"Most US households have a choice of no less than 7 cable companies."
Such a strong assertion without so much as a link.
Where I live, just outside of Washington, DC there are only two major players: Comcast in Maryland and Cox in Virginia. Verizon has some semblance of a presence in the area but it is a joke compared to the huge distribution that Comcast and Cox have.
And by the way, my building was wired only for Comcast, so I couldn't get anyone else if I wanted to. And I know I'm not alone.
"Is there _ANY_ amount of money that is enough? I'm starting to think not."
So am I. A few years ago I thought business for profit was a good idea; I figured, it's ok to make a profit so long as it is made honestly. Actually, I still believe that.
The only part that's lacking is the whole nagging 'honestly' part.
"I never wanted to be a Socialist, but they're pushing me that way..."
And again.. me too. More and more I find myself aligning with what would be considered 'liberal' (lowercase L) ideology, whereas a few years ago I was more 'conservative' (in the political sense, not the fascist Bible thumper sense) on the political spectrum.
Oddly, I don't think my ideas have actually changed much; all that has changed is where those ideas fall on the political spectrum.
"How would you feel to discover that a single individual was tracking all your communications, monitoring your movements, collating all public traces you leave behind?"
Personally, I would consider it stalking, because that's exactly what it is. And I think that's exactly what your point was.
"That is absolutely wrong. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place and anything you do or say in the bank, the convenience store, or any public space or private property open to the public is subject to monitoring and recording."
He didn't say "expectation of privacy", he said "reasonable assumption that one won't be stalked or spied upon." These are very different things. I don't expect to be able to walk around naked in a bank and scratch myself in front of the customer service rep. I DO, however, expect to not be stalked or tracked in any way other than purely random (e.g. I am not the special focus of any official observations). I DO, also, expect to be able to freely and openly exclaim my opinions about the government and political topics, without incurring special 'treatment' by secret organizations of government hitmen.
"In fact, you probably already broke the law just for posting an article counseling how to obstruct the NSA datamining program."
Actually, I'm fairly certain this is only possible if the poster has personal knowledge of the methods used by the NSA's datamining program. Since their methodology is classified, it's not possible to knowingly provide an actual method on how to obstruct the NSA datamining program.
Just a bit of armchair lawyering and who knows, in the current culture of "You're guilty and we'll prove it or find a reason to make you guilty," I'm not sure that any ACTUAL offenses carry any more weight than imagined ones.
"but all that would happen is some Executive would get a new car."
What? No. No no no.
Private jet full of $12,000 bottles of champagne and hookers, yes. Hell if it was just a new car I don't think it would bother me so much; instead, CEO's earn 1000x what their lowly employees do and they have a "vacation home" [errr.. vacation mansion/personal resort] at every major city in the world.
I like my company. 500 employees give or take, and our CEO earns 4x what most of the engineers do, who earn about 1.2x what the administrative staff earns. This salary structure seems very reasonable to me.
Back on topic though, I really wouldn't mind paying another $15/mo to see bandwidth not being oversold, so that this whole 'net UNneutrality' crap can go away. I value a free internet more than the money I spend on my internet connection.
I think you totally missed the grand parent poster's point.. he was saying, and I'll reply to this too:
"but if people keep wanting something for nothing, there's going to be no more something eventually."
he was saying that line of thinking is false - and it is. Van Gogh for example, created over 1000 paintings... and never sold a single one of them while he was alive. Artists who create because they love art, will do so even if they're not getting paid for it.
That aside, I do think an artist who sees their work being copied and they never see even a handshake for it, will stop producing. But payment to them doesnt' have to be financial.
"I'm more of the opinion that once the RIAA & MPAA come out with reasonably, affordable distribution schemes everyone can be happy"
I think so too. But, good luck ever seeing them grow up and stop trying to stifle innovation and creativity. They're like a dying, lumbering dinosaur crushing everything in its path because it knows it's on the way and by god, if it can't have everything than nobody else can either!
"I've read that there is a several month delay for snail mail because it has to be checked for anthrax and other nasties."
According to my congressman, that's only true at the DC offices. If you send a snail mail directly to your congresssman's district office, they get it alot faster than if you send it to their DC office; the DC mailroom is the one that opens every piece of mail to check for anthrax and other stuff.
