This is what is known in programming as a "deadlock":


(Hat tip to The Daily WTF.)

Labels: fun, tech

Toshiba announced yesterday that they are pulling out of the HD-DVD market. Toshiba really was the main force behind HD-DVD, with the exception of a couple of other makers of hybrid HD-DVD/Blu-ray products (such as LG), which were always way too expensive for mere mortals to purchase - even moreso than a single-format HD player.

The upside? The format war is over. Those of us who have upgraded their TV sets for HD now have a clear path for a better DVD format. Blu-ray prices will get cheaper this year, as more manufacturers will step in now that they won't be worried about losing their startup costs for entering into an uncertain market.

The downside? If you bought an HD-DVD player, you're up the creek without a paddle. That's been clear for about a month, though. This announcement wasn't a surprise yesterday.

Personally, I waited. But I expect that the player prices will get low enough this year that I'll jump. I wasn't an early adopter of DVD, either, but I didn't wait for the prices to go all the way down before going for it. I'm kind of a "middle" adopter in many ways.

What's interesting to me is how this compared with the VHS/Betamax war in the 80's. One of the things that the Blu-ray advocates touted all along was that Blu-ray was better. More storage. Probably others, but storage was the biggie. But Betamax was far superior to VHS. The quality of the video was undeniably better. The cassette size was smaller, and more reliable. My dad was an early adopter, and we grew up with a Betamax. But it turned out that price beat quality. VHS was cheaper than Betamax.

No so this time around. HD-DVD players were always cheaper than Blu-ray. The discs started out cheaper, but eventually that leveled out. If I had gambled on it, I would have gone with HD-DVD for two reasons - price, and the name. What kind of dumb name is Blu-ray, anyway?

But it turns out there was one factor I was neglecting - during the VHS/Betamax wars, there were no other alternatives. The only other thing you could do with your TV was watch TV over the airwaves or cable. So everybody wanted something, and as soon as they could get it. People were more motivated to move forward, even with the uncertainty of what would happen. They wanted to watch movies at home! They wanted to record TV!

With HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray, this was not an issue at all. Most people were perfectly content with DVD, and actually will still be quite content with DVD for years to come. Many people had access to content on demand through their cable provider (many with HD options). Many people had DVR functionality through the cable provider, media center systems, etc. There are simply so many ways to get content now, other than live TV. So most people, even those who really would have liked to do something, waited. In the end the adoption was driven not by price, but by quality expected by early adopters who were willing to fork over the cash.

The PlayStation 3 had a huge impact as well. If the HD-DVD had been standard in the XBox 360, that might have changed things a bit. But Microsoft chose to make it cheaper. So Microsoft is winning the console war, but Toshiba lost the HD disc war.

The biggest downside? With HD-DVD, you could put the HD-DVD on one side and put a regular vanilla DVD on the other. Nice compatibility. But if I buy a Blu-ray of "Cars" for my kids, they can't watch that in our DVD player in the car. I guess eventually there will be some software on the web to break the Blu-ray encryption and make a DVD backup of a Blu-ray disc, but you'd still rather not have to resort to those methods just to keep your kids quiet in the car.

But I'll take the tradeoff. The ability to step into full HD content without being worried about picking the losing format will be worth it.

Labels: tech

So I got a new external drive today. Total price: $279. Check out this screenshot:



A little small? Let's zoom in on that a bit:



931 gigabytes. As in, this is a one terabyte drive. For $279. Granted, it's actually two 500 GB drives that's allocated as a single disk. But it's still really cool.

Labels: tech

I got rid of BellSouth last year and switched to SunRocket. Overall, I've been satisfied with their service. Or, I should say, I had been satisfied. At this point, SunRocket is dead. They've laid off nearly all of their employees. Our phone isn't working. We can't access our voicemail online.

The thing that is extremely annoying about this? No warning. No notices. Our service stopped working on Monday. SunRocket's support lines are shut down. They did not respond to my e-mail. Only when I started searching the web did I discover that they were going out of business.

This is a perfect example of abysmal customer service. It would have been simple for them to explain the issue to their customers and warn them that this was coming.

I was at least able to forward our number to Amy's cell phone so we can get calls. It seems like something is still working over there. But I've already started the process to switch to Packet8. Hopefully they'll stay in business for the next year. And hopefully if they do go out of business they'll warn their customers before turning off their service.

UPDATE: I finally got an e-mail today (7/20) from SunRocket. Basically, the e-mail tells customers that they are shutting down, and they have set up transfer agreements with Packet8 and TeleBlend. Our phone had a dial-tone last night, but I'm not sure if that will last or if Packet8 has the SunRocket hardware info, or what. Anyway, at least they did finally e-mail customers, even though they should have sent some kind of notice a week ago.

Labels: life, tech

OK, this is one of the cooler things that I've seen come out of Microsoft in a while. A tabletop computing environment, that understands multiple touches - so more than one person can interact with it at a time - as well as objects placed on top. Initially conceived as a new kind of gaming device, they've changed directions a bit and Microsoft Surface is being positioned as a center for home media use (think pictures, audio, etc.) as well as an attractive business piece (think interactive product displays, menus, etc.).

Gizmodo reports that they'll initially be about $10,000. Most likely, a lot of that cost is due to the technology required for multi-touch interaction, and those prices will come down quickly over the next couple of years.

This is the kind of thing that can change how people interact with digital technologies over the next decade. Seriously, it's that cool.

See more at Microsoft Surface. There's also a great video at Popular Mechanics.

