Correction:
I meant to speak of my refusal to buy downloadable media like tv shows, movies, video games or music.
As penance, I shall force myself to write maven config for old Java projects.
DVDs are digital-only media - "Digital Versatile Disc". There is no analog component in it. The disc stores data digitally.
Furthermore, if by digital you mean online distribution, well, you aren't buying media by definition. You're downloading bits from a wire (or radio wave) and storing it on your own physical media.
Among the general public, there is rampant terminology abuse and devaluing of what the word "digital" means - it is in contrast to "analog", not in contrast to physical, non-electronic, non-online, etc. For example, you can make digital logic gates out of mechanical LEGO; you can deliver digital data on floppy disks via sneakers.
The problem is owned (for practical purposes) versus leased content. Not digital or physical.
That satisfies the definition of "digital only" - every person who has the movie (conceptually speaking) has a digital version of it. This holds true as long as no one tried to print the movie onto paper as an analog image, or export it to VHS or something like that.
Note that digital does not contrast with physical. A DVD is a physical object that holds digital data. A sequence of pulses on an Ethernet cable conveys digital information via waves of electromagnetic energy.
> Digital only ownership is a few bytes abstracted into some database somewhere
And somebody still ultimately has to store at least one copy of the movie on a physical medium somewhere.
> Digital only ownership
I think we can all agree that if you own some coins/tokens/NFTs on Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc., that is a very pure form of digital-only ownership. There is no intuitive physical object that corresponds to the ownership of a digital token.
Yet, that blockchain database is publicly available and mirrored millions of times; it is not locked up behind a single company. This differs from what you were trying to say, where I interpret your notion of "digital-only" to mean that "the movie studio hosts the file on its server and streams it to you on demand, but you can never download a copy of the movie to keep for yourself".
Ultimately, "digital" just means that the information you wanted is a finite sequence of 0s and 1s, as opposed to some analog signal with infinite variation. "Digital" says nothing about who owns it, how many copies exist, how it is delivered, etc.
The term "digital only" says nothing about being digital versus analog in particular.
> Note that digital does not contrast with physical.
Sure it can.
> I think we can all agree that if you own some coins/tokens/NFTs on Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc., that is a very pure form of digital-only ownership. There is no intuitive physical object that corresponds to the ownership of a digital token.
> Yet, that blockchain database is publicly available and mirrored millions of times; it is not locked up behind a single company. This differs from what you were trying to say, where I interpret your notion of "digital-only" to mean that "the movie studio hosts the file on its server and streams it to you on demand, but you can never download a copy of the movie to keep for yourself".
It's not that the lockup is a fundamental part, but in the streaming case it helps enforce the idea that the movie you get is never properly embodied and only exists in an abstract data pool.
A blockchain has lots of replicas but they're all still abstract database entries. Even a "physical bitcoin" is just the keys and not the entries.
> Ultimately, "digital" just means that the information you wanted is a finite sequence of 0s and 1s, as opposed to some analog signal with infinite variation. "Digital" says nothing about who owns it, how many copies exist, how it is delivered, etc.
I think other uses make sense and fit this context.
I assume the parent is using it to mean streaming, or other kinds of DRM.
A wasp is just a bee with anger management issues.
Technically incorrect as they’re not quite the same. But amusing nonetheless.
Enclosed discs like Minidisc solve most of those, but still die from age.
Still hope they can perfect those "laser-created point clouds in glass cubes" media someday
It's been sobering for me.
https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/
Not everything was recoverable, but the vast vast majority was.
I've yet to lose any data after validating a good burn on any M-DISC DVD even well over a decade now. I have also not experienced any loss in data for Verbatim Blu-rays after validating the burn.
Edit:
This might be relevant to your interests, and to others interested in 360 modding.
https://github.com/grimdoomer/Xbox360BadUpdate
> Bad Update is a non-persistent software only hypervisor exploit for Xbox 360 that works on the latest (17559) software version. This repository contains the exploit files that can be used on an Xbox 360 console to run unsigned code.
Addendum:
Modern Vintage Gamer's video of the exploit, which is amazing to see. I had no idea 360 softmods were a thing, and the exploit can run against a free trial version of a retail game, which is just chef's kiss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycY09EUm8wA
> Any Xbox 360 can now be hacked in less than one minute
> A look a the newest V1.2 Badupdate Exploit - Xbox 360 software only Hypervisor Hack that we covered back in March 2025. It requires an Xbox 360 - any model including the later Winchester revisions! A USB flash drive and Rock Band Blitz Trial. This updated 1.2 hack runs much faster and reliable and is now a recommended option to hack any Xbox 360. In today's episode we take a closer look at the BadUpdate V1.2 exploit.
In the end my RGH worked really well and it would boot first try every time, some people it could take like a minute to actually boot. Then it would load into custom firmware and I was able to do what ever I wanted. I still have the thing and it still runs with an external HDD with about 1000 games (all personal back ups of course) and my kids never knew how lucky they were to be allowed to play all my games I had backed up.
Their size is great, too, being about as small as you can get while still being easy to handle across the gamut of human hand sizes yet too big to easily lose, and they’re more fun than SD and CF cards with their outer plastic casings coming in all sorts of colors and patterns.
A new media format that takes these strengths and fuses them with those of flash storage would be wonderful. The only thing is that I don’t know how you’d solve is the bit rot problem flash has when spending extended time powered down — maybe dedicated storage for parity data? Capacitors that hold just enough juice to keep the flash “alive”? Redundant flash chips? This isn’t my area of expertise so I’m just throwing things at the wall haha.