batteries, when they are off by over an order of magnitude on the energy storage side.
So that 400 LB battery in a Tesla Roadster becomes a 4000 LB capacitor making the whole thing unworkable.
There are continual hot air claims about energy storage parity but the reality has them lagging behind to the point that they are unworkable for primary energy storage.
Wake me when the reality gets somewhere near the hype.
The best ultra caps are still off by an order of magnitude.
I have been hearing how eestor would have its ultra caps in cars in 2006, then 2007, and I can only assume 2008 now. Not only are they not in cars, they haven't demoed as much as a since cell. Yeah I know it is not just eestor, but I am getting tired of empty hype.
I love hearing about technology, but at some point, they get to the "put up or shut up" point. That point has past for me.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree it is crazy optimistic to expect parity this year. 2 or 3 years would be my estimate. But the FUD is a little out of proportion.
Media price FUD:
Everyone moans about the price of disks. Buy at Amazon. Disks are already average about $4 more than DVD and they have sales all the time.
Right now Amazon is having buy 2 get one free, bringing the average close to around $17. Anyone paying $30 for a BD is an idiot.
Player price FUD:
$400 seems to be everyones entry level price (with sales hitting close to $300). I paid $400+ for just about every first player I got (DVD/CD/VHS Hi-Fi) and those were dollars worth a lot more than todays. $300 to $400 is nothing I will think twice over. Prices are falling just as fast as they did for DVD. Sure BD won't take over the market till they hit $100 (the price where I bought for my mother/grandmother), but $300 would not be a big deal to anyone who just spent $1000+ on a 1080p screen and would like some HD for it.
Profile FUD:
Please can we stop the nonsense about profile 1.0 players, not playing new disks.
1.0 was the initial profile (aka grace period profile) It plays all movies, all standard extras, anything DVD would do.
1.1 is the last mandatory profile (aka final standard profile) adds capability for Picture in Picture extras (Yipee).
2.0 is optional and adds BD live crap. Ability to connect to the internet to download garbage (trailer games etc..)
They all play all movies and all standard extras. The new ones just add dubious junk like PIP and internet.
Upscaling FUD:
I laugh almost every time I read someone saying upscaling is good enough. Like upscaling somehow makes new detail or something. No matter what you do, you will get an upscaled image on a higher resolution screen. Aside from broken deinterlacing, upscaling is trivial and does not match up with true HD in any way.
Download FUD:
This one is even funnier. Downloads will kill DVD long before it dents Blu Ray. Quality/bandwidth/restrictions/ etc will all keep this much further out of the mainstream than Blu Ray.
I agree Parity is a couple of years off, but more from inertia, than the typical FUD.
90%+ LCD monitors are TN screens like the low end iMacs. They all claim 16+Million colors. The Panel itself is a LG.Philips LM201WE3(teardowns online). The manufacture web says it is 16.7million colors with FRC.
This would only affect the clueless. It was widely complained about that apple switched to TN panel on the 20" as soon as the Aluminum iMacs came out. It is not a hidden fact, you can tell by the viewing angle specs.
Apple will probably fight this one, because there is a chance the laptops did not have FRC dithering (many laptop screens don't) and thus did not have millions of colors, OTOH the FRC dithering panels are classed as having millions of colors industry wide, and the viewing angles were quoted to industry standards in the spec that would make it clear to anyone who knew or cared about display or even asked anyone for advice that these were TN panels.
In fact you would have to be living under a rock to not know, but that won't stop some people for trying for a small cash grab and lawyers from trying for a big one.
This programs seems to have wrecked my VPN tunnel to work. I don't know how to prove it, but now at night, starting a month ago, my VPN, repeatedly drops. I can no longer trust reliability when I need it most. But when I try it early the next morning it works fine.
I am also with a third party ISP and they pay $20/month per customer, just to have that customers traffic delivered to their connection hub, where they then supply the interenet bandwidth.
Bell is interfering with customer traffic before it even has a chance to connect to the internet.
A sound card is a waste of money for most people these days unless you have special requirement.
I have been using MB digital outputs to Denon receiver for about 5 years now (since my first Nforce MB). I will never buy another sound card. Pointless waste of money.
I see no sense at all buy an expensive sound card and expensive computer speakers to go with it. Stick with MB sounds and buy a receiver and real speakers for about the same price.
If you really want to cheap out, buy some inexpensive speakers and hook them up to the MB analog outs. It is not that bad for the price.
For over a month I have been wondering what has happened to my Contivity VPN Tunnel to work, it repeatedly fails to setup, drops connections within minutes of setting up right when I need it most (early evening after work). Yet early each morning when I get up, it is working perfectly. It was working perfectly for months previously at all hours.
