What ID brings to the table is a new reexamination of facts.
No, it doesn't. ID is dogma. It is nonsense. It is childish superstition dressed up to look like a little less like the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. Problem is, no matter how much you dress it up it is still childish superstition.
I mean, if you go to a nut job school, trying to learn how to be a real nut job, the fact that they have to turn you into a troll first should come as no surprise.
Superstitious idiots are going to be around as long as there are cockroaches. Those of us with brains will just have to learn how to live with it.
Which is why I prefer the Lenovo options over, for example, the HP options. On my Lenovo I can say: If I am plugged in and close the lid, turn of the LCD, but if I am not plugged in, go to sleep. On the HP I can only chose go to sleep or turn of LCD, irrespective of my power situation.
Get some common goals. Things you can work on together to accomplish. Make short, medium and long-term goals that you both agree on.
Listen to her. Try to understand. The latter is the harder.
This one is important: Believe in her. Support her. Try really hard to help her succeed in whatever she is trying to do. Even push her a little if you need to. She'll be happier achieving her goals. If you feel she can set her sights higher, tell her so, and let her know you'll help her get there. Someone who respects her self and appreciates your hand in her achievements will never be unhappy around you.
Very, very, very important. Final one. You need to educate her. As much as you can. On one very, very important topic. You need to spend time explaining this to her thoroughly so she really understands this. Spinal understanding.
You need to teach her that guys don't get hints. Never. Ever. Not even close. Won't even begin to fathom.
Banal example. You are in your common room, playing some game. She walks into the room and the following conversation (as you see it) takes place:
Her: Your underwear is on the floor
You (looking around and seeing she is right): You are correct, indeed it is (turning to continue game).
In her mind what took place was her going "I told you to clean this room two days ago, remember [she used the same words 'underwear on the floor']? Please get going on this now please, and stop playing your silly game". All girls communicate like this, and none of them have yet to understand (my wife is 30% there) that we simply do not get it. Making an observation is making an observation. There is no automatic directive that follows by an observation. If there is a directive in there somewhere, it must be spelled out clearly and directly. We are simple creatures. What you say is what we hear.
It will take you years to get this across, and you will never completely get there. She will continue to drop hints. When you say "Where do you want to eat" and she replies "I don't mind, we can go anywhere", there is an additional "but you know I hate that waitress at Papa Joe's, and you better remember that I am allergic to that fish stuff, and you know we need to go see Kate and Roger afterwards, so we can't go to the west side of town" etc... Women communicate without words and at least half of what they say has serious hidden meaning. Try to make her stop that. Every day remind her that "men don't get hints". Use the underwear as an example, it is funny. Make a funny story out of it and tell it regularly to your friends when she is there. "We guys don't get hints. If you (pointing at your friends new girlfriend, who hasn't heard this before) walk into a room where he is watching TV, and you say 'your underwear is all over the floor'", he'll raise his head, confirm that you are indeed correct, and continue to watch TV. If you tell him 'get your blasted underwear off my floor', he'll comply instantly". Something like that.
so every time you close the lid on your laptop you have to carefully check it to make sure nothing's running that might disrupt the process?
Sigh. Reading is apparently quite difficult these days. I said it was a good idea. It is if you run Linux too. My HP laptop, for example, running Linux, will occasionally not go to sleep when I close the lid. Ask HP why. The Lenovos are a lot better, but I have gotten off planes at least twice even with those, and it was warm from being left on.
Generally it works, but not 100%. Linux or Windows.
I seriously hope you are considering going back to school and learn how to read. I would, for example, spend a lot of time trying to figure out concepts like "in context".
No, I seriously don't expect regular users to learn command line stuff for anything at all. I do however expect that power users do, and I do expect that a power user who wants to re-boot a Windows server from a remote location knows exactly how to do this by heart. You see, that is the "context" in which I posted. Someone had complained that "power users" could not do this.
At the same time I would in fact expect the OS to remind a "regular" user that he has an open Word document that has been changed and that he might want to save before the PC re-boots. In the case of the user to whom I replied, I would expect it was his Resume. Being aware of this particular "quirk" in Windows, I am careful about checking my laptop when I close it running at full speed at an airport. Done it many times, and it is always a good idea to check just to make sure. Particularly if the laptop is an HP, which are notorious for not going to sleep when they should. Never had that problem with my Lenovos.
