Edshugeo The GodMoor

Tip o' de hat: James Hudnall

Labels: media, possibilities for creative expression, society, solutions?, technology, Truth, youtube and other video

From ars technica:

Sony BMG is no stranger to piracy. As one of the most vocal supporters of the RIAA and IFPI antipiracy efforts, the company has some experience hunting down and punishing consumers who don't pay for its products. The company is getting some experience on the other side of the table, however, now that it's being sued for software piracy.

PointDev, a French software company that makes Windows administration tools, received a call from a Sony BMG IT employee for support. After Sony BMG supplied a pirated license code for Ideal Migration, one of PointDev's products, the software maker was able to mandate a seizure of Sony BMG's assets. The subsequent raid revealed that software was illegally installed on four of Sony BMG's servers. The Business Software Alliance, however, believes that up to 47 percent of the software installed on Sony BMG's computers could be pirated.

These are some pretty serious—not to mention ironic—allegations against a company that's gone so far as to install malware on consumers' computers in the name of preventing piracy.

Read the rest of it.

Labels: downloads, funny-ass shit, hypocrisy, technology

Okay, it's not terrorism, continuing assaults on our freedoms, or way out of control illegal immigration, but still.

Time Warner said on Wednesday that it was going to start testing a new rate plan in Beaumont that would limit the amount of bandwidth each customer can use each month before additional fees kick in. Alexander Dudley, a Time Warner spokesman, said that the exact terms had not been set, but that packages would probably offer between 5 gigabytes and 40 gigabytes a month. The top plan would cost roughly the same as the company’s highest-speed service, which typically runs between $50 and $60 a month.

read more....

Labels: bittorrent, bullshit, computers, downloads, media, technology

Prices aren't quite as low as I'd like, but still tempting, even for a dead (?) format. But what to do with the HD-DVDs after eventually (?) moving to Blu-Ray? I still buy DVDs and will be able to play them in HD-DVD or Blu-Ray machines, the same can't be said for HD-DVD discs. The HD-DVD player will play standard DVDs and upconvert them, now at a price similar to decent upconverting standard DVD players. Might not be such a bad thing to use this while waiting for fully spec'd Blu-Ray machines to come down to a reasonable price.

Doesn't matter right now as my wallet is paying attention to some other issues.

Labels: DVD, good deal, HDTV, technology

Not this blog. I've just been lazy chillin'.

DRM for music downloads.

The last major label will throw in the towel on digital rights management and prepare to fight Apple for valuable download revenues.

Sony-BMG are dipping their feet in the waters of the DRM free market by starting to offer some of their music.

About iTunes and their competition, it is said;

Still, no service has yet been able to offer DRM-free music downloads from all four major labels. Amazon could yet become a contender.

If a store becomes a popular place to shop, then of course it makes sense to have your music available there, if you can. However, it isn't necessary for the consumer to have only one website to get all our downloads. It's not like having to travel a few miles to another store. Most of what I buy comes from eMusic, everything else is either "found" or bought on CD, though that's more of a rarity for me nowadays. Though I still think 99 cents is too much for a MP3, I have come close on a couple of occasions to buying music on iTunes (Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon) and Amazon (a compilation from Nine Inch Nails, Still), both of which are priced at about eight bucks. And both DRM-free.

If, as a record company, one doesn't like iTunes, there's no reason why Sony, Warners, or any other big company can't sell DRM-free music on their own sites, as long as they aren't stupid about it (there was that Sony site a while back that only worked on Internet Explorer). Plus they would make whatever change that would normally go to iTunes/whoever.

Also Dead?

HD-DVD

As prices started to come down, I came close to getting an HD-DVD player, but came to my senses. Now it appears that Warner's is supporting Blu-Ray, leaving HD-DVD with about 30% of the Hollywood studios on their side. A while back, I was rooting for HD-VMD, but they were a long shot even before the price drops.

