Sony just never stops trying to snare consumers into its overpriced closed solutions. UMD was just another example of that. Now it is being reported everywhere that (predicably) the format looks like it is going to fail. Duh. Have you seen how much they are trying to charge you for a low res, PSP only version of a movie you probably already own on DVD? Here is a random article on the topic: The bell tolls for UMD. It also doesn't hurt that there are readily available methods for ripping and converting DVDs to play on PSP. Well at least they'll sell some more (gag, retch) memory sticks.
Given the recent delay of Vista, Apple could make some serious progress in increasing its market share. If I were Steve Jobs, I'd go straight to Dell and HP and license Mac OS X to them, but ONLY to sell to corporate customers. Apple could charge 10% of the cost of Windows, and still come out way ahead due to the market share gains. It's not like Apple would lose in hardware sales, since that business segment wouldn't buy Macs anyway, and Dell and HP wouldn't be licensed to sell OS X to the consumer market. Support for hardware would fall on the licensee.
An interesting take on the recent delay from a former 'Softie (now at El Goog).
Tuesday
I am stoked to burning-hot waiting for my plane to San Jose for the Game Developers Conference. The waiting area at Seatac airport for my flight is packed with game developers and their myriad gadgets. There is a perceptible hum of anticipation. Alaska Airlines stabs this atmosphere in the heart when they announce our flight is cancelled for no apparent reason, apart from the desire to piss on our parade. Then they tell us with a smirk, “Here’s six bucks. Go buy yourself a freaking Twinkie. Losers.” (I may be paraphrasing a bit there, but I’m sure that was the intended gist.) We are able to reschedule for the next flight, thanks to the quick thinking of my soon-to-be ex-coworker, Patrick, and we get to play Mario Kart DS most of the way there.
I arrive exhausted at the Hyatt Hotel at 10:00 pm and order room service.
And then we're totally going to Mars!
When I grow up, in addition to spaceships, I also want to make robots.
Seriously, how cool would it be to write code that runs on other planets? You think cross-platform is tough, try writing for VxWorks as it orbits Mars...
And, uh, I've just added Space 1999 to my Netflix queue.
Waiter Rant is a blog run by a New York City waiter. Reading the stories there is like eating crack-laced potato chips: once you start, you can't stop!
I just finished the single player Call of Duty 2 on the 360. I'm pretty impressed. Just when I thought I was burned out on WWII games, this comes along. It looks amazing and plays very well. So far it is the best 360 game I've played. I don't want to spoil the ending, but we win.
Damian Marley, Bob's youngest son, continues the family tradition. I first saw his band when they opened for U2 in Oakland... really cool. John and I got a lot of code written to some of Bob's music, and Welcome To Jamrock is a really cool addition to my coding playlist.
Also, buy "Funeral", a super intense album from the Montreal band "The Arcade Fire". It took me a few listens to get it, but holy crap, this record is amazing.
BioWare is coming out with a MMORG, rumored to be for the Xbox 360.
Every now and then I'm tempted to get into one of these games, with World Of WarCraft being the top contender. I like the idea of persistant worlds that grow over time. The problem is that, from what I've heard, the gameplay tends to quickly devolve down to harvesting gold. The MMORG type people also seem a little weird in a not good way: spending all their time reading the game's forums and stats, or leaving a social LAN party to go off to their office to play EverQuest by themselves. On a Friday night.
Is this catagory of game reserved for the hopelessly sad, or can BioWare bring it with their excellent backstory and quality games? If it is for the Xbox, presumably that means voice chat will be central, but how are you going to have a conversation with so many people online? Or hordes of shouty German 12 year olds?
Hopefully it will be set in a science fiction universe, since those seem to have the most breadth in terms of directions and themes. Fantasy games all seem to eventually become pale versions of Lord Of The Rings.
The rumors of a Google Office just won't die. Now Google has apparently snatched up Writely an Axax based word processor that I've mentioned here before. Combine that with the leaked info about Gdrive and I guess we might see a web based office suite after all. -Maybe all that hoopla over Google and Sun working together was just a distraction after all.
