Posts by Ben Gracewood
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There's also the full 'premiere' up on www.hbo.com/conchords. Or is that the same thing?
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One small step for PA, one giant leap for global new media domination! Congrats.
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I am also ambivalent about Vista. Had it on my desktop for a while, but it was just a slow dog, even with 2GB of RAM on a Core2 Duo (Vista 'experience' score of 5.2 or something).
I am excited about Windows Home Server however. Just got in on the beta and am now building a box to run it on. Apparently using the 'single instance' storage some users have backed up 220GB of various crap around the house onto 60GB on Home Server.
Basically it stores every file (well, cluster actually) only once, and keeps pointers if multiple computers share the same cluster (e.g. portion of the same MP3 file or Windows dll or image). Great for people that have a similar collection of stuff on both a laptop and a desktop.
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Before I had a child, I was 100% confident that I would need to use smacking as a last-resort punishment when all else had failed.
Now, as the father of a 3yo, I see the absolute horror engendered by even the mention of timeout, and wonder what I could possibly have been thinking when I even considered smacking.
Now possibly he is an absolute angel, and the next one will laugh off timeout as a joke, but at this stage I really can't see the reason to use any form of physical discipline against a defenceless child. The thought of hitting my boy makes me sick.
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Not to be cynical, but some Big Pharma will just find another way of doing the same thing that DCA does with a new, patentable drug, so we'll have to wait another 10 years for a cancer cure.
Either that or Bill Gates will get cancer and we'll have a cure inside of 12 months.
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You haven't played Wii until you've played 2-player Wii Boxing. Admittedly with nunchuk controllers being as rare as diamonds in New Zealand, it's hard to do, but it is excellent.
There is a slightly hidden move whereby if you dodge at just the right time (by swaying your body to the side), you get a Matrix-like slowdown effect and you can get a good couple of power punches on your opponent.
My wife plays Wii tennis with me several times a week, after never being remotely interested in computer or video games.
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Courtesy of a fateful IQ test by my father in law years ago, we get screeds of Scientology realspam in our letterbox every week. The quantity is quite amazing. At least one letter and one full glossy magazine every week. Shit about 'Flag' levels and 'Cleansing Cruises' and stuff.
The content is quite incredible. I honestly can't understand why and how anyone could get scammed by this, and I'm waiting for the day L-Ron comes out and says "Zing! Fooled you all!".
And the cricket: I turned it off for 30 minutes over dinner, thinking we had a reasonable chance, but then turned it back on to see the credits rolling. Tail collapse of the worst order.
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Another question for the geeks and content nuts: has any decent research (economic or social) been done on the cost/volume of media?
Given that new copies of media are effectively free to produce (just bandwidth), where is the crossover point at which, say, 10 cent DRM-free mp3s will provide more income for the labels than $1.99 DRMed AAC files? Will 20x more people buy the 10 cent copies? Or is there just not that much market?
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And Clarke: nice idea about the disclosure stuff. Kinda like current food labelling:
This product contains TPMs that comply with HDMI specfications 3.2 thru 4.5; WARNING: may not be interoperable with Component Video or Neural Implant Systems version 2.1 and earlier.
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Just a random thought here for the legal beagles to clarify: will the generic term "format shifting" cover all possible outcomes in the future?
I'm thinking about the fact that when the current law was drafted, the concept of a digital music player that did not use any physical media to play music was completely unfathomable.
There will be content technologies in the future that are currently unfathomable.
Does the law need provision for the courts (or some other body) to make provision for new technologies to be covered by 'fair use' or 'format shifting' when they wouldn't easily fit within the new law?