Apparently, Paris Hilton doesn’t understand the concept of a password. Threat Level has the hilarious call where a helpful hacker explains what passwords are, why they’re important, and how to set it up. It’s pretty hilarious and worth a listen.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/audio-helpful-h.html#more
iLounge has the scoop. Check out all the frame-by-frame comparisons.
Not what I would have expected. However, the NYT has a great article explaining exactly why digital downloaded films are stupid. The reason? Crippling DRM. The studios are determined to make this mode of distribution fail. Why? Because they are just too stupid to realize that the world is changing.
Now that we have terabyte drives, here are the next few advances to look forward to (complete with humorous names) . . .
petabyte (a quadrillion bytes)
exabyte (one quintillion bytes)
zettabyte (one sextillion bytes)
yottabyte (one septillion bytes)
xygabyte (one zillion bytes)
zyxobyte (one bazillion bytes)
OK, so I made those last two up.
According to a yahoo article, once we reach the 50T range, we can listen to a century’s worth of music non stop. When Cage wrote his 11 year organ piece, he didn’t think big enough.
Lets hope BluRay and HD-DVD are forgotten as quickly as the mid-90s Digital Compact Cassette (DCC). There’s nothing we need less than over-priced “premium” formats that offer such a small advantage over existing formats. The difference between LPs and CDs is pretty great: size, portability, longevity, price, etc. The difference between high def DVDs is . . . storage capacity??? Sure, this allows better video quality, but not *drastically* better video quality. Why should anyone start rebuilding their DVD collection just for an increase in video quality on a TV they probably can’t afford?
And don’t think for a minute that the larger storage capacity will change anything about extra features. There are still plenty of DVDs released with nothing but trailers and hilariously stupid DVD recommendations (e.g. Did you enjoy Titanic? You might also enjoy The Abyss, Evil Dead, Last Action Hero, and many other titles that happen to be from the same DVD studio!).
The worst aspect that nobody seems to be talking about is the DRM involved. If you try to play a BluRay or HD-DVD in a conventional play, it automatically downgrades its quality to “worse than broadcast”. This isn’t even about copy protection anymore - this is about forcing pointless hardware sales. What a shame. But, I would expect no less from the greedy entertainment industry.
This is an interesting piece on why HD formats have already failed.
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