I am sure some kind of linked filesystem would be possible. In most practical situations, I think this idea would be a non-starter. I fully concur with your statement. If you had say 100 PC's with say 160GB each machine and had say 60GB free you could use that 60GB and get 6TB. This sounds great except you now need the software to do this (we are talking about MS Windows and the company has to pay for it) and an Enterprise backup solution (not cheap either) and that is assuming each PC is connected to a Gigabit network and considering most PC's have on average disks that run at 5400 rpm (laptop) and 7200 rpm (desktop) your disks become your limiting throughput and also a single point of failure and that does not even take into account someone switching off their PC especially if the said company has an energy policy.
This discussion is nothing new and was discussed back in the 1980's and the conclusion was "if you don't like wasted disk space then get a centralised server and thin clients" and it equally applies today. If the business requires some of it's workforce to have laptops then connecting them into a distributed file-system is not worth the trouble because of their portability.
So an effort to fix global warming made things worse? How surprising. You mean we had an effort in the first place?:-)
The problem with liquid biofuels (what the article is alluding to) is not so much the actual production of the fuel itself since that is dependent on the Sun and the quality of the soil or media that is used grow the product, it is the overall energy equation from the actual production to delivery verses the energy that the fuel produces and if you look at ethanol which the Article covers, the cost to produce and deliver in some countries is more than what the energy of the fuel produces. Biodiesel on the other hand has a more positive energy equation and should have been covered, however even biodesel like ethanol requires land to grow the appropriate crops and this can be a major problem in some countries which have limited land to grow food much less biofuels.
There is no easy "one size fits all" liquid energy solution and each solution must weigh all factors and come up with a professional (ie. try to keep politics out, which is impossible) and appropriate policy with regard to alternative energy. It may be possible that ethanol is appropriate in some countries and for other counties biodiesel is better, however for these type of fuels land is needed and then you have the problem of land required for food verses land required for biofuels. For some countries that is not an issue but for many with large populations it is.
One thing the article did not cover is the pollution that each liquid energy source produces and that should also cover the petroleum industry as well. If you take that into account all fuels pollute and you need to weigh all factors.
The debate on biofuels is only going to get hotter and it pays to have a basic understanding of the realities of the topic. For a good start point try here , but be warned this is just a primer. As for other energy solutions such a gas, coal, nuclear, wind, water (the list goes on) that is a major topic for another time and again "one size does not fit all".
But, I am interested in one thing; what criteria do you use when selecting an OS? It think the simplest answer is to ask the question "What do I want to use computer for?".
If you look at the applications the average home user would run on their computer you would see the following breakdown:
Web browsing.
Email.
Simple Word Processing.
Gaming (this is the one which forces choice).
Watching videos (downloaded or just playing the media)
Media server
I am quite sure many people can point out more esoteric uses of a computer (I know I can) but I am trying to point out what the average person uses a computer for. From the above list with the exception of Gaming a Linux OS will work just as well as a Microsoft OS. The problem is the average user has no idea they can put an alternative OS on their PC and even if they do they are normally too afraid to experiment.
As for games. There are native games for Linux however most games are written for MS Windows and software like Wine will never catch-up to the MS Windows proprietary gaming solutions. They do get close but no cigar.
What would make me choose a Linux OS over MS Vista or MS XP for that matter even though my laptop came with Vista Ultimate (IMHO quite a boring OS)? I have installed Fedora 8 (no dual boot) and can do all of the above with the exception of playing Microsoft games, which is no issue for me since I only prefer console and retro games such as what can be run under a native emulator (ie. NES and SNES - still looking at Sega emus). The main factors for me choosing Linux is it does offer me computing freedom as the expense of having to learn which I enjoy and I do work on Unix and Linux systems in my work. Obviously other people have different reasons but unfortunately most people are complacent and will not make the switch from their pre-installed OS, unless there are compelling reasons to do so.
The QT libraries are supposed to be licensed under GPL3 (see Trolltech ) and KDE and anyone else for that matter can use them so if a court case is held it is going to be very interesting.
Even if the QT libraries are under GPL3 this still does not stop propriety and even closed source software from using them and remaining proprietary. Of course if you or Nokia modify the QT libraries the changes must be made available as per what the GPL3 requires. This still allows Nokia to provide paid support which is no different from what Trolltech does already.
See the following article for an interesting slant on why Nokia purchased Trolltech Businessweek .
Personally I don't despise Microsoft however I would not trust them. Actually some of Microsoft's products are quite good and definitely integrate well with Microsoft software but just try to get other software to integrate.
I am not overly surprise with the "Oh it's not like Microsoft" attitude it is always interesting how people will say they have a Microsoft product that does not have an equivalent Linux (note I did not say open-source) product and I normally take great delight in pointing out a commercial Linux product which in many cases is cheaper and is functionally equivalent. A good counter is to ask the Microsoft software supporter if they have paid for a legitimate license and then when they wipe the shock-horror look of their face tell them about the commercial software for Linux (Google's your friend here).
From the Article I noticed they talked about Fedora 5 which is really fairly old now and if they wanted Fedora I would definitely recommend Fedora 8 and is the one I use which has much better wireless support (if needed). Choice of distribution aside Open Office is a must and will do pretty much everything a student requires. You can even used "Dia" as a Visio replacement and for those people who want to do programming the development tools are excellent.
I know I will most likely get people pointing out some commercial software is much better than Linux software but before anyone replies please make sure you have legitimately purchased the your software and if you have I can normally point out commercial Linux software that will be functionally equivalent. People also need to keep in mind that the Philippines is a poor country and Linux can save the country a considerable amount of money. In addition Linux will help train computer people to understand the fundamentals of computers since the Linux source is open. This as far as I am concerned is more important than just learning how to use a web browser or so called Office Productivity Tools.
Shared passwords are a great way to loose information since eventually they are going to end up in the hands of an unauthorised person. Even with passwords and a special browser that is configured not to print it is always possible to save and print the information. Basically if you can see it, hear it or even touch it you can copy it, all you can really do is to trust the user to be ethical.
If you want to limit documents or files to specific users why not use ACL's then you never have to worry about passwords, although you still have to worry about users stupidly sharing their access passwords. It is very easy to administrate ACL's rather than try to implement DRM which IMHO is a total waste of time considering all modern proprietary and open source OS's support ACL's. It is unfortunate that many Application Administrators find ACL's difficult to administrator but DRM easy in theory (go figure).
And yet, despite knowing this, they're still outselling the PS3 nearly two-to-one. That says more about Sony than it does about Microsoft. You are right but only a few months ago the ratio of Xbox360 to PS3 was almost 3 to 1 world wide, now it is less then 2 to 1. The Xbox360 has well over a year start on the PS3 in the USA and Japan but in Europe and Australia the PS3 has been out just 10 months. Go to here for current sales and then to compare launches and you can see that the PS3 is starting to overtake the Xbox360 although in the USA the Xbox360 leads almost 3 to 1 which is significant while the lead in Europe and Japan is very marginal and shrinking. Of course if you want the add the Wii to the argument then don't bother, the Wii is outselling all consoles although when you consider the price differential it is not surprising.