Since it seems to be the buzz around the nets lately I'll jump on the bandwagon as well. Ok I don't have any insider information here. In fact I won't even try to summarize the current rumors. We'll find out what it is eventually anyway. Instead I'll just engage in thought exercise on what kind of device I might want and be willing to buy.
Continue reading "Origami"...It's hard to image how much you have become dependent on technology until it is taken away. As I headed home Friday I remembered that BSG was on that night and I had not setup my DVR to record it yet. Better make that top priority. When I got home however I discovered that the cable was out. Hmm, don't panic, if it stays out all night I'll just have to download the show on Saturday, and watch it then. Bummer. Oh wait cable is out, that means the internet is also out. Ok now panic. That was Friday, today is Monday and I still don't have my cable back. I have forgotten how to function without it. I struggled to remember how I used to get things done in the old days. My first step, contact the cable company. Hmm, how to do that? I usually look them up online. I shred all my bills. Oh right, I used to use this big thing called a phone book. Do I have one of those? A quick search of the house turns up empty. My kids don't even seem to know what one is. Kinda funny actually. I finally got a hold of them and they are not going to get around to fixing it until Tuesday. Thanks, Millennium Digital. Apparently it was knocked out do to the wind storm. Hey wait, doesn't my cable run underground?
All weekend I kept bumping up into my need for the internet; First I wanted to see what was in the local theater, then I needed to lookup an address and get a map for an appointment I had. Next my Daughter needed to look stuff up for a report she has due. I needed to book a hotel.. the list goes on and on. Grrrr. For every problem I encountered there was an 'old' way of doing it, but that knowledge is slipping from my mind. It's like trying to start a fire without matches. Oh wait, this is 2006, I mean trying start a fire without butane lighter. In another generation we will be totally dependent. Why do I have images of people stranded on escalators?
Your thoughts?
Comments (3)
I don't know what's up with all of Sony's crazy storage formats! If video is going to succeed on a mobile device, that device will need a hard drive and software that allows you to put DVDs that you already own on the device. Basically, like iTunes. Actually, iTunes already has video management and syncing, all they need to add is the ability to rip a DVD like they rip audio CDs. We'll probably have colonies on Mars before the MPAA allows that to happen though...
It's weird that you can rip cds to itunes, but it's illegal to rip dvds. Wonder why they never came out with a similar encrypted cd format. Why don't they just allow you to rip dvds to itunes but encrypt the resulting file so it will only play on your iPod, just like audio tracks you download from iTunes. The reason is they want to sell you the video again. They had to let you play mp3s though because otherwise the device would never take off.
As for sony, it would have been much smarter to create a store to download mp4 movies encoded for the PS2. Heck, let it play movies downloaded from the iTunes store, so you can start competing with iPod Video. As you mentioned, they'll still sell memory sticks!
Back when I did hardware (in a different life), OTP's (one time programmable ROMs) were cheaper than EEPROM (erasable ROM) and much much cheaper than flash. The thought I had back then was why don't they release music / media on read only memory cards? The thought was that you would just go down to your local music store and pick up the latest album on ROM in CompactFlash form factor and pop it into your player. it would be encrypted etc. You'd have to carry a pile of these things around, but it would take up less space then your CD collection.
I'm not suggesting we do this now, but I wonder why they didn't go for this model? Perhaps large capacity OTP ROM is expensive these days? At any rate I just thought it might be a good idea for Sony to release movies on some cheap read only memory stick instead of creating a new disc format like UMD.
Yeah, ROMs are a good idea. That was before CD-Rs too. I think they do use this for these little music players for kids that come with like a 60 second version of songs. Probably from a tech perspective, at that time they didn't have good music codecs. Even with MP3, and album still takes around 70MB.
My cynical answer why they didn't do this earlier is that they just simply don't have any reason to change things or rock the boat. They make so much money as is, it's never worth it to change that up unless they're forced to. And since they've got the government lobbied up, "forced to" usually involves some currently illegal behavior on he behalf of their users.