Author: Zach Goldberg

Leave of absence

Unfortunately BlueSata was down this last week for a motherboard replacement. Serious props to AsusTek for replacing the motherboard within 8 days. Fantastic RMA service right there. Machine seems to be up and running pretty well. Major news we missed:

I got an N95! This thing is ridiculously awesome.

Google Buys Double Click

Hm.. theres a lot more but nothing good enough worth me thinking up original comments for.

Java shows its true colors

Was working on a homework assignment in java, when i recieved this lovely notice:


#
# An unexpected error has been detected by HotSpot Virtual Machine:
#
# SIGSEGV (0xb) at pc=0xb789006a, pid=28425, tid=2635639696
#
# Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (1.5.0_10-b03 mixed mode)
# Problematic frame:
# V [libjvm.so+0x3f606a]
#
# An error report file with more information is saved as hs_err_pid28425.log
#
# If you would like to submit a bug report, please visit:
# http://java.sun.com/webapps/bugreport/crash.jsp
#

Fantastic!

PS3: Rediculously Stupid yet Genius

Now I know that you’ve likely read hundreds of articles on the PS3, why people love it, why people hate it. I’m going to try and take a fairly neutral ground here and point out why the PS3’s release as it was is genius and also why its an utter failure. I’m going to try and be wholly untraditional in this analysis.

The Bad
1) the freaking name! The PS3 should not have been called the PS3, but say something like the SuperStation, for several reasons. First: as evidence by the huge reaction on the net, people do not like spending 600 a game console. From sony’s point of view, this isn’t a big issue because the PS3 is a heck of a lot more than a game console — its a home theater system. If marketed as such, as your home Blu-Ray (Next generation HD Movie) experience, all in 1 box, for less than the cost of any other blu ray player / home theater console it becomes much easier to market this 600 of hardware.

2) While this could also been seen as a positive, the fact that sony insists on using strange architectures in their consoles makes it hard for developers to create games in the short run. (Although, with what 300,000 titles for the emotion engine in the ps2, im not sure this argument holds any weight in the long run). However, some better launch titles for the ps3 woulda been nice, and probably facilitated by a more ‘normal’ core architecture.

The Genius
Before I get to the real genius of the ps3, I’de just like to mention how ridiculously powerful the machine is, and how impressive the machine is, simply for its hardware. This alone means the PS3 should have a very quality lifespan. If we compare what launch-titles look like on the ps2, with the quality of a recently released PS2 title the difference is astounding. If we look at the already outstanding quality of ps3 games (graphically), it’ll be nice to look forward to a more mature game.

So, the real reason the PS3 is such a good move by Sony, and that its 1-year lag behind the Xbox 360 is completely justifyable and why sony couldn’t care less that they arn’t selling more consoles than the wii or 360? Blu-Ray. They couldn’t release it last year with 360 because it wasn’t yet economically feasible (as if it were now) — but HD wasn’t in full swing yet. HD is slowly beginning to gain momentum, now, so sony’s release of the ps3 this last winter was good timing. But, by establishing such a huge install base of Blu-Ray capable players sony has almost guaranteed blu-ray’s acceptance in the main stream. The biggest challenge in moving to dvd from VHS probably having to go out and buy the new dvd-player. If 3 million ps3s are sold in the USA within the next year or so, then thats already 1% of the entire country with a blu-ray capable machine.

As proof of my point, since january 1st of 2007 blu-ray’s numbers have been remarkable. Nearly doubling HD-DVD over certain time periods. I’m confident in my conclusion that this definitively would not be the case without the PS3. The fact that it’ll be another couple years before HD-DVD / Blu-Ray players are within ‘reasonable’ prices (2-300), and that the ps3’s price has nowhere to go but down, means that the number of blu-ray capable machines being sold will far outstrip that of HD-DVD unless some HD-DVD player becomes outragously popular — and manages to outsell the ps3.

As a brief disclaimer: I own zero next gen consoles (no wii, 360 or ps3). I would not call myself a fanboy of any of the above. I personally would like to see blu-ray win simply on the basis of superior capacity per layer. I have been both impressed, and also severely disappointed by Sony in the past, and am by no means predisposed to go easy on them.

What to do when you lose all your data

So, I’ve finally decided to ditch my NTFS partition — wipe it, put in an EXT3, move my old data to the new EXT3, remove the old data, then expand the new EXT3 to take up the entire darn drive. The whole thing went pretty smoothly, until upon creating the new “mega” (1.2T) drive, it… couldn’t find the file system. Mounting didn’t work, file system check no go. PANIC!

So, what to do? All 400G of my movies, games, books, homework, programs, life’s worth of stuff is gone! Funny thing is.. we didn’t touch that ext3 file system, we simply messed with the partition tables. So we started thinking — whats wrong. After fiddling with the partition table and holding our breath (many deaths may have occured had the data not been found) we found the problem. Apparently file systems do not like taking up an entire drive. If they do so strange things happen. So, you set the last cylendar to MAX-1. And all is happy again. Simply a lesson to the wise.

Also, adam appears to be messing with youtube. I suggest you check it out, and laugh as i laughed.

Also — Andrew Mao has this little handmade gokart. He and I worked on it for a couple hours tonight, then decided to testdrive it in the rain. Lead acid batteries… poor soldering job… rain… puddles…. lets think abou… nah. We went anyway, had a lot of fun. Got him a good flat tire in the process too. Felt like sharing, that was a worthwhile experience.

Great Pockets!

www.greatpockets.com is a fantastic little getup website advertising the Nokia N95.– a phone in which i have long been a fan. It does almost everything, movies, music, GPS, (5 mp) camera – bluetooth, VOIP, games (dedicated graphics processor), big screen, good battery life etc. etc. Its got some great reviews and lots of public attention. I cannot wait to get my hands on one in may when my current contract expires. Unfortunatly it won’t at first be available in the US, so better make some friends in the EU :).

The system, is down.

For a period of about 6 days BlueSata was down. During the break the system apparently was so depressed in my absence it decided to stop responding. However, upon my return everything appears to be running normally. Apologies about that. A handful of upgrades should still be en route for the blog itself. Not too much other news out there in the world.

I have decided to potentially pick up work on the Rage project. Its a program I myself use a fair amount, and wouldn’t mind putting some work into. I plan on contacting the original author to discuss things first, but expect a Files section on this site soon, with updates to that project imminent.