
Blu-Ray Still Blows - blasdel
http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/2177
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Tichy
I wonder if USB sticks will be cheaper than Blu-Ray disks in the long run?
(And offer more capacity, too).

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potatolicious
I doubt it. A bought a 16GB SD card a little while back, and it cost maybe
$30. A Blu-ray disc holds 25GB single-sided, and 50GB double-sided, and
probably costs well less than a dollar to press.

Flash is a loooooong way from beating the disc.

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Tichy
Just checked at Amazon.de, the price for a writable blu-ray disk seems to
start from 5€, for a 25GB disc. 16GB USB sticks were around 23€. It does not
seem that far away?

Also, I suppose Blu-Ray will be stuck at it's size because of the norms and
patent hell, whereas sticks can just continue to grow. Flash drives are
becoming popular, so the price of Flash in general might come down.

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alain94040
You are correct but you are looking at it from the wrong perspective.

Who cares about reprogramming your stick: for blu-ray, you want to buy a
movie. The movie studio is the one wanting to make a profit, so most of the
sale price of the movie should not go into the media.

Therefore, mass producing blu-ray movies, at around $1 (or less) per disc is
very effective (the studios will sell you the movie at $9.99 or more).

When will a USB stick for 20GB cost less than $1? It's still quite far off.

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textfiles
The assumption, of course, is that you will have 20+gb of content on a Blu-Ray
disc. I am not convinced this is often the case, and an independent could
produce these slightly-higher-cost items for distribution and put all sorts of
material on them.

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wyday
Besides saying "fuck" over and over again, was the whole point of that post to
complain about licensing? If you don't want to deal with licensing issues
don't use any proprietary technology. Release your work online in OGG format.

These types of whiny posts don't contribute much of anything. There's no real
solution proposed. Other than "I want to use proprietary technology but I
don't want to pay the fees".

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TheElder
I'm not sure why vulgar language is becoming so acceptable and commonly used .
Am I just old school (even though I'm 30) when I find myself turned away from
people who talk in such a manner or do others feel similar to me?

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unalone
I'm new school (if 19 isn't too old to call myself that), and swearing's
becoming such a huge trend because of how natural it feels. It's part of the
huge trend towards the unprofessional.

That's a good thing. While it's got some irritating side effects, the overall
idea is getting rid of bullshit attitudes towards one another. Swearing is a
part of language. There's nothing wrong with its being used.

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TheElder
I'm in agreement with your assessment that the trend is towards
unprofessionalism. I live in the US, and have been to Japan three times. My
first time there I was totally shocked with the effort put into dress to look
as clean and professional as possible. Top notch suits that were perfectly
pressed, nice shoes, a nice brief case (very few backpacks), and a very polite
attitude. I wish our trend was towards the Japanese attitude towards the way
we present ourselves in public.

Off topic: it's so refreshing to come here (HN) and read a reply that isn't
some kind of verbal attack towards me for the opinion I presented. I thank you
for that, for stating your opinion with insights without attacking me.

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rikthevik
The pressed suit is a nice touch, but I think with North Americans you'll find
more of a focus on results rather than presentation. Presentation is great
when it follows substance, but it's no substitute.

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bitwize
Yes, you have to use DRM.

Yes, you have to pay for it.

This won't change. In fact, most independent authors and musicians I know
would kill for a transparent, workable DRM system that effectively stopped
casual piracy. Without it, 0-day piracy would become ubiquitous. For Hannah
Montana that won't matter much because Hannah Montana's shit is going to be
bought -- and pirated -- in massive volume anyway. For the local musician it
could mean not getting the big break he was hoping for because he didn't cross
the threshold of 50,000 or 100,000 albums sold necessary for the record
company to heavily market him. In the worst case it means not being able to
feed his family with the income from his music.

So no, DRM is necessary if you want small independent creators to succeed in
the age of the Pirate Bay. And it's not going away anytime soon.

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textfiles
Nah, we fundamentally disagree on this point and a lot of people disagree with
you on this point. (But many do agree with you, too.)

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scblock
I'm sorry but I can't even read this. It is hard to look at, textually awful
and filled with needless coarse language. If you want to write a longish essay
that people will read, learn to edit.

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textfiles
I'm sorry to hear a 1,100 word essay cows you down into illiteracy.

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sketerpot
Wow, they've managed to make it more painful than BitTorrent. This is self-
defeating.

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kdw
Blu-Ray is a transition format anyway. Long-term, my money is on network-based
digital distribution.

It sucks... but for a couple hundred bucks, I'm fine with my blu-ray player,
my netflix subscription, and my purchased copy of Planet Earth.

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pyre
If all you want is HiDef Planet Earth... it was released on HDDVD. You could
probably get a copy and a player for cheap.

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kdw
I actually had one. I switched to blu-ray because of netflix.

A netflix subscription and a blu-ray player is both cheaper and more
interesting than subscribing to all the premium movie channels.

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pyre
Netflix is also on the XBox360. But that might not be relevant to you (not a
gamer,bluray player cheaper,etc).

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GrandMasterBirt
This is one of two points:

a) proprietary formats hurt independents

b) this is yet another anti-piracy heal of crap which will hurt consumers.

So yea I would not be concerned with blue ray. If the porn industry does not
embrace it it won't be the next big thing.

However being that this is sony you are garanteed that they will cater to
destroying independents and growing sony's monopoly.

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pyre
Sony is going to fight tooth and nail for this one. It's the first time that
one of their proprietary formats became an industry standard. They rest are
failures (ATRAC,BetaMax,MemoryStick,MiniDisc,etc). They still won't cater to
independents though.

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jcl
Sony invented the 3.5-inch floppy disk, and the audio compact disc was
invented together by Philips and Sony. Were these somehow not proprietary?

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zandorg
Just an amusing note - I used to call 3.5 inch disks 'hard disks' because
unlike 5.25 inch disks, the shell around the disk is hard!

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BillRossum
You know what else blows? That website. My eyes bleed. Learn how to put "text"
on a "website".

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textfiles
I wrote an entry about that. If you can handle it.

<http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1765>

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bitwize
Yeah, but... smooth green antialiased text on a crisp LCD display? Shit's
WEAK. It's like listening to Britney Spears cover "I Can't Get No
Satisfaction". The soul is gone. I know you did the best you could with what
you had, but I'm yearning for a CSS stylesheet option that changes the text
into an 8x10 chunky pixely aliased monospaced font, rendered in fuzzy green
phosphor dots that don't turn black immediately when the text is scrolled but
rather fade to ghostly lingering afterimages.

As I've mentioned a couple times before, I always use chunky pixely fonts to
code in, though the wheat-on-dark-slate-gray I used for my first Red Hat
install gives me t3h warm fuzzies. It just feels namby-pamby typing your code
in Lucida Console.

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textfiles
You just compared my website to a Britney Spears cover? Them's fighting words,
sir! Keyboards at dawn.

