Environmental DVD Wrecks Apple Drives 459
FST777 writes "The British Mail on Sunday published its latest DVD giveaway on the EcoDisc, a thin and bendable DVD format that is supposed to be more environmentally-friendly than regular DVDs. Despite the clear warning against using them in Apple slot drives, some Mac users decided to give it a go. The result? A brisk trade for repair shops in the UK. 'The EcoDisc's manufacturer, ODS, insists the disc won't break drives. "We've produced over ten million of these discs — we've had less than a dozen phone calls," says managing director, Ray Wheeler. "There are ways to get the discs out." Wheeler says the problem stems from Apple's slot-loading drives. "It uses an ejection system that doesn't get approval from the DVD Forum." He claims the EcoDisc should work in other types of slot-loading drive, although admits that it hasn't been tested in the PlayStation 3.'"
Idiot tax for jumpy Mail readers (Score:3, Informative)
Re:apple slot loader (Score:3, Informative)
Re:apple slot loader (Score:3, Informative)
So you're saying that inserting objects never meant for the drive is bad?
How do they handle hot soup?
Maybe he's referring to actual CD's shaped like business cards and hearts [proactionmedia.com]?
Re:pot, meet kettle (Score:5, Informative)
But it does state that "ODS has applied for 4 patents up to now" so it must be good(TM).
Not a CLEAR warning! (Score:5, Informative)
"no Apple slot in drive"
They didn't just drop the logo... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:pot, meet kettle (Score:1, Informative)
If you were designing a new type of liquid fuel to work in existing cars, you would make a fuel that doesn't follow existing formulations of gasoline and make sure it works to replace normal, unleaded fuel. You wouldn't make sure it also works to power go-carts that were designed to run on methanol.
The slot drive is another choice in place only because it sets Macs apart, and like many of those choices, it is vastly inferior to the non-Mac options.
Re:Luckily for Apple Users there is a simple fix (Score:2, Informative)
Dear American Mac-haters, I have a correction... (Score:2, Informative)
I see this story is tagged "Macs for morons", and various posts joking about destroying Mac owners' machines is not a bug, it's a feature, and so forth.
I must take issue with this stance. If we are to celebrate the fact that a certain demographic sector suffered inconvenience and damage to property, I must insist we aim the full force of our collective schadenfreude not at Mac users, but at Mail on Sunday readers ;-)
(Serious explanation: The Mail is one of the most nasty, deplorable shit-for-brained rags in the country, but sadly very powerful. I would consider the editor, Paul Dacre, one of the most evil men in Britain, for so shamelessly, irresponsibly and (sadly) skillfully peddling his insiduous blend of bigotry, racism, classism, sexism, and scaremongering. A typical Mail headline is something like: "Does your council spend your tax on teaching illegal immigrants how to give working mothers cancer?" It's not the Mail if it doesn't get in a middle-class whinge about taxes/councils/schools/hospitals, insinuate a highly improbable conspiracy involving immigrants, remind women their rightful place is In The Home, and stir panic on public health issues - naturally, all expressed in the form of a question, since it's UTTER BULLSHIT and they know it.
Evil, evil, evil paper.
Re:Luckily for Apple Users there is a simple fix (Score:4, Informative)
She doesn't know it was a rootkit, but she knows there was something about music cds you buy from the store putting a virus on your computer, because it was in newspapers and on television around the world.
Give it a rest with the attempted justifications. The disc was specifically labeled. It didn't even say "Not suitable for PCs", which might confuse Mac users who think their machines are made of Steve Job's semen imbued with life by God above. It specifically said "Don't put this in your fucking Mac" and it had a picture because Mac users can't understand things that don't have pictures.
This worked for me (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Luckily for Apple Users there is a simple fix (Score:5, Informative)
Compact Discs have to adhere to a standard that allows them to be read with standard equipment, otherwise, I could take this record and trim it with scissors and call it a compact disc. DRM is not a part of the compact disc standard, therefore, if some circular disc of metal and plastic has DRM, it's not a compact disc, and won't work like a compact disc, and isn't permitted to be sold as a compact disc.
Re:Nelson points and says "Haha!" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Luckily for Apple Users there is a simple fix (Score:3, Informative)
The logo that was removed was the "Compact Disc Digital Audio" (CD-DA) logo.
Redbook (used for Audio CDs) is a standard.
A CD is a round flat disc with a reflective layer and some pits pressed into it that can be read with a laser with a wavelength of about 780 nanometers. CD defines the physical nature of the disc.
DRM is not part of the CD standard because it is not part of the physical aspect of the CD.
(Weak sectors are a bit of a grey area. The CD is physically a CD, with defects. The DRM is still done logically.)
