Stories like this remind me of why I don't get involved in "social networking" and all that mess. The closest anyone can come to knowing anything about me is by tracking my book purchases, which are all IT-related. There is an alarming amount of information about us available to a lot of people right now, I don't understand why so many people are so quick to jump out there and put their entire lives on the internet.
And that's why TVs with SDTV tuners are in stores now. You don't need to spend the amount of money needed for HD, but you'll probably want to buy something digital. Personally I think it may open up a better viewing experience, but that's just my opinion.
Are you talking about HDTV monitors without the tuner? Those are still over twice the price of the analog TV I bought in December.
I know a lot of gamers who run their shell at a lower resolution than their games. So that they can read information more easily but experience games in full detail (since OSes still haven't gotten around to being resolution independent without bugs).
I like a high-res game as much as anyone, but if my $200 card only did 1024x768 and the next better option was twice the price, I'm going to enjoy my games just as much without the super-high res.
Every household I've been to that doesn't have more than their TV's built in speakers are either very poor or don't take film watching seriously. I know a lot of people watch video as background noise until they can do something else, but people like me who have a real interest in film want to experience what we're watching to it's fullest. To me film watching is the same as reading a book for a bookworm.
You have a different definition of "very poor" than I do:)
The difference between getting the "full experience" out of a movie and a book is that the movie required a significant investment in hardware. The book just requires light and a comfortable place to sit. Most people have to compromise between what they want and what their budget allows; I (like most people I know) am not willing to budget a significant amount of money toward my entertainment system when I can think of a lot of better ways to spend it.
How expensive was the first DVD player? Wasn't it around $500? To tell the truth when I moved from VHS to DVD I didn't really notice that significant an improvement.
A lot of people said the same thing about going from LP/tape to CD. But people saw a significant advantage in the CD format: it didn't wear out if handled properly (both popular formats of the time did), it was capable of storing more music at a higher quality, and it was almost as portable as a tape. All of that applies to DVD: VHS tapes have a shelf life of a few decades at best, and frequently-watched VHS can break down in a few years. DVD had the same advantage over VHS as CD had over cassette.
Blu Ray and HD-DVD have no obvious advantages over DVD except in capacity (which most people won't care about) and resolution (which most people won't use in the near future). And they'll almost certainly be overpriced, while DVDs will routinely retail at $5-10.
I'm not saying that the image is idential, I'm saying it's still a picture of the same thing. The little bit of detail that comes through simply doesn't justify the expense to me, and it won't to most people.
So long as the new way is more expensive than the old way and offers no compelling reason to spend the money to upgrade, most of us won't. Make the tech cheaper and I'm all over it.
If you're in the US and plan on watching broadcast after 2009
Remember when the date was 2006? Know why it got pushed back? Because people aren't buying HDTV. Now why wouldn't they be doing that? Because HDTV is expensive, and they don't see a good reason to buy it.
Well, I guess the reason a customer might buy it is similar to why a customer would want their PC to display resolutions higher than 1024x768 today
To give them a "larger" working area so that more information fits on the screen at once? There's a practical reason for higher resolutions on PCs: more information in the same space.
or why the customer might want an expensive sound system in their home
You can buy a decent 5.1 system for under $200 now, with a built-in DVD player. You can get high-quality sound at quite reasonable prices...and yet there are probably millions of households that don't have it because they have no reason to buy it. Their stereo speakers are enough for them.
That's really where I see all these new formats falling flat. They aren't replacing existing technologies because they are too expensive to do that. So people who don't care about the new shiny stuff don't buy it, which means the format doesn't become an accepted standard.
DVD is the standard video disc. There aren't any really compelling reasons to move away from DVD for the majority of consumers, so Sony and Toshiba both are facing an uphill battle already. Putting players on the market priced at $500 or more isn't exactly going to move large quantities of units.
The winner is going to be the first one to completely replace their product line with backward-compatible units at the same price; instead of a DVD player for $100, you can buy an HD-DVD player for $100 and still watch your DVDs. If Toshiba did that tomorrow and just ate the losses for a couple of years, they'd find that they won the format war before Sony even fired a shot.