They didn't fix the broken Vista file browser or windows explorer, and so *nothing else they did* matters.
I have no idea what they fixed in Win7, but I hope they looked at some of the UAC stuff, some memory bloat and other things. If you seriously feel that the worst part of Vista was the file browser, and that is the only thing you would want fixed, well, then you don't figure among the user type I would normally expect to find on/., people who knows a bit about computers. The file browser "quirks" are mostly irrelevant compared to the other stuff that plagued Vista. Mind you, with UAC turned off, Vista 64 works great for me on my 4G laptop and 8G (memory obv) desktop.
Usability is the most important feature they should be concerned about, and both Vista and Win7 are steps backwards in usability.
I work on XP every day in the office, and on Vista 64 every day at home. I don't see any major usability differences when UAC is off. If the file browser is that much of an issue for you maybe you have some sort of learning disability. Honestly, the differences are insignificant. IMHO.
Why should I wait and watch what should be an automatic, guaranteed to succeed operation? No user-mode application should ever be able to interrupt a critical kernel-mode operation like 'shutdown'.
Of course not. Thankfully they do not on Windows. Now, if you are a lame, ignorant user who doesn't know the difference between "shutdown, and ask about closing apps" and "shutdown NOW and just DO IT", then that is a chair-keyboard interface problem, not an operating system problem.
Ah, but you didn't know that Windows has "shutdown -f -r" you say. Well, stop blaming the OS for your own ignorance then!
That's absurd. So you are saying I can't sell my App on Fry's because the day you go there it may be closed, the parking lot may be full or, heavens forbid, they might deny you access to their store (which they are in their full right to do).
But destroying most of life as we know it... well, yes, we can.
We can destroy a significant portion of larger life forms, but not close to all. Even with nuclear holocaust. Compared to what nature has in store for us, we can hardly make a dent at all. Nature will kill us all, and the only option is to get off this rock. Therefore the only sane, moral and rational thing to do is to spend significant amounts of resources on real exploration. Not doing so is suicidal.
Man must learn that nature is not here to make our life easy. Nature is "evil" and it is trying its best to exterminate us and all other life on the planet and in the universe. The only way is to fight back. Sadly there is only one way to do it, and even that is temporary, namely to multiply like mad and spread out as far as we can. In that way we will delay the inevitable. In the end Nature will win though, and and it will succeed in exterminating all life, not only on this planet, but in the entire universe.
we want to survive as a species we should rather start to change our lives to live sustainable (which would probably not include space travel and certainly not include commercial air flights).
Sigh. The notion that we are, or even have the capability, to destroy life on this planet is absurd. Nothing we do comes close to the damage that nature habitually inflict on planets all over the place. Not even close. In the grander scheme of things we have not had any impact on this planet at all.
Nature on the other hand has. And will. In fact, nature will utterly destroy this planet and make it totally uninhabitable. Even for bacteria. In fact, nature will make it impossible even for rocks to survive. That is what we have to get away from. Global warming. Nuclear holocaust. It is irrelevant compared to what nature has in store for us. Peanuts.
If survival of the species is important to you. If you would like to see animals survive. If you would like to see plants and bacteria live in the future. Getting off this rock is our only option. For that we need technology, and yes, both space and commercial air travel is part of the technology we need. Our behavior is not destroying life on this planet, the lack of such behavior will for sure.
I give a shit about our the ability to survive of our species
Doesn't seem like you do. Seems like you'd rather see all the species on this planet die out rather than have a handful of years with slightly increased temperatures and a slightly elevated sea level. Are the two mutually exclusive? Maybe.
Go ahead, tell me how sending dozens of rovers exploring the whole solar system and/or having a look at Proxima Centauri's planets is any less interesting for the general public than watching a bunch of bozos awkwardly trying to bolt a nut in 0g.
Why would anyone care what is interesting or not? The purpose of space flight is gain the ability to colonize (as in moving people out there) space. All we do we do for survival, and colonizing space is vital for survival. That is why we need manned space flight.