I left Bell Sympatico DSL long ago due to poor service and I am with a 3rd party DSL provider. It never occurred to me that Bell would be throttling my traffic at a 3rd party ISP.
Bell might get some sympathy by claiming they are only hampering those nasty file sharing bandwidth hogs, but it appears to me they are messing up just about everything. My connection to work is now completely unreliable.
I believe the only recourse I now have to offer my complaint to Bell is to Cancel/downgrade any remaining Bell service I have(Phone, Sat TV, Cellular), and tell the call center drone to record my reason why they are losing the revenue.
Is there anyway I can prove my VPN work connection is being interfered with by Bell??
For the most part a game machine doesn't need Blu Ray, but I think Microsoft will have Blu Ray drive (within 12 months) to cover the check boxes in their marketing drive against Sony.
Without the Blu Ray drive option, they give up a perceived advantage, that they previously covered with the HD-DVD drive.
Microsoft can have it both ways. Most users won't buy the add on, and MS will get to continue with their downloading service as the choice for the future of viewing.
But to shut down the argument, they will have a drive and they will say again that it is an option which means that unlike sony they aren't forcing it on you.
The more Blu Ray takes off as a format, the bigger this perceived lack will be noted. It is in Microsofts interest to put the BD driver out there ASAP, to end this line of discussion before it really gets off the ground. The drive isn't to make money from, or even to cover a real need. It covers what may be perceived as an increasingly important checkbox.
I consider this a marketing expense and nothing more. I will be surprised if Microsoft doesn't spend the money on this.
On most tech forums there are vastly greater numbers of Apple bashers, that are far more annoying than the Apple fanatics who are relatively rare. Even the staff at some forums get their jollies bashing Apple.
/. one of the semi-sane message boards left, where I occasionally learn something.
Here is typical of a forum I was reading just today:
"What the numbers do if anything are further inflate the already over inflated egos of the typical MAC worshiping effete snob zealots."
Prior to this post it was only mainly minor diggs at Apple/users in general, not one person had said anything pro-mac it was largely an Apple Bash fest started by the sites staff (Site starts with [H]). I see ten times as much of this PC owner hatred of Apple/Macs/Mac owners than I do of any kind of mac zealotry. The PC zealots also seem a lot more mean spirited.
I don't own a single Apple product, but I might buy one someday. I don't think I will turn into some kind of Maniac on that day. I have worked with about 7 flavors of UNIX over the years and I have Unbuntu installed at home right now along with WinXP. I like the idea of a well packaged and supported UNIX for the home, so OSX sounds alright with me. Neither worthy of zealous adoration nor zealous denigration.
Other than that I have seen fanatics of every stripe since getting on the net. The first flame fests I remember were between users of Gravis Ultrasound and Creative sound cards. Or lately the big one was HD DVD vs Blu Ray which was quite silly since the formats delivered essentially the same results. In the end this is wasted time and hot air.
It might just be my perception, but it is seems the net is becoming more and more the host of unreasoned thinking. It seems to be supporting conspiracy theory based thinking. Vast number of people believe wacko things that are reinforced by finding like minded wackos online. Things like the CIA being responsible for bringing down the twin towers on 9/11.
I find
It jumped the shark for me when they did the flash forward and Apollo donned the fat suit, Admiral Adama and Starbuck grew some extra hair, then in one or two episodes and 5 minutes on a treadmill and everyone was back to their normal appearance. It wasn't just the appearances, it just felt too contrived, too many characters behaved out of character to make that flash forward work. Tack on a bunch of really lame pointless standalone eps (boxing anyone?). Plus characters doing extraordinarily lame(traitorous) things without consequence (Helo sabotaging the bio weapon).
Zero to do with religion. As others have pointed out, religion was heavy from day one and IMO is a draw for those of us that like unfolding mythology.
In the first two seasons of BSG I told everyone it was the best show on TV. I don't even talk about it anymore. Hope it ends with ideas unlike waste of time that was season 3.
This is largely rumor and speculation, so none of these "details" reflect anything concrete, not to mention it is not even clear that this is any different that any other subscription model.
First paragraph FTA: "or it could come as a monthly charge. " Which is like every other lame pay to play your music model.
Also it doesn't matter what Apple wants,the industry is not going to let you fill your 60GB ipod for a one time fee of $20.
When the dust settles Apple might run of those subscriptions models, but that has already been rumored for quite some time and who cares anyway.
I looked at the graph, it looks like a whole lot of nothing. Minor retail fluctuations with a blip up after the holidays. I would expect that of most products.