Another piece of information to keep in mind in your reply is this part:
"Telephone and cable companies want to be able to charge for such large amounts of bandwidth; otherwise, they will have to pass the costs on to the consumer. These Internet sites obviously oppose such a move, as it forces them to pay for using increased bandwidth."
1. Then pass the costs on to the consumer, not to the company providing the website. If I want to download 1TB of porn every day, I should be the one paying for it.
2. How in the world are the websites using more bandwidth? If nobody uses their website, they're not using any bandwidth - demonstrating very clearly that it is the USERS using the bandwidth, not the website. Charge them accordingly, do NOT charge the content providers.
"My contention, and I'm not sure I'm right, is that we think it is different because it is easy to copy it. "
I think I see what you're getting at (replying to your other reply to me, too). I think the key comes down to the answer to this question:
"Because sunglasses aren't easy to copy/clone we tend to purchase more than one pair. Why is music different?"
Ah, humans and their ability to abstract. I've spent quite alot of time thinking about human abstraction and a) what benefits it gives us and b) what it unfortunately ends up costing us, too.
Our ability to abstract is so advanced that we are able to consider our ideas more real than the real world around us (like laws or religion, for example, things we tend to consider [almost] absolute).
This is one of those examples: We're considering the CD to be what we bought, when it isn't - it's the music on the disc. Our abstraction combines them together in one object, and that's why we think of "CD ownership" as a singular idea, but the CD is just a means to an end: transporting the music contained on it.
It's ok to copy a CD (for YOUR OWN use) not because it's easy, but because you paid for the music on it. You didn't pay for the CD; you paid for what it carries. You also paid for the music you downloaded on iTunes, but it's ok to put it on your iPod, right? (in general; I don't know if you have an iPod, I don't!)
This example is not extendable to sunglasses or kettles or toasters, because the toaster IS what you bought - the sunglasses ARE what you bought. You can't copy them, not because we don't have a magical object duplicator, but because THAT IS the actual content of your purchase.
In the case of the CD, the content of your purchase happens to be digital and transportable to other mediums. You can take the content of your purchase with you (e.g. you can take your sunglasses with you) - and since the content of your purchase is the music, not the disc it came on, you can copy it wherever you want to make sure you can listen to it.
"Nevertherless, consumers seem to adopt new formats rather than just rejecting progress. It seems to me consumers think this is good for them, not bad."
Well, point taken. I was referring more to standards-wars like the VHS/Betamax one, wars that are between concurrent competing standards, rather than consecutive standards. I gladly upgraded my VHS collection to DVD, because I felt I was getting a massive benefit for it. Also, my VHS collection had been built up over a period of many years, so I did not have the sense of spending $2000 in a few short years just to be asked to spend $4000 almost immediately to replace it again.
That last is simply a matter of perception, but it's an important one in the marketing business.
"provide real advantages to the consumer...is something everyone needs to decide for themselves"
I apologize for the snip, but this seems somewhat contradictory to me. I personally don't think the new formats offer me ANY advantages where my movies are concerned; the only reason I care about more space on a DVD is for making computer backups. I'm not so obsessed about the quality of my viewing experience that I derive any benefit from a higher resolution DVD. In fact, I really don't care about it all. For me, regular DVD is 'good enough', and I've seen the alternatives. They are not worth even a penny to me.
I realize that IS me 'deciding for myself', but.. as this is my post.. I can't really comment on other people's feelings on the subject. My general impression is that I share this view with alot of the general public, though.
"Let's assume you had a holiday home. You'd maybe have copies of your music there, but you'd buy a new kettle and toaster. Why? Because it's easy to copy your CDs but somewhat harder to copy your kettle!"
I wish we could edit Slashdot posts. Anyway, I wanted to reply to this part too and forgot.
If you had a holiday home, a closer analogy here would be bringing your existing kettle and toaster WITH you, from your other home. You can bring your CD with you right? It makes very simple sense to bring your CD with you and play it on your CD player at your holiday home. So you could bring your kettle and toaster with you too.
To say that bringing your CD with you would be stealing would be like saying bringing your toaster with you would be stealing. And that doesn't make sense.