Folks are declaring the format war over, though it might be best to wait and see. Also Blu-Ray player prices are not where they need to be, yet. Especially for full spec players. Many of the players on the market only contain few of the features of the Blu-Ray spec. Typical of Sony in the last few years to release hardware that does a little bit of what it's supposed to do. Some would say, all it really needs to do is play the movies. Sure, if it was a machine costing less than 200 bucks, but right now they're much more expensive than that.

PS3 is still a non-issue for me. I'm not exactly starving for games for my XBox 360, so until Sony's "superior technology" actually does something interesting on the gaming front, I'll have no need for it.

Speaking of the XBox, I rented the movie, Ratatouille from XBox Live last week. I was curious as to what Hi-Def content looked like on the console, especially since the sizes of their movie files (4-6 GB, generally) would fit on a standard dual layer DVD. The resolution of Hi-Def on XBL is 720p vs. 1080i for most hi-def on Cablevision (sports on cable tends to be on 720p, though). The movie looked very good and I noticed no quality difference between this and a movie on Hi-def cable. Except for the lack of pixelation. There was none of it during Ratatouille. On a hi-def channel on cable, there's plenty of it during fast motion action, or during scenes that contain flickering lights. I initially thought this might be a limitation of my relatively cheap Olevia TV, but I doubt that now.

I'd been using HDMI on my Xbox and component cables on the HD cable box/DVR. The tv has only one HDMI input. Today (Jan 5th '08) I switched the HDMI cable to the set top box and watched a little bit of Yuen Wo Ping's Tiger Cage 2 (which was on the DVR) and noticed an improvement on motion scenes. Just a tiny bit of pixelation in one scene and they (the pixels) were much smaller. It was a worn film print, so I wasn't able to notice any picture improvement, and more time will be needed to see if HDMI really has reduced the pixelation issue. Jury seems to be out as to which is clearly better, but it seems to depend on the equipment. I may have to get an HDMI switch, but I'll wait till I get a Hi-Def player of some sort. Now to see if the XBox 360 suffers from component cables...

I won't be downloading much in the way of movies from XBL, though. 480 points, translates into about six dollars and change, plus tax. I didn't time the 5 Gb download, but it took a while.
Downloading to hard drives is great for rentals, but bad for owned content (and the only good use of DRM). If they bring it down to 3 bucks, I'll do a lot more of it.

Standard DVD still wins. Until a decent Blu-ray player (not the half ass shit that's out there) hits at 300 bucks and below.

Labels: kung fu, movies, music business, PS3, technology, XBox 360

The "$100 Laptop" (actually closer to $200.) project, aimed at getting computers to children in the "developing" world, is set to make them available to developed countries as well. The plan is to have consumers buy two. One for themselves and one for a child in a poor country.

I might be interested in this. If you are, leave your email address at xogiving.org, for a reminder. The program starts November 12th.

Via the BBC.

Labels: computers, good deal, Heroes, Linux, society, solutions?, technology

I bought the 360 Elite last week after spending a week debating the PS3 vs. the 360. Prior to that point I went from no interest in a next gen system to "Ooh! The PS3 will be out next year" to "It's gonna cost what?" to "No Fuckin' way am I spending that on a game system" to "It would probably look nice on my 37 inch flatscreen TV." My interest gradually escalated from there and I started to brake down after purchasing three used games for the PS2 and not being overly impressed by the graphics.

I was gonna get a PS3, but I mentioned that to a coupl'a friends, and was advised to avoid it and go for the 360. Their opinions were based on hearsay (about the PS3) and the fact that they owned 360s, so I dismissed them at first. But I was motivated to explore the issue a li'l bit.

There were a number of things that I was concerned about already. Price wasn't one of them at this point, though it had been a major issue in the past. If I wanted to go cheap, I'd have gone with the 360 core system. Not interested in the Wii, though I'm sure it's fine for what it is.