But they tend to fail miserably if you have something you want to actually accomplish
Did you not read his article? You need to read it again. What Buzz is saying is essentially: "Going back to the moon is old-hat. I even have a t-shirt to prove it is. We need to think bigger, but I realize that the moon stuff needs some attention. Let's make an international consortium where the others do the heavy lifting on this mission since it is probably mostly useless anyway. Then we can focus on going to Phobos and Mars."
Buzz has something he actually wants accomplished, that is why he wants someone else to do most of the lifting on the moon project. It is a side-track. Its only value (probably) is training. We need to be there though.
Sometimes the right decision is to listen to the engineers and not the scientists.
Whether scientists or engineers, if they work for NASA it is rarely any point in listening to them. Why? Well, I think this "story" explains it well enough.. The NASA engineers are still playing around with 1970s technology and they think it is as cool as it was in the 1970s when the same engineers built it.
You sir Are completely wrong. Many if not most theater these days are digital not analog
This mostly incorrect. Many, but nowhere close to most, theaters have digital offerings. In multiplexes for example, there is often one or two with digital projection.
Once we go all digital, you are of course correct. 4K is probably going to offer a better viewing experience than HD on a good set. Do recall that there is significant loss in definition and scan line resolution once you get into a large room like a movie theater.
Now, when you start out with "You sir Are completely wrong" it would be an idea to point out what specifically you feel was wrong with what I said. Nothing of what you say contradicts what I said, so on that particular item you are a little unclear. Given that I clearly know what is possible with newer digital formats (read the last sentence) and that I clearly state that I am talking about non-digital - still the most prevalent theater format - your "you are wrong" seems a little odd.
I guess I would claim that the crucial point in the quality of a movie comes in the writing, acting and directing.
A well directed movie that is shot poorly is as bad as the other way around. Same with acting. To me the entire experience counts. That is why I spend extra to go to the better theaters. That is why I watch quality movies in HD. That is also why I shoot in HD only.
Honestly, if you can't tell the difference, particularly in NTSC land, IMHO you are blind or you do not have a TV that is suitable for HD.
The Planet Earth BD has some sections that are shot in standard def. To me, when they switch between them, the difference is jarring and unpleasant. The standard def stuff, the jumping shark is an example, is just too bad quality compared to the rest of the disks.
LG made HD players..and HD/BLu-ray players. There was a player for the X-Box.Onkyo, Integra, Samsung, HP, Adonics and others all made HD players.
This is (mostly) incorrect. LG sold (and still may actually) a BD burner that is also an HD-DVD player. For stand-alone, the only company to release product was Toshiba. There was a minor amount of re-branding but nobody ever sold a non-Toshiba player.
You need to realize that the average home has about 4 people in it. So it's not 30 million players.
I never even hinted that I am as stupid as you seem to imply above. There are about 111 million households in the US. If 11% of them have an HD-DVD player then that would mean that there are somewhere around 12 million HD-DVD players in the US. Do you know how many HD-DVD players have been sold in the world? Approximately 1.3 million. Out of those about 600 000 were sold in the US. TOTAL.
The maximum total number of households that might own an HD-DVD player is around 0.5%. That is a lot less than the article claimed. The number is absurd and the person who wrote the article is a clueless idiot.
BR was slower to be adopted the HD.
Blu-Ray started selling a little later than HD-DVD since it was released (in reality) a little later. It caught up really fast however, and all through 2007 Blu-Ray media, in other words movies, was consistently out-selling HD-DVD. HD-DVD was dead in September of 2007 when WB decided to drop support for it (due to poor sales, nothing else). Though WB decided, IMHO wrongly, to wait with the announcement about dropping support until 2008.
Oh, and no, it was not bribe money that made WB drop support, it was simply that BD media from WB was out-selling HD-DVD media between 2-1 and 3-1 all through 2007. Tosh and MS tried to make WB hang on by offering significant incentives, but WB said "no thanks".
there are many players that can't play movies that use the full spec.
Sigh. This again. It is stated often. It is wrong. It is usually stated by the clueless. All BD players can (unless they are broken of course) play all BD movies. They may not play all the extra stuff though. The games. The BD-Live stuff. They will all play all BD movies though.
I cared was for consumer power, something Blu-Ray strips away.
How? Please be specific. It makes it impossible for you to make illegal copies of your disk, fine. What other power does it strip away?
