Not true. I stumble across films listed that are still in-production all the time. Some have been "in production" for years and still aren't out yet. But they're in IMDB.
Considering how much low-budget porn is in IMDB, it's quite obvious that Amazon's issue here is anti-torrent and has absolutely nothing to do with the production status of the film, the content of the film, or the credentials of those making the film.
WalMart's been growing since they were called "Walton's Five and Dime" simply because they didn't gouge consumers.
I love how when suddenly a company starts offering a product for less than what people were contently paying for it before, all of a sudden all the places offering it at the old price were "gouging consumers".
Is it so hard to fathom that to produce certain things properly actually has a cost? And if someone else comes around selling for less than that, that maybe they're the "bad guys"? Either by virtue of selling below cost, or doing unethical/immoral things to get the price lower.
Like a previous poster said: consumers prioritize price above all else. Apparently so... including common sense.
When local milk farmers, who I assure you are honest hard-working people who are not price-gouging, can't even break-even, something's horribly wrong.
If you don't have a FB account, then the sudden viral spreading of a photo is not possible. The whole original complaint was due to a scenario that requires having a FB account. Without an account, sure... someone can tag individual photos of you. But they aren't unified and tracked under a specific account for that name, so it's not possible without the user having a FB account for another user to instantly see all photos that all other FB users have tagged of him via immediate notification in their news feeds.
If you don't have a FB account, THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN.
If one is going to criticize FB (and certainly, they deserve plenty), it'd be worth actually understanding how FB works in the first place and gaining some perspective, so that one doesn't sound like an idiot. Your complaint is entirely different than the original issue, and yours is akin to some random person posting some single picture up on a telephone pole somewhere. That problem isn't caused by FB and existed before FB, so your issues aren't with FB if that scenario bothers you so much.
Change your privacy settings to not share pictures that other people tag you in. Or organize people into groups and then selectively control who can see pictures of you tagged by others, and who can't.
Look, I hate Facebook as much as the next guy and confess that the subtleties of Facebook's privacy settings are probably well-beyond the average consumer, but this is Slashdot. I'd expect a certain level of technical competence here. It's not like it's impossible to adjust your Facebook privacy settings now to accomplish this exact request... and it's well within the skills of the average/. reader.
Those of you who hate Flash on the internet and are good with HTML5 and JavaScript really need to head on over and help out the team working on Gallery:
For the second time now, they've given up trying to do things "right" using Javascript and are throwing in the towel to implement core functionality using Flash instead:
They claim they just don't have the skills or manpower to figure out how to make Javascript do what they want, so they're just using Flash since it's easier. I'm not the only Gallery user to have grave concerns about this trend.
Still not clear why anyone would buy a Bluray player other than a PS3.
- DVD upscaling: The PS3 is not top of the game when it comes to this. Many of us have huge DVD collections and countless movies will never see a Blu-Ray release. On modern large screens, the better DVD upscaling of better players is quite evident.
- Power usage: the PS3 uses like 4 times the electricity while running than a typical Blu-Ray player.
- Aesthetics: The PS3 is a useless shape that does not stack or fit well in an AV cabinet
- Remote: If you want a normal IR remote like which comes with any other movie player, you have to shell out extra money
- Sony: Sony is a shitty company with horrible business practices. I know I'm not the only one who boycotts them and refuses to have any of their devices in my house. I can get my movie player, amp, TV, speakers... and even my gaming experience... from better companies.
I actually liked Songbird. No, it wasn't perfect, but it showed a lot of potential. It was bad enough that the Linux version was so Linux-dependent (I run FreeBSD), but this just makes things even worse. It's a sad day... hopefully other projects can pick up the slack, but the Songbird team are really shooting themselves in the foot here and forgetting their roots (and support/fan community).
Did a search through the comments to see if anyone mentioned MDD yet. You beat me to it.:)
MDD is the hidden gem in the webhosting world... that amazing place you've never heard of. The owner is amazing, the service is amazing. He went above and beyond to get my site switched over. If I had known it'd be that easy, I would've switched to him years ago.
