Knight Rider 2008 Premiere

Wal-Mart to only sell Blu-ray. HD-DVD to be "euthanize[d]"

"Since the beginning of the year, when Warner Bros. announced that it was pulling support for HD DVD, the prospects appeared grim. Toshiba and some of the other backers of the format put on a brave face, but most observers were wondering if and when Toshiba would acknowledge Blu-ray's fait accompli and let HD DVD join Betamax in The Place Where Unloved Formats Are Eternally Blessed. That time may be soon, according to a report in The Hollywood Reporter, which quotes "reliable industry sources" as saying that Toshiba will euthanize HD DVD in the months ahead."

From Ars

How Apple will Exceed its iPhone Sales goal of 10 Million in year-one...

I've been closely observing "the machine." The machine as I have termed it is the Apple information management system. No its not some fancy enterprise piece of software; its not a Web 2.0 tool; its not even a computer system. It is simply Apple. From the trickle of leaks, one liners, silence, response of all information leading up to the iPhone announcement last year; this years Macbook Air.

It's a little comment made seemingly too soon (Nov: 3G iPhones in 2008). Its the lack of announcement at Macworld (16GB iPhones Feb). It is the silence about the unlocking/jailbreaking crowd. Its about mum on the SDK. Its about inverse buzz.

In the coming weeks, Apple will be in the consiousness of all in the tech industry, mainstream media, blogosphere, and fanboy world. They will release the SDK. Then come Apps. Then come killer Apps. Then....3G, New capability, Price drop (or increased capability/features at current price), then the next thing, and another, and iphone 2, iphone mini, iphone android(??).

The point of the post is to show past examples of the Apple Information Machine at work. Sometimes purring along like a nice economy car and sometimes in the fast lane like a Tesla electric sports car. Constantly in your consciousness.

iPhones can be bought for $399 8GB, $499 16GB at Apple Stores, Apple online and AT&T Corporate Retail stores.

Conservitive in the Tech World

It's not the most common occurrence, a conservative (read: Reagan Conservative) that is also an avid technology world follower. However there are some basic principles that are important to highlight for the new younger generation being biased and manipulated by a far left national media structure.

When I started to write this, I multi-tasked Google for a bullet list of Reagan Conservative points. Only to find this timely blog post that really saved me 4 paragraphs. Hop over to Marks blog and read what Reagan Conservatism is about.

Let me expand this post to the tech world now. Mark G writes "Ronald Reagan embraced economic conservatives because he understood that low taxes, free and fair trade, less government and reasonable regulation were the catalyst that would create great economic growth that would be the best way to create opportunity and prosperity of the American people." It is important to view all the growth in the e-commerce, social, and informational progress of the Internet as a conservative success. Business has been free and unburdened by taxes, excessive legislation and first amendment support on the Internet. Multi-national, cross-national, global websites have brought people from all over the world a little closer. Business opportunities have allowed companies like Google, MySpace, Facebook and Yahoo to prosper. VCs and Start-ups are now back innovating new ways to capitalize on the success of the internet. Concerns of net neutrality have only been conjecture and threats by the minority of data providers have been vapor.

Market forces are pushing individual and corporate investment in national data networks. Verizon is running Fiber optic cable to your Door. Not your street, not your block, not your neighborhood and not your town. Your doorstep. One strand of this fiber Verizon is running can handle, ONE STRAND, every single phone call on mothers day of the entire day at the same instant at the same time. Cable companies are building out similar fiber to the node networks. Satellite providers have expanded capacity for high-definition content; moving to terrestrial wireless technologies to complete their product offerings. Billions and billions of dollars are being bid on prime wireless spectrum. $4.7 Billion dollars have been pledged by Google, a public company, for open access rules on a government auction. The government didn't push that requirement the open marketplace wanted that requirement and they were willing to buy and build said network for billions over the acquisition cost for the spectrum.

So as your are pondering this election season, please think past the one liner, one sentence, one paragraph answer to a question. See into the core philosophy of the candidates and align that with the right way to achieve a goal. Governments must remain out of the marketplace with burdensome and counter productive regulations. Governments should be stewards of the national economy and promote at all costs fair and open competition; the national economic environment from which all business must engage in open competition. Capitalism is an economic theory which stresses that control of the means of producing economic goods in a society should reside in the hands of those who invest the capital for production. Private ownership and free enterprise leads to more efficiency, lower prices, better products. That is the true goal of capitalism and a pillar of the conservative point of view.

Why Blu-Ray should win from here on out....

