...more recent posts
Google's battle for wireless spectrum -- Google is pushing the FCC to write rules for an upcoming auction to enforce openness.
Sex and Violence
* Japanese Porn Industry Embraces Blu-Ray Disc
* Sony Inks Exclusive Rockstar Deal for PlayStation 3
YouTube here on the iPhone and net neutrality. I have no opinion.
The 1080p60 LCD HDTVs with 120 Hz refresh rate that I saw in January at CES are starting to roll out. Sony's are going under the XBR4 and XBR5 designation.
"DVD Jon" Cracks iPhone Activation, Kinda
Microsoft's costly Xbox problem
Microsoft took a billion dollar charge to cover anticipated costs associated with extending the warranty to three years. Ouch.
james fallows, the atlantic
China Makes, The World Takes
Good News/Bad News for Sony
Blockbuster favors Blu-ray DVDs to HD DVD
GTA IV episodic content exclusive to 360, confirms Take-Two
Microsoft Unveils New Version Of IPTV Platform
Sony, Matsushita to launch Internet video-on-demand for flat TVs
Wintel become Macwintel?
Supposedly Time Warner Cable (RoadRunner) starts traffic shaping (at some times of day, in some markets, etc....) This is their response to the issue of a very small percentage of users who constantly utilize all their bandwidth (so, almost always BitTorrent clients or Newsgroup readers.) Those users (for those applications) will see their bandwidth being throttled. Attempts to get around this (by, say, running your BitTorrent client on a non-standard port, or encrypting the traffic) will be seen as a violation of the TOS.
Melodeo plans music service from iTunes playlists
Nintendo Wii outsells Sony PS3 5-fold in Japan
External I/O Ports
I'm doing some backups using external disks -- bare SATA II drives stuffed into USB external disk cases. One of the cases has eSATA support at SATA II speeds: 3 Gbps. At work, where I'm doing the backups, I have to live with USB 2.0 speeds -- 480 Mbps -- but at home I have a machine with an eSATA port on the back panel.
It just kind of struck me this evening ... 3 Gbps. Sweet. Screw USB. Screw Firewire. And Firewire 800 can go pound sand. 1.5 Gbps eSATA? I don't think so.
Three. Motherfucking. Gig.
How long until everything supports that data rate?
New AACS "fix" hacked in a day
In what's shaping up as an electronics industry trial of the century_between two incompatible, high-definition video-disc formats_the holdout juror is Ken Graffeo, Universal Home Video executive vice president of HD strategic marketing. And he may very well upset the whole case.
The Apple iTune DRM-free tracks contain user account info. I predicted they would do this with watermarking, but the info appears to be in the clear.