Do DVDs deserve to die? (1 Viewer)

[PaulP]

Bruce Sterling, a science fiction author, journalist, and cultural critic from Austin, TX seem to think so.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/973949.asp

It's quite a nice column that makes a lot of sense and good points. Until you come to the end. I think this is a facetious attempt at a joke.

At any rate, read and feel free to comment and send hate mail to ol' Bruce. (Hey, I'm being facetious too!)

 

[Jeff D Han]

If DVDs do deserve to die, then they will die
outside my home. They will always have a place to
stay as long as I'm around. I take care of my
400 pets very well and they are happy.

 

[Ken Chan]

We still need nuclear weapons (#1 on his list) to blow up asteriods and comets that will hit the planet, or restart the earth's core.

//Ken

 

[Tony_Ramos]

First off, the only reason the US or our troops abroad have never been attacked by a nuclear weapon or device is b/c the world knows we will retaliate with our own.

As for DVDs, the guy makes the great point that DVDs have just exponentially increased the $ amounts lost from privacy. It already takes millions to make even a low budget film, so I wish therre was some compromise between giving the consumer the quality, convenience, and long life of digital media while at the same time protecting the content...

I'm thinking Digital Rights protection is the answer, but they are making these schemes such a pain in the butt for even legit consumers...

 

[Lewis Besze]

Clearly the guy has been watching too much Star trek.

 

[Edwin-S]

#6 Manned Spaceflight

And this guy is a Science Fiction writer??!!!




Where is the statistical proof that DVDs have increased $ lost from piracy? So far all that seems to have occurred is a bunch of whining from industry bigwigs about piracy losses and no hard statistics. It is hard to quantify piracy losses, because it cannot be determined if people acquiring pirated versions would have bought the legitimate release in the first place.

 

[David Lambert]

I wouldn't give the time of day to this, ahem, piece of journalism. It's a sensation piece meant to take a basic premise (nuclear weapons are bad) and turn it into a controversy surrounding other technology that ends up being a wish list.

I mean, what's the REAL plan to replace coal power and combustion engines? And it's nice and all to say that you think we can get rid of prisons, and let the crooks hang out at the airport because it's practically like a prison...but the real point is to keep the dangerous ones from being a continuing danger to the decent folk, and he doesn't begin to address that.

And he talks about lie detectors as if they could evolve into mind-readers if the technology improves, which they clearly are not at this time and a mind-reading device doesn't constitute a current piece of technology that deserves to "die".


So never mind what this guy has to say about DVDs.


Why did it get published at all? Well, obviously it's a slow news day at MSNBC, for starters. And, well, perhaps they thought that geeks like us would give them hits on something of this nature...getting clicks IS the goal of any website, right?

Even if you boil this article down to it's stated purpose - humor - then you are left with nothing for us to worry about in the real world. It's a joke, people...even if it's not intended to be one, it's a joke.

 

[Greg*go]

Plus, just like CDs, DVDs as physical objects will prove to warp and delaminate....

Most loathsome of all is the fiendish spam hard-burned into DVDs, which forces one to suffer through the commercials gratefully evaded by videotape fast-forwards.

What the hell is this guy talking about? Does he live in a humidifier and never got his remote control for the DVD player? And maybe he's talking about the FBI warning which is illegal to fast forward through, under penalty of law.

 

[George See]

And, well, perhaps they thought that geeks like us would give them hits on something of this nature

As a fellow geek i'd say you hit the nail right on the head. I ended up reading this article before even seeing this thread. The geek in me was drawn to it as a moth to a flame.

 

[Terry H]

I strongly suspect he is talking about a recent Universal title and was forced to sit through the trailers. Honestly, I really enjoy my dvds but he did have one good point. I have to agree with him that the medium is overly fragile.

 

[Kevin Farley]

Bruce Sterling is brilliant. Read Islands in the Net, The Difference Engine (with William Gibson), etc.

I loved this piece. It took me a bit to wrap my brain around some of it, but it's mostly true.

Mostly, it's about evolving. Having to spin a plastic disc to retrieve data will hopefully be a thing of the past soon. Look at Flash cards and Holographic Cube memory; much more intelligent and hopefully will be rampant.