"I used to copy music to tapes to listen in the car, and I have recently come to the conclusion that this is actually the same process as copying from a friend or downloading from the internet as I would otherwise have had to purchase a copy on tape for my car, purchased another copy to listen to at work, etc."
I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion. This conclusion also supports the idea that you're copying the music by simply... removing the CD and playing it in a different player. While the music companies would love it if you bought a separate CD for every playing device you own, this is the realm of ridiculous.
Say you don't have a tape deck in your car, you have a CD player. Are you unfairly copying that music then by carrying your CD out to your car? But this is all you're doing when you copy your CD to your tape - just making it so that music you already paid for, you can listen to in your car.
Once you pay for the CD, the music on it is yours to listen to. As so many people are so fond of pointing out, you're not paying for the CD - that costs about 12 cents. You're paying for the content on it, and it's your right to copy that content onto another medium so you can continue to listen to it.
What becomes UNfair is then giving or selling (not lending) that copy to your friend (or your 'friends' on BitTorrent).
I hope I have changed your mind on that topic because it broke my heart to read that you're doing that to yourself, and unnecessarily.
"but I suspect that the only reason people think it is "OK" is because it is so easy!"
The alternative is that people think it's OK is because it really is OK (and the courts upheld fair use copying way back in the 80's - fair use being, YOUR use. You bought it, you can do whatever you want to do to listen to it, excluding the option I laid out above). It's the content and music companies that want you to think otherwise, not because they really care that you think it's wrong, but because they want you to think it's wrong so they can make more money. That is the only reason.
"Alternately, Blu-Ray means that the entire season at the existing quality level will fit on a single-layer disk, which costs less to produce than a double layer disc. Either way, it's a win."
For only one company: Sony.
For consumers, it still means paying $80/season of their favorite TV show (and most people I know would find that idiotic - we believe we're buying the DVD, so why is ONE DVD $80? Of course it's more complex than that [buying the content and all] but Joe Blow doesn't think of it like that). And it also means buying that season all over again because your brand-spankin' new DVD player can't play your old discs.
Either way, it's lose-lose for the consumer. They're doing this to screw you over, not because they have any interest in improving technology.
"resulting in competition that concerns more than just brand labels."
That's exactly it - some competition is actually bad for the consumer. Competition among things like data formats is exactly one of these things, because it ends up making alot of people's current collection of movies/music/whatever obsolete and unplayable, forcing them to buy it all over again.
While the content companies love this, consumers don't, and alot of manufacturers don't because it forces them to raise costs to support formats that may or may not survive. End result is that the consumers end up getting screwed.
This is the reason there are so many standards organizations, like the IEEE and ISO. Some things just NEED to be standardized.
Personally I'm of the opinion that all this "new DVD format" nonsense is being forced on us exclusively for expanding the use of DRM, and as just another way to get consumers to buy their DVD collection all over again.
"I'm part of that 0.5% of the movie-watching public who thinks the story is the most important element of a film, and from my quick scan of the features of these formats, story enhancement just isn't there yet. Oh well, perhaps next year."
[snicker]
I think you must have been joking when you said 0.5%, because I think most people buy movies because they like them, not because they're shot at 1080i with 5 speaker surround THX certified sound. People like DVDs because they last longer and they have menus. That's it.
The only reason I have surround sound is because my girlfriend wanted it and on a whim one day we bought it, but I have always been happy with regular stereo sound of my tv speakers. I have never felt like I was missing something, and most people don't.
Surround sound is why we go to the theater to see X-Men 3. Unless you're willing to lay down $10,000 on your entertainment system, this kind of garbage is just that: Garbage. And I don't know anyone who has, or ever will, find it necessary to spend that kind of money on their home theater system.
Actually, the only exposure to HDTV I've ever had is at Best Buy, and it was awful. I don't know if they're not sending HD signals, or they have the machines configured wrong, but the artifacts are so obvious that it's painful to look at the screen. At least something with less resolution has a smooth image, even if it's not sharp.
I've seen this same thing at 3 different Best Buy stores, so I start to question whether the problem is theirs, or that HDTV isn't really as awesome as people want it to be.
It sounds to me like you're basically saying "It's coming, there's nothing you can do about it so just give in and get your new HDTV."
Personally, I prefer to NOT buy this new crap and hope that as many people as possible don't buy it either, so the content companies and manufacterers abandon this insanity.
