> not that there really is now, as aside from sports freaks most people don't care
You apparantly don't have HDTV, because if you did, you'd realize that nearly every primetime show is now broadcast in HD... Do you care if CSI is in HD? Maybe not. But it IS there. The "there's no content" argument is dead, and has been for a year or so.
> They are improvements only in picture quality, and not that great of a leap at that.
Actually, they do improve on audio -- DD+. I don't know how much better the sound is, but there is improvement there from what I've read.
Granted, DRM does suck. But don't minimize the audio/video improvements of HD over SD.
Keep in mind that I'm not disagreeing that most people don't know what HD is, let along HD-DVD/BD - there was a study 6-9 months ago that said most people who have HD sets don't watch HD... And some of them thought that they WERE watching HD, when in fact they weren't...
> With DVD discs being basically as good as the eye and > mind can comprehend, why would they need another format?
Have you seen an HD broadcast of your favorite TV show (Lost, Battlestar Gallactica, etc?). It's definately better than a DVD. Maybe you can't tell if your TV isn't very good, but I use a 100" front projector (AE700), and there's a significant difference.
I would probably still buy most of my movies on DVD, because they're much cheaper, but there are some movies (Serenity, LotR, Terminator 2, Star Wars, etc) that I'd almoost definatley buy the HD version of.
> Besides, as people have noted, most individuals who are > installing pirated versions have computers that can't > handle Areo Glass anyway. Any computer capable enough will > come with Visa pre-installed, whenever that happens to be
What about people who build their own systems (and I'd guess there's quite a few of them here)? Not everyone buys a Dell... I'd guess that most people who are installing pirated versions fall into the "build your own PC" mentality, although I have no proof.
When my wife and I went to England in '01, we went to an IMAX theater that was playing several movies (6+ I think). It was setup just like a regular movie theater - popcorn, pop, etc - and business was booming. These weren't regular movies migrated to IMAX, but the selection was still great and the movies we saw were awesome.
Re:part 2- not trolling, just a little frustrated
on
OpenBSD 3.8 Released
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Have you even TRIED installing OpenBSD? It's simple. Download a 1M install disk, burn to CD, boot off the CD, select install, and it downloads everything that you select to install automatically. No need for an ISO, no need for a torrent.
Ahh, but they ARE the outlaws, the desperados. They follow their own code of honor, but they're not following the law of the land.
It's no different than the people on/. who say, "Screw the **AA, I'm going to use P2P to download music/movies nayway!" or, "Screw the DMCA, I'm going to crack the copy protection on my DVDs anyway!" That makes those people the "bad guys," even if the **AA has ridiculously outdated business models. Same thing applies to Firefly; the main characters aren't evil, they just don't don't agree with the current laws. There's a big difference there.
The difference is that you EXPECT a mafia leader to do something like that. With the Train Job episode, you never expected to see the captain do that.
Plus, it gets better after the "bad" guy gets kicked into the turbine -- he starts the same speech over again with badguy #2 and the look on #2's face is priceless.:)
You can live in "this magical world" if you sign up with DirecTV. They've never raised their rates while under contract. It's one of the reasons I don't mind taking their offers of cheap/free hardware for signing a new contract; I get free stuff, AND lock-in my price? No problem!
I don't understand what everyone's complaining about here. You pay $50 for a TiVo... But have to promise to pay $155.40 for the service for a year. That's $205.40 total for the year. I dare you to built a MythTV box for that price.
I can understand the complaints abouto DRM, red flags, etc. I get that. But to complain about a one year contract when they now give the hardware away for close-to-free? Financially, this is a better deal than paying $200 up front -- you're keeping the $150 in your pocket and paying it over time, instead of all at once. People would rather pay $500 for a TiVo and not have to sign the contract? I don't get it...
Duh. That's why I said "Yeah, there's a VAT tax, and it **REPLACES** an income tax."
Do a VAT, get rid of income taxes, and you now no longer have to worry about deductions, exemptions, and crap like that. If you buy stuff, you pay tax (even for food/clothes). If you don't, you don't pay as much tax. Maybe we can't get it quite that simple, but the current tax system is completely messed up and needs reform.
It's true that Fox has a crappy contract which, in essence, kills Firefly on the small screen. However, Universal has said that if Serenity does well, they will make it a trilogy. Be sure to watch early, watch often, and bring your friends and family!