Nothing "unlimited", but extremely price-competitive and he has several options. Do yourself a favor and check him out, ask lots of questions, and do your own research. I don't work for them so I don't want to sound like a salesman/parrot... but I'm an EXTREMELY happy customer.
PowWeb used to be awesome, and their community forum was second to none. Rock solid service and support.
Then they sold out and were bought by Endurance, who switched their server platform, censored the forums, and QoS and support went to hell. Lots of people jumped ship, me included.
A guy I know ran with this today and was going on and on about it, going off about how climate-change advocates were such idiots and how this was a huge slap in the face for them, etc etc. He tried to sound really educated about it, talking laws of thermodynamics and saturation of 14.77 micron absorbtion and so on. I countered all his points but he wouldn't let up, of course selectively responding to the stuff I countered with and bringing up some new zany thing each time. I ran out of energy to deal with him, and was simply reminded of why I never really liked the guy.
It's unfortunate to let him have the last word, as of course all his fan-club will read the thread (I confess... this was on Facebook) and of course they will all just see it as a victory and continue to reinforce each others' delusion... but I really don't see how I could ever change his or any of their minds on the subject. My only real hope is that all these curmudgeons with their lazy conservative and antiquated views on things will eventually die off in time for the newer generation of educated youth to step in and hopefully turn things around in time.
It IS a simple notion. It's just too many people find it easier to distort their perception of data in order to allow them to continue their existing lives with as close to no change as possible. Anything that requires one to perform effort, change, or that reduces ones comforts obviously must be wrong.
Well, maybe for 2009 to not be the hottest year in recorded history, or 2000-2009 to be the hottest decade in recorded history, for one.
Maybe not for a clear upward trend in average global temperature over the last 100 years, for another.
Stuff that was predicted well before it actually happened is not evidence to the contrary. If your restricted mental model of how climate works doesn't allow you to comprehend the mechanism that allows global warming to lead to more precipitation, then I'm not sure anyone here can help you. Weather != climate. Luckily the people actually working on the problem are way beyond that first-year course issue. It's unfortunate that there are so many people like yourself with voting powers getting in their way though.
It costs money to run a business. It costs money to run a school/college/university/whatever campus.
Things cost money. Things eventually need to be fixed/replaced, which costs money. Managing this and planning for future inevitible costs are part of running a business/whatever.
Anyone who sold the soul of a 25K-employee multi-billion-dollar business on lock-in with a specific version of a technology that most people knew even 9 years ago would be a bad idea, shouldn't have a job. And a multi-billion-dollar business should know that even things that cost several million dollars need to be replaced sometimes. Otherwise instead of the Venetian and the Bellagio we'd still be dealing with a crumbling and patched The Sands and The Dunes.
A local college here builds a new multi-million-dollar building every few years. In the process, some older multi-million-dollar building is demolished to make room.
Committing to technology means jumping on the train. The train moves, and so must you. Even 9 years ago it would've been no mystery that computers would continue to evolve, Windows would continue to evolve, and it should've been assumed that IE6 would've been depreciated and no longer supported even BEFORE 2010. Just because Microsoft keeps the vegetable of a browser on life-support doesn't mean companies should pretend it's still alive and that it'll be around in 2020 too.
Or did they think they'd just run Windows 2000 forever, and eternally be able to buy licenses for it as their computers died and needed to be replaced, and that there'd be Win2K drivers for their decade-newer hardware?
Some people need to lose their jobs in every instance where IE6 is still required, else the business needs to die from natural selection. Either way, I have no sympathy.
You've gotten a lot of replies to this key ignition placement issue, but none of them hit it.
I have a SAAB-published book that came with my Viggen which states the key was placed in the center between the seats instead of the steering column due to safety studies which revealed driver injuries from the keys on the steering column were very common.
It's part of their character now, certainly... but it wasn't just "to be different" (or to annoy you).