Labels: tech

I posted a while back about using Bloglines. I'd just like to take this opportunity to remind you all about it again. If you find yourself manually checking this and other blogs, by going to the site to see if there are new posts, then you need to use a news reader. A news reader will keep track of what blogs you read, notify you of new blog posts, and should keep track of what you've read, all in one place. So you won't have to visit ten or twenty or thirty blogs every day to keep up with all of your favorites. You can also find news feeds for comics, weather, and lots of other stuff to track all in one place.

Bloglines is my favorite, but there are several other web-based news readers. If you look at my XML news feed, you'll see FeedBurner's list of popular online news readers that you can check out. If you've been checking this blog manually, you owe it to yourself to get set up with something like Bloglines.

Labels: tech

I'm not going to say that Comcast rules, since I've only been a customer of theirs for about seven hours, and of their internet service for only about thirty minutes. But I'll say this, at least they don't require you to have a home phone in order to provide you high-speed internet service, like your local phone company does. And the television service is a LOT better than what I was getting from BellSouth. BellSouth's digital channel guide looked like it was embedded EGA graphics or something. Only my fellow DOS geeks would have any clue of what that meant...

It's been a rough week without internet at the house, but we're all up and running now.

That makes our switch complete: no more Bellsouth for anything. Good riddance! We're now on Comcast for television and internet, and SunRocket for home phone. In case you've not heard of them, SunRocket is like Vonage, a voice-over-IP phone service, but it's a lot cheaper for all the same stuff. It rocks!

Labels: life, tech

So especially now that all my siblings, and even some of their significant others, have blogs (including Britt, Gina, Shane, and Ben), it's going to be a pain to check and see when everyone has updated their blog. I found a great tool today for making this easier.

First of all, if you're using Blogger and you haven't turned on the site feed, do so now. It allows readers to use a tool that will alert them when there are new posts. When you see a little graphic somewhere that looks like , this is usually a link to a site feed in either RSS (really simple syndication) or Atom format. To turn it on, check the Blogger help entry titled How do I change my site feed settings?.

You'll notice the little XML image on the sidebar of this site, but underneath it is something new - a link to Bloglines, that looks like this:



Bloglines helps you to create a list of all the blogs you read, and will display which ones have new posts, just like an e-mail program does. So if you create a Bloglines account and subscribe to this site, you can see when there are new posts using Bloglines. But you can also see, at a glance, when any of the Mooneys have posted something new. Cool, huh? Programs that do this are called "RSS reader aggregators". They basically aggregate other content on the web for you.

I've seen other programs that do this, but this is the best one I've seen yet. It's free, and it's online, so you can access it from anywhere. You can add subscriptions to any site that includes a site feed, including two of my favorites -- Neal Boortz' Nealz Nuze and James Taranto's Best of the Web Today. On those, or any other sites that regularly publish content, just look for the little XML graphic. You can even get comics (Bloglines has links to Dilbert and Get Fuzzy), weather, and news via RSS.

The best part is that if you're hosting your blog on blogspot, you don't even have to turn on the site feed for it to work with your site. So it works with my siblings' blogs even though they haven't turned on the site feed yet.

Labels: tech

I get approached often enough about adware problems that I decided to write this article about how to get adware off of your computer and keep it off.

One of the most frequent problems computer users face today is adware. This comes in a variety of forms, and has a variety of ill effects. Most people don't realize they have adware installed -- they assume the ads that are appearing on their computer are related to the websites they are viewing, but this is not always the case.

In extreme cases of adware infection, your computer slows to a crawl, to a point where you are frustrated and simply ready to buy a new computer. But this isn't a long-term solution -- even on your new computer, if you continue your web browsing habits without any changes, you will likely be infected again and have the same problems within a couple of months.

There are two things you have to do: find and remove the adware, and then learn how to avoid it in the first place.

For the full article, see Dealing with Adware.

Labels: tech

What has a 800x480 screen, 256MB RAM, a 20GB hard drive, includes WiFi, Bluetooth, USB, and Firewire, and runs Windows XP? And oh yeah, and it's 3.5" by 5" and weighs less than a pound?

It's the OQO Model 01 "ultra personal computer". It's about as expensive as a laptop (currently $1899), but melds the idea of a laptop with the idea of a Pocket PC.



Devices like this have been rumored for awhile, and while most reviews thus far haven't been very promising in terms of performance (it's only a 1ghz processor) and battery life, my bet is that this idea will catch on like crazy in the next couple of years. Pocket PC functionality is being increasingly added to mobile phones, and that trend will continue. But why can't I get a Pocket PC with a hard drive? Finally, this device offers something very similar.

Labels: tech

The $10 million X-Prize will be awarded... ShaceShipOne took it's second flight in a week, this time to an altitude of 368,000 feet, breaking the record set in the 60's by the X-15. (News Story) ShaceShipOne was developed by Scaled Composites, and funded by Paul G. Allen, co-founder of Microsoft.

SpaceShipOne is the first non-governmental project into space, and not only did they do it once, they did it twice in less than a week with the same craft. The technology is already being licensed by Virgin Galactic to offer flights to paying customers in 2007, for about $190,000 a trip.

This has been compared to Lindbergh's flight over the Atlantic to win a $25,000 prize. But I think it's more like the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk. Sure, we've been to space before. But for a handful of engineers to put this together with gliders and a big rocket, is an incredibly impressive human feat, and has signaled the beginning of private space travel.

Labels: tech