He's pushing for advances to be made. I went over to a friend's house recently to help them with their computer, and their house is off the grid: all power is generated from a windmill and solar cells, which is stored in batteries. Most days they have to throw away power; from the wind in Iowa alone it let's them use all the electricity they need.
There's so many clean sources of cheap and clean power it isn't funny. If we spent anywhere near as much money and energy exploring Solar, Geothermal, Hydrogen-Cell, Wind, and Wave power as we do Coal, Nuclear, and Fossil Fuels we'd be better off.
And with the manned spaceflight, it's true; too much energy is expended just getting to orbit. Until we figure out Anti-Gravity (which from modern physics, it seems that gravity is a wave, so it should be relatively simple to create localized destructive interference of that wave) or a space elevator, It's a real bitch to get to space to do any meaningful long term travel.

If you take the prison population growth curve and take it's limit, we're going to be a prison planet at some point. Eventually we'll have to figure out another solution, and I hope that happens in this lifetime. Just a wish!

Great article; it made me think a bit deeper.

Plus; dvd's with commercials: bad.

 

[Edwin-S]

I'm not quite sure about the logic. It is too expensive to lift heavy bodies into space; therefore, we should stop manned spaceflight until a space elevator or anti-gravity (presently theoretically impossible) makes it cheap enough to resume manned space exploration. Of course, due to the lack of manned flights, the argument for a space elevator becomes redundant because there is no need to develop the technology.

 

[David Susilo]

I don't know whether DVDs deserve to die, all I know for sure is that this thread deserves to be in After Hours Lounge.

 

[David Lambert]

Agreed, David!

 

[John Watson]

Do DVD's Deserve to Die?

Just the P&S ones, oh, and the Madacy ones

 

[Keith Mickunas]

it cannot be determined if people acquiring pirated versions would have bought the legitimate release in the first place.

This is a key point. Now some movies make more money from video distribution than from their theatrical release. If piracy was such a problem, how could this possibly happen? Granted before VHS and DVD there probably wasn't near the level of piracy there is now, but there wasn't any consumer sales to begin with. Seems like Hollywood is better off even with the piracy going on.

 

[MarkHastings]

Most loathsome of all is the fiendish spam hard-burned into DVDs, which forces one to suffer through the commercials gratefully evaded by videotape fast-forwards.

Oh yes, video tape is SO much better than DVD because of this - Excuse me while I try to shove my VHS tape into my computer.

 

[Leila Dougan]

Here we go again. Deja Vu, anyone? First the RIAA and then the MPAA. The details may differ but the principle is just the same. Basing an argument on unverified assumptions never helped anyone.

 

[Scott Strang]

I can think of several technologies that never deserved to live.

Open reel is the only analog tape format that ever had a right to live. Even pre-recorded tapes at 3 3/4 ips were able to sound better than 8 tracks and cassettes.

8-Track carts. Always sucked regardless of how good the blank could be and the 3 3/4 ips speed. Pre-recorded were mandatory in suckiness. The 8-track was incomparable in it's ability to destroy music.

Cassettes. Mr. Nakamichi made a great accomplishment with his 1000 deck. Cassettes were never meant to hold hi-fidelity sound (which most realize they never really did now matter how advanced tape and decks got). They were better than 8-tracks and if they had tried to add the 3 3/4 speed to the cassette standard, they could've been a far better option.

RCA CED. Oh please.


DAT. They sound great and I have tapes recorded as early as 1996 that still sound great and have no audible drop outs and no diginoise. But the tape size and data density
basically said I'm waiting for the best possible moment to be come un-useable. I was amazed when Bert Whyte in Audio magazine said that DAT promises to be a great archival medium. He of all people should have known better than that. If DAT standard had been as wide as 8mm it would've been more robust. Prior to seeing Tascam and Sony doing the 8mm multitrack digital format, the only other digital audio use I remember with 8mm was that dreadful 12 bit 32 kHz sampling rate available in some 8mm vcr's.

 

[Dave Poehlman]

DVD's deserve to die....


when HD-DVD's come out.