SAAB always took safety very seriously. Did you know the roof is reinforced to provide extra-safety in the event of a moose collision? Due to there being something like 100,000 moose in Sweden. They average 10 moose-car collisions a day.
I've never understood why you'd want to buy a "high end" Blu-ray player anyhow. Reason is I can see only two setups...
Well, that's being rather narrow then. The reason I own the Oppo BDP-83 (and I was one of the first 50 people to own one, getting in on the early-adopter program in January well before its release) was because I owned an Oppo 983 before that and I had become used to the top-notch DVD upscaling abilities. I use a projector setup on a 92" screen so the shortcomings of standard-def are considerably magnified. I did not want to lose DVD-upscaling quality when I went to blu-ray, nor did I want to have to mess with 2 different disc players. So for me, the BDP-83 was perfect.
I really couldn't care less about the analog audio outs (I use HDMI), or the myriad of media support (SACD, DVD-A, etc).
I can see potentially buying something like the Oppo player, if it had a good warranty and build quality. Makes sense to maybe pay more to have your gear last
Well, that's the other thing: it has amazing build quality, and Oppo support is second to none. The few people who've had to make use of it were consistently blown-away by the speed, efficiency, professionalism and courtesy that Oppo support provides. There's something to be said for that.
Then there's one last issue you overlooked: firmware updates. If you follow the AV forums, you'd find that there's no single Blu-ray player manufacturer that works as hard or as fast as Oppo to come up with firmware fixes. Unfortunately "Blu-ray" and "firmware updates" come hand-in-hand as studios play games and experiment with the complicated spec (and out of spec). Your blu-ray player is only as good as the company behind keeping your firmware current. I have watched them work one-on-one with customers who identify problem discs, having the user mail them the disc to test in some circumstances in order to confirm whether it's a faulty disc or indeed an issue with that release, then returning it promptly to the user, often with a new "beta" firmware right behind.
Not to mention the new features we keep seeing, such as subtitle repositioning, DLNA network streaming, Blu-TV, HDMI "auto" negotiation (bitstreams audio formats your receiver supports, sends all others as LPCM). And that's just the latest firmware.
It says something for Oppo that when I bought my BDP-83, my (discontinued) 983 sold on eBay for not only more than I paid for it, but more than its original MSRP.
There are many reasons to go with Oppo. You don't have to be a crazy audiophile to appreciate them, just willing to do a little research.
There's one potential argument to buy a highend player: if done properly, I'd expect them to come with a serial interface to connect it to a matching receiver or pre-amp or some high-end home-control / remote control system. As far as I'm aware, that has never been available even on Lexicon's old Pioneer kit based DVD players, but it used to be a standard feature on e.g. Meridian, TagMclaren or Denon's high-end kit.
A serial connection is an option for the BDP-83.if you order direct from Oppo. It adds $89 as they do the mod on-demand.
Nope. 480p is still "standard definition", by definition. Maybe not "de facto" SD since most peoples' TVs only supported 480i but it was part of the spec and there were plenty of devices that existed that supported 480p all along.
"Enhanced definition" was a marketing term coined after "HD" was defined, to make people now able to see 480p feel special. It wasn't actually a spec.
A "nuke in space" wouldn't' do that much. Space is big and already filled with a wide range of radiation. The flash from a single nuke wouldn't blind too many sats for that long, and while it could certainly take out a satilite it wouldn't be able to take out many at once.
