My friend just bought a Dell, and within 2 days the price on that configuration was $500 less. They said they'd send him $220 (some magic calculation on the difference), but instead he sent it back for $100 (minus $25 the CSR arranged).
Apple does the same thing, but with a better refund. My step-father bought a Powerbook the week before the new ones came out. Of all the remedies offered, he chose to take the difference in price as store credit. He bought a nice digital camera and some other things for his machine. He still had enough left over that he applied it towards buying my sister an eMac.
Yeah, but you are using a program like DVDDecrypter to copy the images to your HD. Which removes CSS.
I'll look into that. I believe one of the features of the software I use is that it just makes a pure disk image, suitable for use in producing "real" DVDs (not DVD-R or DVD+R) with the encryption intact. I haven't used it in a long time, so my memory may be playing tricks on me.
Now for the legality of removing CSS, I thought that it was finaly agreed upon that it was not a trade secret.
Of course it isn't. The fool lawyers for the DVD CCA included the full source of DeCSS in an unsealed legal document that is now part of the public record. That makes it impossible to claim it as a trade secret. Those guys make SCO's lawyers look smart. Not that I'm complaining, of course...
I'd recommend a quad-Xeon system with hyperthreading and 4GB of RAM (at least)
My old PowerMac G4 from 1999 (450MHz, 384MB PC100 ram) can play DVDs from the hard drive just fine. In fact, that was the only way to play them when I bought it. If you tried to play from the DVD itself, the audio would get out of sync*.
I assume that any recent low-end PC should be able to handle it. The only hurdle is getting that much disk space and the time to rip the DVDs. It sure beats keeping them on a shelf though.
*Apple had to face a class action lawsuit for selling computers that it claimed could play DVDs but couldn't because the player software was still in beta.
Of course if the disc was encrypted, you need DeCSS to get the disc contents onto your HD, and that's legally iffy right now (fair use says yes if you own the original disc, DMCA says no). But there's absolutely no problem supporting menus, multiple audio tracks, subtitles, multi-angle, etc etc. from content in a HD folder...
That is incorrect. DeCSS is for getting at the underlying mpeg stream. If you are going to be ripping complete images, you can keep them in encrypted form. Your player software will legally decrypt the data for you.
Wouldn't you have to circumvent CSS encryption and violate the DMCA to do this?
Nope.
The DVD playing software will legally decrypt the ripped images. No illegality there. I do that with my DVDs so that I don't have to carry them with my laptop. I can leave them at home on the shelf. This also means that I don't have to find my DVDs when I forget to put them back on the shelf.
The whole problem is easily solved:
Get a cheap PC. Get a video card with tv-out. Get lots of HD space. Get a usb infrared receiver. Get a remote with directional controls. Make the computer treat the remote as a keyboard.
Rip the DVDs to disk images. Run a file manager
Now just select the file you want with the remote and press enter. The image mounts and the dvd software starts up.
If you don't like the interface, get another file manager and try again.
Another detail most people even don't notice but take advantage of in the Finder's behavior is that if you move the mouse as soon as clicking on a filename, it becomes editable.
That's the only method I've used to rename files since at least System 7. I read about it in Macintosh Secrets and never went back to the other way again.
It doesn't work as well in OS X. It used to be that a 1-pixel shift would do it. The new version does it after a time delay even if the mouse didn't move. It's frustrating. I'm so much more efficient under earlier versions of the Mac OS that I've had to switch to using the command line to handle files.
Old habits die hard. I file dialogs and Finder interface of System 7 (which I retained through OS 9 using an extension). The OS X ones look Mac like, but the key binding are totally screwed up. Panther made it a bit better, but I've lost so much time to these new terrible designs. If they didn't look at all like the old ones, it would be ok. As it is the similarities are there just to bring your guard down and hit you with another gotcha. Using the command line, I at least get a consistent user experience with most other versions of bash.
Your local wholesaler will sell you an optical mouse for $3-$5. Keyboards are $1-$5 and video cards start at $5 (for the basic non-gaming kind). Cases cost $20 for the great ones. The fancy ones can pass $60. The cheap ones start at about $12. I'm not sure about memory or a drive, but your prices look way too high. I used to buy for a reseller; but the only difference in our price and the public price is the sales tax.