Well GPL3 and GPL2 do take away the "so called rights of a developer" to grab the code and make it their own. If you want to get GPL'd code and keep it in-house that's ok, but if you sell the modified code you must provide the source on request. Personally I cannot see a problem with that. Anyway the GPL can exist with proprietary code however it is important to define the line between them. Actually I don't know of any license that requires you to make your source (providing it is your own source) available or even owned by the maker's license of a library (look at NAG or IMSL libraries if you want an example) or even a compiler. In other words your proprietary code can call QT Libraries but you can not modify the QT libraries without publishing the changes.
Like it or not software is becoming the new land grab and ruthless companies (not just Microsoft) can ride roughshod over a well meaning and in many ways an idealistic software developer by actually take away their code and make it their own with no compensation to the developer, this is what the GPL was written to redress.
No formal or even informal agreement can exist in within the fabric of a societies Law without amendments added to it over time to hopefully protect the rights of the person or persons who it applies to. Looking at the GPL which was written almost 19 years ago, over time newer amendments must be made to cope with the vagaries of Law and to date GPL3 the latest revision.
I am not going to blindly follow someone or a group based on past good deeds I am going to follow the group that I feel is protecting my freedoms now and not trying to control me. If you see the history many of the most oppressive dictators got into power because they were one of the strongest fighters for freedom. But after they got control and recognition they started to pull the reigns on their supporter and slowly take away the freedom. Leaving people to have less freedom then when they started with... I see the FSF starting to do the same and using people who blindly support the old FSF and slowing adding restrictions and making it sound good. For people to bend their principals a little bit each time. No one is asking you to blindly follow someone, the choice has always been yours. If you don't like the GPL then use some other License if you wish, the choice is entirely up to you. Of course when I read what you have written which likens the FSF to something like the Nazi Party in the late 1920's that reads like trolling. At least you don't have to worry that some jack-booted, brown-shirted FSF member is going to intimidate you or start beating up on innocent Microsoft employees, or worse yet Richard Stallman here defending himself against ninja's.:-)
The Article is a little vague on if people in the US don't like DVD recorders or Hard Disk Drive (HDD) DVD recorders. I did a check on your Humax Tivo/DVD-recorder combo unit, it is what we call in Australia a HDD DVD recorder and it is much more popular than a DVD recorder even though this is cheaper. From your link it is almost identical to my LG RH7521W however yours had a dual digital tuner while mine has a single analog tuner, still I got mine fairly cheap about three years ago. I have found a HDD DVD player/recorder is very flexible and convenient, my wife finds it very easy to use compared to our old, now defunct VCR. I would personally find a DVD player/recorder a pain since it would not be that much different than a VCR which is almost dead (DVD/VCR combos are still popular but I think the demand is dropping) in Australia.
I have Foxtel and while Foxtel in Australia is standard definition I can connect the digital set-top box to my recorder composite in but my recorder can do component out and it converts the output to PAL progressive scan (PAL 576p) and the sound to coaxial which I feed to my amplifier. The picture when converted to PAL 576p can look quite nice on my HDTV although on occasions we need to set our amplifier to 2 channel stereo for older shows (one button push).
While I have not done an Australian survey I notice that DVD player/recorders are mainly sold in shops or in markets that sell cheap items so you get what you pay for, which IMHO is not much. Most department stores may have one or two token DVD player/recorders but HDD DVD player/recorders dominate. I have a feeling the author of the article has not done his homework.
If and when Foxtel goes to High Definition (not the stupid so called HD which shrinks to half size on my HDTV) I hope they are not going to charge me extra since I am getting a bit put off with all the commercials and this will make me look at alternative HDTV methods. Unfortunately I have never seen a HDD DVD recorder that can take HD component in which sort of defeats the purpose since DVD is still standard definition. If I get a HDD Blu-ray player/recorder I would definately want to record HD via component in with HDMI and component out. I have a feeling I am going to be waiting a while.
Having a car with an integrated HD-DVD or even a BD player for that matter is really being stupid or maybe it's all about having bragging rights unless you have a reasonable sized HDTV in the back (yes I have have seen a chop shop do a 50" LCD). Most screens for cars and vans are usually less then 12" which basically means a standard DVD player or even the new lite PSP will display a divx movie really well to your rear car screen and you would be hard pressed to pick the difference.
HD-DVD is a completed hardware spec. Unlike Blu-Ray, where now people who early adopted to use the new features unless they got the cheap Blu-Ray player in the PS3, have no way to use the new features like the Internet, PiP and other features being released in BluSpec 2.0. Hmm if HD-DVD is completed spec then why did it not get put in the Xbox360 and why did they say that we can do 3 layer when most HD-DVD players don't support it? I suggest you look here then tell me which is the better spec and I am being fair since I picked the HD-DVD to BD comparison not the other way around. If you compare HD-DVD to BD popular movies there is little if any difference in price, which means if HD-DVD is cheaper to produce than BD then why is that price differential not passed to the consumer?
Many BD players do have an upgrade capability but some earlier ones don't, however these players will still be able to display the movie. Early adopters expect or should expect this. Of course if the you don't have an internet connection then your only hope of an upgrade if supported is via the media and that equally applies to HD-DVD players as well. As for PiP how many people are going to use this? I have PiP in my HDD DVD player/recorder but I don't use it although if people want it then thats ok with me.
The PS3 being a "cheap" BD player? I guess you don't have one. The PS3 is recognised as one of the best upscaling DVD and BD player on the market. BD movies played on a PS3 look fantastic on a large HDTV, even lowly divx files played on a PS3 are upscaled and are quite watchable on a HDTV. A PS3 can even upscale and display content from a media server. In addition there are over 9 million PS3 in homes now and most people (unless they live on Mars) contrary to what the so called survey said do know that the PS3 can play Blu-ray movies and most know that it can play and upscale DVD movies as well.
Transformers is on DVD and upscales well on a BD or even a HD-DVD player but if you want a cheap legitimate copy from the department stores of Transformers the movie not the cartoon series for approx US$4 then go to the Philippines there VCD not DVD is king and mention HD-DVD you get blank looks although the people I was training did know about Blu-ray (go figure).
A BD, DVD or HD-DVD player is just that "a player" and has few if any additional features, still if that is what some people want then it is their money. Personally I would rather pay for a HDD High Def player/recorder which may be more expensive but IMHO it is definately more flexible and useful although at the moment there are few high def player/recorders on the market and they are expensive.
I do have a HDD DVD player/recorder (less than US$250) and it is very flexible with time shifting and recording capabilities as well as the ability to record on to hard disk or DVD or even from hard disk to DVD and vice-versa. Newer HDD DVD player/recorders have larger disks and have one or even two High Def tuners for two channel recording and they are about the same price I paid for my original machine. Once you get a HDD DVD player/recorder you would (IMHO) considerer a VCR or dare I say it Betamax stone-age technology. I can understand buying a portable DVD player so the kids can watch it when you are on a long trip but buying a video player Standard or High Definition for home use IMHO is just a waste.