"The potential as an anti-satellite weapon became apparent in August 1958 during Hardtack Teak. The EMP observed at the Apia Observatory at Samoa was four times more powerful than any created by solar storms, while in July 1962 the Starfish Prime test damaged electronics in Honolulu and New Zealand (approximately 1,300 kilometers away), fused 300 street lights on Oahu (Hawaii), set off about 100 burglar alarms, and caused the failure of a microwave repeating station on Kauai, which cut off the sturdy telephone system from the other Hawaiian islands... Because of the very large radius associated with nuclear events, it was nearly impossible to prevent indiscriminate damage to other satellites, including one's own satellites. Starfish Prime produced an artificial radiation belt in space which soon destroyed three satellites (Ariel, TRAAC, and Transit 4B all failed after traversing the radiation belt, while Cosmos V, Injun I and Telstar suffered minor degradation, due to some radiation damage to solar cells, etc.... The worst effects of a Russian high-altitude test occurred on 22 October 1962 (during the Cuban missile crisis), in 'Operation K' (ABM System A proof tests) when a 300-kt missile-warhead detonated near Dzhezkazgan at 290-km altitude. The EMP fused 570 km of overhead telephone line with a measured current of 2,500 A, started a fire that burned down the Karaganda power plant, and shut down 1,000-km of shallow-buried power cables between Aqmola and Almaty"
Since I clearly remember renting full-length movies on Betamax, I feel the need correct you: with Beta II and Beta III, recording time maxed out at 5 hours.
Granted, VHS was always a step ahead with recording time. And there were plenty of other factors.
One of the ways of introducing people to alternative software is to install it and have in sitting there on the menu.
Which is the same behavior we demonize Microsoft for on Windows... for "introducing" us to their "alternatives" by pre-installing them with Windows. And likewise, with hardware vendors, for pre-installing all their useful "alternatives" onto the PCs they sell.
Granted, I'm no Microsoft fan, and firmly believe in open-source and alternative OSes and apps, but if we're to have a legitimate and compelling argument, it has to be consistent. No one is going to bother with a bunch of hypocrites.
Slashdot Mirror
Not true. I stumble across films listed that are still in-production all the time. Some have been "in production" for years and still aren't out yet. But they're in IMDB.
Considering how much low-budget porn is in IMDB, it's quite obvious that Amazon's issue here is anti-torrent and has absolutely nothing to do with the production status of the film, the content of the film, or the credentials of those making the film.
WalMart's been growing since they were called "Walton's Five and Dime" simply because they didn't gouge consumers.
I love how when suddenly a company starts offering a product for less than what people were contently paying for it before, all of a sudden all the places offering it at the old price were "gouging consumers".
Is it so hard to fathom that to produce certain things properly actually has a cost? And if someone else comes around selling for less than that, that maybe they're the "bad guys"? Either by virtue of selling below cost, or doing unethical/immoral things to get the price lower.
Like a previous poster said: consumers prioritize price above all else. Apparently so... including common sense.
When local milk farmers, who I assure you are honest hard-working people who are not price-gouging, can't even break-even, something's horribly wrong.
I don't know of a place that has a Walmart but not a Target
Well, the entire state of Vermont, for one.
If you don't have a FB account, then the sudden viral spreading of a photo is not possible. The whole original complaint was due to a scenario that requires having a FB account. Without an account, sure... someone can tag individual photos of you. But they aren't unified and tracked under a specific account for that name, so it's not possible without the user having a FB account for another user to instantly see all photos that all other FB users have tagged of him via immediate notification in their news feeds.
If you don't have a FB account, THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN.
If one is going to criticize FB (and certainly, they deserve plenty), it'd be worth actually understanding how FB works in the first place and gaining some perspective, so that one doesn't sound like an idiot. Your complaint is entirely different than the original issue, and yours is akin to some random person posting some single picture up on a telephone pole somewhere. That problem isn't caused by FB and existed before FB, so your issues aren't with FB if that scenario bothers you so much.
It was his sister who shared the pictures.
How exactly do you prevent this from happening?
Change your privacy settings to not share pictures that other people tag you in. Or organize people into groups and then selectively control who can see pictures of you tagged by others, and who can't.
Look, I hate Facebook as much as the next guy and confess that the subtleties of Facebook's privacy settings are probably well-beyond the average consumer, but this is Slashdot. I'd expect a certain level of technical competence here. It's not like it's impossible to adjust your Facebook privacy settings now to accomplish this exact request... and it's well within the skills of the average /. reader.