Funny. Clueless fanbois never give up. No matter how absurd, the "numbers are fine". Sorry dude, but you are wrong. Toshiba made somewhere around 1.3 million HD-DVD players total. If they were all sold in the US that would be a little more than 1% of all US households. The numbers in the article are absurd.
On a technical basis, HD was better then Blu-Ray
Please elaborate if you can. What in particular was technically superior with the HD-DVD format? Was it the lower storage capacity? The fact that it would always have lower storage capacity no matter what? Was it the fact that the HD-DVD menu system was vastly inferior to the Blu-Ray system? Again, please elaborate. Oh, and yes, I agree that the content protection scheme on BD is draconian.
No, I said I prefer movies on my 24" widescreen TFT monitor fed by DVD than Blu-Ray HD movies on a 46" 1080p TV.
And, given the fact that you clearly prefer lower quality to higher quality, I inferred that you would, if you could, prefer VHS on 21" to DVD on 24" and DVD on 24" to BD on 42". That follows naturally.
Actually, this isn't about keeping up. If you enjoy good picture and good sound (really, really good sound) then BD is the thing. It is as good or better than theater image quality and significantly better than (typical) theater sound quality. That isn't "keeping up" it is just enjoying a product to the fullest.
Yes, really. 1080i and 720p typically delivers the same (or very similar) number of scan lines, and in fact 1080i is very typically delivered from a 720p source. The vertical resolution is basically irrelevant, but again, a 1080i signal frequently comes from a 720p source.
A good 1080p set will easily show you a greater clarity with a 1080i image than a 720p image
And that is fine. $5 will definitely get you a ton of Blu-Ray movies as well. Once they have reached the age of the DVDs that you buy.
On the other hand, claiming that Blu-Rays are expensive because new and relevant movies on BD are more expensive than half-second-hand movies pulled out of the "buy it before we throw it in the garbage" bin at Wal Mart is so absurd it's not even funny. You ever heard about "Apples and Oranges". Compare a newly released DVD with a newly released BD. The difference is typically within $5. If that is too rich for you then you are obviously not in the income bracket that a new video format aims to win. You were also not in the income bracket that DVD was aiming for when it came out.
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What ID brings to the table is a new reexamination of facts.
No, it doesn't. ID is dogma. It is nonsense. It is childish superstition dressed up to look like a little less like the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. Problem is, no matter how much you dress it up it is still childish superstition.
Trolling is something else.
I mean, if you go to a nut job school, trying to learn how to be a real nut job, the fact that they have to turn you into a troll first should come as no surprise.
Superstitious idiots are going to be around as long as there are cockroaches. Those of us with brains will just have to learn how to live with it.
RAID doesn't even work all that well.
Which is why I prefer the Lenovo options over, for example, the HP options. On my Lenovo I can say: If I am plugged in and close the lid, turn of the LCD, but if I am not plugged in, go to sleep. On the HP I can only chose go to sleep or turn of LCD, irrespective of my power situation.
Very, very, very important. Final one. You need to educate her. As much as you can. On one very, very important topic. You need to spend time explaining this to her thoroughly so she really understands this. Spinal understanding.
You need to teach her that guys don't get hints. Never. Ever. Not even close. Won't even begin to fathom.
Banal example. You are in your common room, playing some game. She walks into the room and the following conversation (as you see it) takes place:
Her: Your underwear is on the floor
You (looking around and seeing she is right): You are correct, indeed it is (turning to continue game).
In her mind what took place was her going "I told you to clean this room two days ago, remember [she used the same words 'underwear on the floor']? Please get going on this now please, and stop playing your silly game". All girls communicate like this, and none of them have yet to understand (my wife is 30% there) that we simply do not get it. Making an observation is making an observation. There is no automatic directive that follows by an observation. If there is a directive in there somewhere, it must be spelled out clearly and directly. We are simple creatures. What you say is what we hear.
