Patrick Smith writes about the TSA and how we fight an attack that happened six years ago, that is over and could not be repeated.
Category: history
750,000 HD DVD players and 2.7 million Bluray players have been sold in the last 18 months that the formats have been available. In those BluRay numbers are about 2 Million PS3 consoles included. 4 Million Bluray discs have been sold, 2.6 Million HD-DVD ones. Which comes down to 1.5 Bluray and 3.5 HD-DVDs per device.
The DVD of “Knocked up” alone sold more often than all HD-DVD and Bluray formats combined. I wonder how the marketing budgets would compare.
In 1998 9.8 Million DVD Discs had been sold. Almost ten discs for each player that was out there. People loved DVD. They still do. As for the two replacement formats they could care less it seems. And that’s only partly a problem of the rivaling formats. I think that DVD is good enough for people. Most simply have neither the hardware setup nor the desire to spend allot of money for the extra resolution that the new formats provide.
Here the DVD hardware sales:
315,136 1997 (April-December)
1,089,261 1998
4,019,389 1999
8,498,545 2000
12,706,584 2001
17,089,823 2002
21,994,389 2003
19,999,913 2004
16,147,823 2005
19,788,279 2006
10,252,893 2007 (January - July)
sources: current HD numbers past DVD device numbers, reversed via the linux ‘tac’ command. I had no idea it did exist. DVD disc numbers Warner DVD sales in 1998 DVD sales in 1998 and 1999
That would indeed be nice.
In unix you tell the system via a file called /etc/fstab which drives should be mounted.
Simple. Works. Except for OS X. Some crazy new fancy database sheme was supposed to replace /etc/fstab. It was all so amazing. It is junk, that’s what it was. Didn’t stop Apple-Idiots to claim it would be amazing. And countless websites offered help. What was one line a file became pages and pages of instructions.
Finally with 10.5 /etc/fstab is also part of OS X. It took years. It’s good that it’s there. it’s not good that it did not become available in the updates to 10.1, 10.2, 10.3 and 10.4. Apple is idiotically stubborn sometimes.
Almost a year ago 0.02% of all Americans bought a specific record. And it became the number #1 of the Album charts. One in 5,000!
fourty some years ago one in 200 US Americans went to buy a specific Beatles record the day it came out.
Even six years ago the Beatles convinced one in 600 people to buy a record in the week it became available.
Over at Independendant Arts Media Preservation I can read:
The complexity of digital media preservation is fourfold. First, data resides on a physical support–a floppy disk, CD-ROM, or hard-drive, for example–and this physical container or support naturally deteriorates. Second, the data itself may decay. Third, most software is proprietary and has no long-term technical support. Finally, hardware obsolescence makes a great deal of digital media inaccessible.
I would merge point 3 and 4 into one. 3 being able to be overcome by open source. Point #1 is also called Entropie, and it’s a real bitch. If you escape all illnesses and accidents it is will get you in the end. But the “data itself may decay” ??? Huh? How so? If bit’s are not what they used to be, than it’s the first point. Data is pure.
It is kind of scary that the people that tasked themselves with the preservation of stuff have such a bent understanding of the thing they like to protect. Somebody probably started his/her computing experience on a bug ridden system like Windows 95. I wonder what their plan against ‘self inflicted data decay’ may be.
US Airlines scramble to get internet on airplanes. Which is great. I loved it when Lufthansa had it. I wonder why they stoped offering it. It worked well, and I was more than happy to pay 25 US$ for a flight with internet. Actually, while I used to have a second battery when flying with the ‘Titanium’, I don’t open the laptop anymore these days. There is no room for starterts. And a computer without internet connection is nothing more than a grim tease for me by now.
The mightiest force ever lost some stuff in the desert it seems.
what could go wrong if Siemens and the BBC team up? everything
I am sure there are lots of projects where people try really hard to push a rope. Instead of pulling on it. If the structures involved are big enough they will try. What a waste of everybodies time!
Annie Leonard talks about stuff Whoever she is.
I am with her. To a point. The breastmilk part is a bit much, and on technology she is just plain wrong. Which discredits the whole piece somewhat. And that is a real shame. Since the whole consumerism / consumption stuff weighted against diminishing returns in respect to happyness is a very important point. And there are others in this presentation that are pretty obvious and get equally ignored. Still worth the link, and maybe even worth watching.