Until Sony starts shipping CDs with thumb print readers on the top side, they can still call it a CD.
Re:Nelson points and says "Haha!" (Score:4, Informative)
I particularly love the way that you can add files to projects by drag-and-drop! Oh, wait, no you can't, you have to add them with an "Add file" dialog.
- Opens up the 'src' folder in the Finder
- Selects a file
- Drags it to the 'Sources' folder in the XCode project
- Sees import-folder-to-project sheet drop down
- Wonders what the fuss is about
But at least you can add a whole bunch at once! Oh, wait, no you can't, you can only add one at a time
- Does same as above, but selects multiple files
- Wonders what the fuss is all about
- Tries using the dialogue box, in case Apple had gone insane... Nope, multi-select works just fine...
But at least the dialog box remembers where the files were so you don't have to navigate your directory structure again and again for every single file! Oh, wait, no it doesn't, it always goes right back to the project directory
* This one I'll give you, but then I tend to keep my source files for a given project within the project folder anyway, so it works quite well for me...
the only way to change the build settings for your project is to right-click on the build target name and select the intuitively named "Get Info" option
- Wonders why the coward just doesn't double-click the project...
Thinks to himself: "Perhaps reading the manual might be a useful exercise for this coward". Here's a hint: If you're doing something that you think is a monumental waste of time, something the computer could do far better, and make your life far easier, you're probably missing something. Reading the fine manual before blowing off steam in public saves making an ass of yourself.
Simon
Re:Idiot tax for jumpy Mail readers (Score:3, Informative)
Oh and let's not forget it's support for fascism in the 30s.
Re:Luckily for Apple Users there is a simple fix (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Obviously they did (Score:1, Informative)
Furthermore, Matsushita is a member of the DVD Forum, the organization which sets the standards for DVDs. (As is Apple, for that matter.) I doubt very much that Matsushita is actually selling mislabeled or standards violating drives. (One of the claims that's come up is that the drives lack some sort of guidance feature. Such a requirement is extremely unlikely to be in any standards document. Standards are written mainly to allow interoperability, so (in the case of optical media), they focus mostly on what is always common: the disc. They rarely if ever get down into detailed mechanical design of the players.)
Far more likely: this organization selling supposedly eco friendly DVD media is full of crap. When did the amount of plastic used in a DVD become a serious environmental issue? There are far bigger fish to fry. This company decided to take advantage of feel-good pseudo-environmentalism, is all. They quote you a few amazing sounding statistics, none of which are anything but the logical consequences of removing about 50% of the material from the plastic substrate which makes up the bulk of the disc. Duh.
The other logical consequences which they don't talk about so much are that the resulting disc is in no way compliant with the DVD Forum's standards. It's not the standard thickness and it's flexible, not rigid. It should therefore come as no surprise that it fails to work correctly in some players, especially slot load players, which are always more sensitive to whether discs match the expected physical standards than tray load players.
So enough with the crusading. You're being lead around by the nose by a company which is abusing your notion of what's good (they said the magic word environment!) to sell something whose environmental benefits are far from obvious. Show that the amount of plastic used in optical discs is a serious issue and I'll take them a bit more seriously. Besides, if you read the company's web page and PDF it's clear the product is really targeted at snail-mail spam of promotional videos and/or software (thinner/lighter/flexible are all good for snail-mail). If it takes off, this product might actually be worse for the environment by encouraging more companies to take up snail-mail spam of optical discs. It certainly isn't going to be used instead of standards compliant optical discs in any other market.
Re:Nelson points and says "Haha!" (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe because things might have changed a bit in 8+ years? Many people were still using floppy disks in 1998 (and as pointed out, there was no alternative supplied for writing media). A few years later, floppy disks are dead and every computer has CDRW or even DVDRW, along with support for memory cards.
And actually, I read the OP (and probably the Grandparent) as taking the piss out of people who claimed that the iMac was some revolutionary ("high technology") machine for not having a floppy drive. (Even if that is worth a claim to fame, the Amiga CDTV did it years before anyway.)
Re:Nelson points and says "Haha!" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"I've heard the opposite..." (Score:3, Informative)
Very young children will insert things into any slot they can find (double entendres unintended there). when I used to work as an Apple tech, I would spend plenty of time removing coins, paper clips, random junk from floppy drives and CD drives and from the cases of any Mac with large enough air vents.
Friends with young children have told me about having to have video recorders serviced repeatedly from young children putting toast and other crap in the tape slot.
When doing laptop support at the secondary school, I saw very little of this behaviour. Generally only when one child deliberately vandalised another child's laptop.
Simple and relatively harmless DIY solution (Score:2, Informative)