HD DVD and Blue-Ray
Maybe it should be called "Sting-Ray"

For those of you home theater enthusiasts, your movie collections are in danger of becoming obsolete. Because the movie industry has been fighting amongst themselves, driven by the almight buck of course, all of your current DVDs may become "Obseleteum Defunctum".

"Technological progress is being harmed by the motion picture industry's misguided efforts to prevent what it perceives as vast economic losses due to piracy. And the inability of competing electronic manufacturers to negotiate a compromise that would blend the best technical features of two incompatible formats into a single disc structure threatens a destructive format war."

That war being between HD DVD and Blue-Ray. I'm posting a link to a site that explains the whole story...and it's a scary one. I'd hate to think that all the money I spent buying my favorite movies was completely in vain, soon they may need to be repurchased for the new format. Especially considering I'm a queen with a great movie collection. This combined with the TOTAL control that the plastic media and the players will have to render my legal purchases unusable or my player turned into a nice paperweight is very disturbing in the least. (Ref: Issue Two of posted url) Bill Gates is a pacifist compared to these people and this industry. My next post will be on Sony and their DRM software. Your computer may already be infected!!!

http://www.dvdsite.org/faq.html#1h

Will the Real Mac OS X Please Stand Up

Recently I read an article related to the new Intel Based Macs, that hackers were busy trying to hack the new, supposedly solid build, of OSX--the release being distributed to developers. Reports are coming in that apple has strengthened their anti-piracy routines so that even if the OS does run on a non-apple machine it won't allow you to run any applications. Isn't this the point of an OS?

First let me say that I am a mac geek. I like my macs because they are reliable. I think this is partly due to the fact that the hardware and software are controlled by the same manufacturer. PC's have so many mutations that it's impossible for Redmond to program for them all. So, you ask....what is the point of this article? The point is that all these people trying to hack the OSX86 need to get a life. If you hate your Windows so much, why not just buy a Mac? We all know that by the time the X86 machines are released apple will have built in enough protection that it will never be reliable or stable to hack it for generic hardware. When the first build was released there were several sites showing supposedly running on a Viaio (or whatever it is, I can't even pronounce it). I don't think you will find this with the new release. I think the thing that pisses most of these people off is that the new mac will be able to run OSX and windows xp, but the PC won't be able to do likewise.....who cares? Apple has made so many advances in personal computing and the Windows crowd is beginning to feel the heat. That's why they want the superior OS to work on their equipment. Here's a very interesting brief history of how far they've come. (If anyone has a similar history for Windows this might be interesting to compare).
http://www.amacgenius.com/archives/125/history-of-mac-os/

Quite frankly if any one is ever able to hack the X86 to run reliable on generic box I probably will stick with purchasing my hardware from apple. I know it works reliably. You get what you pay for, I'd rather have a Mercedes instead of a Honda.
Some of their software practices still piss me off through. Like Itunes!

ITUNES SUX

Shortly after the release of Roxio's Toast Titanium 7 the ability to burn purchased music from the iTunes store disappeared. Tech representatives from Roxio said they were required by Apple to remove this feature. Apple is beginning to take control much the same as windoze has done. Only 5 machines can play the music you purchase, you can only burn so many copies...etc. etc. Personally I have stopped buying from iTunes because of this. Spending a few extra dollars at the store allows ME the control to do as I wish with the music I purchase, instead of Apple.

With the release of version 6, touting a new interface and downloadable videos, nothing much has changed. Currently only ABC, Disney and Pixar have purchaseable downloads. Lost's 25 epsode first season goes for $34.99 about $15 less than you’d pay for the Season One DVD. But consider that you can't burn your low res video to DVD, only watch it on your computer. Who buys this groovy feature??? (Resolution=320x240, only one-quarter the resolution of a standard-definition television program. In other words, you’ll notice the lower quality picture if you watch your iTunes-bought TV episodes on a TV-sized display, and you won't have the extras you’d get on the DVD).

Quite frankly I'd rather have a reason to get out of the house, go video shopping and spend a few xtra bucks to get what I want without layer upon layer of DRM heaped on top of my purchases. Although iTunes music heaped lots of great revenue on apple and let them get afloat unless they change some of their policies, I for one, as a consumer probably won't go there.

I love doing 3d design! This is my new logo. Your comments about this logo are appreciated.

Down with browser detects

Recently I went to check a site for a client. The site had a browser detect for Internet Exploder. Even spoofing my user agent I was not able to get in. If the internet is truly the communication tool of the future these people will have to get with the program and realize that we are all individuals and will use the browser of our choice. Which brings up another point...I believe the reports that 70% of the market is for IE is total hogwash. Firewalls allow information hiding, users can spoof their user agent and I'm sure a mariad of other things can affect the results Perhaps since Longwait (Longhorn) has been thrown on the scrap heap and replaced with vista they will do the same with IE (hope upon hopes).

CDA
Forgot I had this silly blog for so long. I'll have to jump on my soap box and render some useless opinions. Feel Free to do the same!