Now correct me if I'm wrong, but what do you do if you've used some sort of optical scene detection software to split the original DV source into multiple files? I don't think you can be guaranteed to have those exact same frame-accurate cuts if you try importing the tape a second time. So this works fine if you export the entire tape as one large AVI file, but not if you cut it up into multiple AVI files when extracting.
That said, if it's a final project and you don't want to do any more editing with it later, simply export the finished video to MiniDV and be done with it.
As for the pictures -- I burn to DVD as well as copy to two separate harddrives. Make sure you keep at least one backup offsite, in case your house burns down or something equally tragic.
The EFF does a lot of good work fighting things like the PATRIOT Act, the Broadcast Flag (which we won!), etc. Go here to find a form letter that you can send to your representatives automatically through the EFF (and/or print and snail mail).
I didn't make myself clear in the original post, but I had been a DirecTV customer for over six years when they gave me that deal. That deal was only for existing customers who had been around for at least two years, not for new subscribers.
Yes, $99 does not equal free, but I got a $350 receiver, a $100 dish, a $100 multiswitch, and installation (which including fishing through walls and should have cost $250), all for only $99. Based on this, I see no reason why people would think DirecTV is going to screw the owners of the HDTiVo with the new sattelite.
I wouldn't be surprised if DirecTV GAVE their customers new receivers (or at least traded at a VERY reduced price).
Why do I say this? Well, a little over a year ago DirecTV GAVE me a triple-LNB dish, a 4x8 multiswitch, an HD receiver (retail price of about $350 at the time), and installation for only $99. What makes you think that they wouldn't offer something similar to existing customers?
They're putting out the trrailer now for one big reason -- lots of sci-fi movies being released. The movie was supposed to be released in April, but because of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Star Wars, and a few other sci-fi movies coming out at the same time, Universal didn't want to compete so moved it to September to better market it.
Think about it. Everybody knows Hitchhiker. Everybody knows Star Wars. Not many people know Firefly/Serenity. If the trailer is done well, everyone going to see those types of movies will say, "Hey, this Serenity thing looks cool, I think I'll go see that in September." That will draw in bigger crowds. And it's been documented that if the movie does well, we'll get a full trilogy which would be awesome. After the trilogy, it's POSSIBLE that we'd get a TV series again (apparantoly the Fox contract says that there can't be a TV series for 5-10 years.... Damn Fox execs.)
Re:The morality of the story:
on
Tracking Your Taxes
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Yes, but things come up that you don't expect that really could end up costing you in penalties. For example, last year my wife worked part-time at H&R Block doing tax returns (ironic, no?). They didn't take much out in taxes there, but we didn't mind since I have extra taken out of my check and we figured that would cover it.
Then later in the year, the state hired her as an independent contractor and she made a few thousand more teaching classes. None of that money was taxed at the time.
Then I taught a class late in the year as well, and none of that money was taxed.
We ended up paying $86 to the Federal government, even though we had a refund of around $1,000 the previous year. If I hadn't taken extra out of my check, we would've been surprised to owe over $1,000, and I'm pretty sure penalties kick in around that threshold.
If the system were more predictable (or there were no penalties for underpaying), I'd agree 100% in having less withheld from check to check. But since it's impossible to predict what you'll earn the entire year, it's nice to overpay a little every pay period and get some of it back at the end of the year.
Did you ever think that maybe your data center isn't being cooled or powered properly? If you're having as many outages on your Sun equipment as you say, SOMETHING isn't right...
We have a Sun E220 webserver that's been running for 822 days straight... We have Ultra60s as our workstations that are working without a problem. We have several V880s that have had no problems at all (although one did have a bad motherboard at one point).
I find it hard to believe that you're having as many problems as you're saying without there being another cause.
> If you go to KFC and buy some chicken and a Coke,
> reverse-engineer the "secret formula" of each and
> start selling equivalents, yes, the lawyers will
> come a-knockin'.
Not really true. There's a few cookbooks where the author did exactly that - reverse engineered recipes from restaurants - and the books are popular on Amazon. I bought them for my wife, and they're actually pretty good.
Slashdot Mirror
> not that there really is now, as aside from sports freaks most people don't care
You apparantly don't have HDTV, because if you did, you'd realize that nearly every primetime show is now broadcast in HD... Do you care if CSI is in HD? Maybe not. But it IS there. The "there's no content" argument is dead, and has been for a year or so.
> They are improvements only in picture quality, and not that great of a leap at that.
