As to the quality, I've never noticed it being significantly worse than Apple's DVD player, the main difference being interlacing, you have to remember to turn deinterlacing on if you leave it off for other things--and yes, without proper deinterlacing it can look pretty awful.

But then, I don't watch films on a home theatre rig or anything fancy. Perhaps I am a bit of a troglodyte in that regard. My computer monitor and headphones is sufficient for me to enjoy the experience, so maybe I'm not seeing what would otherwise be obvious if I tried to use VLC on a large television screen or projector.

California, seems to be reactive in terms of policy.
It will try hundreds of policies many of them fail or have no impact. But the few that do work they will tout how progressive they are.

Still I want to cross the state border with my nice juicy apple.

Between a bit better language design and superior support and tools, CUDA is way easier to do your work in. We've 4 labs that use CUDA in one fashion or another, none that use OpenCL. A number have tried it (also tried lines like the Cell cards that IBM sold for awhile) but settled on CUDA as being the easiest in terms of development. Open standards are nice and all but they've got shit to do and never enough time to do it, so whatever works the easiest is a win for them.

On a different side of things, I've seen less issues out of nVidia on CUDA than AMD on OpenCL for video editing. Sony Vegas supports both for accelerating video effects and encoding. When I had an AMD card, it was crashes all the time with acceleration on. Sony had to disable acceleration on a number of effects with it. I had to turn it off to have a usable setup. With nVidia, I find problems are very infrequent.

Obviously this is one one data point and I don't know the details of development. However it is one of the few examples I know of a product that supports both APIs.

For most cases the language is rather minimal on the impact.
The quality of the compiler and supporting libraries give performance. The IDE usually offers the ease and speed of development.

Sure some languages make some things easer then others, or makes it easier for the compiler or interpreter efficient.

But for the most part with language preference it is just about chest thumping to try to show who is the alpha geek.

Because downloading is kind of lame & takes hours if you have normal Internet access speeds. I prefer to rent DVDs because the quality is significantly superior and I like the commentary and behind the scenes stuff. Just rip the DVD and return it, it is fun to browse at the rental place if it is a good one. Lots of esoteric old titles nobody bothers to seed.

NTSC stuff is so bad when viewed on a large TV. It is amazing how blurry things look when you flip back and forth between the HD and SD channels. That is part of what lead to the rise of big screen TVs was actually having content for them. With NTSC, a large TV just meant a big blurry image. With ATSC it can mean a nice large image.

Why shouldn't they continually improve their products? Even with NTSC sets this was done. New ones would be larger, have better focus, more clearly resolve the signal, have better phosphors, and so on. Why shouldn't this continue? They should keep trying to improve their products as technology allows.

None of that means you need to buy a new toy all the time though. You can stick with what you have until it breaks, or until the new stuff is a big enough leap that you wish to own it.

I think a lot of the whining from people comes down to simple jealousy. They'd like to own the new stuff, but cannot afford it, or do not wish to. So they try and hate on it and act like a luddite. You see it practically any time Slashdot has a story on new technology. People complain about it like it is somehow a bad thing that there might be something new.

Most panels in higher end screens are actually real 120fps panels. However that is just used for 3D and for reduced motion blur. The only set I know that advertises support for 120fps input is Vizio. Others could do it, if they wanted to, however.

As you say, the issue with higher refresh rates isn't in the display technology.

Part of it is just getting people used to the idea I think. We've seen shitty, jerky, frame rates in moves for so long people start to associate that with being "cinematic". People need to get used to the idea that's bullshit and maybe they'll start to like it more.

Hopefully sports and such will get shot at 60fps some day and that may help.

You know, when something says that we are so close to destruction for over half a century... well you have to wonder why anyone would put any stock in it. It is a bit hard to reconcile with being on the edge of destruction, and yet everything continuing to not be destroyed.

Thing thing is if you go and look at benchmarks of the cards in actual games, you find out the 970 wrecks shit, particularly given its price point. The 980 is an overpriced luxury (I say this as a 980 owner) because the 970 gets nearly the same performance for like half the price. The difference with its memory controller just doesn't seem to matter in actual games out there on the market.

And that's the real thing here the the spec head forget: You buy these to run actual software. If it does well on all actual software, then who gives a shit about the details?

Try VLC. It is the only thing I will use to watch DVDs these days. For one thing you can start playing the film immediately for most discs, just stick it in and load with menus skipped. For those discs that put other crap in the 1-1 position, loading to the menu means just that. No preview bullshit, no restricted navigation, no tedious animated menu effects, just straight to the navigation point, click play and the film starts without every other authoritative government's angry and unskippable piracy warnings.

You can practically follow the plot!

i have fios. it is coax cable on the street. then on the post near my house it is split into fiber. the fiber goes to my place into a very big box, with two Verizon emblazoned power supplies! and become cable again to a cable modem...

the only explanation i have for this insanity is that if they advertised it as cable, i, who only pay for internet, would be allowed by law to have access to basic cable channels unencrypted. so they do this turnduckey of cables just to avoid it, and force me to pay $20/mo for basic cable.

and the only explanation i have for them dropping it is either that nobody pays that 20, like me. or that they finally got rid of the laws that force them to provide free unencrypted basic cable for cable internet customers.

He may well have been as smart as he thought (I'm not saying that is the case for sure, mind) but turns out others were smart enough, and more knowledgeable in the ways that mattered.

Hans Reiser is a good example. Man is unquestionably very smart. However, he had the geek hubris that I call SMFU, Smartest Motherfucker in the Universe syndrome. He figured he was so much smarter than everyone else, he could easily get away with his crime. Turns out that the police have some smart people too, and those people know a lot more about criminal investigation than he did.

Right in that yes, they already have a lot of evidence, and are just working to seal the deal. They like to have everything in a row and an overwhelming amount of evidence before going to trial.

Wrong about the contempt thing. If you look it up in the US you find out that the courts have decided the 5th amendment applies to passwords. So you can keep your mouth shut and they can't compel you to hand over a password. If it is locked with something physical like a key fob or fingerprint, that you have to hand over. Basically if something is solely in your mind, they can't compel you to hand that over if it can be used against you.