Yes. Many times, at friends' houses. I was not so impressed by it that I felt the desire to spend several hundred dollars more on my recently-purchased 27" TV. For the same reason that I don't spend $500 on a new video card when I am perfectly happy with a $200 mid-range model. I personally don't think a few more frames a second and a few less jaggies are worth $300, and I don't think a sharper, higher-resolution version of the exact same image is worth $300+ either.
I don't buy cable or satellite. I know I'm not being a good little consumer whore, but I refuse to pay $50+ a month for the five or six channels I'd watch that I can't get OTA. And yes, OTA is still analog here. Only one station (UPN, nobody cares about them anyway) has moved to all-digital.
I don't think it's that Blu-ray is "more proprietary" so much as it marginalizes itself.
HD-DVD is on the market now, and hit the shelves much cheaper than BR.
What I'd really like to know is why I should rush out and buy their overpriced format instead of continuing to purchase $5 DVDs that I can watch on my XBOX. Of course, I'm still waiting to be convinced why I need to spend $500 for HDTV when I can get an analog for $150 and receive all of one less signal.
Video games are not a sport and gamers are not "cyberathletes". I love gaming as much as the next guy and nearly went pro twice (fell just short of making enough money to make it more than a money-making hobby), but I resent these people who are trying to make gaming into something it's not.
Soccer and gymnastics and all the other sports and athletic events are lessened when we try to group gaming in among them. It is a unique competition, and deserves its own unique venues.
You want to add something new and fresh to the Olympics? Paintball. Now *there* is a sport fitting of the five rings.
That's okay. See, the guards are the no-future jocks and bullies who used to give you wedgies, and you're the secret spy / wedgie master out for revenge.
100% backward compatibility is a stupid expectation. Considering the technical hurdles to get DOS- and Win9x-native software to run on what is essentially a rework of Win2K, I think they did a great job of providing compatibility that didn't have to be there.
Apple and Linux aren't any better about running 6- to 10-year-old software. OSX just refuses to run quite a few old programs, and Linux just drives you insane trying to sort out dependencies and versions and all the rest of that fun stuff.
When it's done right, Linux is probably the most backwards-compatible...but XP's compatibility is somewhere in the middle, and much easier than Linux...when it works.
#2 is "pay us for dedicated bandwidth to our customers"
You can set up a VPN from California to New York via cable modems, but performance is not guaranteed. Or, for a much higher price, you can buy a more expensive connection that has a speed and availability guarantee. #2 is more like that: If Google wants to be sure they can reach Bell South's customers with the speeds they want, they could buy direct lines to Bell South. There would be no penalty for not buying the lines, it's just that they would have no guarantee of speeds.
Version 1: What every Slashdotter fears. Our ISPs charge us, the site's ISP charges them, and then our ISP and anyone in between charges the site to not throttle down their connection. This business model is impractical and would probably be found illegal if taken to court.
Version 2: What will probably happen. Any site can pay for what amounts to a "leased line" from their server to our ISP. This would give them guaranteed bandwidth across the entire trip and eliminate potential bottlenecks.
Another idea (would also fit in #2) I've heard mentioned is that service providers can essentially buy more bandwidth for you, but only to use their site. Say you have a 3 Mb connection. ABC wants to stream HDTV to you and would prefer it be over a 6- or 10 Mb connection. They pay your ISP, your ISP conditionally opens up your bandwidth so you can get the stream flawlessly without having to pay for the higher bandwidth full-time.
I'm all for #2, especially the second part. I'd love to be able to pay a small fee to have my bandwidth opened up for a particular service.
In defense of the litigation-happy parents (I sympathize, plus I like to play devil's advocate), what most of the litigation does is simply help parents retain their power of choice for their children. It's hard to raise kids right in a media-crazy world. Unless you throw out the TV and radio and never let them get out of sight, kids are quickly exposed to adult themes that some of them are not emotionally mature enough to understand. The two big ones are sex and violence, of course.