Actually, they do improve on audio -- DD+. I don't know how much better the sound is, but there is improvement there from what I've read.
Granted, DRM does suck. But don't minimize the audio/video improvements of HD over SD.
Keep in mind that I'm not disagreeing that most people don't know what HD is, let along HD-DVD/BD - there was a study 6-9 months ago that said most people who have HD sets don't watch HD... And some of them thought that they WERE watching HD, when in fact they weren't...
> With DVD discs being basically as good as the eye and
> mind can comprehend, why would they need another format?
Have you seen an HD broadcast of your favorite TV show (Lost, Battlestar Gallactica, etc?). It's definately better than a DVD. Maybe you can't tell if your TV isn't very good, but I use a 100" front projector (AE700), and there's a significant difference.
I would probably still buy most of my movies on DVD, because they're much cheaper, but there are some movies (Serenity, LotR, Terminator 2, Star Wars, etc) that I'd almoost definatley buy the HD version of.
If you look at sales rank, Serenity is currently #32 at Amazon. Firefly is (still) at #14.
Revenge of the Sith is only 49th.
So yes, I'd say Serenity is selling very well.
Firefly was also the 2nd most TiVo'd show while on Fox, so that shows that people who like Serenity have technology gadgets and disposable income.
It makes sense to me.
> Besides, as people have noted, most individuals who are
> installing pirated versions have computers that can't
> handle Areo Glass anyway. Any computer capable enough will
> come with Visa pre-installed, whenever that happens to be
What about people who build their own systems (and I'd guess there's quite a few of them here)? Not everyone buys a Dell... I'd guess that most people who are installing pirated versions fall into the "build your own PC" mentality, although I have no proof.
When my wife and I went to England in '01, we went to an IMAX theater that was playing several movies (6+ I think). It was setup just like a regular movie theater - popcorn, pop, etc - and business was booming. These weren't regular movies migrated to IMAX, but the selection was still great and the movies we saw were awesome.
Lots of good information, and is nice to have on hand, just in case.
Obviously for the US only:
http://www.krages.com/ThePhotographersRight.pdf
Have you even TRIED installing OpenBSD? It's simple. Download a 1M install disk, burn to CD, boot off the CD, select install, and it downloads everything that you select to install automatically. No need for an ISO, no need for a torrent.
:)
Quick and painless. Try it, you'll like it.
> Plot can certainly enhance a good game ... but it
> cannot make a game.
I think fans of Final Fantasy VII would disagree with you.
Ahh, but they ARE the outlaws, the desperados. They follow their own code of honor, but they're not following the law of the land.
/. who say, "Screw the **AA, I'm going to use P2P to download music/movies nayway!" or, "Screw the DMCA, I'm going to crack the copy protection on my DVDs anyway!" That makes those people the "bad guys," even if the **AA has ridiculously outdated business models. Same thing applies to Firefly; the main characters aren't evil, they just don't don't agree with the current laws. There's a big difference there.
It's no different than the people on
The difference is that you EXPECT a mafia leader to do something like that. With the Train Job episode, you never expected to see the captain do that.
:)
Plus, it gets better after the "bad" guy gets kicked into the turbine -- he starts the same speech over again with badguy #2 and the look on #2's face is priceless.
You can live in "this magical world" if you sign up with DirecTV. They've never raised their rates while under contract. It's one of the reasons I don't mind taking their offers of cheap/free hardware for signing a new contract; I get free stuff, AND lock-in my price? No problem!
I don't understand what everyone's complaining about here. You pay $50 for a TiVo... But have to promise to pay $155.40 for the service for a year. That's $205.40 total for the year. I dare you to built a MythTV box for that price.
I can understand the complaints abouto DRM, red flags, etc. I get that. But to complain about a one year contract when they now give the hardware away for close-to-free? Financially, this is a better deal than paying $200 up front -- you're keeping the $150 in your pocket and paying it over time, instead of all at once. People would rather pay $500 for a TiVo and not have to sign the contract? I don't get it...
Duh. That's why I said "Yeah, there's a VAT tax, and it **REPLACES** an income tax."
Do a VAT, get rid of income taxes, and you now no longer have to worry about deductions, exemptions, and crap like that. If you buy stuff, you pay tax (even for food/clothes). If you don't, you don't pay as much tax. Maybe we can't get it quite that simple, but the current tax system is completely messed up and needs reform.
