A Sad Goodbye

I can go on record and say I hate Sony. It seems they can make the coolest product and yet screw it up so badly. Example the Minidisc. I guess in their effort to support mp3 on their new Hi-Md players they have degraded the quality so they can showcase their own format. I am now washing my hands of the Minidisc. It breaks my heart but once I can afford it I am getting a Ipod. Heck I might get a Ipod Mini. I know its not that much more to get a 20 GB instead of a 6 GB one, but I have to admit I like the mini size. If I need more than 6 GB of mp3s then I need to get a life. Also there are some Linux music programs that support The way flash memory is going in capacity and price I won't be surprised if they take back the market from the harddrive players. I figure get a Ipod once it dies they should be selling 1 or 2 GB SD cards for fairly reasonable. Especially with the Consoles supporting them in the next generation thats not an extreme stretch of the imagination. As long as I get a player that can support the higher capacity cards I'm ok. I am still kinda bummed that such a cool concept of the Minidisc got so mishandled. Unless Sony seriously gets its act together I doubt I will ever own a MD player. I will always feel sadness everytime I will see blank Minidisc at Best Buy. Thanks to Sony stop selling the one computing product that seem to done almost everything right their Palm based handheld I don't have too much reason to buy anything else from Sony (maybe except a PS3). Its just overpriced but good quality stuff. I am officially bummed.

MS

Update: Just saw some speculation about 2 or 4 GB Ipod Shuffles. If they can sport a small screen I am all over it. Considering I can't afford a Mini anytime soon then that might be the ticket especially if its cheaper than the Mini.

Gaming Consoles

Ok I hate apologize every other post for not posting but I am sorry.... Now that you have forgiven and we are all happy and such. Lets talk gaming console systems, not just the current ones but the Next Gen ones. Last week we got a preview of the systems in question. Some more detailed than others but a preview. From the specs it is looking like the PS3 seems to be the leader as far as power but only by a hair. All of them are going to have wireless controllers, be powerpc based (yes hell froze over), be online, will have some kind of standard memory card slot and will feature wireless is some form. So beyond that its pretty much more of the same from both the ps3 and xbox 360. Oh they are pretty too (looks wise and Graphics wise) Big bad boxes I have to wait a couple years to be able to afford. The running rumor has the price somewhere between $350 and $500 for either system. So what about the big N? Well there console is called the Revolution. It small its black and has a glowing blue cd slot. Oh it can act as a wireless hub, will be online with a Live like service (via Gamespy technology), supports SD cards, will have a hard drive (a small one), be powerpc based (starting to get redundant huh?) and graphic chip from ATI. Pretty much that same feature set as the other two. Beyond that they are pretty tight lipped. In that lippedness they win the Least Amount of Hype Award. I have to admit the other 2 have impressive specs but do we really need it. In the current generation we have gotten fairly close to photo realistic. Come on folks how shiny does it have to be to keep it fun. I personally rather have a game that looks mediocre and be fun than a game that looks impressive that isn't all that fun. Oh I forgot to mention the big N is going to offer a service for a fee to download and play 20 years of past Nintendo games. Not too sure if that means only Nintendo titles or if there are going to be 3rd party titles. Either way I'm excited in that regard alone. Oh well I guess we will see how this all plays out in the next year or two.

MS

Well apparently not

Ok so I am ranting to no one oh well. I have for the last several years had a infatuation with the minidisc. I can't tell you why but I have. Maybe its it size or the fact that it was basically a mini-cd with higher capacity and a hard plastic case. I guess it just always appealed to me. I never broke down and got one (thankfully) because of one issue. DRM, Sony insistence on having stupid restrictions on the music you put or take off. Who are they to judge how I got my music. If I want to trade music with someone I'll use another technology if not yours. Your not inconvencing me just screwing yourself over. Well the news came as of late that they have embraced mp3 and saw the error of their ways. They even allowed native playback on the new HI-MD minidiscs players. They officially haven't released the players but from what I am understanding you still have to use their SoundStage software (windows only) to put them on the minidisc. You can use the minidisc a usb mass storage device but for some reason can't just play mp3 on the disc with some kind of DRM wrapper. I can only hope this is not true. If they don't have this issue and I can use my Linux system to transfer music to it I am so getting one. Sure I could get 5gb hard drive player for around the same price. Something I might do if Sony disappoints me again. I so want to have small minidisc. Sure I can get a CD based mp3 player for a quarter or even a fifth of the cost of the HI-MD player but it wouldn't be in the nice sleek package that it is in. On a side note I am also considering a Rio Carbon. So tell me what you think. Am I crazy for wanting one?