Sony's dicking around with the PSP didn't help (or perhaps it did). The PSP is a great hand held multimedia device. There's nothing like it out there. If you just want games, there's the DS and all the previous incarnations of the Game Boy by Nintendo. If you just want music and/or movies, theres the various iPods and other personal media players. But for all of the above and also wireless internet there's only the PSP which is capable of even more thanks to the efforts of the homebrew community.

The PSP was my first taste of Sony's "sleeping giant" marketing tactic of presenting a device with great potential, but only unlocking it's capabilities a piece at a time via firmware upgrades (usually after a homebrew developer had unlocked it first). Some of these things were fixes to issues that might not have been well thought out at first, like the placement and naming of videos. Other things were obviously being held back, like full resolution video, which was available on UMD video discs, but not supported on the memory stick until a much later firmware. Officially, that is.

When Sony finally provided the one feature homebrewers could not get right, the ability to play PS1 games on our favorite portable, they chose not to allow their limited selection of games to be purchased and downloaded by anyone who did not have a PS3. Apparently this was expected to motivate purchases of the new system, instead of angering their existing customers who already owned internet capable devices (the PSP and likely a computer). Instead, homebrew came to the rescue and modified the software that allowed the playability of PS1 games as well as provide a way for users to convert their existing game library to the PSP. No PS3 needed. No need to buy the old games again. I even bought a used title off Amazon.com for less than the supposed price of a download (not including the PS3 price). Fuck you, Sony, for even thinking of pulling a stunt like that.

Still, I was somewhat convinced that the PS3 was the most powerful game machine, out there. It was expected to be miles ahead of what the XBox 360 was capable of. I was unconvinced, however, that it's power was being fully demonstrated. Games made for both the 360 and the PS3 were turning out better on the 360 (according to many reports). This being due to developers being more familiar with the XBox platform. Sony defenders point out that Microsoft had a years head start on the PS3 and that their strongest games are just being released now. When the PS3 reaches a similar point in it's development we will see it deliver the goods and maybe it'll surpass the 360.

If I was gonna wait another year to get a game machine, that would be fine and dandy. Placing my bets now on a system that might be great eventually? Um, ... no. Buying a machine that does what it's supposed to do very well, right now? That makes more sense.

HD DVD vs. Blu Ray? A non issue for me. I'll wait for a winner in that contest or I'll wait for a cheap HD disc recorder (it'll happen eventually), download whatever HD content I want from each competing format and convert them to the one I have.

XBox Live vs. PS3's online service - PS3 online is free, but kinda sloppy from what I understand. Sony has some interesting ideas, but they're just promises right now.
XBox Live seems to garner better reviews. So far I like it as far as downloading demos are concerned. Haven't tried online gaming yet, but I will.

PSP to PS3 connectivity seemed like a good idea at first, but makes no sense in it's current application, downloading media to the PS3 and then send it over to the PSP. The PSP can access the internet already. Thank you. If it could be used as a location free player to play PS3 games (and other media) on the PSP via wi-fi wherever you were, that would be a killer app. I don't know what the technical limitations are that keep such a thing from happening. I only hope that it is issues like that that keep it from happening, and not Sony dicking around again. Sony's Location Free player is a device that allows television to stream via wi-fi to an owners PSP wherever he happens to be.
Oct. 18th, 2007 - According to the November issue (#175) of Game Informer magazine (pg 24 - Portable Puppetmaster), Sony plans to allow this very feature sometime in 2008. It'll probably be 2009 until it's up and running. Once it is and a good number of PS3 games are playable on the PSP, I'm gettin' one. Though if Microsoft were to announce a handheld gaming device capable of the same thing via the 360, I might hold off.

The renting movies to the XBox hard drive thing is kinda interesting, but needs to be cheaper. I won't be doing that. I've got decent HD cable service, a DVR and I can't complain about the prices of DVDs. I still prefer to own hard copies of media (less true for music with non-DRM mp3s) and the less DRM the better. Rentals (pay per view) don't need to be as expensive as they are.

Sony vs. Microsoft: which is more evil? Microsoft, probably. Certainly more hated in the PC world. That they've managed to create a product that their customers are mostly happy with is a huge achievement! I mean, a lot of us are Windows users, who won't go near a Mac, but that doesn't mean that Windows doesn't piss us off for a variety of reasons. 360 users really like their machine regardless of how evil Microsoft is with PC software. I've always viewed Sony as a maker of decent electronics. My first DVD player was a Sony. Back then the hardware did the talking. Now when Sony talks, they sound a little like Microsoft, but not the Microsoft in the gaming business.

The games - the 360's got 'em and those that are also on the PS3 are not quite as good (hearsay), though that may change. If Grand Theft Auto IV had been a Sony exclusive, that might've been enough to sway me back to the PS3. I love GTA. The extra content being developed for the 360 wasn't really a determining factor for me though it definitely doesn't hurt. The PS3 will no doubt get great games that can't be found on the 360, but they don't really have them now, and that's a major disadvantage for buyers who aren't waiting. I'll be trying Halo for the first time next week. Haven't tried the first two games and don't feel I need to.

My first games...
Bioshock is a creepy first person story based thriller that takes place in a would be paradise that's gone horribly wrong. I'm enjoying it so far though I haven't played it much, yet.
Burnout Revenge is a race and crash game I bought for simple fun. I played Burnout Legends on the PSP and loved it. I was unaware of the Burnout games before then. Revenge is much more awesome than I expected.
Quake 4 I haven't played yet. Bought it used for twenty bucks.

Also tried a few demos, both on XBox Live and also from the magazine, XBM, which obviously isn't necessary since they are downloadable. Demos don't need hard copies. Sony canceled their official Playstation magazine (the US version) for the same reason.

Hardware failures. Sony wins on that account. Microsoft is handling the issue in a number of ways, but this shouldn't have been an issue to begin with. Still all the pluses outweigh this negative.

The future? Maybe the PS3 will turn out to be hot shit, after all. If this happens by next winter, maybe I'll get one in addition to my 360, PS2 and my PSP (which is still a brilliant console). I don't expect Sony to give up, no matter how bad the numbers get. They stuck with Betamax until after DVDs dominated. Right now, the PS2 is outselling the PS3, so there's still life in that system as well. There are a few games I want to finish on it before I put it out to pasture.

Labels: HDTV, PS3, PSP, technology, video games, XBox 360

From an email sent by freepress.net:

What if I told you we could use empty TV channels to connect millions of Americans to the Internet?

New technology would do just that. But the powerful TV broadcast lobby is standing in the way with a multimillion-dollar misinformation campaign designed to deny us one of our last, best chances to connect the nation.

The Federal Communications Commission is about to make a critical choice: support a better Internet for everyone or side with the broadcasters and let the United State slide further behind the rest of the world in Web access.

Tell the FCC: Open the Internet for Everyone

The fight for universal Internet access is now being waged over "white spaces" -- empty frequencies between television channels on the public airwaves. New devices can use these vacant airwaves to connect millions to the information superhighway, including many people still stuck on dial-up -- or without any service at all.

Here's the problem. The National Association of Broadcasters wants to keep white spaces for themselves. This week, they're blitzing Washington with television ads and lobbyists. They're making outright false claims that any new devices will interfere with over-the-air TV broadcasts.

Their scare tactics are aimed at convincing the FCC and Congress to stifle new technologies that can revolutionize our airwaves. Unless we act now, the FCC could side with the broadcasters and deny us one of our last opportunities to deliver a better Internet to more people.

Take Action: Open White Spaces for Everyone

It's a familiar story. Big media companies will use any means to squash new ideas that threaten their control. For too long, our policymakers put the narrow interests of a few conglomerates before innovation, competition and the public good.

Last year we sent 1.5 million letters to Congress and halted the phone and cable industry efforts to kill Net Neutrality. This year, we're fighting to make the Internet available and affordable to everyone. Opening up white spaces is key to creating the healthy competition, consumer choices and technological innovation we need to provide an open Internet to all.