Yeah, there's a VAT tax, and it replaces an income tax. Smart idea, I'd like to do that here.
It's true that Fox has a crappy contract which, in essence, kills Firefly on the small screen. However, Universal has said that if Serenity does well, they will make it a trilogy. Be sure to watch early, watch often, and bring your friends and family!
Now correct me if I'm wrong, but what do you do if you've used some sort of optical scene detection software to split the original DV source into multiple files? I don't think you can be guaranteed to have those exact same frame-accurate cuts if you try importing the tape a second time. So this works fine if you export the entire tape as one large AVI file, but not if you cut it up into multiple AVI files when extracting.
That said, if it's a final project and you don't want to do any more editing with it later, simply export the finished video to MiniDV and be done with it.
As for the pictures -- I burn to DVD as well as copy to two separate harddrives. Make sure you keep at least one backup offsite, in case your house burns down or something equally tragic.
Yes :)
The EFF does a lot of good work fighting things like the PATRIOT Act, the Broadcast Flag (which we won!), etc. Go here to find a form letter that you can send to your representatives automatically through the EFF (and/or print and snail mail).
I dr005=4z3rtw4op1.app6a&page=UserAction&cmd=display &id=143
/. we should all try to stop it.
https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?JServSession
Think about donating some money (tax deductable) to help as well.
Instead of complaining on
I didn't make myself clear in the original post, but I had been a DirecTV customer for over six years when they gave me that deal. That deal was only for existing customers who had been around for at least two years, not for new subscribers. Yes, $99 does not equal free, but I got a $350 receiver, a $100 dish, a $100 multiswitch, and installation (which including fishing through walls and should have cost $250), all for only $99. Based on this, I see no reason why people would think DirecTV is going to screw the owners of the HDTiVo with the new sattelite.
I wouldn't be surprised if DirecTV GAVE their customers new receivers (or at least traded at a VERY reduced price).
Why do I say this? Well, a little over a year ago DirecTV GAVE me a triple-LNB dish, a 4x8 multiswitch, an HD receiver (retail price of about $350 at the time), and installation for only $99. What makes you think that they wouldn't offer something similar to existing customers?
They're putting out the trrailer now for one big reason -- lots of sci-fi movies being released. The movie was supposed to be released in April, but because of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Star Wars, and a few other sci-fi movies coming out at the same time, Universal didn't want to compete so moved it to September to better market it.
Think about it. Everybody knows Hitchhiker. Everybody knows Star Wars. Not many people know Firefly/Serenity. If the trailer is done well, everyone going to see those types of movies will say, "Hey, this Serenity thing looks cool, I think I'll go see that in September." That will draw in bigger crowds. And it's been documented that if the movie does well, we'll get a full trilogy which would be awesome. After the trilogy, it's POSSIBLE that we'd get a TV series again (apparantoly the Fox contract says that there can't be a TV series for 5-10 years.... Damn Fox execs.)
Yes, but things come up that you don't expect that really could end up costing you in penalties. For example, last year my wife worked part-time at H&R Block doing tax returns (ironic, no?). They didn't take much out in taxes there, but we didn't mind since I have extra taken out of my check and we figured that would cover it. Then later in the year, the state hired her as an independent contractor and she made a few thousand more teaching classes. None of that money was taxed at the time. Then I taught a class late in the year as well, and none of that money was taxed. We ended up paying $86 to the Federal government, even though we had a refund of around $1,000 the previous year. If I hadn't taken extra out of my check, we would've been surprised to owe over $1,000, and I'm pretty sure penalties kick in around that threshold. If the system were more predictable (or there were no penalties for underpaying), I'd agree 100% in having less withheld from check to check. But since it's impossible to predict what you'll earn the entire year, it's nice to overpay a little every pay period and get some of it back at the end of the year.
Rumors of Sun's/Solaris' demise have been greatly exaggerated.
Did you ever think that maybe your data center isn't being cooled or powered properly? If you're having as many outages on your Sun equipment as you say, SOMETHING isn't right...
We have a Sun E220 webserver that's been running for 822 days straight... We have Ultra60s as our workstations that are working without a problem. We have several V880s that have had no problems at all (although one did have a bad motherboard at one point).
I find it hard to believe that you're having as many problems as you're saying without there being another cause.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0452 275873/qid=1111704126/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl 14/104-3867649-7716752?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0452 283191/qid=1111704126/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl 14/104-3867649-7716752?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Pot, meet kettle.