We're talking about people who simply think it's best for their children to learn things a certain way, and at certain times. If we're going to hold parents accountable for their kids, then we need to respect them as parents and make it possible for them to control their childrens' access to adult-themed material. I'm not saying ban everything from being accessible to a minor, I'm saying that we as a society simply need to respect ratings and ensure that things are rated properly.
Pretty soon it'll reach Earth, then people will start disappearing as if they never existed, and the universe will shrink until it's just one person in one room and the computer says she's the only person who was ever on the ship and...
What exactly did he *do* that warranted the expulsion?
From another story, he was apparently venting about his friend being expelled:
His friend allegedly started a fire in an urinal in a bathroom at Plainfield South High School and later posted the incident on his xanga site, according to police reports. That student's case is currently in court. He was charged with reckless conduct. The school district said the student was expelled for two years.
"Kids don't realize that if there is a connection with the school or has a potential of creating a disturbance to the school, they can be disciplined for it and they don't appreciate the personal threat to them for posting information on the Internet," Harper said. "It is our responsibility to educate kids and help them work through some of these issues."
So the big question is, was he really exercising his right to free speech, or what he making threats or otherwise doing something potentially dangerous? Given his Columbine comment in TFA, he's obviously willing to make veiled threats ('The Columbine shooters were bullied, and now you're bullying us' seems potentially threatening to me)
Slashdot Mirror
Stories like this remind me of why I don't get involved in "social networking" and all that mess. The closest anyone can come to knowing anything about me is by tracking my book purchases, which are all IT-related. There is an alarming amount of information about us available to a lot of people right now, I don't understand why so many people are so quick to jump out there and put their entire lives on the internet.
Can't. It doesn't exist. ...
There is no press.
And that's why TVs with SDTV tuners are in stores now. You don't need to spend the amount of money needed for HD, but you'll probably want to buy something digital. Personally I think it may open up a better viewing experience, but that's just my opinion.
:)
Are you talking about HDTV monitors without the tuner? Those are still over twice the price of the analog TV I bought in December.
I know a lot of gamers who run their shell at a lower resolution than their games. So that they can read information more easily but experience games in full detail (since OSes still haven't gotten around to being resolution independent without bugs).
I like a high-res game as much as anyone, but if my $200 card only did 1024x768 and the next better option was twice the price, I'm going to enjoy my games just as much without the super-high res.
Every household I've been to that doesn't have more than their TV's built in speakers are either very poor or don't take film watching seriously. I know a lot of people watch video as background noise until they can do something else, but people like me who have a real interest in film want to experience what we're watching to it's fullest. To me film watching is the same as reading a book for a bookworm.
You have a different definition of "very poor" than I do
The difference between getting the "full experience" out of a movie and a book is that the movie required a significant investment in hardware. The book just requires light and a comfortable place to sit. Most people have to compromise between what they want and what their budget allows; I (like most people I know) am not willing to budget a significant amount of money toward my entertainment system when I can think of a lot of better ways to spend it.
How expensive was the first DVD player? Wasn't it around $500? To tell the truth when I moved from VHS to DVD I didn't really notice that significant an improvement.
A lot of people said the same thing about going from LP/tape to CD. But people saw a significant advantage in the CD format: it didn't wear out if handled properly (both popular formats of the time did), it was capable of storing more music at a higher quality, and it was almost as portable as a tape. All of that applies to DVD: VHS tapes have a shelf life of a few decades at best, and frequently-watched VHS can break down in a few years. DVD had the same advantage over VHS as CD had over cassette.
Blu Ray and HD-DVD have no obvious advantages over DVD except in capacity (which most people won't care about) and resolution (which most people won't use in the near future). And they'll almost certainly be overpriced, while DVDs will routinely retail at $5-10.
I'm not saying that the image is idential, I'm saying it's still a picture of the same thing. The little bit of detail that comes through simply doesn't justify the expense to me, and it won't to most people.
So long as the new way is more expensive than the old way and offers no compelling reason to spend the money to upgrade, most of us won't. Make the tech cheaper and I'm all over it.