I do not intend to buy my DVD collection AGAIN. And that's all this bullshit is - a way to make you buy it all over again, only this time, they'll make damn sure you can't actually do anything with it.
You have to think of this from Joe Blow's perspective - most people lose the ability to tell the different in quality between DVD and full blown, uncompressed raw video. I can sort of tell, because I am marginally interested in it, but very, very few Joe Blow's are going to have the sort of 'increased video resolution orgasm' that most technophiles have.
For Joe Blow, all he cares about is that it's a nice picture and is damn easy to use. That's why DVD provided such a MASSIVE improvement to VHS; I see no correspondingly massive improvement in any of these proprietary formats.
I certainly hope I'm right anyway. I categorically refuse to buy my DVD collection all over again, and I will go out and buy 25 goddamn DVD players before the new formats come out so that I'll still be able to play them until the day I die (so that as each DVD player breaks, I've got one to replace it! hehehe).
Re:more proof the RIAA/MPAA are insane
on
Death By DMCA
·
· Score: 1
Yes. You're a dirty rotten thief, and if the successor to the DMCA gets passed, you will be charged with the evil, thoughtless, horrible crime of...
Changing your TV channel.
You think I'm joking.
I wish i were.
Re:more proof the RIAA/MPAA are insane
on
Death By DMCA
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
"Remote control zapping is going to be illegal in a few months time."
Sad part is, had I not read an article detailing the DMCA's younger (but 10x scarier) brother, I wouldn't believe you. It seems unthinkable that they would make it ILLEGAL to change channels.
Yet that is exactly what the bill calls for. Forcing TV's to refuse to allow you to change channels during commercials, and impose huge penalties for 'interfering' with the technology that prohibits channel changing.
It's sickening.
Re:more proof the RIAA/MPAA are insane
on
Death By DMCA
·
· Score: 1
"And no matter how many ways they find to distort and convolute the constitution, it is still there."
No it isn't. No 200 year old document is going to survive THAT much urine.
Slashdot Mirror
"Most US households have a choice of no less than 7 cable companies."
Such a strong assertion without so much as a link.
Where I live, just outside of Washington, DC there are only two major players: Comcast in Maryland and Cox in Virginia. Verizon has some semblance of a presence in the area but it is a joke compared to the huge distribution that Comcast and Cox have.
And by the way, my building was wired only for Comcast, so I couldn't get anyone else if I wanted to. And I know I'm not alone.
"Is there _ANY_ amount of money that is enough? I'm starting to think not."
So am I. A few years ago I thought business for profit was a good idea; I figured, it's ok to make a profit so long as it is made honestly. Actually, I still believe that.
The only part that's lacking is the whole nagging 'honestly' part.
"I never wanted to be a Socialist, but they're pushing me that way..."
And again.. me too. More and more I find myself aligning with what would be considered 'liberal' (lowercase L) ideology, whereas a few years ago I was more 'conservative' (in the political sense, not the fascist Bible thumper sense) on the political spectrum.
Oddly, I don't think my ideas have actually changed much; all that has changed is where those ideas fall on the political spectrum.
Right. My good for nothing Democrat congressman voted in favor of this bill.
He'll be hearing from me. Apparently my letters are not having any effect (like I should be surprised, but still..)
"How would you feel to discover that a single individual was tracking all your communications, monitoring your movements, collating all public traces you leave behind?"
Personally, I would consider it stalking, because that's exactly what it is. And I think that's exactly what your point was.
"That is absolutely wrong. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place and anything you do or say in the bank, the convenience store, or any public space or private property open to the public is subject to monitoring and recording."
He didn't say "expectation of privacy", he said "reasonable assumption that one won't be stalked or spied upon." These are very different things. I don't expect to be able to walk around naked in a bank and scratch myself in front of the customer service rep. I DO, however, expect to not be stalked or tracked in any way other than purely random (e.g. I am not the special focus of any official observations). I DO, also, expect to be able to freely and openly exclaim my opinions about the government and political topics, without incurring special 'treatment' by secret organizations of government hitmen.
"In fact, you probably already broke the law just for posting an article counseling how to obstruct the NSA datamining program."
