Category: General

Microsoft’s effort to “Fasttrack” their OOXML standard has failed, and people around the world rejoice.

In reading the above link you will likely encounter the following Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office. Everybody should install this. Everybody.

BlueSata is back! Expect fairly frequent updates now that BlueSata’s (re)location is complete!

Been a while since I put in the effort to really blog on much of anything. As the post will tell you, its nearly 1:15am and I’m kinda tired. But I just finished V2 of the-warforge.com and its live. So, giant sigh of relaxation. I’m currently at penn again, working on the SAAST program. It’s alot of fun, keeps me very busy. I’ll attempt to put something insightful in the next couple days in this space.

So, you’re saying that the company that created Betamax, ATRAC encoding, the S-Link protocol, Minidisc players, Super-AudioCDs, Memory Sticks and Universal Media Discs might actually lose a format war?

As much as I love 50 200 GB optical discs (Blu-Ray) gotta admit, thats a damn classy comment.

p.s. Topic is a reference to Vonage’s ongoing legal troubles with Verizon.

In much much more interesting news, scientists have found the first near-earth like planet to date. Its a bit bigger than earth, but is the first planet to be found which has a temperature inbetween water’s freezing and boiling points (0-100C). Its also cool because this thing is so close, 20 Light years. Feasibly we could detect radio waves from them, according to the article. O_o.

Also found this today. Good read about camera phones, especially the N95 :).

So, apparently there is this guy out there, whose remarkably talented and decided to combine some Halo, Samus Aran, Star Wars, Matrx and Final Fantasy all into one action packed (rediculously awesome) video. http://www.joystiq.com/2007/04/18/battle-of-the-fps-titans-samus-vs-master-chief/I’m sure its up on numerous other sites, this is the link I “stumbled” upon.

Also — Found this one. Puts our galaxy into perspective, especially the end. 1/1689794’th of a single pixel.

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.

Found this one: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LanguagesByKeyboard. Won’t be so fantastic for most of you but if you look at perl’s comments, i got a giggle out of it.

Also found this little gem: http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/ . It took the following image:

and told me exactly what font it was! I’m impressed. Could be quite useful.

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!

Important news of the day: I hit greatpockets.com via stumble upon. Fantastic stuff.

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.