Considering that HD-DVD players are now been sold at a fire sale price this sounds like a good buy but when you consider that HD-DVD and BD movies of similar popularity are exactly the same price and much more expensive than DVD there is no compelling reason to pick either format unless you already have a HDTV and want a HD player. Also if you consider that many people only have SDTV's why would they rush out and buy a cheap HD-DVD player when they can't tell the difference between upscaled DVD or HD-DVD (or even BD for that matter) against plain DVD output to their SDTV.
Anyone considering buying a High Definition player should first consider a High Definition TV and the bigger the better although for most 50" is about the largest you should go unless you have a large viewing room. Anyone with a HDTV under 32" will find that they are hard pressed to tell the difference between a HD movie and a SD movie especially if their player can upscale. The bigger the HDTV the more you can tell the difference between SD and HD. Deciding on a HDTV does depend on what you can afford although if you are willing to shop around you can get good package deals.
I won't disagree with what you said with regard to license fees and TCO, however the issue is not licensing, re-training costs or TCO it is saving your word processor file in ODF which is a document format and should not require any retraining, hence licensing, re-training costs or TCO is effectively zero.
Now moving from Microsoft Office to Open Office or even Star Office may entail some re-training although to be honest if you can use a Word processor or spreadsheet you can work on just about any Office suite of software. Sure you may not be 100% proficient but lets be honest here how many clerical people use even 50% of Microsoft Office capabilities, so re-training costs to any other Office suite is and should be minimal. I won't deny it, but those people who absolutely must have Microsoft Office because they are a power user are probably going to need re-training the most, not because they need to know what Open or Star Office can do but because they have locked themselves into a mindset of if it isn't Microsoft software then it cannot be good and have a very negative attitude to change.
Any manager who wants any type of re-training for a format is drinking too much Microsoft cool-aid and should be gently shown to a nice padded room for a extended vacation since their credibility and TCO has just flown out the window.:-)
Like it or not Microsoft tries to work within the laws of each county they do business in and they have a "illusion" of lawyers to make sure they don't cross the line too much so if at the end of a long dragged out court case they do have enough money to pay the fine, cry crocodile tears, state they will work with the commission more closely and pledge they will never do it again.
Sorry I could not resist "illusion" since the list was not actually IMHO appropriate although "greed" came close. Still Microsoft lawyers do seem to practicing some form of magic.:-)
In Australia the OEM costs for MS Vista Home (32 bit)or MS XP (32 bit) is approx US$100. For Vista Ultimate (32 bit) the price is over US$200 and this price is for a Custom built machine. Of course if you purchase a pre-built machine the Microsoft OEM costs are built into the total price of the machine and the person doing the buying has no idea what the original OEM price is. This is what is commonly called the "Microsoft Tax".
All you get with an MS Windows OEM install is a pre-built version of a MS Windows distribution and from what I have seen you need to create a "Recovery CD/DVD" which you can only do once, so loose this and hello your friendly pirate or you can pay full price (normally over two times the OEM price) for the genuine install kit. If the user has any smarts they should create a image or ghost backup of their base OS and use this if required because if you have the right image tools the image creation (base install not user data) should take approx 30 minutes as does the recovery time.
The problem is that most people have no idea that they can image their disk much less create a Recovery CD/DVD until something goes wrong. To be fair most people would not know how to do this even if they had a Linux machine although you would normally find that a Linux user has more technical expertise and is more likely to create a valid recovery mechanism than a Microsoft centric user.
Alpha has been killed by HP in favour of the Itanic (Itanium) No Compaq put the knife in and pushed the body in a hole, HP is just filling in the hole. The reason why the hole has not be fully filled in is those annoying arms keep popping up.
Yeah, but what XP owner is still running the same original installation? My mom, for example, has reinstalled XP several times over the last few years. Actually XP owners are running the same original installation the only thing that has changed are the updates over the years.
The above also begs the question why did your mother have to reinstall XP several times over the last few years? A hard disk failure is acceptable that can and will happen to any hardware but several times?. The fun comes when you take your Microsoft recovery CD/DVD (you can only generate this once) and recover to a machine which has newer or different hardware. Of course if you read the Microsoft Eula this is illegal but who reads the Eula?
Recovery CD's are really just:
1) Put recovery DVD or CD in your CD/DVD drive.
2) Power cyle your PC.
3) Answer "Y" to reinstall,
4) Find something to do for a few hours.
5) After the recovery you end up with a bare bones system that requires you to put on all your (cough) licensed software plus all your (you did do a backup?) personal data.
What I just described is the Win2000, XP and Vista recovery process and that is normally for the same or similar machine which is hardly rocket science. If you are recovering an image (recommended) then step 4 is much shorter and step 5 may not be needed. An advantage of doing this is you get not only your OS updated to when you created your image but all your data as well. The thing is how many people do this?
With Linux I use a cloned or snapshot backup of my disk data to an external hard disk at approx 1.5 to 2GB per minute to backup and recover. I then run a simple backup script on all important file-systems. By doing this I can do a fresh install of a new Linux OS (I use Fedora 8 now) and recover all my data in approx 6 hours from initial backup to full recovery. This is not difficult to do and you don't need to be a Linux Guru. It must be noted I stated "fresh install" not "upgrade". A Linux upgrade depending your machine takes approximately 1 hour and an update may take another hour depending on your network connection. It must be noted that nothing of what I have stated costs me anything except maybe the DVD (approx $0.50) for the latest Linux distribution.
For "video availability" that will mean more choices or feeds. When you consider it if you have say 100 video feeds each feed being a different movie be it high or standard definition (obviously you make more movies available with this) then at any one time you can have millions of people connecting to just the one feed they want to view at the moment and saving the movie to their set-top box since each feed is available instantaneously to all subscribers. Of course if the movie has already started you have to wait for the next session to start with a popular movie having three or more time offset feeds. A good set-top box can time shift so a smart person can start their recording earlier and then watch the show at their convince and as many times as they want which would normally be over a 24 hour period. The company could even have 30 or more feeds available for requested movies but this will definately cost more. Look at the Foxtel movie selection and you can see the methodology I am talking about although in Australia at the moment Foxtel is standard Definition only.
As for "video on demand" 160Mbps is not that great since I cannot see even a thousand people trying to download the same movie or even a selection of movies around the same time. I know about Torrents but I cannot see this being implemented to spread the download bandwidth so for the foreseeable future "video availability" is much more flexible since increasing overall bandwidth means increasing the number of video feeds rather than just trying for faster downloads.
For home use you are better off with an equal or much larger external disk drive, however you are not protected from fire, theft, flood and stupid mistakes. Even with say 100GB Blu-Ray or 1.6TB HVD (not available yet) the media is not cheap and backups with this would not come cheap. DLT tape drives can do close to a TerraByte but they aren't cheap either. Actually the cheapest burner is Blu-Ray since you can get an internal PC burner/reader for approx $300 to $500 that will burn/read 50GB Blu-Ray media however the media is still expensive although it is approx the same price DVD's were in 2000.