Much has been made of the HD-DVD vs. Blu Ray format war. There are technical and capability differences in the formats. Consumers really don't care. They both have amazing and virtually equal movie quality. Consumers don't care.

Technical individuals in the computer, gaming, audio and video field whether they are content creators, enthusiasts, journalist or bloggers want a winner and end to this format war.

On the eve of CES 2008, Wanner Brothers movie studio who had been supporting both formats announced that they would be going to Blu Ray exclusively. HD DVD Consortium then canceled a early press event. A tech community wanting a winner, proclaiming a possible winner if not at least the front runner were embolded by the prompt tail-between-the-legs / take-my-ball-and-go-home feeling the HD DVD Consortiums cancellation instilled.

The wanters and waiters in the consumer realm were ecstatic. Here was enough reason to no longer wait and get that PS3 or other Blu ray player for the sole purpose that they wanted to flex that new 1080p HDTV's muscles.

The best bloggers and tech journalists have provided some reasons how blu ray can now clinch this "war". Here are mine in no particular order:

• Reduce license fees to all blu ray parties (device and studios)
• Reduce price of stand alone players
• Strike deals with the biggest retailers to sell ONLY blu ray moives.
  
• Release Blu ray blank media and burners for PC's Laptops
• Advertise as the winner. Americans love to be told what to think.

Hopes for Macworld...teech on 2008

It's been in incredibly long time since I sat down or even remotely had the time to write a blog post. Now that there is a slight lul in the action here at the Trif abode, I'll try and make some smart tech sense....

Let me start with the iPhone. I have now been an iPhone user and lover since the first week in July 2007. It is still the best phone I've ever owned. It is also be best mobile computing device (smartphone if you must) as well. I spend endless time on the couch watching TV with my iPhone as my internet surfing device. This is simultaneous to Michelle's usage of her 12" Inspiron laptop during tv watching times. The iPhone represents the richest web browsing experience of any mobile device and one that is on par with full brower clients like IE7, Safari and Firefox.

With my jailbroken (term for installing your own 3rd party apps), it is a fierce smart phone competitor to windows mobile and the blackberry. Some of the things that can be done to make it an even more competitive device or superior device is some of the outcomes I'd like to see from macworld.

This macworld comes a year to the announcement of the iPhone and about 6 months after its release. Some of the early shortcomings must be addressed. These range in technical complexity so I list in no particular order.

1. Copy and Paste
2. MMS (yes i know email is just as easy and free but sometimes you need MMS)
3. 3G (Edge is slow but not terrible as long as you are in metropolitan/suburban areas)
4. 3rd Party Apps (just can't come soon enough)

/*************************************/

So the above was typed before Macworld but I simply didn't have time to post it. Now that macworld has happened, some comments:

1. iPhone

Google is freaking the best company every. Location and the usability updated in 1.1.3 has me willing to forgo jailbreak apps of 1.1.2. I had the opportunity to stop at the Apple story and play with it. Worked great in Allentown PA.

WebApp Icons

Nice. I just recently re-organized all my iPhone bookmarks so this can make it easier to hit the most popular sites i goto like Twitter and Facebook.

Icon Re-arrangement. Executed with simplicity and ease that only Apple can bring to a consumer device. Excellent

No 3G. Clearly its not ready. Plenty of wifi available. Really a non issue for me.

2. Macbook Air

Awesome. Expensive. If I can get work to buy one I just may. As for the Trif household. I really see the iMac the way to go as a appliance computer for our downstairs. It will only be used w/o wires with the exception of the power cord.

3. Movie Rentals

This is how I want to watch movies. For 2.99/3.99 SD, I will rent and watch movies on my iPhone through iTunes. The movie industry just made ripping DVDs and encoding for iPhone not woth the work. Sorry Handbrake, you've been released.

Twitter Feed

Check out the twitter feed on the blog at right.

Ringtones for iPhone | Free Ringtones for iPhone

Last week Steve Jobs announed a bevy of new/revamped iPods. Additionally he announced ringtones for the iPhone. Through iTunes you can (re)buy a song on iTunes for $0.99 (in addition to the original purchase price) and custom select up to 30 seconds to make into a ring tone. Thanks for nothing Steve....

There are already several ways to get ringtones on your iPhone at no additional cost. iRingtoner is one app with instructions on modmyiPhone.com.

Immediately after the announcement of ringtones baked-in to iTunes, the hackers have unraveled how to get free ringtones on your iPhone. Its hardly a hack and more of a procedure. Ars technica has the scoop on the file rename hack for ringtones.

Qipit...

