I prefer hard media in my hands, for all the reasons you state. Add to that list much higher quality video and audio, and you'll be golden.

PS - you use a player to watch your media? How 2002... ;)

Um, none of that had anything to do with it. It was Sony mortgaging itself to the hilt and selling 49% of Sony Pictures to pay Fox to stay BD exclusive and Paramount to be BD exclusive as well as the end cap exclusivity agreements with Target and BlockBuster and others that caused the tipping point. Until Christmas 2007, HD-DVD was still ahead technically: HD-DVD players existed and executed stated features while BD was "wait until the next release" and pulled a Microsoft, always late and under delivering. Also consider that the PS3 was by far the majority of "BD Player" sales. It's estimated that the PS3 cost Sony over $3B in losses by including a nearly free BD player, take it for what it's worth. Had MS included HD-DVD in its XBox for "free" like Sony did with BD...

In any case, this is all history now, and Sony is still suffering losses, may they continue. (Sony deserves its losses, and BD is by far the weakest reason, although perhaps the biggest contributor) We at least thank HD-DVD for pushing region codes out of the mainstream, BDs still do not enforce region codes like DVDs do.

Yes, lighting is key, but even with good or excellent lighting you are not guaranteed a great shot.

They still either have 1 year from the (un)lawful disclosure, or 0 from the time someone else creates and uses the patented technology. Also, since the US specifically is a first to file....

But this is Sony Pictures we're talking about, not Sony the 900 lb patent gorilla.

That doesn't guarantee no data mining, which is probably the most important facet of the entire thing. I run my own mail server to avoid it.

For Safari - Click To Plugin will save you. NoScript or a number of others for Firefox, and Chrome also has something similar, though if you use chrome, why do you care?

Technically, society has decided that we have those rights. There are no "natural" rights, other than survival of the fittest, per nature.

Since you do not pay for the full costs of the first 2, you will not pay for the full costs at the deli nor the auto mechanic, as both are subsidized in the same way you are for the first 2 and whole set of other services (water, sewage, etc).

That's an awesome answer. If you want enthusiastic sweatshop workers (might as well call them what they are) then your only sources are going to be either inexperienced naive workers that don't know any better, or really really desperate people that will tell you anything, and leave as soon as something better comes along. Neither will do you much good, and based on my experiences, there are many places out there that hire this way and wonder why their projects fail.

I've seen small teams (3-5) with decent experience and good communication crank out solutions in amazingly short time frames. I've see large teams (150+) fail to make deadlines and deliver essentially crap at the end multiple times. Are small teams always the answer? Surprisingly, no, as it depends upon the project. There are some projects that can be chopped up where larger "teams" make sense. In essence, it's a group of small teams being lead by a small team, with no interdependencies. It's about the only case where I've seen it work.

Not valuing certs is not the same as not having them. I've had several over the years, and in the long run they've done exactly zilch for me. That's my specific anecdotal evidence. As an interviewer, I can also state that certs have 0 effect, the most they will do is get you past HR or whatever serves as a filter before they get to me. I'm more interested in how you think, what you know, and what you can tell me about the things in your resume.

A truly selfish animal, especially one whose progeny, like humans, requires nurturing and care before becoming self-sufficient, will fail to procreate. So yes, there's a built in requirement for cooperation.

The gp displays the standard ignorance of a novice photographer, who doesn't even know that he knows nothing about photography because his hardware allows him to take pictures he deems "good". There's a reason there are professional photographers out there that get paid well and use "pro" equipment, but until gp tries to take pictures outside the limited scope of a P&S, he won't realize how limited he is. Should he use a pro-sumer or better grade camera, he may be disappointed in his pictures not being "better" than the P&S, that's not a fault of the equipment but more his failure to understand how to use that equipment to get great pictures. And even then, great pictures don't just happen automatically, it is luck or many tries, and sometimes significant post-processing before a great picture is realized. To be fair, sometimes that is also achievable with a P&S.

But they're not Common Carrier, and this lawsuit may push that over the last hump. The sooner, the better, honestly.

I expressed these concerns back around mid 2000. IMNSHO, that's about when everything took a major wrong turn, with the neo-cons coming to the forefront.

Since 15K "large" drives peak at about 600GB for $200 or so, I'd say we've already reached price parity, the only thing necessary is reliability on the part of SSDs.