Author Archives: CmdrChalupa

10 Reasons Why High Definition DVD Formats Have Already Failed

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This article lists some pretty good reasons why HDDVD is going wrong, and I agree with most of them, but this had me nodding and going “yes!”:

For many people, getting into HDTV is all about the widescreen and being able to see their DVDs with more clarity than ever before. When Billy Bob comes home with his new high definition 720p display, the difference between that and his older SD TV is amazing – at least when he’s watching DVDs. You see, that’s the problem – and it’s two-fold. While most consumers are still getting into the HDTV craze, they’re already impressed. And the difference between SD TV and HDTV is more amazing than the difference between 480p DVDs and 1080i downrezzed high definition discs.The other side of the coin is the lack of HD content available on TV – and this is a biggie. While Billy Bob is impressed by his DVD player, he is dumbfounded by his cable TV – which actually looks worse than it did on his old set (mostly because it’s bigger). You see, nobody told Billy Bob that he’d have to get an antenna or subscribe to HD service from his cable/satellite provider. He was also not told that most of his favorite shows (Billy likes sitcoms and the Sci-Fi Channel) aren’t yet available in HD, regardless of technology or service provider. As a result, many Americans are underwhelmed or feel like they got burned by HDTV. The last thing they’re going to do is rush out and buy the next greatest thing.

Count me as already pretty impressed with HDTV, and yet here I am watching the latest reality show, on a broadcast HD channel, and it’s in the plain old SD format.

The networks need to get it together.  And I am not upgrading anything to HD-DVD for a long, long time.

Sony not so concerned with market share

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 This is hilarious…
Engadget:

Silly us, we thought Sony was planning on grabbing market share in this console generation, but we were oh so wrong. "The name of the game is not market share, it's how fast we can grow the industry," says David Reeves, head of Sony Europe, who went on to say "We want to try and double digital entertainment in the next five to six years. Whether we have 40, 50, or 60 per cent market share is not that important." Good to know guys, we're really sorry for getting on your case about all this stuff, we had no idea you're not feeling so competitive this time around.

Heck, as long as your all about "growing the business" why not price the console at $1000 and grow the business even more!

PirateBay.Org Raided!

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News Here:

The seizure of ThePirateBay.org’s entire server farm will guarantee this BitTorrent tracker will remain offline until the police complete their investigation. The uncertainty on the part of the police may stem from the fact ThePirateBay.org's servers only host .torrent files, not actual copyrighted material. As a tracker, ThePirateBay.org's function is to index .torrent files and to direct BitTorrent traffic and maintain the swarm (uploads and downloads.) The downloaded .torrent file contains all the necessary information to locate and download the queried file. The legality of indirectly linking to copyrighted material has yet to be tested by Swedish courts.

Whether this will keep ThePirateBay.org offline indefinitely is another matter.

“We are not sure when it will return, but we are moving it to another country if necessary,” brokep said.

Time to find another source for your warez.  You know who you are. 

Sweet Little Utility.

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OK here's the situation:

-The HVAC system in our building is monitored by a PC and some software.

-The software is about ten years old, and can be installed from the original floppy disks, about ten of them.

-Yes, I said floppy disks.

-No the building owner doesn't want to upgrade to the latest software, that would be a lot more than they want to pay.

-No they weren't on maintenance.

-Upgrade Path? No, no upgrade path.

-Did I mention the software only runs on Windows 98?

So the original pc died a couple years back and they bought a compusa-cheapest-pc-possible-to-buy and put the original 4gb HDD in it.

-Yes, I said 4GB.

-You can stop laughing now.

-No I am not going to try to reinstall this POS software on another copy of windows 98. If worst comes to worst, I have a ghost image of the hdd that I will blast onto a new hdd.

-So then I taught the building super how to boot back and forth between the two hdd's by switching the boot order in the BIOS. The newer Hdd is used for email and internet, the older one for the aforementioned hvac system.

-So just last week the cheap POS dies on us. Now what? After ruling out the Power supply we figure the motherboard is fried since we get no power whatsoever.

-This is one of these cheap mobo's where the CPU is actuall soldered on. (AMD of course), so it's all or nothing.

-Well I took one an old busted box with a broke power supply, upgraded to the new power supply and threw the two hdd's in it, the original one ~1996 and the newer one.

-Only this pc has a problem in that you can't choose which hdd to boot from in the bios. It always boots off the first one in the chain.

-So now I am contemplating showing the building super how to change ribbon cables. That's not going to work.

And that's where this sweet little utility I found today comes in:

GAG, the Graphical Boot Manager

Download it and they have both an iso and a floppy disk image. boot from it and it will…

1. let you custom build a boot loader

2. create a menu to boot off of any disk and partition in your system.

3. Then write that menu to the mbr on the first hdd.

All done! And now the building super simply restarts and selects whatever OS he wants to boot from.

[tag]Gag[/tag] [tag]Graphical Boot Manager[/tag]