If you're in the US and plan on watching broadcast after 2009
Remember when the date was 2006? Know why it got pushed back? Because people aren't buying HDTV. Now why wouldn't they be doing that? Because HDTV is expensive, and they don't see a good reason to buy it.
Well, I guess the reason a customer might buy it is similar to why a customer would want their PC to display resolutions higher than 1024x768 today
To give them a "larger" working area so that more information fits on the screen at once? There's a practical reason for higher resolutions on PCs: more information in the same space.
or why the customer might want an expensive sound system in their home
You can buy a decent 5.1 system for under $200 now, with a built-in DVD player. You can get high-quality sound at quite reasonable prices...and yet there are probably millions of households that don't have it because they have no reason to buy it. Their stereo speakers are enough for them.
That's really where I see all these new formats falling flat. They aren't replacing existing technologies because they are too expensive to do that. So people who don't care about the new shiny stuff don't buy it, which means the format doesn't become an accepted standard.
DVD is the standard video disc. There aren't any really compelling reasons to move away from DVD for the majority of consumers, so Sony and Toshiba both are facing an uphill battle already. Putting players on the market priced at $500 or more isn't exactly going to move large quantities of units.
The winner is going to be the first one to completely replace their product line with backward-compatible units at the same price; instead of a DVD player for $100, you can buy an HD-DVD player for $100 and still watch your DVDs. If Toshiba did that tomorrow and just ate the losses for a couple of years, they'd find that they won the format war before Sony even fired a shot.
Uh, have you ever watched HDTV?
Yes. Many times, at friends' houses. I was not so impressed by it that I felt the desire to spend several hundred dollars more on my recently-purchased 27" TV. For the same reason that I don't spend $500 on a new video card when I am perfectly happy with a $200 mid-range model. I personally don't think a few more frames a second and a few less jaggies are worth $300, and I don't think a sharper, higher-resolution version of the exact same image is worth $300+ either.
I don't buy cable or satellite. I know I'm not being a good little consumer whore, but I refuse to pay $50+ a month for the five or six channels I'd watch that I can't get OTA. And yes, OTA is still analog here. Only one station (UPN, nobody cares about them anyway) has moved to all-digital.
I thought it was Phillips that developed the CD.
I don't think it's that Blu-ray is "more proprietary" so much as it marginalizes itself. HD-DVD is on the market now, and hit the shelves much cheaper than BR. What I'd really like to know is why I should rush out and buy their overpriced format instead of continuing to purchase $5 DVDs that I can watch on my XBOX. Of course, I'm still waiting to be convinced why I need to spend $500 for HDTV when I can get an analog for $150 and receive all of one less signal.
Video games are not a sport and gamers are not "cyberathletes". I love gaming as much as the next guy and nearly went pro twice (fell just short of making enough money to make it more than a money-making hobby), but I resent these people who are trying to make gaming into something it's not.
Soccer and gymnastics and all the other sports and athletic events are lessened when we try to group gaming in among them. It is a unique competition, and deserves its own unique venues.
You want to add something new and fresh to the Olympics? Paintball. Now *there* is a sport fitting of the five rings.
That's okay. See, the guards are the no-future jocks and bullies who used to give you wedgies, and you're the secret spy / wedgie master out for revenge.
Or something.
Imagination: use it or lose it.
And I've seen programs designed for DOS 3.3 run under Windows XP.
:)
Just because we've seen it done doesn't mean it's always feasible.
And the other reply to your post sums up my other point nicely, so I don't even have to make it
Offtopic: I've heard that several times, but haven't been able to find any real proof of it.
I do know that SF has essentially crippled CD burners until a complete reinstall of Windows was done.
100% backward compatibility is a stupid expectation. Considering the technical hurdles to get DOS- and Win9x-native software to run on what is essentially a rework of Win2K, I think they did a great job of providing compatibility that didn't have to be there.
Apple and Linux aren't any better about running 6- to 10-year-old software. OSX just refuses to run quite a few old programs, and Linux just drives you insane trying to sort out dependencies and versions and all the rest of that fun stuff.
When it's done right, Linux is probably the most backwards-compatible...but XP's compatibility is somewhere in the middle, and much easier than Linux...when it works.
