After a good, long run at this location... I've decided to move the blog to a brand new home at Wordpress. I've been playing around with WP for a while and decided once and for all I like it better. Besides, nothing like a little change to spice things up, right? So yeah, I won't be posting here anymore, which is sad in a way, but I'm super-excited about my new location and I hope you enjoy it too. Everything, (posts, comments) from the Blogger version has been imported to the Wordpress blog.
Once again, here's the link: http://nestpasblog.wordpress.com/
This is now very old news, but I realized today I never made a post announcing or sharing my thoughts on the end of the format war. In case you live underground and haven't heard, Sony's Blu-ray has triumphed over HD-DVD as the next-generation entertainment/storage medium. I can't say I'm surprised. With a better storage capacity and a name with less than half the syllables of its adversary, Blu-ray has always been the better product in my mind. The final nail in HD-DVD's coffin was when Wal-Mart announced they'd only be carrying Blu-ray and DVDs henceforth. At that point, Toshiba threw in the towel and said they wouldn't be manufacturing any more HD-DVDs.
Do you think Blu-ray discs will be the last physical medium for the Blockbusters of the world to stand on, before Hollywood goes the way of the music industry? (That is, before it dies, slowly and painfully.) This year I've been renting movies a whole lot less than I did last year, despite living even closer to the video store. Although, the pitiful selection at Rogers Video doesn't exactly help. (In the last few weeks they've failed to have: Grosse Pointe Blank, Il Postino, America's Sweethearts, and Equilibrium, among others. Yeah. Shame shame shame!) Still, no matter where you go, nothing quite beats the savory flavor of freeness, something that March's issue of Wiredsays is going to be the new golden standard in the future of business. Indeed, more and more people are discovering the magic of Bittorrent, and sharing proliferates now more than it ever has. It's becoming difficult to keep track of everything.
Just a few days ago, for example, I discovered the amazing Stage6, which is YouTube-like in what it does and Torrent-like in what it delivers. The site offers full TV episodes of just about anything you want, but forget fiddling around with trackers and seeding, and all that other torrent nonsense. A whole episode of, say, Heroes, takes just a few minutes to buffer before it's ready for your viewing pleasure in full DVD-quality. Not bad for a video-hosting site! However, for reasons pertaining to its dubious legality, Stage6 is being shut down tomorrow, probably around midnight. So if you're like me and didn't know about it until now, you missed your chance! Still, we seem to be going through the same motions with movies today as we did with music back in the early 2000s. If you ask me, it's probably just a matter of time. Maybe one day we'll see a model in place where all films and TV are pay-what-you-want, a la Radiohead.
But, back to Blu-ray. One thing that's interesting about it is the fact that the PS3's power to groove with the format du jour is now more enticing. Also, if I remember correctly, they've scored a couple more exclusive and noteworthy titles since I last wrote about it. After all this time, I still want a friggin' Xbox 360. (And it might not be so far off - when I get a job this summer I should be able to meet this price as advertised on Newegg.) But perhaps now the PS3 will start getting some more, well, play. Back in the summer of '07, I got it straight from the horse's mouth that Sony intends for the PS3 to be a general entertainment unit, which seemed risky at the time since the format war was still in full-swing. Also, many gamers feel that software support is ultimately more important than the versatility of the medium. I cautiously count myself among those gamers, but I do see where Sony is coming from. I mean, let's face it: getting a two-for-one is sweet, because electronics are hella expensive. Especially when you're a student who will pay $500 for a course that teaches you how to transcribe English words into the phonetic alphabet, fork over another $100 for the textbook containing this worthwhile information, and then drop the course because, frankly, it kinda sucks. Ahem.
What's your take on the blu-ray takeover? Are you still mourning the passing of HD-DVD, (or thinking of buying a bunch of movies and a player for dirt cheap) or are you dancing on its grave, all decked out in your Sony memorabilia? How long will Blu-ray last, or will it have a lasting effect at all?
One of my friends dugg this image and I liked it so much I just had to post it here. (By "like", I mean it terrifies me.) Click to enlarge.
Sorry for the lack of content on this blog lately. Most of the stuff I'd post here always makes me think, "actually that'd be a good one for my class blog!" so I end up doing it there...since I get marks for it, and stuff. On the subject of net neutrality, though, here's a post I wrote recently explaining it since it came up in class and I was pretty sure a lot of my peers would be unfamiliar with the issue.
You know what, Jack? Forget about giving this struggling new medium a hard time at every turn. That's bad, but it doesn't even come close to using a tragedy, a disaster in which young people lose their lives to further your own twisted agenda. It makes me sick. And then you threaten to sue the school if they don't humor you by sending you some information to support your little argument, which everyone knows is absurd in the first place. Let the people grieve, you twit.
I did not manually change my list of del.icio.us links to a link cloud. Don't know why it's doing that. In fact, I don't even know if it's appearing that way for anyone other than me.
In any case, I'll fix it when I feel like it. I think my blog's earned enough cred looking super-sexy for long enough to hold me over for a couple days.
My reading week starts today. Cool, huh? I'm taking the bus home tonight. More posts and stuff coming soon.