I thought I would check one of the high marks they are using as Evidence:
I looked at the Sharp BDHP20U listed as having jumped to $440. I checked amazon where it is show a LIST PRICE of $399 and selling price of $350. Only $90 different? Maybe Amazon is an outlier? Dell $329, Every retailer I have heard of was under $400.
The only number higher were listing of something called "storefront"? with a price of $100 more than list??
Anyway even if the graph was correct, it looks like a whole lot of nothing, but to top it, the data itself seems suspect. Have a look for yourself.
Bottom line nothing to see here. Just another attempt to stir up the dead war for TG page hits.
Correlation doesn't equal causation.
It could simply be that most hard driving type A folks destined for heart attacks, have less interest in Cats. Giving them a Cat wouldn't lower their actual risk.
Cat ownership may have nothing to do with it. It just may be that calm easy going folks buy more cats, and hard drivers don't. In the absence of the cats their rate of heart attack may be unchanged, you would just need another mechanism to identify them.
I really agree with Tim here. This was the perfect opportunity to transition to 64bit. Most compatibility issues with Vista are Vista related, not 64 bit related. This would have given us more access to memory beyond 2GB and accelerated 64bit application development and might have even given me a reason to go with Vista. If you are breaking a lot of drivers and programs anyway, why not got 64bit at the same time and gain some benefit in the process. Heck Apple managed to swap to a whole new CPU architecture with minimal pain. You need to have stones to move forward.
But by giving everyone a choice again and all the OEMs pushing 32bit, there is practically no movement to 64bit and practically no new capabilities exercised, no 64 bit games. etc..
Another thing is MS should have upped the minimum HW requirements for Vista. 64bit processor 1Gig memory and graphics capable of at least running the interface. That is how bad Intel Integrated is. It can't even run Vistas bloated interface (hence lawsuit). No surprise it can't run games.
There should be some kind of game certification as well and the bar needs to be high enough that Intel Integrated fails even the minimum standard.
It needs to be made absolutely clear than standard integrated graphics are incapable of running games.
I don't think analogies apply here, this is nothing like Lindburg, this is so far beyond that.
Even without resupply and a likely limited lifespan (say two years) I would do it.
Face it, most of us will lead mundane 9 to 5 insignificant lives and will likely die a forgotten death lingering in a hospital bed. Why wouldn't you trade that for a chance to blaze a completely new trail for humanity, to truly go, where no one has gone before.
I am sure there are a lot of scientist who trade the rest of their life for 2 years studying Mars in person.
Besides that, he is talking about sending company, resupply etc.
On top of that, this would be a volunteer mission. I don't quite get the nervous nellies who have a problem with someone else making this choice. It might not be for them, but they should at least be able to realize that for some this is an inspirational idea.
I just can't believe the amount hand wringing over this.
Though I think it is immediately clear that this will never be done because of the tender sensibilities of the public. If even the slashdot crowd are getting bent out of shape, the general public would frothing at the mouth.
We seem to be becoming a world of spineless weepy nannies.
There was complete flat denial by a company officer of Warner (President of home entertainment division). That is the kind of thing that would be criminally actionable if he were lying. Why would he lie. Absolutely everything points to them doing this.
There were several stories before Christmas saying that Warner would likely go Sony based on disk sales leadership.
In many ways the defection doesn't come as a surprise and accomplished exactly what Warner stated as goals, a quick end to the format war and the confusion it brought: Tsujihara says the studio took no pay-offs to exclusively back Blu-ray. He emphatically denied reports that the studio had received anywhere from $250 to $500 million in exchange for dropping its HD DVD format support in a post-announcement conference call. Warner's only incentive to drop its HD DVD format, according to the exec, was to ensure growth of the "category" and the long-term health of the industry. Now against flat clear denial by the company officer involved in the decision, what shred of evidence is there that these payments happened for just doing the logical thing in their own best interest.
The net has turned into a cesspool of swirling conspiracy theories base on rumor. Find something more than a bitter HD-DVD fan rumor and there might be something to talk about.
Better disk sales for every single week of 2007 might have a little something to do with. Blu Ray was winning in every measurable way before CES/Warner announcement against HD-DVDs legless and armless black knight.
Warner going Blu-ray ended war quickly (what they wanted to accomplish).
Warner going HD-DVD would have dragged it out for years (what no one wanted).
It is hard to imagine that they even considered going HD-DVD, if they had the goal of ending the war quickly, it would have taken something less than 1 second to recognize the only choice leading to that outcome.