The Blu-Ray market would not even be considered in the Enterprise since DLT is king although this may be shaken by the introduction of HVD but that is still in the future.
Like it or not even if you down load movies dare I mention some sort of DRM will be involved here for short term legitimate downloads you will need huge storage for High Def movies even if you can rip and compress them so having High Def media such as Blu-Ray or even DVD for your movie backup is always a good idea. After all if you have insurance and you have a catastrophe such as fire and/or theft, you have more chance of getting back movies on that were on legitimate purchased media such as DVD, Blu-Ray or even HD-DVD than movie, TV show downloads or rips (avi, divx whatever) that were on you media server.
Actually with regard to family photos even DVD would be fine for the next few years although I would definitely refresh (copy back to disk then re-burn) to your hard drive every year (depends on the quality of your media). Blu-Ray would be the best bet for compressed movie and TV show rips and again I would be refreshing every one to three years although I would definitely refresh when you change your PC hardware. Of course you should consider putting your backup media in some safe place preferably not in your house, flat or unit.
The PS2 is still alive and some great games are being made for it. I have never regretted buying my PS3 since it is backwards compatible and smooths and upscales PS2 games which IMHO give many PS2 games a second life so much so that I am not really worried about buying native PS3 games. This has two benefits for me, 1) I save money over buying PS3 games and 2) many new PS2 games are really good. This was great when there where few PS3 games I liked but now that there are some PS3 games I like I find I am still playing and enjoying those PS2 games and even some new ones which means that I am am quite happy to wait till the PS3 games that I like come down in price.
Now the downside??... Hmm can't think of any.
Currently playing FFX11, Dragon Quest, Phychonauts (odd but really fun) and many other great PS2 games and oh yes "Oblivion". Sigh I really should get out more.
I recently purchased a laptop that came with Vista Ultimate 64 bit and I put on Fedora 7 and later on Fedora 8 with no dual boot and everything works for me including Wireless. Does Microsoft care that I did this? No they don't since as far as they are concerned they have a Vista sale. I could hand in my license for a refund however I may if I was lucky and jumped through many hoops get US$100 but when I sell my laptop in six months time I would have a hard time doing so since I know the prospective buyer would want MS Vista on it.
Because I only keep a laptop for about a year (I get a very good work discount) I nearly always break even and sometimes make a profit, however I do give the prospective buyer the option of a fully operational Fedora or even Ubuntu Distribution but in all cases they want a Microsoft OS which has nothing on it so I always make sure I can recover that OS so I don't bother getting my money back. If you say to a prospective buyer that they can get a huge amount of legitimate free software with Linux Distributions they still prefer to get a bare MS Windows OS and are quite comfortable with pirating (they always know someone) the MS Windows compatible software even though they would never continence taking an item worth a few cents from a supermarket shelf.
My attitude to this is to actually charge more for the laptop with MS Vista plus the recovery DVD's than if I sold it with a Linux Distribution although I would still give them the recovery DVD's and surprisingly people are happy with this, go figure.
In the enterprise and I am talking about many terabytes here then tape is still the best backup solution. It may not be the most reliable since DLT tapes even with the best of care can and do break and I can assure you that can be very embarrassing especially when doing a Disaster Recovery. It must be noted that tapes can be put in a RAID configuration with enterprise backup solutions which arn't cheap, but even then you can still have failures.
You are spot-on with regard to technology changes and as I have said before the backup and recovery/refresh on change methodology is so important since you keep your original data and that is assuming the format of your original data does not change. If your data format changes you are going to have a huge problem. I am fully in favor of open format solutions which makes recovery or portability so much easier. Unfortunately many businesses don't think along this line and usually data is lost between hardware or format changes and of course it is always the System Administrators fault.
Personally I don't think CD/DVD style media are good for large amounts of archival storage but they do offer 10 to 20 year storage for smaller amounts of data such as films and music and at least even if Blu-Ray becomes the prefered format you can still read CD's and DVD's with the device of course the same can be said for HD-DVD. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are ok for High Def films and a reasonable amounts of data but at the moment I would not want to bet the business on them. HVD does offer an alternative to tape but as you have mentioned a technology change (ie. new formats or hardware) will stuff up long term archival recovery.
For home use I would recommend a backup disk (or disks) that will fit one backup on it and at least enough space on said disk that can store a few weeks or preferably months of incrementals. It only took me 5 hours to backup my 30GB of personal data, install Fedora 8 and recover all personal data as well as do an update. That worked for me but what happens when you have terabytes or more of data? It does not take any rocket scientist to pick holes in my personal home backup strategy but what home user can afford a reliable backup system that covers all disasters.
Actually on a slightly different note I have read that for short term archive storage and near-line capability HVD is becoming fairly popular with stand alone libraries although from my experience many of the libraries in the area where I live use central servers. I cannot comment on museums but I don't think they are different to what a library requires with the exception of requiring more pictures. At the risk of repeating myself an open format solution is by far the safest bet for any long term storage.
While I did like Shadowrun on the SNES it was fairly simplistic but is was good fun. I thought Shadowrun on the Sega Megadrive was so much better since it had IMHO a better story and a better character build path, of course that made the game so much harder and challenging, this was especially so when you thought you were fairly powerful then got slaughtered when you went into a new area, Well back to running some less dangerous jobs - sigh! Unlike the SNES Shadowrun you really needed to depend on the people you hired (let them get hurt and their re-hire cost went up). Still both games were good on their own merits.
After reading the Xbox360 Shadowrun review on gamespot it turns out this game was fairly mediocre even though it should have been much better, from what I can gather even though I have not played the game since I an not a fan of on-line games and especially FPS games, the review gives me the impression that it has similar RPG elements to the Shadowrun on the Megadrive. Still no mater what the review said I am quite sure some will have liked it.
Except for a few urban centers you won't see so called "video on demand" because the bandwidth requirements are too large. What you may see is something like Foxtel has and that is video availability in that you get to choose out of 20 to 30 movies at a time and the movie you choose can be saved or recorded since you are not actually downloading) to your set-top back and played back almost in real time. Some set-top boxes (depends on your provider) actually let you watch the movie as many times as you want over a 24 hour period. Of course you need quite a good deal of DRM control on those set-top boxes but I am quite sure that has already been thought of (sarcasm) so the consumer gets screwed again.
Actually Sony would be quite happy if IPTV took off since they are in a nice position to provide the service and the content while Microsoft can only provide the service but still will have to pay for the content which they will pass to the consumer. Actually both would do this anyway.
For many an IPTV service would be very convenient and could put video stores out of business. For those people who actually want to play a movie many times then owning the movie on a media like Blu-Ray, DVD or HD-DVD is preferred. Personally there are very few movies I would want to watch more than once, but a huge amount of people do.