Actually, I'm fairly certain this is only possible if the poster has personal knowledge of the methods used by the NSA's datamining program. Since their methodology is classified, it's not possible to knowingly provide an actual method on how to obstruct the NSA datamining program.
Just a bit of armchair lawyering and who knows, in the current culture of "You're guilty and we'll prove it or find a reason to make you guilty," I'm not sure that any ACTUAL offenses carry any more weight than imagined ones.
"but all that would happen is some Executive would get a new car."
What? No. No no no.
Private jet full of $12,000 bottles of champagne and hookers, yes. Hell if it was just a new car I don't think it would bother me so much; instead, CEO's earn 1000x what their lowly employees do and they have a "vacation home" [errr.. vacation mansion/personal resort] at every major city in the world.
I like my company. 500 employees give or take, and our CEO earns 4x what most of the engineers do, who earn about 1.2x what the administrative staff earns. This salary structure seems very reasonable to me.
Back on topic though, I really wouldn't mind paying another $15/mo to see bandwidth not being oversold, so that this whole 'net UNneutrality' crap can go away. I value a free internet more than the money I spend on my internet connection.
I think you totally missed the grand parent poster's point.. he was saying, and I'll reply to this too:
"but if people keep wanting something for nothing, there's going to be no more something eventually."
he was saying that line of thinking is false - and it is. Van Gogh for example, created over 1000 paintings... and never sold a single one of them while he was alive. Artists who create because they love art, will do so even if they're not getting paid for it.
That aside, I do think an artist who sees their work being copied and they never see even a handshake for it, will stop producing. But payment to them doesnt' have to be financial.
"I'm more of the opinion that once the RIAA & MPAA come out with reasonably, affordable distribution schemes everyone can be happy"
I think so too. But, good luck ever seeing them grow up and stop trying to stifle innovation and creativity. They're like a dying, lumbering dinosaur crushing everything in its path because it knows it's on the way and by god, if it can't have everything than nobody else can either!
"I've read that there is a several month delay for snail mail because it has to be checked for anthrax and other nasties."
According to my congressman, that's only true at the DC offices. If you send a snail mail directly to your congresssman's district office, they get it alot faster than if you send it to their DC office; the DC mailroom is the one that opens every piece of mail to check for anthrax and other stuff.
Hey there,
Another piece of information to keep in mind in your reply is this part:
"Telephone and cable companies want to be able to charge for such large
amounts of bandwidth; otherwise, they will have to pass the costs on to
the consumer. These Internet sites obviously oppose such a move, as it
forces them to pay for using increased bandwidth."
1. Then pass the costs on to the consumer, not to the company providing the website. If I want to download 1TB of porn every day, I should be the one paying for it.
2. How in the world are the websites using more bandwidth? If nobody uses their website, they're not using any bandwidth - demonstrating very clearly that it is the USERS using the bandwidth, not the website. Charge them accordingly, do NOT charge the content providers.
Yep.
Pay them enough, and the telecoms will screw you with a soft, feather-padded broom stick instead of the hard prickly kind.
But either way, they're still screwing you..
"My contention, and I'm not sure I'm right, is that we think it is different because it is easy to copy it. "
I think I see what you're getting at (replying to your other reply to me, too). I think the key comes down to the answer to this question:
"Because sunglasses aren't easy to copy/clone we tend to purchase more than one pair. Why is music different?"
Ah, humans and their ability to abstract. I've spent quite alot of time thinking about human abstraction and a) what benefits it gives us and b) what it unfortunately ends up costing us, too.
Our ability to abstract is so advanced that we are able to consider our ideas more real than the real world around us (like laws or religion, for example, things we tend to consider [almost] absolute).
This is one of those examples: We're considering the CD to be what we bought, when it isn't - it's the music on the disc. Our abstraction combines them together in one object, and that's why we think of "CD ownership" as a singular idea, but the CD is just a means to an end: transporting the music contained on it.
It's ok to copy a CD (for YOUR OWN use) not because it's easy, but because you paid for the music on it. You didn't pay for the CD; you paid for what it carries. You also paid for the music you downloaded on iTunes, but it's ok to put it on your iPod, right? (in general; I don't know if you have an iPod, I don't!)
