Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
Politics & Explosions
I like to think that I do a good job of keeping up with world affairs. Granted, I probably care more about whats happening at home than what is going on abroad, but maybe thats just an American sentiment, maybe its not. It just makes sense to me: be more concerned about yourself, then the rest of the world. Can my foreign friends back me up, or shoot me down on this? Anyway, this line of thought was spurred on by Kosovo declaring their independence last week. I had no idea they weren't an independent country already. I knew that Serbia was no longer administering the province, and I guess I just assumed that meant they were their own nation. CNN says that they were being administered by a joint UN task-force; both keeping the peace, and the law. Most of the EU and also the US recognized Kosovo as its own nation over the weekend and today.
I suppose thats all well and good...but I can understand where Spain and Russia are coming from for refusing to acknowledge it. With Chechnya in a state of rebellion, (or at least something similar to it) and Spain's problems with one of its states wanting to go independent; is it really that surprising a state of a country declaring independence is causing Moscow and Madrid to shiver? Despite that, those countries aren't responsible for genocide either. Of course Chechens might disagree...All in all I think the idea of Kosovo separating away from Serbia will be a good thing. Kosovo has very few Serbs living within its boundaries, which again is probably a good thing.
On a different note, but not completely unrelated. (Okay, its radically different, but it still deals with politics...just business politics). I admit, I'm a Sony basher. I'm not a fan of most of their products, especially the PS3, but to their defense they don't lose as many format wars as people think. They were involved in the CD format, DVDs, flash memory card standards, PS One, PS2. Of course they also had the infamous Betamax debacle, minidiscs, and UMD. The point of this whole comment is that Toshiba's HD-DVD has lost.
The format war is ended and deathwatch has now begun. Its only a matter of time before Blu-Ray is considered winner, (which will be immediately after Toshiba withdraws its HD business which I expect to occur fairly soon). What about you guys, were you guys surprised by the outcome? I'd like to say that from the beginning I was pro-Blu-Ray....but I wasn't. I had little to no faith that it would win. Is it the superior format?...thats debatable, it depends on what you define superior. Blu-Ray is much more expensive to manufacture because of its ability to store such large amounts of data. HD-DVD cant store as much data from the beginning, but its cheaper and it does have the ability in the future to store more data. But, on the flip side: even with high definition movies, there is virtually no reason why you would need such a large storage medium as what Blu-Ray can support. A feature length movie, with no compression would need a large amount of storage (100s of gigabytes), but every movie is always compressed. Ironically compressing it actually makes it easier to decode. Because of this, and my practical sense, I expected the HD-DVD to win. I suppose I didn't anticipate the weight of the PS3's inclusion of the Blu-Ray drive as much as I should. Apart from owners of PS3s, does anyone actually own one of these players as a stand alone player?
So has anyone else heard the further ridiculous conspiracy theories from Mohammad Al Fayed? I particularly enjoyed the part where he claimed Prince Charles's original name is "Frankenstein" and compared the Royal Family to Dracula, but my favorite part is when he called Duchess Camilla: "Crocodile". He goes on to say that Diana was pregnant and that he was the only person Diana and Dodi told. He says that they are covering up the fact that Diana is pregnant. Royal Family politics confuse me, especially since I'm American...but why in God's name would they feel the need to cover it up in such a manner? Whatever. The story gave me a good chuckle.
This is the Explosion part of the post...does anyone watch History Channel's show Shockwave? If you don't, I demand an explanation why you don't. That show is awesome. This is a pretty impressive explosion:
This one was too:
I think its safe to say this is getting a little long and I should probably cut it short here. I also need to get some work done....until next time everyone!
I suppose thats all well and good...but I can understand where Spain and Russia are coming from for refusing to acknowledge it. With Chechnya in a state of rebellion, (or at least something similar to it) and Spain's problems with one of its states wanting to go independent; is it really that surprising a state of a country declaring independence is causing Moscow and Madrid to shiver? Despite that, those countries aren't responsible for genocide either. Of course Chechens might disagree...All in all I think the idea of Kosovo separating away from Serbia will be a good thing. Kosovo has very few Serbs living within its boundaries, which again is probably a good thing.
On a different note, but not completely unrelated. (Okay, its radically different, but it still deals with politics...just business politics). I admit, I'm a Sony basher. I'm not a fan of most of their products, especially the PS3, but to their defense they don't lose as many format wars as people think. They were involved in the CD format, DVDs, flash memory card standards, PS One, PS2. Of course they also had the infamous Betamax debacle, minidiscs, and UMD. The point of this whole comment is that Toshiba's HD-DVD has lost.
The format war is ended and deathwatch has now begun. Its only a matter of time before Blu-Ray is considered winner, (which will be immediately after Toshiba withdraws its HD business which I expect to occur fairly soon). What about you guys, were you guys surprised by the outcome? I'd like to say that from the beginning I was pro-Blu-Ray....but I wasn't. I had little to no faith that it would win. Is it the superior format?...thats debatable, it depends on what you define superior. Blu-Ray is much more expensive to manufacture because of its ability to store such large amounts of data. HD-DVD cant store as much data from the beginning, but its cheaper and it does have the ability in the future to store more data. But, on the flip side: even with high definition movies, there is virtually no reason why you would need such a large storage medium as what Blu-Ray can support. A feature length movie, with no compression would need a large amount of storage (100s of gigabytes), but every movie is always compressed. Ironically compressing it actually makes it easier to decode. Because of this, and my practical sense, I expected the HD-DVD to win. I suppose I didn't anticipate the weight of the PS3's inclusion of the Blu-Ray drive as much as I should. Apart from owners of PS3s, does anyone actually own one of these players as a stand alone player?
So has anyone else heard the further ridiculous conspiracy theories from Mohammad Al Fayed? I particularly enjoyed the part where he claimed Prince Charles's original name is "Frankenstein" and compared the Royal Family to Dracula, but my favorite part is when he called Duchess Camilla: "Crocodile". He goes on to say that Diana was pregnant and that he was the only person Diana and Dodi told. He says that they are covering up the fact that Diana is pregnant. Royal Family politics confuse me, especially since I'm American...but why in God's name would they feel the need to cover it up in such a manner? Whatever. The story gave me a good chuckle.
This is the Explosion part of the post...does anyone watch History Channel's show Shockwave? If you don't, I demand an explanation why you don't. That show is awesome. This is a pretty impressive explosion:
This one was too:
I think its safe to say this is getting a little long and I should probably cut it short here. I also need to get some work done....until next time everyone!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)