If you want long time archival storage you still have very little choice but but to use tape which may have a life beyond 10 to 20 years (depends on the brand and what you are willing to pay). Even film may only last a few 10's of years. As for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD or even DVD for that matter you would be crazy if you honestly think you are going to get much more than 15 to 30 years although you can get some DVD's that are supposed to last 100 years. In a few years (months) you may get some Blu-Ray or HD-DVD disks that can last a long time but you are going to pay for them, even so you are going to find that 50GB disks (dual layer BD) are too small for some archiving.
Basically anything in digital format can have an unlimited lifespan providing you backup and refresh that data to a storage repository every time that storage repository is upgraded or replaced. Tapes have proven to be the best solution here although there are newer backup solutions (see HVD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc) that may supplant them in the foreseeable future. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD or even DVD will work for small amounts of data but not when you want to backup terabytes and above. As for archiving for say 100 years on CD size media, forget it, the backup/refresh method is still the best way. Well that and acid free paper and clay tablets which are know to survive for a few thousand years:-)
That's a statement I wouldn't agree with until the HDDVD players are no longer on the shelves. Personally I do not find the difference between HD-DVD/BluRay and regular DVD's so I won't be caring much until this all dies down and HD video disc players are thrown in for free with purchase of a large pizza.
You are right there is no difference in physical size between Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, DVD or even CD's for that matter (sorry could not resist). If you want to compare specs then try the following site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD#HD_DVD_.2F_Blu-ray_disc_comparison there is a significant difference between DVD and HD-DVD/Blu-Ray however while Blu-Ray is better than HD-DVD the difference is not that great except for capacity where Blu-Ray definately has the edge.
If you want a popular format go to Asia or the Philippines there "VCD" is king especially when you consider that you can get the latest movies (I was in the Philippines just 6 weeks ago) for US$4 on VCD compared to US$7 for DVD at legitimate stores. Most people I met there don't know what HD-DVD is although they do now about Blu-Ray. Sill I could not find any shop that sold either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray.
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This discussion is nothing new and was discussed back in the 1980's and the conclusion was "if you don't like wasted disk space then get a centralised server and thin clients" and it equally applies today. If the business requires some of it's workforce to have laptops then connecting them into a distributed file-system is not worth the trouble because of their portability.
The problem with liquid biofuels (what the article is alluding to) is not so much the actual production of the fuel itself since that is dependent on the Sun and the quality of the soil or media that is used grow the product, it is the overall energy equation from the actual production to delivery verses the energy that the fuel produces and if you look at ethanol which the Article covers, the cost to produce and deliver in some countries is more than what the energy of the fuel produces. Biodiesel on the other hand has a more positive energy equation and should have been covered, however even biodesel like ethanol requires land to grow the appropriate crops and this can be a major problem in some countries which have limited land to grow food much less biofuels.
There is no easy "one size fits all" liquid energy solution and each solution must weigh all factors and come up with a professional (ie. try to keep politics out, which is impossible) and appropriate policy with regard to alternative energy. It may be possible that ethanol is appropriate in some countries and for other counties biodiesel is better, however for these type of fuels land is needed and then you have the problem of land required for food verses land required for biofuels. For some countries that is not an issue but for many with large populations it is.
One thing the article did not cover is the pollution that each liquid energy source produces and that should also cover the petroleum industry as well. If you take that into account all fuels pollute and you need to weigh all factors.
The debate on biofuels is only going to get hotter and it pays to have a basic understanding of the realities of the topic. For a good start point try here , but be warned this is just a primer. As for other energy solutions such a gas, coal, nuclear, wind, water (the list goes on) that is a major topic for another time and again "one size does not fit all".
If you look at the applications the average home user would run on their computer you would see the following breakdown:
- Web browsing.
- Email.
- Simple Word Processing.
- Gaming (this is the one which forces choice).
- Watching videos (downloaded or just playing the media)
- Media server
I am quite sure many people can point out more esoteric uses of a computer (I know I can) but I am trying to point out what the average person uses a computer for. From the above list with the exception of Gaming a Linux OS will work just as well as a Microsoft OS. The problem is the average user has no idea they can put an alternative OS on their PC and even if they do they are normally too afraid to experiment.As for games. There are native games for Linux however most games are written for MS Windows and software like Wine will never catch-up to the MS Windows proprietary gaming solutions. They do get close but no cigar.
What would make me choose a Linux OS over MS Vista or MS XP for that matter even though my laptop came with Vista Ultimate (IMHO quite a boring OS)? I have installed Fedora 8 (no dual boot) and can do all of the above with the exception of playing Microsoft games, which is no issue for me since I only prefer console and retro games such as what can be run under a native emulator (ie. NES and SNES - still looking at Sega emus). The main factors for me choosing Linux is it does offer me computing freedom as the expense of having to learn which I enjoy and I do work on Unix and Linux systems in my work. Obviously other people have different reasons but unfortunately most people are complacent and will not make the switch from their pre-installed OS, unless there are compelling reasons to do so.
The QT libraries are supposed to be licensed under GPL3 (see Trolltech ) and KDE and anyone else for that matter can use them so if a court case is held it is going to be very interesting.
Even if the QT libraries are under GPL3 this still does not stop propriety and even closed source software from using them and remaining proprietary. Of course if you or Nokia modify the QT libraries the changes must be made available as per what the GPL3 requires. This still allows Nokia to provide paid support which is no different from what Trolltech does already.
See the following article for an interesting slant on why Nokia purchased Trolltech Businessweek .
Personally I don't despise Microsoft however I would not trust them. Actually some of Microsoft's products are quite good and definitely integrate well with Microsoft software but just try to get other software to integrate.
I am not overly surprise with the "Oh it's not like Microsoft" attitude it is always interesting how people will say they have a Microsoft product that does not have an equivalent Linux (note I did not say open-source) product and I normally take great delight in pointing out a commercial Linux product which in many cases is cheaper and is functionally equivalent. A good counter is to ask the Microsoft software supporter if they have paid for a legitimate license and then when they wipe the shock-horror look of their face tell them about the commercial software for Linux (Google's your friend here).
From the Article I noticed they talked about Fedora 5 which is really fairly old now and if they wanted Fedora I would definitely recommend Fedora 8 and is the one I use which has much better wireless support (if needed). Choice of distribution aside Open Office is a must and will do pretty much everything a student requires. You can even used "Dia" as a Visio replacement and for those people who want to do programming the development tools are excellent.
I know I will most likely get people pointing out some commercial software is much better than Linux software but before anyone replies please make sure you have legitimately purchased the your software and if you have I can normally point out commercial Linux software that will be functionally equivalent. People also need to keep in mind that the Philippines is a poor country and Linux can save the country a considerable amount of money. In addition Linux will help train computer people to understand the fundamentals of computers since the Linux source is open. This as far as I am concerned is more important than just learning how to use a web browser or so called Office Productivity Tools.