Those of you who hate Flash on the internet and are good with HTML5 and JavaScript really need to head on over and help out the team working on Gallery:
http://gallery.menalto.com/
For the second time now, they've given up trying to do things "right" using Javascript and are throwing in the towel to implement core functionality using Flash instead:
http://gallery.menalto.com/thanks_adobe_flash_builder
They claim they just don't have the skills or manpower to figure out how to make Javascript do what they want, so they're just using Flash since it's easier. I'm not the only Gallery user to have grave concerns about this trend.
Still not clear why anyone would buy a Bluray player other than a PS3.
- DVD upscaling: The PS3 is not top of the game when it comes to this. Many of us have huge DVD collections and countless movies will never see a Blu-Ray release. On modern large screens, the better DVD upscaling of better players is quite evident.
- Power usage: the PS3 uses like 4 times the electricity while running than a typical Blu-Ray player.
- Aesthetics: The PS3 is a useless shape that does not stack or fit well in an AV cabinet
- Remote: If you want a normal IR remote like which comes with any other movie player, you have to shell out extra money
- Sony: Sony is a shitty company with horrible business practices. I know I'm not the only one who boycotts them and refuses to have any of their devices in my house. I can get my movie player, amp, TV, speakers... and even my gaming experience... from better companies.
I actually liked Songbird. No, it wasn't perfect, but it showed a lot of potential. It was bad enough that the Linux version was so Linux-dependent (I run FreeBSD), but this just makes things even worse. It's a sad day... hopefully other projects can pick up the slack, but the Songbird team are really shooting themselves in the foot here and forgetting their roots (and support/fan community).
Did a search through the comments to see if anyone mentioned MDD yet. You beat me to it. :)
MDD is the hidden gem in the webhosting world... that amazing place you've never heard of. The owner is amazing, the service is amazing. He went above and beyond to get my site switched over. If I had known it'd be that easy, I would've switched to him years ago.
Nothing "unlimited", but extremely price-competitive and he has several options. Do yourself a favor and check him out, ask lots of questions, and do your own research. I don't work for them so I don't want to sound like a salesman/parrot... but I'm an EXTREMELY happy customer.
PowWeb used to be awesome, and their community forum was second to none. Rock solid service and support.
Then they sold out and were bought by Endurance, who switched their server platform, censored the forums, and QoS and support went to hell. Lots of people jumped ship, me included.
Avoid them now like the plague.
2009 was the hottest year on record? Huh. News to me, I have heard otherwise. Not locally or nationally, but globally.
Here you go:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20100121/
Ok, but 2009 wasn't and 2000-2009 wasn't. Don't believe me
Ok, I won't:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20100121/
And all the recorded historical data proves these to be facts, right?
Yes.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20100121/
Sorry, I mis-remembered: 2009 is the second warmest year on-record. 2000-2009 is still the warmest decade.
A guy I know ran with this today and was going on and on about it, going off about how climate-change advocates were such idiots and how this was a huge slap in the face for them, etc etc. He tried to sound really educated about it, talking laws of thermodynamics and saturation of 14.77 micron absorbtion and so on. I countered all his points but he wouldn't let up, of course selectively responding to the stuff I countered with and bringing up some new zany thing each time. I ran out of energy to deal with him, and was simply reminded of why I never really liked the guy.
It's unfortunate to let him have the last word, as of course all his fan-club will read the thread (I confess... this was on Facebook) and of course they will all just see it as a victory and continue to reinforce each others' delusion... but I really don't see how I could ever change his or any of their minds on the subject. My only real hope is that all these curmudgeons with their lazy conservative and antiquated views on things will eventually die off in time for the newer generation of educated youth to step in and hopefully turn things around in time.
It IS a simple notion. It's just too many people find it easier to distort their perception of data in order to allow them to continue their existing lives with as close to no change as possible. Anything that requires one to perform effort, change, or that reduces ones comforts obviously must be wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
Well, maybe for 2009 to not be the hottest year in recorded history, or 2000-2009 to be the hottest decade in recorded history, for one.
Maybe not for a clear upward trend in average global temperature over the last 100 years, for another.