It will take you years to get this across, and you will never completely get there. She will continue to drop hints. When you say "Where do you want to eat" and she replies "I don't mind, we can go anywhere", there is an additional "but you know I hate that waitress at Papa Joe's, and you better remember that I am allergic to that fish stuff, and you know we need to go see Kate and Roger afterwards, so we can't go to the west side of town" etc... Women communicate without words and at least half of what they say has serious hidden meaning. Try to make her stop that. Every day remind her that "men don't get hints". Use the underwear as an example, it is funny. Make a funny story out of it and tell it regularly to your friends when she is there. "We guys don't get hints. If you (pointing at your friends new girlfriend, who hasn't heard this before) walk into a room where he is watching TV, and you say 'your underwear is all over the floor'", he'll raise his head, confirm that you are indeed correct, and continue to watch TV. If you tell him 'get your blasted underwear off my floor', he'll comply instantly". Something like that.
so every time you close the lid on your laptop you have to carefully check it to make sure nothing's running that might disrupt the process?
Sigh. Reading is apparently quite difficult these days. I said it was a good idea. It is if you run Linux too. My HP laptop, for example, running Linux, will occasionally not go to sleep when I close the lid. Ask HP why. The Lenovos are a lot better, but I have gotten off planes at least twice even with those, and it was warm from being left on.
Generally it works, but not 100%. Linux or Windows.
I seriously hope you're making a joke there
I seriously hope you are considering going back to school and learn how to read. I would, for example, spend a lot of time trying to figure out concepts like "in context".
No, I seriously don't expect regular users to learn command line stuff for anything at all. I do however expect that power users do, and I do expect that a power user who wants to re-boot a Windows server from a remote location knows exactly how to do this by heart. You see, that is the "context" in which I posted. Someone had complained that "power users" could not do this.
At the same time I would in fact expect the OS to remind a "regular" user that he has an open Word document that has been changed and that he might want to save before the PC re-boots. In the case of the user to whom I replied, I would expect it was his Resume. Being aware of this particular "quirk" in Windows, I am careful about checking my laptop when I close it running at full speed at an airport. Done it many times, and it is always a good idea to check just to make sure. Particularly if the laptop is an HP, which are notorious for not going to sleep when they should. Never had that problem with my Lenovos.
They didn't fix the broken Vista file browser or windows explorer, and so *nothing else they did* matters.
I have no idea what they fixed in Win7, but I hope they looked at some of the UAC stuff, some memory bloat and other things. If you seriously feel that the worst part of Vista was the file browser, and that is the only thing you would want fixed, well, then you don't figure among the user type I would normally expect to find on /., people who knows a bit about computers. The file browser "quirks" are mostly irrelevant compared to the other stuff that plagued Vista. Mind you, with UAC turned off, Vista 64 works great for me on my 4G laptop and 8G (memory obv) desktop.
Usability is the most important feature they should be concerned about, and both Vista and Win7 are steps backwards in usability.
I work on XP every day in the office, and on Vista 64 every day at home. I don't see any major usability differences when UAC is off. If the file browser is that much of an issue for you maybe you have some sort of learning disability. Honestly, the differences are insignificant. IMHO.
Why should I wait and watch what should be an automatic, guaranteed to succeed operation? No user-mode application should ever be able to interrupt a critical kernel-mode operation like 'shutdown'.
Of course not. Thankfully they do not on Windows. Now, if you are a lame, ignorant user who doesn't know the difference between "shutdown, and ask about closing apps" and "shutdown NOW and just DO IT", then that is a chair-keyboard interface problem, not an operating system problem.
Ah, but you didn't know that Windows has "shutdown -f -r" you say. Well, stop blaming the OS for your own ignorance then!
That's absurd. So you are saying I can't sell my App on Fry's because the day you go there it may be closed, the parking lot may be full or, heavens forbid, they might deny you access to their store (which they are in their full right to do).
But destroying most of life as we know it ... well, yes, we can.
We can destroy a significant portion of larger life forms, but not close to all. Even with nuclear holocaust. Compared to what nature has in store for us, we can hardly make a dent at all. Nature will kill us all, and the only option is to get off this rock. Therefore the only sane, moral and rational thing to do is to spend significant amounts of resources on real exploration. Not doing so is suicidal.
Man must learn that nature is not here to make our life easy. Nature is "evil" and it is trying its best to exterminate us and all other life on the planet and in the universe. The only way is to fight back. Sadly there is only one way to do it, and even that is temporary, namely to multiply like mad and spread out as far as we can. In that way we will delay the inevitable. In the end Nature will win though, and and it will succeed in exterminating all life, not only on this planet, but in the entire universe.
we want to survive as a species we should rather start to change our lives to live sustainable (which would probably not include space travel and certainly not include commercial air flights).