This example is not extendable to sunglasses or kettles or toasters, because the toaster IS what you bought - the sunglasses ARE what you bought. You can't copy them, not because we don't have a magical object duplicator, but because THAT IS the actual content of your purchase.
In the case of the CD, the content of your purchase happens to be digital and transportable to other mediums. You can take the content of your purchase with you (e.g. you can take your sunglasses with you) - and since the content of your purchase is the music, not the disc it came on, you can copy it wherever you want to make sure you can listen to it.
Oh and by the way, how do you do that fancy post quoting thing? Is that a Firefox extension I don't have?
"Nevertherless, consumers seem to adopt new formats rather than just rejecting progress. It seems to me consumers think this is good for them, not bad."
Well, point taken. I was referring more to standards-wars like the VHS/Betamax one, wars that are between concurrent competing standards, rather than consecutive standards. I gladly upgraded my VHS collection to DVD, because I felt I was getting a massive benefit for it. Also, my VHS collection had been built up over a period of many years, so I did not have the sense of spending $2000 in a few short years just to be asked to spend $4000 almost immediately to replace it again.
That last is simply a matter of perception, but it's an important one in the marketing business.
"provide real advantages to the consumer...is something everyone needs to decide for themselves"
I apologize for the snip, but this seems somewhat contradictory to me. I personally don't think the new formats offer me ANY advantages where my movies are concerned; the only reason I care about more space on a DVD is for making computer backups. I'm not so obsessed about the quality of my viewing experience that I derive any benefit from a higher resolution DVD. In fact, I really don't care about it all. For me, regular DVD is 'good enough', and I've seen the alternatives. They are not worth even a penny to me.
I realize that IS me 'deciding for myself', but.. as this is my post.. I can't really comment on other people's feelings on the subject. My general impression is that I share this view with alot of the general public, though.
"Let's assume you had a holiday home. You'd maybe have copies of your music there, but you'd buy a new kettle and toaster. Why? Because it's easy to copy your CDs but somewhat harder to copy your kettle!"
I wish we could edit Slashdot posts. Anyway, I wanted to reply to this part too and forgot.
If you had a holiday home, a closer analogy here would be bringing your existing kettle and toaster WITH you, from your other home. You can bring your CD with you right? It makes very simple sense to bring your CD with you and play it on your CD player at your holiday home. So you could bring your kettle and toaster with you too.
To say that bringing your CD with you would be stealing would be like saying bringing your toaster with you would be stealing. And that doesn't make sense.
"I used to copy music to tapes to listen in the car, and I have recently come to the conclusion that this is actually the same process as copying from a friend or downloading from the internet as I would otherwise have had to purchase a copy on tape for my car, purchased another copy to listen to at work, etc."
I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion. This conclusion also supports the idea that you're copying the music by simply... removing the CD and playing it in a different player. While the music companies would love it if you bought a separate CD for every playing device you own, this is the realm of ridiculous.
Say you don't have a tape deck in your car, you have a CD player. Are you unfairly copying that music then by carrying your CD out to your car? But this is all you're doing when you copy your CD to your tape - just making it so that music you already paid for, you can listen to in your car.
Once you pay for the CD, the music on it is yours to listen to. As so many people are so fond of pointing out, you're not paying for the CD - that costs about 12 cents. You're paying for the content on it, and it's your right to copy that content onto another medium so you can continue to listen to it.
What becomes UNfair is then giving or selling (not lending) that copy to your friend (or your 'friends' on BitTorrent).
I hope I have changed your mind on that topic because it broke my heart to read that you're doing that to yourself, and unnecessarily.
"but I suspect that the only reason people think it is "OK" is because it is so easy!"
The alternative is that people think it's OK is because it really is OK (and the courts upheld fair use copying way back in the 80's - fair use being, YOUR use. You bought it, you can do whatever you want to do to listen to it, excluding the option I laid out above). It's the content and music companies that want you to think otherwise, not because they really care that you think it's wrong, but because they want you to think it's wrong so they can make more money. That is the only reason.
"Alternately, Blu-Ray means that the entire season at the existing quality level will fit on a single-layer disk, which costs less to produce than a double layer disc. Either way, it's a win."
For only one company: Sony.