Stuff that was predicted well before it actually happened is not evidence to the contrary. If your restricted mental model of how climate works doesn't allow you to comprehend the mechanism that allows global warming to lead to more precipitation, then I'm not sure anyone here can help you. Weather != climate. Luckily the people actually working on the problem are way beyond that first-year course issue. It's unfortunate that there are so many people like yourself with voting powers getting in their way though.
It costs money to run a business. It costs money to run a school/college/university/whatever campus.
Things cost money. Things eventually need to be fixed/replaced, which costs money. Managing this and planning for future inevitible costs are part of running a business/whatever.
Anyone who sold the soul of a 25K-employee multi-billion-dollar business on lock-in with a specific version of a technology that most people knew even 9 years ago would be a bad idea, shouldn't have a job. And a multi-billion-dollar business should know that even things that cost several million dollars need to be replaced sometimes. Otherwise instead of the Venetian and the Bellagio we'd still be dealing with a crumbling and patched The Sands and The Dunes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunes_(hotel_and_casino)
A local college here builds a new multi-million-dollar building every few years. In the process, some older multi-million-dollar building is demolished to make room.
Committing to technology means jumping on the train. The train moves, and so must you. Even 9 years ago it would've been no mystery that computers would continue to evolve, Windows would continue to evolve, and it should've been assumed that IE6 would've been depreciated and no longer supported even BEFORE 2010. Just because Microsoft keeps the vegetable of a browser on life-support doesn't mean companies should pretend it's still alive and that it'll be around in 2020 too.
Or did they think they'd just run Windows 2000 forever, and eternally be able to buy licenses for it as their computers died and needed to be replaced, and that there'd be Win2K drivers for their decade-newer hardware?
Some people need to lose their jobs in every instance where IE6 is still required, else the business needs to die from natural selection. Either way, I have no sympathy.
then the man would first need an un-fake-able signal of the woman's seriousness before passing the rock across the table.
I don't see why this isn't reasonable, even now. Or are men the only ones who lie, cheat, and/or get married for the wrong reasons?
You've gotten a lot of replies to this key ignition placement issue, but none of them hit it.
I have a SAAB-published book that came with my Viggen which states the key was placed in the center between the seats instead of the steering column due to safety studies which revealed driver injuries from the keys on the steering column were very common.
It's part of their character now, certainly... but it wasn't just "to be different" (or to annoy you).
SAAB always took safety very seriously. Did you know the roof is reinforced to provide extra-safety in the event of a moose collision? Due to there being something like 100,000 moose in Sweden. They average 10 moose-car collisions a day.
I've never understood why you'd want to buy a "high end" Blu-ray player anyhow. Reason is I can see only two setups...
Well, that's being rather narrow then. The reason I own the Oppo BDP-83 (and I was one of the first 50 people to own one, getting in on the early-adopter program in January well before its release) was because I owned an Oppo 983 before that and I had become used to the top-notch DVD upscaling abilities. I use a projector setup on a 92" screen so the shortcomings of standard-def are considerably magnified. I did not want to lose DVD-upscaling quality when I went to blu-ray, nor did I want to have to mess with 2 different disc players. So for me, the BDP-83 was perfect.
I really couldn't care less about the analog audio outs (I use HDMI), or the myriad of media support (SACD, DVD-A, etc).
I can see potentially buying something like the Oppo player, if it had a good warranty and build quality. Makes sense to maybe pay more to have your gear last
Well, that's the other thing: it has amazing build quality, and Oppo support is second to none. The few people who've had to make use of it were consistently blown-away by the speed, efficiency, professionalism and courtesy that Oppo support provides. There's something to be said for that.
Then there's one last issue you overlooked: firmware updates. If you follow the AV forums, you'd find that there's no single Blu-ray player manufacturer that works as hard or as fast as Oppo to come up with firmware fixes. Unfortunately "Blu-ray" and "firmware updates" come hand-in-hand as studios play games and experiment with the complicated spec (and out of spec). Your blu-ray player is only as good as the company behind keeping your firmware current. I have watched them work one-on-one with customers who identify problem discs, having the user mail them the disc to test in some circumstances in order to confirm whether it's a faulty disc or indeed an issue with that release, then returning it promptly to the user, often with a new "beta" firmware right behind.