Leadman was one of our suppliers. Find one of their locations and you'll probably find a dozen competing wholesalers.
You can use a cheap PC with Windows, VNC, and SAMBA to get full PC functionality in your Mac for less than the cost of VPC. If you're using Wine and X11 anyway, you might as well skip on VNC and a copy of Windows and just use Wine on a Linux box with your Mac acting as an X11 server.
iTunes is lame. It will matter when ANYONE can sell music through it, and artists can bypass record companies altogether. As it is, it is just a shill for the record companies and the RIAA.
An artist can get their music into the iTMS by getting a label to represent them and act as an intermediary with Apple. Any of the labels in the iTMS can submit music. So for an artist to get into the iTMS, they just need to get on CD Baby. It's easy.
PocketPC? The Newton did more in 1993 than most PDAs of today. If development had continued...
XBox? Ok it's a game console -- like an Atari. Oh. It's a computer-based console? Try the Pippen (from '95).
Media Player 9? What's so special about it? QuickTime was revolutionary in 1991.
If anything MS is painfully aware that they need to divest themselves of a PC-only mentality and are inovating in a wide number of areas at an alarming rate to ensure that they don't end up with all of their eggs in one basket.
In Miami, Florida, the three or four Clear Channel stations worked together to prevent the playing of some songs -- going so far as to deny listener requests. After word got out, they reversed their decision. In any case, how is "Imagine" a bad song to hear as war looms? It might take people's minds off of revenge and back on making the world better for everyone so that things like 9/11 stop happening.
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My friend just bought a Dell, and within 2 days the price on that configuration was $500 less.
They said they'd send him $220 (some magic calculation on the difference), but instead he sent it back for $100 (minus $25 the CSR arranged).
Apple does the same thing, but with a better refund. My step-father bought a Powerbook the week before the new ones came out. Of all the remedies offered, he chose to take the difference in price as store credit. He bought a nice digital camera and some other things for his machine. He still had enough left over that he applied it towards buying my sister an eMac.
I hear really old Macs used to lock out "non-Apple" branded hard drives as well.
I've been using Macs since the Plus and the HD upgrades have always been from 3rd party vendors. I've never seen the lock out you refer to.
Yeah, but you are using a program like DVDDecrypter to copy the images to your HD. Which removes CSS.
...
I'll look into that. I believe one of the features of the software I use is that it just makes a pure disk image, suitable for use in producing "real" DVDs (not DVD-R or DVD+R) with the encryption intact. I haven't used it in a long time, so my memory may be playing tricks on me.
Now for the legality of removing CSS, I thought that it was finaly agreed upon that it was not a trade secret.
Of course it isn't. The fool lawyers for the DVD CCA included the full source of DeCSS in an unsealed legal document that is now part of the public record. That makes it impossible to claim it as a trade secret. Those guys make SCO's lawyers look smart. Not that I'm complaining, of course
I'd recommend a quad-Xeon system with hyperthreading and 4GB of RAM (at least)
My old PowerMac G4 from 1999 (450MHz, 384MB PC100 ram) can play DVDs from the hard drive just fine. In fact, that was the only way to play them when I bought it. If you tried to play from the DVD itself, the audio would get out of sync*.
I assume that any recent low-end PC should be able to handle it. The only hurdle is getting that much disk space and the time to rip the DVDs. It sure beats keeping them on a shelf though.
*Apple had to face a class action lawsuit for selling computers that it claimed could play DVDs but couldn't because the player software was still in beta.
Of course if the disc was encrypted, you need DeCSS to get the disc contents onto your HD, and that's legally iffy right now (fair use says yes if you own the original disc, DMCA says no). But there's absolutely no problem supporting menus, multiple audio tracks, subtitles, multi-angle, etc etc. from content in a HD folder...
That is incorrect. DeCSS is for getting at the underlying mpeg stream. If you are going to be ripping complete images, you can keep them in encrypted form. Your player software will legally decrypt the data for you.