For consumers, it still means paying $80/season of their favorite TV show (and most people I know would find that idiotic - we believe we're buying the DVD, so why is ONE DVD $80? Of course it's more complex than that [buying the content and all] but Joe Blow doesn't think of it like that). And it also means buying that season all over again because your brand-spankin' new DVD player can't play your old discs.
Either way, it's lose-lose for the consumer. They're doing this to screw you over, not because they have any interest in improving technology.
"resulting in competition that concerns more than just brand labels."
That's exactly it - some competition is actually bad for the consumer. Competition among things like data formats is exactly one of these things, because it ends up making alot of people's current collection of movies/music/whatever obsolete and unplayable, forcing them to buy it all over again.
While the content companies love this, consumers don't, and alot of manufacturers don't because it forces them to raise costs to support formats that may or may not survive. End result is that the consumers end up getting screwed.
This is the reason there are so many standards organizations, like the IEEE and ISO. Some things just NEED to be standardized.
Personally I'm of the opinion that all this "new DVD format" nonsense is being forced on us exclusively for expanding the use of DRM, and as just another way to get consumers to buy their DVD collection all over again.
"I'm part of that 0.5% of the movie-watching public who thinks the story is the most important element of a film, and from my quick scan of the features of these formats, story enhancement just isn't there yet. Oh well, perhaps next year."
[snicker]
I think you must have been joking when you said 0.5%, because I think most people buy movies because they like them, not because they're shot at 1080i with 5 speaker surround THX certified sound. People like DVDs because they last longer and they have menus. That's it.
The only reason I have surround sound is because my girlfriend wanted it and on a whim one day we bought it, but I have always been happy with regular stereo sound of my tv speakers. I have never felt like I was missing something, and most people don't.
Surround sound is why we go to the theater to see X-Men 3. Unless you're willing to lay down $10,000 on your entertainment system, this kind of garbage is just that: Garbage. And I don't know anyone who has, or ever will, find it necessary to spend that kind of money on their home theater system.
Actually, the only exposure to HDTV I've ever had is at Best Buy, and it was awful. I don't know if they're not sending HD signals, or they have the machines configured wrong, but the artifacts are so obvious that it's painful to look at the screen. At least something with less resolution has a smooth image, even if it's not sharp.
I've seen this same thing at 3 different Best Buy stores, so I start to question whether the problem is theirs, or that HDTV isn't really as awesome as people want it to be.
It sounds to me like you're basically saying "It's coming, there's nothing you can do about it so just give in and get your new HDTV."
Personally, I prefer to NOT buy this new crap and hope that as many people as possible don't buy it either, so the content companies and manufacterers abandon this insanity.
I do not intend to buy my DVD collection AGAIN. And that's all this bullshit is - a way to make you buy it all over again, only this time, they'll make damn sure you can't actually do anything with it.
You have to think of this from Joe Blow's perspective - most people lose the ability to tell the different in quality between DVD and full blown, uncompressed raw video. I can sort of tell, because I am marginally interested in it, but very, very few Joe Blow's are going to have the sort of 'increased video resolution orgasm' that most technophiles have.
For Joe Blow, all he cares about is that it's a nice picture and is damn easy to use. That's why DVD provided such a MASSIVE improvement to VHS; I see no correspondingly massive improvement in any of these proprietary formats.
I certainly hope I'm right anyway. I categorically refuse to buy my DVD collection all over again, and I will go out and buy 25 goddamn DVD players before the new formats come out so that I'll still be able to play them until the day I die (so that as each DVD player breaks, I've got one to replace it! hehehe).
Yes. You're a dirty rotten thief, and if the successor to the DMCA gets passed, you will be charged with the evil, thoughtless, horrible crime of...
Changing your TV channel.
You think I'm joking.
I wish i were.
"Remote control zapping is going to be illegal in a few months time."
Sad part is, had I not read an article detailing the DMCA's younger (but 10x scarier) brother, I wouldn't believe you. It seems unthinkable that they would make it ILLEGAL to change channels.
Yet that is exactly what the bill calls for. Forcing TV's to refuse to allow you to change channels during commercials, and impose huge penalties for 'interfering' with the technology that prohibits channel changing.
It's sickening.
"And no matter how many ways they find to distort and convolute the constitution, it is still there."
No it isn't. No 200 year old document is going to survive THAT much urine.