Not to mention the new features we keep seeing, such as subtitle repositioning, DLNA network streaming, Blu-TV, HDMI "auto" negotiation (bitstreams audio formats your receiver supports, sends all others as LPCM). And that's just the latest firmware.
It says something for Oppo that when I bought my BDP-83, my (discontinued) 983 sold on eBay for not only more than I paid for it, but more than its original MSRP.
There are many reasons to go with Oppo. You don't have to be a crazy audiophile to appreciate them, just willing to do a little research.
There's one potential argument to buy a highend player: if done properly, I'd expect them to come with a serial interface to connect it to a matching receiver or pre-amp or some high-end home-control / remote control system. As far as I'm aware, that has never been available even on Lexicon's old Pioneer kit based DVD players, but it used to be a standard feature on e.g. Meridian, TagMclaren or Denon's high-end kit.
A serial connection is an option for the BDP-83.if you order direct from Oppo. It adds $89 as they do the mod on-demand.
Nope. 480p is still "standard definition", by definition. Maybe not "de facto" SD since most peoples' TVs only supported 480i but it was part of the spec and there were plenty of devices that existed that supported 480p all along.
"Enhanced definition" was a marketing term coined after "HD" was defined, to make people now able to see 480p feel special. It wasn't actually a spec.
A "nuke in space" wouldn't' do that much. Space is big and already filled with a wide range of radiation. The flash from a single nuke wouldn't blind too many sats for that long, and while it could certainly take out a satilite it wouldn't be able to take out many at once.
Hmm...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_nuclear_explosion#EMP_generation
http://history.nasa.gov/conghand/nuclear.htm
"The potential as an anti-satellite weapon became apparent in August 1958 during Hardtack Teak. The EMP observed at the Apia Observatory at Samoa was four times more powerful than any created by solar storms, while in July 1962 the Starfish Prime test damaged electronics in Honolulu and New Zealand (approximately 1,300 kilometers away), fused 300 street lights on Oahu (Hawaii), set off about 100 burglar alarms, and caused the failure of a microwave repeating station on Kauai, which cut off the sturdy telephone system from the other Hawaiian islands ... Because of the very large radius associated with nuclear events, it was nearly impossible to prevent indiscriminate damage to other satellites, including one's own satellites. Starfish Prime produced an artificial radiation belt in space which soon destroyed three satellites (Ariel, TRAAC, and Transit 4B all failed after traversing the radiation belt, while Cosmos V, Injun I and Telstar suffered minor degradation, due to some radiation damage to solar cells, etc. ... The worst effects of a Russian high-altitude test occurred on 22 October 1962 (during the Cuban missile crisis), in 'Operation K' (ABM System A proof tests) when a 300-kt missile-warhead detonated near Dzhezkazgan at 290-km altitude. The EMP fused 570 km of overhead telephone line with a measured current of 2,500 A, started a fire that burned down the Karaganda power plant, and shut down 1,000-km of shallow-buried power cables between Aqmola and Almaty"
Since I clearly remember renting full-length movies on Betamax, I feel the need correct you: with Beta II and Beta III, recording time maxed out at 5 hours.
Granted, VHS was always a step ahead with recording time. And there were plenty of other factors.
One of the ways of introducing people to alternative software is to install it and have in sitting there on the menu.
Which is the same behavior we demonize Microsoft for on Windows... for "introducing" us to their "alternatives" by pre-installing them with Windows. And likewise, with hardware vendors, for pre-installing all their useful "alternatives" onto the PCs they sell.
Granted, I'm no Microsoft fan, and firmly believe in open-source and alternative OSes and apps, but if we're to have a legitimate and compelling argument, it has to be consistent. No one is going to bother with a bunch of hypocrites.