Second floor. We thank you for participating in the beta testing of this iVator (tm). Please exit quickly, I feel a crash coming on.
"Wha--AHHHhhhh..."
--insert loud metallic clang here--
That's okay. In the interest of being hip, the next Web will not be called Web 3.0, but Web Cubed.
No. #1 is "pay us or we'll cap you"
#2 is "pay us for dedicated bandwidth to our customers"
You can set up a VPN from California to New York via cable modems, but performance is not guaranteed. Or, for a much higher price, you can buy a more expensive connection that has a speed and availability guarantee. #2 is more like that: If Google wants to be sure they can reach Bell South's customers with the speeds they want, they could buy direct lines to Bell South. There would be no penalty for not buying the lines, it's just that they would have no guarantee of speeds.
Do you suppose it's a threat to my pace--
*FZZZZT*
*THUMP*
Version 1: What every Slashdotter fears. Our ISPs charge us, the site's ISP charges them, and then our ISP and anyone in between charges the site to not throttle down their connection. This business model is impractical and would probably be found illegal if taken to court.
Version 2: What will probably happen. Any site can pay for what amounts to a "leased line" from their server to our ISP. This would give them guaranteed bandwidth across the entire trip and eliminate potential bottlenecks.
Another idea (would also fit in #2) I've heard mentioned is that service providers can essentially buy more bandwidth for you, but only to use their site. Say you have a 3 Mb connection. ABC wants to stream HDTV to you and would prefer it be over a 6- or 10 Mb connection. They pay your ISP, your ISP conditionally opens up your bandwidth so you can get the stream flawlessly without having to pay for the higher bandwidth full-time.
I'm all for #2, especially the second part. I'd love to be able to pay a small fee to have my bandwidth opened up for a particular service.
Absolutely.
In defense of the litigation-happy parents (I sympathize, plus I like to play devil's advocate), what most of the litigation does is simply help parents retain their power of choice for their children. It's hard to raise kids right in a media-crazy world. Unless you throw out the TV and radio and never let them get out of sight, kids are quickly exposed to adult themes that some of them are not emotionally mature enough to understand. The two big ones are sex and violence, of course.
We're talking about people who simply think it's best for their children to learn things a certain way, and at certain times. If we're going to hold parents accountable for their kids, then we need to respect them as parents and make it possible for them to control their childrens' access to adult-themed material. I'm not saying ban everything from being accessible to a minor, I'm saying that we as a society simply need to respect ratings and ensure that things are rated properly.
That may be so, but Firefox isn't an integral part of the OS so its vulnerabilities are a lot lower risk (typically)
Not to mention IE loses a lot of points for its utter failure to comply to web standards.
Pretty soon it'll reach Earth, then people will start disappearing as if they never existed, and the universe will shrink until it's just one person in one room and the computer says she's the only person who was ever on the ship and...
oh, wait...
*turns off TV*
Sorry, I get a little confused sometimes.
The really sad thing is how many people are going to miss the humor in this post :(
Yahoo + eBay = YeHay. For ease of use, they will instead merge the sites and call the new entity YEHAW!
What exactly did he *do* that warranted the expulsion?
From another story, he was apparently venting about his friend being expelled:
His friend allegedly started a fire in an urinal in a bathroom at Plainfield South High School and later posted the incident on his xanga site, according to police reports. That student's case is currently in court. He was charged with reckless conduct. The school district said the student was expelled for two years.
"Kids don't realize that if there is a connection with the school or has a potential of creating a disturbance to the school, they can be disciplined for it and they don't appreciate the personal threat to them for posting information on the Internet," Harper said. "It is our responsibility to educate kids and help them work through some of these issues."
So the big question is, was he really exercising his right to free speech, or what he making threats or otherwise doing something potentially dangerous? Given his Columbine comment in TFA, he's obviously willing to make veiled threats ('The Columbine shooters were bullied, and now you're bullying us' seems potentially threatening to me)
Modded troll? Seriously?
Have you SEEN that woman? God help her, I wouldn't...
(if you don't know the rest, ask a George Carlin fan)