Sigh. The notion that we are, or even have the capability, to destroy life on this planet is absurd. Nothing we do comes close to the damage that nature habitually inflict on planets all over the place. Not even close. In the grander scheme of things we have not had any impact on this planet at all.
Nature on the other hand has. And will. In fact, nature will utterly destroy this planet and make it totally uninhabitable. Even for bacteria. In fact, nature will make it impossible even for rocks to survive. That is what we have to get away from. Global warming. Nuclear holocaust. It is irrelevant compared to what nature has in store for us. Peanuts.
If survival of the species is important to you. If you would like to see animals survive. If you would like to see plants and bacteria live in the future. Getting off this rock is our only option. For that we need technology, and yes, both space and commercial air travel is part of the technology we need. Our behavior is not destroying life on this planet, the lack of such behavior will for sure.
I give a shit about our the ability to survive of our species
Doesn't seem like you do. Seems like you'd rather see all the species on this planet die out rather than have a handful of years with slightly increased temperatures and a slightly elevated sea level. Are the two mutually exclusive? Maybe.
If we want to colonize other worlds we need to spend the money doing the research and developing the technologies we need
As darthdavid points out - what research? The technology is there. As they say "Rocket science isn't exactly, you know, rocket science".
Go ahead, tell me how sending dozens of rovers exploring the whole solar system and/or having a look at Proxima Centauri's planets is any less interesting for the general public than watching a bunch of bozos awkwardly trying to bolt a nut in 0g.
Why would anyone care what is interesting or not? The purpose of space flight is gain the ability to colonize (as in moving people out there) space. All we do we do for survival, and colonizing space is vital for survival. That is why we need manned space flight.
But they tend to fail miserably if you have something you want to actually accomplish
Did you not read his article? You need to read it again. What Buzz is saying is essentially: "Going back to the moon is old-hat. I even have a t-shirt to prove it is. We need to think bigger, but I realize that the moon stuff needs some attention. Let's make an international consortium where the others do the heavy lifting on this mission since it is probably mostly useless anyway. Then we can focus on going to Phobos and Mars."
Buzz has something he actually wants accomplished, that is why he wants someone else to do most of the lifting on the moon project. It is a side-track. Its only value (probably) is training. We need to be there though.
Sometimes the right decision is to listen to the engineers and not the scientists.
Whether scientists or engineers, if they work for NASA it is rarely any point in listening to them. Why? Well, I think this "story" explains it well enough.. The NASA engineers are still playing around with 1970s technology and they think it is as cool as it was in the 1970s when the same engineers built it.
You sir Are completely wrong. Many if not most theater these days are digital not analog
This mostly incorrect. Many, but nowhere close to most, theaters have digital offerings. In multiplexes for example, there is often one or two with digital projection.
Once we go all digital, you are of course correct. 4K is probably going to offer a better viewing experience than HD on a good set. Do recall that there is significant loss in definition and scan line resolution once you get into a large room like a movie theater.
Now, when you start out with "You sir Are completely wrong" it would be an idea to point out what specifically you feel was wrong with what I said. Nothing of what you say contradicts what I said, so on that particular item you are a little unclear. Given that I clearly know what is possible with newer digital formats (read the last sentence) and that I clearly state that I am talking about non-digital - still the most prevalent theater format - your "you are wrong" seems a little odd.
I guess I would claim that the crucial point in the quality of a movie comes in the writing, acting and directing.
A well directed movie that is shot poorly is as bad as the other way around. Same with acting. To me the entire experience counts. That is why I spend extra to go to the better theaters. That is why I watch quality movies in HD. That is also why I shoot in HD only.
Honestly, if you can't tell the difference, particularly in NTSC land, IMHO you are blind or you do not have a TV that is suitable for HD.
The Planet Earth BD has some sections that are shot in standard def. To me, when they switch between them, the difference is jarring and unpleasant. The standard def stuff, the jumping shark is an example, is just too bad quality compared to the rest of the disks.
LG made HD players..and HD/BLu-ray players. There was a player for the X-Box.Onkyo, Integra, Samsung, HP, Adonics and others all made HD players.