Shared passwords are a great way to loose information since eventually they are going to end up in the hands of an unauthorised person. Even with passwords and a special browser that is configured not to print it is always possible to save and print the information. Basically if you can see it, hear it or even touch it you can copy it, all you can really do is to trust the user to be ethical.
If you want to limit documents or files to specific users why not use ACL's then you never have to worry about passwords, although you still have to worry about users stupidly sharing their access passwords. It is very easy to administrate ACL's rather than try to implement DRM which IMHO is a total waste of time considering all modern proprietary and open source OS's support ACL's. It is unfortunate that many Application Administrators find ACL's difficult to administrator but DRM easy in theory (go figure).
Like it or not software is becoming the new land grab and ruthless companies (not just Microsoft) can ride roughshod over a well meaning and in many ways an idealistic software developer by actually take away their code and make it their own with no compensation to the developer, this is what the GPL was written to redress.
No formal or even informal agreement can exist in within the fabric of a societies Law without amendments added to it over time to hopefully protect the rights of the person or persons who it applies to. Looking at the GPL which was written almost 19 years ago, over time newer amendments must be made to cope with the vagaries of Law and to date GPL3 the latest revision. I am not going to blindly follow someone or a group based on past good deeds I am going to follow the group that I feel is protecting my freedoms now and not trying to control me. If you see the history many of the most oppressive dictators got into power because they were one of the strongest fighters for freedom. But after they got control and recognition they started to pull the reigns on their supporter and slowly take away the freedom. Leaving people to have less freedom then when they started with... I see the FSF starting to do the same and using people who blindly support the old FSF and slowing adding restrictions and making it sound good. For people to bend their principals a little bit each time. No one is asking you to blindly follow someone, the choice has always been yours. If you don't like the GPL then use some other License if you wish, the choice is entirely up to you. Of course when I read what you have written which likens the FSF to something like the Nazi Party in the late 1920's that reads like trolling. At least you don't have to worry that some jack-booted, brown-shirted FSF member is going to intimidate you or start beating up on innocent Microsoft employees, or worse yet Richard Stallman here defending himself against ninja's.
The Article is a little vague on if people in the US don't like DVD recorders or Hard Disk Drive (HDD) DVD recorders. I did a check on your Humax Tivo/DVD-recorder combo unit, it is what we call in Australia a HDD DVD recorder and it is much more popular than a DVD recorder even though this is cheaper. From your link it is almost identical to my LG RH7521W however yours had a dual digital tuner while mine has a single analog tuner, still I got mine fairly cheap about three years ago. I have found a HDD DVD player/recorder is very flexible and convenient, my wife finds it very easy to use compared to our old, now defunct VCR. I would personally find a DVD player/recorder a pain since it would not be that much different than a VCR which is almost dead (DVD/VCR combos are still popular but I think the demand is dropping) in Australia.
I have Foxtel and while Foxtel in Australia is standard definition I can connect the digital set-top box to my recorder composite in but my recorder can do component out and it converts the output to PAL progressive scan (PAL 576p) and the sound to coaxial which I feed to my amplifier. The picture when converted to PAL 576p can look quite nice on my HDTV although on occasions we need to set our amplifier to 2 channel stereo for older shows (one button push). While I have not done an Australian survey I notice that DVD player/recorders are mainly sold in shops or in markets that sell cheap items so you get what you pay for, which IMHO is not much. Most department stores may have one or two token DVD player/recorders but HDD DVD player/recorders dominate. I have a feeling the author of the article has not done his homework.
If and when Foxtel goes to High Definition (not the stupid so called HD which shrinks to half size on my HDTV) I hope they are not going to charge me extra since I am getting a bit put off with all the commercials and this will make me look at alternative HDTV methods. Unfortunately I have never seen a HDD DVD recorder that can take HD component in which sort of defeats the purpose since DVD is still standard definition. If I get a HDD Blu-ray player/recorder I would definately want to record HD via component in with HDMI and component out. I have a feeling I am going to be waiting a while.
HD-DVD is a completed hardware spec. Unlike Blu-Ray, where now people who early adopted to use the new features unless they got the cheap Blu-Ray player in the PS3, have no way to use the new features like the Internet, PiP and other features being released in BluSpec 2.0. Hmm if HD-DVD is completed spec then why did it not get put in the Xbox360 and why did they say that we can do 3 layer when most HD-DVD players don't support it? I suggest you look here then tell me which is the better spec and I am being fair since I picked the HD-DVD to BD comparison not the other way around. If you compare HD-DVD to BD popular movies there is little if any difference in price, which means if HD-DVD is cheaper to produce than BD then why is that price differential not passed to the consumer?
Many BD players do have an upgrade capability but some earlier ones don't, however these players will still be able to display the movie. Early adopters expect or should expect this. Of course if the you don't have an internet connection then your only hope of an upgrade if supported is via the media and that equally applies to HD-DVD players as well. As for PiP how many people are going to use this? I have PiP in my HDD DVD player/recorder but I don't use it although if people want it then thats ok with me.
The PS3 being a "cheap" BD player? I guess you don't have one. The PS3 is recognised as one of the best upscaling DVD and BD player on the market. BD movies played on a PS3 look fantastic on a large HDTV, even lowly divx files played on a PS3 are upscaled and are quite watchable on a HDTV. A PS3 can even upscale and display content from a media server. In addition there are over 9 million PS3 in homes now and most people (unless they live on Mars) contrary to what the so called survey said do know that the PS3 can play Blu-ray movies and most know that it can play and upscale DVD movies as well.
Transformers is on DVD and upscales well on a BD or even a HD-DVD player but if you want a cheap legitimate copy from the department stores of Transformers the movie not the cartoon series for approx US$4 then go to the Philippines there VCD not DVD is king and mention HD-DVD you get blank looks although the people I was training did know about Blu-ray (go figure).
A BD, DVD or HD-DVD player is just that "a player" and has few if any additional features, still if that is what some people want then it is their money. Personally I would rather pay for a HDD High Def player/recorder which may be more expensive but IMHO it is definately more flexible and useful although at the moment there are few high def player/recorders on the market and they are expensive.
I do have a HDD DVD player/recorder (less than US$250) and it is very flexible with time shifting and recording capabilities as well as the ability to record on to hard disk or DVD or even from hard disk to DVD and vice-versa. Newer HDD DVD player/recorders have larger disks and have one or even two High Def tuners for two channel recording and they are about the same price I paid for my original machine. Once you get a HDD DVD player/recorder you would (IMHO) considerer a VCR or dare I say it Betamax stone-age technology. I can understand buying a portable DVD player so the kids can watch it when you are on a long trip but buying a video player Standard or High Definition for home use IMHO is just a waste.
Considering that HD-DVD players are now been sold at a fire sale price this sounds like a good buy but when you consider that HD-DVD and BD movies of similar popularity are exactly the same price and much more expensive than DVD there is no compelling reason to pick either format unless you already have a HDTV and want a HD player. Also if you consider that many people only have SDTV's why would they rush out and buy a cheap HD-DVD player when they can't tell the difference between upscaled DVD or HD-DVD (or even BD for that matter) against plain DVD output to their SDTV.
