oh argh.

we are quitting smoking.

this.

is.

not.

easy.

high-definition maundering.

so, there's this whole "hi def" thing going on. a "format war." toshiba has come out with the first volley, the HD-DVD player. last week, at the fabled E3, or Electronic Entertainment Expo, sony debuted their playstation3, complete with promised blu-ray in both models.

from the technology side, i believe i understand the various lines that have been drawn. HD-DVD is cheaper. it's high definition. blu-ray is the (slightly) better technical standard. its algorithm allows more data to be stored on the discs. where things get confusing is when the numbers start getting involved. i think 1080p is the best, but is 720p better than 1080i? and what is "standard definition" anyway?

the political (if you will) lines are a little harder to draw. microsoft, toshiba, and intel are the flag-wavers for HD-DVD. sony is the main voice for blu-ray. because of this, a lot of people want to draw comparisons to sony's previous format failures: betamax, minidisk, memory stick, and UMD. but they're missing a main point there. the reason these technologies failed in the market is because they were developed by sony and kept exclusive to sony. sony refused to license the technology, or at least, to license it at a reasonably price. but a quick glance at the blu-ray homepage shows very quickly that this isn't just another sony vs everyone else fight. this time, sony is leading a veritable consortium of developers and collaborators.

now, i don't have an HDTV, and i'm certainly not planning on dropping $600 for a PS3. i'm also not going to drop $400 on an xbox360, which is the whole reason this format war exists in the first place. yes. i'm actually blaming this whole mess on the xbox *grin* sony and microsoft are rivals in the console industry. they're certainly not rivals anywhere else; sony's computers run microsoft windows, and windows talks happily to the myriad of sony devices available. if ms hadn't jumped into the console fray, i don't believe we'd be seeing this battle. but because it did, and because sony is trying to use the PS3 to lever blu-ray into people's homes the way it banked on people buying the PS2 to be a cheap DVD player, micorsoft has to fight them.

i'm probably just going to wait until my relatively new tv dies, and hope by that time dual-format drives have been on the market long enough to be cheap.

enfranchised.

i just voted in pennsylvania's primary election. i have to say, i have possibly never been more disappointed in our government. there was absolutely no publication of offices, candidates, or issues anywhere. lawn signs barely count. who was running? what offices were up for election? hell, who are the incumbents? if you didn't go to the state website and jump through a labyrinthine series of hoops and search functions, you wouldn't even know who was already representing you in congress, or in the state legislature.

cynically, i know it's completely in the incumbents' interests to not publicize this stuff, because if you don't know anything, either you won't vote, or you'll just vote for the first name on the ballot. i left half the ballot blank because i wasn't even sure what function some of the offices performed. this is both a failing of our educational system and a failing of our government, at all levels. why vote for someone if you don't know what they stand for? which is worse, not voting at all, or voting blind and ignorant? sometimes, i don't know. you're disenfranchised both ways.

a democracy relies on an educated and informed electorate. this is apparently fast becoming the government's worst nightmare.

people around the world are threatened, beaten, and killed for trying to exercise the right that we take for granted. it's a money game, sure, but at least there aren't armed guards standing at our polling stations. i'd encourage anyone who's reading this who is also registered to vote in PA to run out right now and vote, as the polls close at 8pm. assuming you did the same thing and took the time to wade through the horrible, confusing mess of candidates, offices, and issues at stake.

switcher.

alright, here's what i don't get about this whole "intel inna mac" thing. why would suddenly changing to the least efficient processor architecture suddenly make a macintosh such a compelling product?

ok, i can understand it for the laptops. ibm basically said, "fuck you" to apple over the whole mobile G5 thing. they were too busy making the new processors for all the new game consoles to worry about the tiny sliver of the market that was apple laptops. compared with a G4, the intel core duo is actually pretty compelling.

but the desktops? i mean, if you really wanted a mac that badly, what was holding you back from the $500 mac mini? why don't people switch to mac? "there are no applications." well, guess what. that hasn't changed. ooo, yes, now you can boot into windows, but doesn't booting into windows on the mac pretty much destroy the point of buying a mac? same goes for games.

so maybe you wanted OSX. it's a pretty operating system. it really is. and it's stable, and doesn't yet have the marketshare to make it attractive to viruses and spyware. but, come on. if you had the $2000+ laying around for a macbookpro, why didn't you just buy dual G5 tower, which is still faster than the core duo?

maybe it's that the x86 intel architecture is comfortable and soothing and somehow makes the process of switching to apple less traumatic. i dunno. maybe i'm just biased, we have 2 G4s both running OS10.4, so i don't see the big deal about the intel macs. it's not like they made any other part of the hardware easy to upgrade, similar to the normal x86 boxes. a mac is still a mac. it still comes with a one-button mouse, people ;) you're still using MacOS. whatever this new compelling crack is, apple is certainly laughing all the way to the bank over it.