This is (mostly) incorrect. LG sold (and still may actually) a BD burner that is also an HD-DVD player. For stand-alone, the only company to release product was Toshiba. There was a minor amount of re-branding but nobody ever sold a non-Toshiba player.
You need to realize that the average home has about 4 people in it. So it's not 30 million players.
I never even hinted that I am as stupid as you seem to imply above. There are about 111 million households in the US. If 11% of them have an HD-DVD player then that would mean that there are somewhere around 12 million HD-DVD players in the US. Do you know how many HD-DVD players have been sold in the world? Approximately 1.3 million. Out of those about 600 000 were sold in the US. TOTAL.
The maximum total number of households that might own an HD-DVD player is around 0.5%. That is a lot less than the article claimed. The number is absurd and the person who wrote the article is a clueless idiot.
BR was slower to be adopted the HD.
Blu-Ray started selling a little later than HD-DVD since it was released (in reality) a little later. It caught up really fast however, and all through 2007 Blu-Ray media, in other words movies, was consistently out-selling HD-DVD. HD-DVD was dead in September of 2007 when WB decided to drop support for it (due to poor sales, nothing else). Though WB decided, IMHO wrongly, to wait with the announcement about dropping support until 2008.
Oh, and no, it was not bribe money that made WB drop support, it was simply that BD media from WB was out-selling HD-DVD media between 2-1 and 3-1 all through 2007. Tosh and MS tried to make WB hang on by offering significant incentives, but WB said "no thanks".
there are many players that can't play movies that use the full spec.
Sigh. This again. It is stated often. It is wrong. It is usually stated by the clueless. All BD players can (unless they are broken of course) play all BD movies. They may not play all the extra stuff though. The games. The BD-Live stuff. They will all play all BD movies though.
I cared was for consumer power, something Blu-Ray strips away.
How? Please be specific. It makes it impossible for you to make illegal copies of your disk, fine. What other power does it strip away?
The numbers are fine.
Funny. Clueless fanbois never give up. No matter how absurd, the "numbers are fine". Sorry dude, but you are wrong. Toshiba made somewhere around 1.3 million HD-DVD players total. If they were all sold in the US that would be a little more than 1% of all US households. The numbers in the article are absurd.
On a technical basis, HD was better then Blu-Ray
Please elaborate if you can. What in particular was technically superior with the HD-DVD format? Was it the lower storage capacity? The fact that it would always have lower storage capacity no matter what? Was it the fact that the HD-DVD menu system was vastly inferior to the Blu-Ray system? Again, please elaborate. Oh, and yes, I agree that the content protection scheme on BD is draconian.
No, I said I prefer movies on my 24" widescreen TFT monitor fed by DVD than Blu-Ray HD movies on a 46" 1080p TV.
And, given the fact that you clearly prefer lower quality to higher quality, I inferred that you would, if you could, prefer VHS on 21" to DVD on 24" and DVD on 24" to BD on 42". That follows naturally.
'twas on my "recommended" page yesterday. Still, 48 and 56, not that much of a difference for a significant amount of staggering documentary making.
Actually, this isn't about keeping up. If you enjoy good picture and good sound (really, really good sound) then BD is the thing. It is as good or better than theater image quality and significantly better than (typical) theater sound quality. That isn't "keeping up" it is just enjoying a product to the fullest.
Umm really.
Yes, really. 1080i and 720p typically delivers the same (or very similar) number of scan lines, and in fact 1080i is very typically delivered from a 720p source. The vertical resolution is basically irrelevant, but again, a 1080i signal frequently comes from a 720p source.
A good 1080p set will easily show you a greater clarity with a 1080i image than a 720p image
That depends entirely on the source.
And that is fine. $5 will definitely get you a ton of Blu-Ray movies as well. Once they have reached the age of the DVDs that you buy.
On the other hand, claiming that Blu-Rays are expensive because new and relevant movies on BD are more expensive than half-second-hand movies pulled out of the "buy it before we throw it in the garbage" bin at Wal Mart is so absurd it's not even funny. You ever heard about "Apples and Oranges". Compare a newly released DVD with a newly released BD. The difference is typically within $5. If that is too rich for you then you are obviously not in the income bracket that a new video format aims to win. You were also not in the income bracket that DVD was aiming for when it came out.