Anyone considering buying a High Definition player should first consider a High Definition TV and the bigger the better although for most 50" is about the largest you should go unless you have a large viewing room. Anyone with a HDTV under 32" will find that they are hard pressed to tell the difference between a HD movie and a SD movie especially if their player can upscale. The bigger the HDTV the more you can tell the difference between SD and HD. Deciding on a HDTV does depend on what you can afford although if you are willing to shop around you can get good package deals.
I won't disagree with what you said with regard to license fees and TCO, however the issue is not licensing, re-training costs or TCO it is saving your word processor file in ODF which is a document format and should not require any retraining, hence licensing, re-training costs or TCO is effectively zero.
:-)
Now moving from Microsoft Office to Open Office or even Star Office may entail some re-training although to be honest if you can use a Word processor or spreadsheet you can work on just about any Office suite of software. Sure you may not be 100% proficient but lets be honest here how many clerical people use even 50% of Microsoft Office capabilities, so re-training costs to any other Office suite is and should be minimal. I won't deny it, but those people who absolutely must have Microsoft Office because they are a power user are probably going to need re-training the most, not because they need to know what Open or Star Office can do but because they have locked themselves into a mindset of if it isn't Microsoft software then it cannot be good and have a very negative attitude to change.
Any manager who wants any type of re-training for a format is drinking too much Microsoft cool-aid and should be gently shown to a nice padded room for a extended vacation since their credibility and TCO has just flown out the window.
Like it or not Microsoft tries to work within the laws of each county they do business in and they have a "illusion" of lawyers to make sure they don't cross the line too much so if at the end of a long dragged out court case they do have enough money to pay the fine, cry crocodile tears, state they will work with the commission more closely and pledge they will never do it again.
:-)
Sorry I could not resist "illusion" since the list was not actually IMHO appropriate although "greed" came close. Still Microsoft lawyers do seem to practicing some form of magic.
In Australia the OEM costs for MS Vista Home (32 bit)or MS XP (32 bit) is approx US$100. For Vista Ultimate (32 bit) the price is over US$200 and this price is for a Custom built machine. Of course if you purchase a pre-built machine the Microsoft OEM costs are built into the total price of the machine and the person doing the buying has no idea what the original OEM price is. This is what is commonly called the "Microsoft Tax".
All you get with an MS Windows OEM install is a pre-built version of a MS Windows distribution and from what I have seen you need to create a "Recovery CD/DVD" which you can only do once, so loose this and hello your friendly pirate or you can pay full price (normally over two times the OEM price) for the genuine install kit. If the user has any smarts they should create a image or ghost backup of their base OS and use this if required because if you have the right image tools the image creation (base install not user data) should take approx 30 minutes as does the recovery time.
The problem is that most people have no idea that they can image their disk much less create a Recovery CD/DVD until something goes wrong. To be fair most people would not know how to do this even if they had a Linux machine although you would normally find that a Linux user has more technical expertise and is more likely to create a valid recovery mechanism than a Microsoft centric user.
Recovery CD's are really just:
1) Put recovery DVD or CD in your CD/DVD drive.
2) Power cyle your PC.
3) Answer "Y" to reinstall,
4) Find something to do for a few hours.
5) After the recovery you end up with a bare bones system that requires you to put on all your (cough) licensed software plus all your (you did do a backup?) personal data.
What I just described is the Win2000, XP and Vista recovery process and that is normally for the same or similar machine which is hardly rocket science. If you are recovering an image (recommended) then step 4 is much shorter and step 5 may not be needed. An advantage of doing this is you get not only your OS updated to when you created your image but all your data as well. The thing is how many people do this?
With Linux I use a cloned or snapshot backup of my disk data to an external hard disk at approx 1.5 to 2GB per minute to backup and recover. I then run a simple backup script on all important file-systems. By doing this I can do a fresh install of a new Linux OS (I use Fedora 8 now) and recover all my data in approx 6 hours from initial backup to full recovery. This is not difficult to do and you don't need to be a Linux Guru. It must be noted I stated "fresh install" not "upgrade". A Linux upgrade depending your machine takes approximately 1 hour and an update may take another hour depending on your network connection. It must be noted that nothing of what I have stated costs me anything except maybe the DVD (approx $0.50) for the latest Linux distribution.
For "video availability" that will mean more choices or feeds. When you consider it if you have say 100 video feeds each feed being a different movie be it high or standard definition (obviously you make more movies available with this) then at any one time you can have millions of people connecting to just the one feed they want to view at the moment and saving the movie to their set-top box since each feed is available instantaneously to all subscribers. Of course if the movie has already started you have to wait for the next session to start with a popular movie having three or more time offset feeds. A good set-top box can time shift so a smart person can start their recording earlier and then watch the show at their convince and as many times as they want which would normally be over a 24 hour period. The company could even have 30 or more feeds available for requested movies but this will definately cost more. Look at the Foxtel movie selection and you can see the methodology I am talking about although in Australia at the moment Foxtel is standard Definition only.
As for "video on demand" 160Mbps is not that great since I cannot see even a thousand people trying to download the same movie or even a selection of movies around the same time. I know about Torrents but I cannot see this being implemented to spread the download bandwidth so for the foreseeable future "video availability" is much more flexible since increasing overall bandwidth means increasing the number of video feeds rather than just trying for faster downloads.
For home use you are better off with an equal or much larger external disk drive, however you are not protected from fire, theft, flood and stupid mistakes. Even with say 100GB Blu-Ray or 1.6TB HVD (not available yet) the media is not cheap and backups with this would not come cheap. DLT tape drives can do close to a TerraByte but they aren't cheap either. Actually the cheapest burner is Blu-Ray since you can get an internal PC burner/reader for approx $300 to $500 that will burn/read 50GB Blu-Ray media however the media is still expensive although it is approx the same price DVD's were in 2000.
The Blu-Ray market would not even be considered in the Enterprise since DLT is king although this may be shaken by the introduction of HVD but that is still in the future.
Like it or not even if you down load movies dare I mention some sort of DRM will be involved here for short term legitimate downloads you will need huge storage for High Def movies even if you can rip and compress them so having High Def media such as Blu-Ray or even DVD for your movie backup is always a good idea. After all if you have insurance and you have a catastrophe such as fire and/or theft, you have more chance of getting back movies on that were on legitimate purchased media such as DVD, Blu-Ray or even HD-DVD than movie, TV show downloads or rips (avi, divx whatever) that were on you media server.
Actually with regard to family photos even DVD would be fine for the next few years although I would definitely refresh (copy back to disk then re-burn) to your hard drive every year (depends on the quality of your media). Blu-Ray would be the best bet for compressed movie and TV show rips and again I would be refreshing every one to three years although I would definitely refresh when you change your PC hardware. Of course you should consider putting your backup media in some safe place preferably not in your house, flat or unit.