Wouldn't you have to circumvent CSS encryption and violate the DMCA to do this?
Nope.
The DVD playing software will legally decrypt the ripped images. No illegality there. I do that with my DVDs so that I don't have to carry them with my laptop. I can leave them at home on the shelf. This also means that I don't have to find my DVDs when I forget to put them back on the shelf.
The whole problem is easily solved:
Get a cheap PC.
Get a video card with tv-out.
Get lots of HD space.
Get a usb infrared receiver.
Get a remote with directional controls.
Make the computer treat the remote as a keyboard.
Rip the DVDs to disk images.
Run a file manager
Now just select the file you want with the remote and press enter. The image mounts and the dvd software starts up.
If you don't like the interface, get another file manager and try again.
Done.
Two button optical mice cost $5. Is it that big of a deal? Sell the original or keep it as a spare.
Another detail most people even don't notice but take advantage of in the Finder's behavior is that if you move the mouse as soon as clicking on a filename, it becomes editable.
That's the only method I've used to rename files since at least System 7. I read about it in Macintosh Secrets and never went back to the other way again.
It doesn't work as well in OS X. It used to be that a 1-pixel shift would do it. The new version does it after a time delay even if the mouse didn't move. It's frustrating. I'm so much more efficient under earlier versions of the Mac OS that I've had to switch to using the command line to handle files.
Old habits die hard. I file dialogs and Finder interface of System 7 (which I retained through OS 9 using an extension). The OS X ones look Mac like, but the key binding are totally screwed up. Panther made it a bit better, but I've lost so much time to these new terrible designs. If they didn't look at all like the old ones, it would be ok. As it is the similarities are there just to bring your guard down and hit you with another gotcha. Using the command line, I at least get a consistent user experience with most other versions of bash.
Your local wholesaler will sell you an optical mouse for $3-$5. Keyboards are $1-$5 and video cards start at $5 (for the basic non-gaming kind). Cases cost $20 for the great ones. The fancy ones can pass $60. The cheap ones start at about $12. I'm not sure about memory or a drive, but your prices look way too high. I used to buy for a reseller; but the only difference in our price and the public price is the sales tax.
Leadman was one of our suppliers. Find one of their locations and you'll probably find a dozen competing wholesalers.
You can use a cheap PC with Windows, VNC, and SAMBA to get full PC functionality in your Mac for less than the cost of VPC. If you're using Wine and X11 anyway, you might as well skip on VNC and a copy of Windows and just use Wine on a Linux box with your Mac acting as an X11 server.
Make a boot floppy, but replace the Finder with an app that draws the image you want. It's easy.
iTunes is lame. It will matter when ANYONE can sell music through it, and artists can bypass record companies altogether. As it is, it is just a shill for the record companies and the RIAA.
An artist can get their music into the iTMS by getting a label to represent them and act as an intermediary with Apple. Any of the labels in the iTMS can submit music. So for an artist to get into the iTMS, they just need to get on CD Baby. It's easy.
Media Center PC? Try Macintosh TV
Tablet PC? I have a Fujitsu Sytlistic 1200 tablet PC from 1997.
PocketPC? The Newton did more in 1993 than most PDAs of today. If development had continued...
XBox? Ok it's a game console -- like an Atari. Oh. It's a computer-based console? Try the Pippen (from '95).
Media Player 9? What's so special about it? QuickTime was revolutionary in 1991.
If anything MS is painfully aware that they need to divest themselves of a PC-only mentality and are inovating in a wide number of areas at an alarming rate to ensure that they don't end up with all of their eggs in one basket.
Have you heard of the Digital Hub?
Were you intentionally listing things that were innovative only by Microsoft's definition of the term?
In Miami, Florida, the three or four Clear Channel stations worked together to prevent the playing of some songs -- going so far as to deny listener requests. After word got out, they reversed their decision. In any case, how is "Imagine" a bad song to hear as war looms? It might take people's minds off of revenge and back on making the world better for everyone so that things like 9/11 stop happening.
the company NEVER dictates which songs we play. Period.
What about the refusal to play "Imagine" for a while after 9/11? Or the ban on playing the Dixie Chicks.