Does anyone actually read this thing?

I'm starting to wonder if anyone actually does read this. Feedback would be nice.

Really Folks

This stuff is getting childish Microsoft. Everything you fund a study it tells us how expensive and unsecured Linux is. Everything anyone else funds (including independent studies) a study it tells that Linux is a real, viable and time than not better option to any windows server. Do you think you scare any intelligent IT manager anymore. You have been caught crying wolf too many times for us to believe you anymore, regardless who you get to do it.

Mice

Its amazing that Apple feels it needs to engineer things to their "standard". I'll give them that the ipod was pretty awesome but people have done it as well since then. I'm sure they are going to spend a foturne when all they need to do is the same thing that Microsoft did when they did their first mouse. Call up Logitech and ask them to design something for them. I'm sure they will make it pretty and clear(or white or blueberry or whatever the heck the color of the month is) . I'm sure you want it way too small, if I ever got a Mac (something I'm not doing) I would get a replacement mouse / keyboard to able to use it. (big hands) Either way time to catch up Apple. You can read about it here.

Speak of pointing devices (nice transitoin there). My first trackball ( or was it my second) was an earlier model of this product from Kensington. I ended up giving up on trackballs because of how inacruate they were and how dirty than get hence causing it act unpredictably. This is espiecally annoying when doing CAD. I think it was the late 90s when I gave them up and haven't used one at least in 6 or 7 years. That said when I first saw the opitcal trackballs I laughed, but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. That would remove all the problems I had in years past. That said at the time I was still doing CAD work and I was addicted to mouse wheel by then. Wasn't really an option then. Now today check this out from Microsoft. The question should I spring for it

IE 7

I saw a link to an article that had some leaked specs for the next version of Internet Explorer. Not that I'll be ever using it on any PC if I can help it. I requires XP. Amazing how Microsoft can sing how innovative they are when they are just implementing features that I have been using for over 3 years in alternative browsers. Maybe we should be grateful that they are getting around to actually supporting an actual web standard. That reminds me I need to install Debian on my PC at home. Got to get away from those idiots.

Wired Vaporware Awards 2004

This is at least an interesting article.

My favorite quote about Duke Nukem Forever is:

"NASA has planned, designed, developed and successfully landed a rover on Mars in the time this game has been in development," wrote reader Ray O'Neill. "So much for deadlines."

To give some perspective. They were talking about this being a Quake 2 killer back in 98. Yes 1998.

Late Christmas Redux

I know I promised to post more often, and I am. Within a month is an improvement. I hope to do better about that. Anyway on to the reason of the post.

Thanks to my brother and disordered I am now a proud owner of 128mb Geforce FX 5200. Yes I know its not the latest out there but hey its pretty powerful for a 3 year old 1.2 GHz Athlon computer. Who am I kidding I would pair it off with a brand new computer especially considering the price and the fact its not that far off curve. You ask how I know the price, well I kinda sent him the email ad for it. He is the only family member I can ask for stuff like that for Christmas / Birthday. (they are only 3 days apart) Anyway it seems to be doing pretty well on everything I have thrown at it, well except the Doom 3 demo. I suspect that has more to do with processor than anything. Most of what I got is at least a year old so I can't guess how well it will stack up against more recent games like Unreal Tournament 2004. (Which I do plan on buying soon) I am again in need to redo my system config. I hope to get this thing settled eventually. At this point I think I'm going to hold off till next year to build a new system. I think it wise to hold off until a couple things(x64, SATA, PCI Express, etc) I want use become a hair bit cheaper. It will also give more time for the x64 flavors of Linux distros to mature. I figure on retiring the old box to act as a server for various tasks. Not that I'm not looking foward to it.

Happy computing every one

A New Year

Ok, my New Years resolution (well one of them) is to update my blog more often. So look foward to seeing more post after this one. I promise.


Really I mean it.