The PS2 is still alive and some great games are being made for it. I have never regretted buying my PS3 since it is backwards compatible and smooths and upscales PS2 games which IMHO give many PS2 games a second life so much so that I am not really worried about buying native PS3 games. This has two benefits for me, 1) I save money over buying PS3 games and 2) many new PS2 games are really good. This was great when there where few PS3 games I liked but now that there are some PS3 games I like I find I am still playing and enjoying those PS2 games and even some new ones which means that I am am quite happy to wait till the PS3 games that I like come down in price.
Now the downside??... Hmm can't think of any.
Currently playing FFX11, Dragon Quest, Phychonauts (odd but really fun) and many other great PS2 games and oh yes "Oblivion". Sigh I really should get out more.
I recently purchased a laptop that came with Vista Ultimate 64 bit and I put on Fedora 7 and later on Fedora 8 with no dual boot and everything works for me including Wireless. Does Microsoft care that I did this? No they don't since as far as they are concerned they have a Vista sale. I could hand in my license for a refund however I may if I was lucky and jumped through many hoops get US$100 but when I sell my laptop in six months time I would have a hard time doing so since I know the prospective buyer would want MS Vista on it.
Because I only keep a laptop for about a year (I get a very good work discount) I nearly always break even and sometimes make a profit, however I do give the prospective buyer the option of a fully operational Fedora or even Ubuntu Distribution but in all cases they want a Microsoft OS which has nothing on it so I always make sure I can recover that OS so I don't bother getting my money back. If you say to a prospective buyer that they can get a huge amount of legitimate free software with Linux Distributions they still prefer to get a bare MS Windows OS and are quite comfortable with pirating (they always know someone) the MS Windows compatible software even though they would never continence taking an item worth a few cents from a supermarket shelf.
My attitude to this is to actually charge more for the laptop with MS Vista plus the recovery DVD's than if I sold it with a Linux Distribution although I would still give them the recovery DVD's and surprisingly people are happy with this, go figure.
In the enterprise and I am talking about many terabytes here then tape is still the best backup solution. It may not be the most reliable since DLT tapes even with the best of care can and do break and I can assure you that can be very embarrassing especially when doing a Disaster Recovery. It must be noted that tapes can be put in a RAID configuration with enterprise backup solutions which arn't cheap, but even then you can still have failures.
You are spot-on with regard to technology changes and as I have said before the backup and recovery/refresh on change methodology is so important since you keep your original data and that is assuming the format of your original data does not change. If your data format changes you are going to have a huge problem. I am fully in favor of open format solutions which makes recovery or portability so much easier. Unfortunately many businesses don't think along this line and usually data is lost between hardware or format changes and of course it is always the System Administrators fault.
Personally I don't think CD/DVD style media are good for large amounts of archival storage but they do offer 10 to 20 year storage for smaller amounts of data such as films and music and at least even if Blu-Ray becomes the prefered format you can still read CD's and DVD's with the device of course the same can be said for HD-DVD. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are ok for High Def films and a reasonable amounts of data but at the moment I would not want to bet the business on them. HVD does offer an alternative to tape but as you have mentioned a technology change (ie. new formats or hardware) will stuff up long term archival recovery.
For home use I would recommend a backup disk (or disks) that will fit one backup on it and at least enough space on said disk that can store a few weeks or preferably months of incrementals. It only took me 5 hours to backup my 30GB of personal data, install Fedora 8 and recover all personal data as well as do an update. That worked for me but what happens when you have terabytes or more of data? It does not take any rocket scientist to pick holes in my personal home backup strategy but what home user can afford a reliable backup system that covers all disasters.
Actually on a slightly different note I have read that for short term archive storage and near-line capability HVD is becoming fairly popular with stand alone libraries although from my experience many of the libraries in the area where I live use central servers. I cannot comment on museums but I don't think they are different to what a library requires with the exception of requiring more pictures. At the risk of repeating myself an open format solution is by far the safest bet for any long term storage.
While I did like Shadowrun on the SNES it was fairly simplistic but is was good fun. I thought Shadowrun on the Sega Megadrive was so much better since it had IMHO a better story and a better character build path, of course that made the game so much harder and challenging, this was especially so when you thought you were fairly powerful then got slaughtered when you went into a new area, Well back to running some less dangerous jobs - sigh! Unlike the SNES Shadowrun you really needed to depend on the people you hired (let them get hurt and their re-hire cost went up). Still both games were good on their own merits.
After reading the Xbox360 Shadowrun review on gamespot it turns out this game was fairly mediocre even though it should have been much better, from what I can gather even though I have not played the game since I an not a fan of on-line games and especially FPS games, the review gives me the impression that it has similar RPG elements to the Shadowrun on the Megadrive. Still no mater what the review said I am quite sure some will have liked it.
Except for a few urban centers you won't see so called "video on demand" because the bandwidth requirements are too large. What you may see is something like Foxtel has and that is video availability in that you get to choose out of 20 to 30 movies at a time and the movie you choose can be saved or recorded since you are not actually downloading) to your set-top back and played back almost in real time. Some set-top boxes (depends on your provider) actually let you watch the movie as many times as you want over a 24 hour period. Of course you need quite a good deal of DRM control on those set-top boxes but I am quite sure that has already been thought of (sarcasm) so the consumer gets screwed again.
Actually Sony would be quite happy if IPTV took off since they are in a nice position to provide the service and the content while Microsoft can only provide the service but still will have to pay for the content which they will pass to the consumer. Actually both would do this anyway.
For many an IPTV service would be very convenient and could put video stores out of business. For those people who actually want to play a movie many times then owning the movie on a media like Blu-Ray, DVD or HD-DVD is preferred. Personally there are very few movies I would want to watch more than once, but a huge amount of people do.
If you want long time archival storage you still have very little choice but but to use tape which may have a life beyond 10 to 20 years (depends on the brand and what you are willing to pay). Even film may only last a few 10's of years. As for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD or even DVD for that matter you would be crazy if you honestly think you are going to get much more than 15 to 30 years although you can get some DVD's that are supposed to last 100 years. In a few years (months) you may get some Blu-Ray or HD-DVD disks that can last a long time but you are going to pay for them, even so you are going to find that 50GB disks (dual layer BD) are too small for some archiving.
:-)
Basically anything in digital format can have an unlimited lifespan providing you backup and refresh that data to a storage repository every time that storage repository is upgraded or replaced. Tapes have proven to be the best solution here although there are newer backup solutions (see HVD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc) that may supplant them in the foreseeable future. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD or even DVD will work for small amounts of data but not when you want to backup terabytes and above. As for archiving for say 100 years on CD size media, forget it, the backup/refresh method is still the best way. Well that and acid free paper and clay tablets which are know to survive for a few thousand years
If you want a popular format go to Asia or the Philippines there "VCD" is king especially when you consider that you can get the latest movies (I was in the Philippines just 6 weeks ago) for US$4 on VCD compared to US$7 for DVD at legitimate stores. Most people I met there don't know what HD-DVD is although they do now about Blu-Ray. Sill I could not find any shop that sold either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray.