Category: Uncategorized

HD versus Blu-Ray

~ rbonini

Note: I’m far from an expert on this subject, but have been watching from the sidelines

I was at ASDA yesterday (that’s Walmart here in the UK) and found a few titles in both HD and Blu-Ray formats. It was exceedingly modest compared to the huge “normal” DVD collection that surrounded it. It seems to drive home the point that a single, unified format that runs on all devices works.

My collection of DVD’s ( about 100) can be played on any capable device I can find. From my PC to the my laptop to the DVD player to the Playstation 2. The only thing that changes is the screen size and controller format. Simple – no thinking require, literally.

As far as I could tell (and I didn’t look that hard to be honest – I wasn’t planing to write this post), the only device capable of playing either format was the PS3 (of which there were only 4 on sale). The reason for the lack of a) players and B0 titles to choose from comes from the confusion over which title is going to make it to the big time. Its a rather chicken-and-egg problem. Do you take a risk and back one over the other and hope that it will make it with enough pushing? or do you sit it out and wait for it to make it to the big time.

The thing is that once a format dominates, both manufacturers studios and retailers stand to make huge amounts of money since all the confusion will have cleared up and consumers will feel much more comfortable spending large amounts of money. Its not just the disks, its the whole eco-system that surrounds it. I’ll have to buy a new CD-drive capable to playing the new format. I’ll have to by a new player for the TV. I’ll have to by a HD-TV ( already done). I could go a bit further an by a HD set top box. And then there’s the disks (both with movies on them and for burning stuff to )

Since there is so much to gain, I don’t get it when manufacturers are prepares to duke it out to the death (or one or the other does a repeat of VHS’s move against betamax)

The thing is,  a push is already happening:

On the one hand, it looks like Blockbuster is going all Blu-ray (in other words, no more discs that conform to the HD-DVD format). According to a story from the Associated Press as seen on Fox (there’s also a blog on News.com about it)

…

Could Blockbuster’s move mean the death knell for HD-DVD? Is Blockbuster even relevant in this market where people are getting their video on-demand and through outlets like Netflix?

…

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the Net, questions are being raised about Blu-ray discs engineering. Via Engadget comes a report that certain Blu-ray discs are “rotting” to the point that they’re unplayable.

I watch with interest, while I save my pounds and penny’s to spend on the winner – to the victor, the spoils.

Google Privacy Row – Roundup

~ rbonini

Since last night there’s ben a huge row over this report from Privacy International slamming Google over its user privacy policy/practices.

For a taster Mitch Ratcliffe has this to say:

Giving up our privacy for a little Web functionality and storage capacity is like handing over the mining rights to ancestral lands to the first guy who comes along with a better shovel

And he was responding to this :

It’s funny how they know so much about their horrible practices when they even admit Google didn’t respond to their request for information. Certainly that means their practices are the worst on the Internet.

Scoble weighed in by saying:

I was hoping this report was more factual than it looks cause we need to have a real conversation about privacy. If you read the privacy report you should read Danny’s blow-by-blow response to it.

That said, Google’s PR is really stinky. Google isn’t paying attention to what normal people think of it anymore and it’s getting a bad reputation because of that. I heard it slammed over and over again for street-level views on Google Maps and no one from Google responded in most of the mainstream talk shows I heard talking about it. They should have a full-court “feel good” initiative where they have normal everyday citizens come in and meet the engineers, and look at the privacy issues.

Danny Sullivan has a pretty good blow-by-blow account of the report (its a must read):

Overall, looking at just the performance of the best companies PI found shows that Google measures up well — and thus ranking it the worse simply doesn’t seem fair. But the bigger issue is that the report itself doesn’t appear to be as comprehensive or fully researched as it is billed.

Frankly, about the only thing saving Privacy International from many more companies or services being upset over this report is that they singled out Google as the worse. That’s almost guaranteed to make players like Microsoft and Yahoo shut their mouths and point at this silently as vindication they aren’t so bad.

To save itself, I’d like to see Google appoint a privacy czar, someone charged with, as I’ve suggested above, assuming the worst about the company and diligently working to ensure users have as much protection as possible.

All that said, Matt Cutts responds:

Google didn’t leak user queries

In this past year, AOL released millions of raw queries from hundreds of thousands of users. Within days, a journalist had determined the identity of an AOL user from the queries that AOL released. But AOL got a better grade than Google.

Google didn’t give millions of user queries to the Dept. of Justice

In 2005/2006, the Department of Justice sent subpoenas to 34 different companies requesting users’ queries and other data. In fact, the original subpoena requested all queries done by users for two full months. AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo all gave some amount of users’ queries to the Department of Justice. Google fought that subpoena (full disclosure: I filed a declaration in that case). The judge sided with Google; no queries from Google users were given to the DOJ. But Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL got better grades in this report than Google.

Google will anonymize query logs

In March, Google announced that it would begin anonymizing its logs after 18-24 months. Google has continued to communicate on the issue, including a post on the Google blog in May discussing the reasoning behind that decision. In fact, we talk a lot about privacy, from blog posts to Op-Ed pieces in the Financial Times. To the best of my knowledge, no other major search engine has followed suit in a plan to anonymize user logs.

I Don’t think I can really add to all that. Other than the idea that Google is firewalking here. As soon as it makes I really, really clear what its policy is, in detail, and appoints a Privacy Czar, things may well quiet down. Google just has to get used to the idea that this is going to happen more often.

Quote of the Day

~ rbonini

I can’t belive I’m quoting Scott Adams, but here it is:

Okay, so my plan is this. America becomes the disaster recovery center of the world. To some extent, we already are. We generally offer help when needed, and we have lots of assets for that sort of thing. But we haven’t taken it to the next level and “Switzerlandized” the concept. We need to be more known as the country that finds people under rubble, as opposed to our current plan of being known as the people who put people there in the first place.

Go on. Read the whole plan.

Interesting Comparison

~ rbonini

Frank at pseudorandom has this to say:

Since Bush took office, the Canadian dollar is up 39.76 percent. When you consider that Canada has a comparable (though much smaller) economy, a comparable standard of living, a border that’s essentially open to most trade, and a higher level of government services, this becomes an amazing statistic. It’s what happens when one government runs budget surpluses year after year, while its neighbor, after briefly running a budget surplus under one president, begins running unprecedented budget deficits under his successor.

Never thought of it that way.

On Programming

~ rbonini

Jeff Atwood just posted his Favorite Programming Quote:

My all-time favorite programming quote has to be this Nathaniel Borenstein bon mot:

It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter.

It’s too perfect. Never have programmers been more neatly summarized.

And he also gave a list of great quotes sites:

Here are a few of my favorites:

Theory is when you know something, but it doesn’t work. Practice is when something works, but you don’t know why. Programmers combine theory and practice: Nothing works and they don’t know why.

Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris.

Larry Wall

One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs.

Robert Firth

Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random numbers is, of course, in a state of sin.

John von Neumann

There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new…

Niccolo Macchiavelli, The Prince

As an aside, Bill Clinton quotes this in his Autobiography

Writing code has a place in the human hierarchy worth somewhere above grave robbing and beneath managing. (Gerald Weinberg)

Writing code has a place in the human hierarchy worth somewhere above grave robbing and beneath managing. (Gerald Weinberg)