Wouldn't it be great to be able to snap a photo of those meeting notes on the whiteboard or keep a digital copy of notes on your writing pad? Well some smart fella has created a website just for that. Check out Qipit.

Eudora lives to see version 8.0

Most Penn Staters will recall and I am sure countless other long time email users the great Eudora email program. Scott Gilbertson writes on his blog at wired.com: "Eudora, one of the earliest and much revered desktop e-mail clients, has been reborn under the Mozilla Thunderbird umbrella. The new beta version of Eudora 8 and the Penelope add-on are available for download from the Mozilla site."

Grab the release here.

"My first iPhone bill...in a box

Ok, so its not as good as Justin Timberlakes D*ck in a Box but this is still funny. Doesn't hurt that the chick if pretty freakin' hot!


Check out this video: My first iPhone Bill!



Add to My Profile | More Videos

Recover songs off iPod to PC

http://howto.wired.com/wiredhowtos/index.cgi?page_name=get_your_music_off_of_your_ipod;action=display;category=Play

Here is a great article on moving music off of your iPod and onto your computer.

5th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies - Paper

5th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies - Paper

Excellent paper on Hard Drive failure rates in the real world. Interesting to note that there is correlation of (higher) failure rates between SCSI, FC and SATA drives. Additionally the authors note there is no correlation to (higher) failure rates between manufactures. They do note that real world HD replacement rates are much higher than hard drive MTTF estimates from vendors.

My RoomBa cleans the Family Room...

CableTV/Phone/Internet

So I finally got the RCN triple package. So here's what I got and how it works...

CableTV (Full Basic): $30
Internet (10 Mbit down/800KB up): $30
Phone (Unlimited local, regional, and LD for 1 year; 5 features (caller id, etc): $30

Add my DigitalVision (little ones need Sprout and 3 PBS's :-)), HD and HD package (ESPNHD for me) and total bill is like $132 plus tax.

Separately with Verizon for phone (local only, crap), DSL (3mbit) and cable unbundled my bill was $157. So i save a few bucks and get better services in both the Internet and Phone experience.

I can only hope we get Verizon FIOS (fiber to the home) soon as well. Verizon is aggressively pricing their TV and Internet portions of this service. Also, the speeds at release of this service are 5 and 10 mbps. Expect 20, 25, and 30 mbit speeds in a year or two.

I'll re-post in a few months on the reliability and quality of the service.

MIT OpenCourseWare | OCW Home

MIT OpenCourseWare | OCW Home

Free learning. All the info you can learn at MIT, free minus the actual degree. Really cool.

Apple iPhone

Probably the most amazing device I have seen in a long time.

Read here how Apple, Cingular, Google and Yahoo! kept the secret for nearly 2.5 years of development!

I am so buying one when its out!!

OLPC

The one laptop per child program has provided some more great details on their now final design. Check out this article.

IM, MS Word threats, and NSA-ATT

So it has been some time since I posted howerver we do have several interesting revalations today...

Coming from our friends at Yahoo, a new work is infecting their IM (Instant Messaging) client known as Yahoo Messenger. This pesky work installs its own web browser and is engaging in spyware like activities. Ironically, the name of the insecure browsers it installs is called The Safety Browser. Check out some more about it here.

Late last week, word (ha!) surfaced on the internet the Microsoft's Word wordprocessor program has a exploit out in the wild. This exploit allows a hacker to take over your comptuer. The good news is that you need to use MS Word and open a document for the exploit to take place. Good thing only 99% of the PC world uses Word. Virus info here.

Finally, the NSA-ATT internet spying scandal is heating up. Today, Wired news/magazing published the 30-page affadavid and ATT documents describing the procedures and setup of the NSA spying equipment. Technically exciting, details things such as procedures, off-limit rooms, and fibre-splitting.

Undetectable "stealth" rootkits are infecting Windows XP SP2 Machines

From E-Week:

"In a rare discussion on the severity of the Windows malware scourge, a Microsoft security official said businesses should consider investing in an automated process to wipe hard drives and reinstall operating systems as a practical way to recover from malware infestation.

"When you are dealing with rootkits and some advanced spyware programs, the only solution is to rebuild from scratch. In some cases, there really is no way to recover without nuking the systems from orbit," Mike Danseglio, program manager in the Security Solutions group at Microsoft, said in a presentation at the InfoSec World conference here.

Offensive rootkits, which are used hide malware programs and maintain an undetectable presence on an infected machine, have become the weapon of choice for virus and spyware writers and, because they often use kernel hooks to avoid detection, Danseglio said IT administrators may never know if all traces of a rootkit have been successfully removed."