Ummm old and unsubstantiated/busted rumor:
The Original source is Dan Lindich, he has since edited the story to remove all references to money changing hands. Read some of his blog, he hates Blu-Ray with a passion and has always recommended HD-DVD, still doesn't recommend Blu-ray, even it won the format war, here is his now eidited story:
http://www.soundadviceblog.com/?p=758
From Digital bits:
"As it happens, I've actually spoken about this today with Fox's senior VP of corporate and marketing communications, Steve Feldstein, who echoed something Warner's Ron Sanders has also said in recent days: "The kind of money they're talking about [in these stories] isn't worth jeopardizing a multi-billion dollar business." In other words, payoffs would not have impacted Fox and Warner's decisions. Feldstein also told me that when The Pittsburgh Post Gazette piece broke, he contacted Lindich immediately to let him know that he was being misled by someone. When Don posted the same piece on his own blog, it was edited to reflect this. Specifically, the references to $120 million and $500 million payoffs were gone - something that's worthy of note."
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/mytwocentsa149.html
Basically bitter Fan can't see writing on wall, sees conspiracy instead.
The facts were Blu Ray disks outsold HD-DVD disks for every single week of 2007, by the last weeks of 2007 there were more standalone Blu Ray players sold than HD-DVD players sold, despite HD-DVD being massively cheaper. HD-DVD was toast before Warner announced.
Slashdot, all the quality of Digg, without the quantity.
Some little details that show HD-DVD was aldready dead.
Weeks before the announcement, they did not even capture 50% of the hardware sales. That is with much cheaper players and excluding the PS3.
Look at the hardware at CES, which has nothing to do with Warner announcement, everyone and there dog was building a Blu Ray machine. Toshiba was alone against the industry on their sinking ship.
The Warner announcement is just the final nail in the coffin. The booth shots were hilarious, you could almost hear the crickets in the HD-DVD booth.
It looks like everyone but Toshiba is make a Blu Ray player and only Toshiba is making HD-DVD players. That speaks volumes.
Thanks, I will check it out.
Which sites nail bad games? I notice long, long ago that you almost never see a bad car review at any of the big pages. I read "Edmunds" now, they don't seem afraid to say something sucks. Or "The truth about cars", it is rare when they say anything is good.
Where are the gamer equivalents?
I saw "A new hope" when I was 12 years old. It was the perfect matching of audience maturity to film making. The wonder/comedy/romance balance was just right for a 12 years old.
When I saw "The empire strikes back", I had grown slightly more adult and so had the series, it was again almost a perfect match.
Then "Return on the Jedi" and I was now a more cynical young adult. The series had not kept pace. Silly antics and cutsey toy ewoks sullied what could have been a brilliant trilogy capper if the original writing/directing team were kept in place, and someone kept George from going backwards.I thought this was bad, but little did I know...
So a combo of me growing up and George aiming younger and lower. The sharked jumped at ROTJ.
The special edition tweaks were lame. Not just Han turning from calculating badass to a typical good two shoes hero, but all the lame overdone insertions of random creatures all over the landscape. Bleh. But this is more of footnote you can ignore.
The new trilogy: Seriously this was garbage by almost any standard. It sold because of mega marketing dollars and because we are suckers for nostalgia. Though I waited for the 1 and 2 to hit video or TV broadcast,because even the previews were painful to watch. I saw 3 in the theater and it was meh.
So ROTJ jumped the shark, but it got mind boggling worse from there.
I distinctly remember them/zenn saying 2006 target back in 2005. Naturally they would have removed such claims by now.
I don't know what "Modern" ultracaps you are talking about, but I recently looked up a bunch and the energy density is 1/10 that of batteries AT BEST.
So if you want to replace a 1KG laptop battery, you are looking at at least 10KGs of modern ultra capacitors to replace it.
Yes it will be great when they get parity with chemical batteries or even half parity with batteries, but we have been hearing that kind of hype for years, absolutely nothing has been demonstrated anywhere near those levels and it remains hype at this time. Increasingly tiresome hype from my perspective.
I realize they are being used in some applications.
But what they keep promising is parity with chemical batteries, when they are off by over an order of magnitude on the energy storage side.
So that 400 LB battery in a Tesla Roadster becomes a 4000 LB capacitor making the whole thing unworkable.
There are continual hot air claims about energy storage parity but the reality has them lagging behind to the point that they are unworkable for primary energy storage.
Wake me when the reality gets somewhere near the hype.
The best ultra caps are still off by an order of magnitude.
I have been hearing how eestor would have its ultra caps in cars in 2006, then 2007, and I can only assume 2008 now. Not only are they not in cars, they haven't demoed as much as a since cell. Yeah I know it is not just eestor, but I am getting tired of empty hype.
I love hearing about technology, but at some point, they get to the "put up or shut up" point. That point has past for me.