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SXSW

I will be letting you know of all major incidents at South by South West.

My Thoughts On Tech For March 2nd

Blu-Ray Players, and HDDVD players. OK well lets back up a little, There are two new formats that both produce 1080p resolution. Blu-Ray, and HDDVD. HDDVD is cheaper to make and produce, but only has 15GB of single layer capacity. But Blu-Ray has a cooler name, and holds 25GB single layer disc, and 50GB! on a duel layer disc. Cheaper usually wins. But personally, I would prefer to have blu-ray in my home. A Month ago, it was CES 2007. The big thing was the format war. Blu-ray, or HDDVD? LG came out with a duel format disc player, which played both of the two formats. However, that player was $1,300 dollars. Which is not bad considering that a HDDVD player is $999, and so is a Blu-ray player. However, as usual, the costs have come down. Sony, which is one of the supporters of Blu-ray has announced that they will be selling a $599 dollar blu-ray player. Which gets me thinking, at the end of the year, will there be 1080p disc players as low as $200? The price is not the only thing holding buyers back, the fact that some movie producers are leaning toward Blu-ray, and others HDDVD is also a huge problem. Some of us just do not want to spend thousands of dollars on a disc player. Now for a history lesson.when we look back at the introduction of DVD, we realize that they started out anywhere from $700 to $3,800. And now look, you can get one at Wal-Mart for $20. So we can expect lower prices, we will just have to wait. As far as the different producers problem, Sony, Disney, and Fox are distributing in Blu-Ray. And other companies for Blu-Ray consist of HP, Apple, Dell, and Panasonic. HDDVD, has more of the major studios backing them up. These include Playboy, yes, porn in 1080p, how nice, New Line Cinema, HBO, Paramount Pictures, Dreamworks, & Warner Bro. Other companies that back them up are Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo, Microsoft, RCA, & Intel. Sure, it would mean putting a little more money into upgrading the centers were the discs are made, but it would be very worth it. 50GB Discs, the best you could get 12 months ago was 4.7GB. Big difference. In slightly less annoying news, ROBOTS ARE GOING TO KILL US ALL! Well, not quite, but they may make you dinner. For the last four years, a group of Japanese researchers have been developing a robot that will work in the kitchen for you. As of today, it can not cook you dinner, but it will pour you tea without spilling, every time, that's more than I can do already. But they can also do dishes for you. True, they are not cooking dinner yet, but this is a start. But if they start feeding you, I am going to decide that we have most definitely gone too far in our love of robots. Who knows what it will do to me. I think it should be a law that all robots that have any sort of intelligence, should have two key fobs. One goes to the military, and the other goes to the owner of the robot. They both are emergency shut off switches. I would feel much more comfortable if that system were in place. What else, ummm, a combo TV Stand-fireplace, find the nearest Starbucks by text message, not much else. I will let you know if something catches my eye.

-Ryan

Here is a link to the features and specs of Blu-Ray, and HDDVD:

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i224/ryanbrooks33/Picture1.png

Damn The Auto Industry

I am a little pissed at the auto industry right now. Nobody seems to be getting along. Chrysler has been up for sale apparently, but nobody except GM are interested in buying them. Chinese companies SAIC & FAW thought about it, but then decided that Chrysler is too shitty of a company to bother investing in. Which is true. They are below average in quality. But I am a huge fan of Dodge styling and the SRT vehicles. Did you hear the fucked up information from Chevrolet? OK, GM makes three quality cars in my opinion, The Chevrolet Impala, the Pontiac Grand Prix, and the Chevrolet Monte Carlo. My favorite of them is the Monte Carlo, but you know what, as of June 20, 2007 the production of the Monte Carlo will be cancels because nobody really wants to buy a Monte Carlo. But if you ask me, it is all in advertising, and GM has always done a shitty job of doing that. If I could pick one thing that I think is most essential fr marketing cars, I would say advertising. For one reason, it works. I have always hated scion, not the tC, but the xA, and the xB I think are. . . different, but they are extremely slow. So at the auto show when they were introduced, I looked and said, wow, whats that. I want to see the 103 hp rating and walked away never expecting to look back at scion again. Then I saw those pimping commercials, and I was on their website researching like crazy, because people buy cars based on what is hot. And if you tell the public that the Monte Carlo is hot, it is reliable, and it is fast, as well as it will "fit in with the costumers scenes", they will be in the showroom the next day. They did not have to cancel. But GM has never really made sense to me. Ma by they didn't think that it worth the campaign. I think they would have better luck if they tried to market the cobalt and the HHR with that type of advertising. And had no haggle pricing. If that were all GM brands, and not just Saturn, they would be selling more cars as well. Mitsubishi is going to get a new designer. Body design that is. Which is not a huge deal. I like the new Eclipse, but other that that they have never really had any good looking cars anyway, so I figure that they can not get much worse.

-Ryan

Read at your Own Risk

What is our world coming to? I was just on crave checking the tech for the 1st of March 2007, and I was shocked. There was the usual TV in a fridge, Cell phone TV is getting better junk, but then the disturbing stuff comes. Some scientists have done a surgery on a pigeon and a monkey to make them remote controlled. That's right, remote controlled. They press a button and they have hacked the pigeon's brain and it takes off. The monkey, they could control it, but they don't. It has lost an arm, and is hooked up to a bionic arm that it is controlling with these brain implants. Next, is a helmet for gamers that detects your thoughts, it makes you mad when you are mad, it makes your character's face look mad and so on. Not only did I not know that this technology was available, but I am scared that anyone can use it to stalk you. Lenovo the laptop brand is recalling 100,000 laptop batteries because they are allegedly overheating and melting people's laptops. In less scary news, a student at Iowa State University has invented a solar purse. It has solar panels all over it forming a stylish pattern. Inside this trendy gadget is a USB plug to charge up your tech. Hey, if I were into carrying a purse around, I would get one and always have my iPod's battery full when I needed it to be. As many mobile phone manufactures are producing champagne colored phones, of coarse Helio had to get one. It is a slider. I personally think that champagne colored phones are one of the worst ideas since the CellSensor device that will let you know if there are severe electro-magnetic waves coming from your cell phone. Now I can understand how you would worry about these things, but would you pay money for a device that tells you if your phone is creating electro-magnetic waves. And if it is today, it is most likely going to tommorrow, and the next day and so on. So why would you buy this? Ummm. . . I got nothing.

All things listed can be found at crave.cnet.com in which you can fear the creepy ideas, and love the awesome ones.

Tough Luck Linux Lovers

As much as we all would love to be able to have linux pre-installed on our Dell laptops, and all the open source software in the world, Dell says no. We would have to put in a little bit of thought and effort to train our costumer service poeple. So dont expect any time soon.