We can win this fight. Take action to open white spaces today.

Timothy Karr
Campaign Director
Free Press
www.freepress.net
www.savetheinternet.com

1. Learn more: Visit our "Save Our Spectrum" initiative to learn more about white spaces.

2. Report back: Did you take action on this issue? Join a conversation with other activists at the Free Press Action Network.

3. Become a Free Press Action Fund member: Our team in Washington needs your help to counter Big Media's lobbyists. Your donation of $50 or more will make sure public interest advocates represent our views before the FCC and on Capitol Hill.

Labels: media, politics, solutions?, technology

from savetheinternet.com;

"Congress is pushing a law that would abandon Network Neutrality, the Internet’s First Amendment. Network neutrality prevents companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from deciding which Web sites work best for you — based on what site pays them the most. Your local library shouldn’t have to outbid Barnes & Noble for the right to have its Web site open quickly on your computer.

"Net Neutrality allows everyone to compete on a level playing field and is the reason that the Internet is a force for economic innovation, civic participation and free speech. If the public doesn’t speak up now, Congress will cave to a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign by telephone and cable companies that want to decide what you do, where you go, and what you watch online.

"This isn’t just speculation — we’ve already seen what happens elsewhere when the Internet’s gatekeepers get too much control. Last year, Canada’s version of AT&T — Telus— blocked their Internet customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to workers with whom Telus was negotiating. And Shaw, a major Canadian cable company, charges an extra $10 a month to subscribers who dare to use a competing Internet telephone service."

Click here to find out what you can do.

Courtesy of JamesHudnall.com

Labels: civil rights, DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER, technology, World Affairs

This article says pornography to go is a no-brainer, but oddly enough, I never saw this coming. I liked the idea of the video iPod when I first heard about it and I like porn. I don't care much for the idea of carrying "Rocco Ravishes Europe" or anything by Max Hardcore in my pocket, though. My feeling is that iPod porn will soon make headlines in the context of it's use by students in classrooms. I have to worry too, about whether or not public masturbation becomes more convenient and thus more prevalent. I take public transportation. And public restrooms, fuggedaboutit!
Anyway, I still don't have an iPod nor any of the other portable mini music players as of yet. I have a portable cd player that plays mp3s on CD. While the video iPod sounds cool, I may be leaning toward the Sony PSP, which plays games as well as video. I'll probably get one around January-ish. I haven't had a close up look at either product, but I assume the screen sizes will make watching subtitled movies troublesome. That's kinda an issue for me. Also the price.
iTunes is selling video downloads for $1.99 or something. That seems a bit much, but people appear to be buying 'em. Plus a more reasonable price point might have people questioning the 99 cents they're charging for music downloads. Tough to argue with success, though. Besides, there are alternatives for the resourceful among us. "Nudge, nudge, say no more"...

Labels: downloads, media, porn, PSP, society, technology

Interesting article from a local paper (The Long Island Press) about privacy and the information stockpiled by Google and other web services and how it could impact you. Click "here" to read it.

Just two days ago I downloaded and installed Google's Desktop search thingy. Even before reading this article, I knew I was just asking for it, but I did it anyway. It's fast as a muh-fug, but oftens tries to connect to the mother site and I'm not too crazy about that.

Labels: bullshit, civil rights, computers, downloads, technology

Click on the title to view the article in question.

I've played round with Linux in the past and intend to do it again at some point. No, it's not ready for prime time, but I expect that eventually, it will be. Maybe a few years down the line. When that happens, Bill Gates will consider practically giving Windows away.

For some reason I assumed (probably wrongly) that Microsoft didn't aggressively pursue users of pirate Windows because it kept them away from other OS's. That thinking is probably naive as it relates to the present and the past, but perhaps not the future.

Guess we'll find out soon enough...

Labels: computers, technology