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.

more evidence of spring.

the great blue heron is back. i saw him wednesday afternoon walking home from work. at least, i assume it's a him. one would expect the females to be sitting on eggs this time of year, not standing nonchalantly in a creek maybe a hundred feet from traffic.

and i saw a bluebird this year! apparently, they're coming back to the area. it's odd, development hasn't slowed a bit, but we're getting birds back. not only bluebirds and herons, but raptors as well. i've seen more hawks in the past year or so than i ever saw when i was a kid. my dad and i figure that now all the farms are being turned into developments, farmers aren't killing them anymore. funny how that works, isn't it? you'd expect the destruction of open space to result in the destruction of the wildlife, not cause it to thrive. i suppose the alternative explanation is that as human growth encroaches on what used to be the animals' habitat, human-animal interaction will increase, cf. mountain lions in california. i'm not entirely sure that works around here, though, because it's not wild open space that's being built on, but rather space that was already human-occupied. not that i'm an ecologist or an environmental scientist either. perhaps some research is in order. i have heard from other sources already that the eastern bluebird, at least, is actually experiencing a resurgence in this area.

also, all of my tomatoes have now sprouted. would anyone like some tomato plants? :)

i have created life.

my tomatoes have sprouted!

well. some of them.

happy easter.

another spring holiday.

i'm sick. "late flu season" indeed.

good friday service.

one good thing about helping to organize communion at the church this time of year is that i am never faced with the (admittedly somewhat unique) question: is the communion bread kosher for passover?

happy passover.

i ate too much last night ^_^ i shall have to make more matzo balls. i believe it is impossible to have too much matzo ball soup. mmmm....

too far?

last friday we went to see Thank You For Smoking (which, btw, i recommend. it's very funny). it is an R-rated film. attached to the film was a trailer for a new movie called United 93, about the flight of that number which crashed into a field in western pennsylvania on september 11, 2001.

yes, that flight.

from what i understand, the hour-and-a-half long movie is more or less supposed to be in real-time, showing what happened on that flight, bolstered mostly by the phone calls the passengers made before it went down. i can understand that. it seems the movie was made under consultation with the families of the victims, and they feel it's a respectful treatment of the topic. it's slated to screen at the Tribeca Film Festival in lower manhattan.

the issue i had with the trailer is that they cut to the news footage clip of the first tower at the world trade center on fire and the second plane coming in and hitting the south tower.

what. the. fuck.

it's a freaking movie trailer! they don't warn you, they don't have a note that it's attached to the film. you're in there for entertainment, and you see that shot, and it's not a movie, it's not special effects. everyone knows that image. you're watching real people dying on screen. i mean, you have a choice not to go see the movie. i personally won't, i don't think. but you can go see it, if you want. people can make responsible choices. but i'm sorry, i don't expect to see that shot, probably one of the most iconic shots of that day, up on a movie screen for entertainment. they had to stop screening the trailer in a manhattan theatre because people were getting so upset, and quite frankly, i'm with them. sure, make the film. tell people it's out there. but don't use fucking news footage like that in a movie trailer, especially one for a comedy. i don't care if it's an R-rated comedy, and the audience is supposed to be adults prepared to encounter adult themes. it may not be too early to make a movie about sept 11, but it is definitely too early to use that kind of footage in a trailer for it.

of time, and other things.

alright, let's see if blogspot will eat this post. nothing strikes confidence in the heart of a blogger like clicking "Publish Post" and getting the message, "This blog cannot be found."

passover starts wednesday night. so why have i just put a loaf of banana bread in the oven? banana-cherry bread, no less. i'm having a love affair with dried cherries, at the moment. probably because i don't like the taste of ripe bananas, but i also don't want to throw them out. i guess i'll be eating a lot of banana bread over the next 3 days.

post-eating aside, this blog is suffering again, i've noticed. i come up with all these cool ideas while i'm at work, but i can't blog from the office anymore, and equally, since i don't even have my own office anymore, typing them out and mailing them to myself at home is equally fraught with potentially unhappy consequences. the problem is, once i get home, i'm so tired. all i want to do is veg.

oh look. people are over.