The Design and Implementation of laffer1

It's the holiday season again. Family fighting and manipulation are rampant. My father finally sent me a birthday gift. It's November. My birthday was in May. Had to make sure it was for this last year. He included a card with a chicken on it. Good way to mend things with a vegetarian. I don't eat meat.

Thanksgiving

My mother came over for Thanksgiving. It was a rather relaxing holiday. My father wasn't around to start shit. I didn't have to deal with the in laws. Usually Caryn's family doesn't bother me, but it's very awkward during the holidays. My family is always rude to them if they run into each other this time of year.

Caryn made a tofurkey, pumpkin pie (Libby's recipe) and the usual veggie fixings. My mother seemed to like it. We ended up watching The Producers on DVD (original) and playing the Wii. She loves Dance Dance Revolution and Wii Sports.

Professors stick us with homework

As usual some of my professors decided to ruin the holidays for their students with tons of bullshit work. I get annoyed because I am usually ready to pull my hair out this time of year anyway. I'm trying to decide how much I have to do and how much can slide until Monday.

CPU

I bought a new CPU for my desktop. It's an Intel core 2 duo 6420 aka 2.13Ghz w/ 4MB Cache. It's helping quite a bit with my system performance. The RAM is now running at 667MHz and the power management is great. In MidnightBSD, one of the cores is slowing down to 800MHz when the system is idle. Some improvements should help with that problem. The heat when first starting the system is almost half. Now the chip runs at 32C instead of the old chip at 60C. I think it will be better as the compound sets in. In Vista, the computer's index is now 5.0. The RAM went from 4.6 to 5.3 and the CPU when from 4.7 to 5.0. Some people don't pay any attention to those tests, but it's still a way to compare systems. I didn't see too many at Best Buy that scored a 5.0 last time I looked several months ago.

The PS3 has been sold as many times as the xbox 360 in first year sales.  The units are comparable and both are overshadowed by the Nintendo Wii. 

There have been many people who have reportedly bought multiple xbox 360s due to failures.  It would be interesting to subtract out duplicate purchases from the figures of each console.  I suspect that the PS3 has actually done better than the xbox in sales.  Remember that the core system was $300 which is half the price of the original PS3 units.  The real question is how many games are getting sold.  That is possibly a better indicator of sales volume.  Many people have speculated that Wii owners aren't buying games.  Unlike the hidef war, there could actually be a winner and loser in the game console war. 

The initial sales figures at retailers show that more DVD players were getting sold than either new format.  The mad rush has not happened.  I've also been reading misinformation on many blogs and websites about studio support for each format. 

HD DVD

Supporters:
Universal/NBC (subsidising the format)
Toshiba (making most of the players)
Microsoft

Studios
Universal
Paramount (exclusive?) 
Warner (both formats)

Porn industry

Blue Ray

Supporters:
Sony
Apple
...Studios
Sony Pictures
Disney
Warner (dual format)
Fox (showing blue ray on their site limitedly)

Technology

Both formats use the same codecs to encode video although blue ray titles tend to use mpeg2 more often (DVD like).  Blue ray has higher capacity discs.  HD DVD players are required to have more interactive features built in which means end users can do more "tricks". 

Price

Toshiba, Universal and Microsoft are intentionally releasing very cheap players to win the format war.  As the technology is similar, the real issues are disc capacity and availability of videos. 

Movies and TV

Most consumers don't know about either format.  Further, both sides have released general purpose titles that don't target people who adopt early.  This is slowing adoption.  Most PS3 owners don't know they have a blue ray player.  Most xbox 360 owners don't know they can add HD DVD for less than $200. 

Paramount is releasing Star Trek on HD DVD.  There are rumors that Indy and Star Wars will go with that format too.  George Lucas also liked laser disc though.  Most people have bought these films recently on DVD and don't want to pay more. 

Universal has released their stupid films like knocked up on HD DVD and until recently did not try to release classics that people really like.  James Bond might be released on HD DVD. Porn might promote the format.  The Porn industry feels that HD DVD is better because they don't have to pay licensing fees to release discs.  It's cheaper for them. 

Blue Ray has done a little better with diversity in films.  Sony has a very strange catalog at the moment with distribution rights on MGM films (although bond is going to fox?)  as well as their own library.  Spider-man, and most of the other marvel films are on Blue Ray.  Disney classics and Pixar releases are going Blue Ray like Cars, Ratatoile, etc.  In the past, Disney has picked the winner. 

In the end, it has to do with who wants to buy the format to go with their new TVs.  If people all go on price, HD DVD wins and the movies will eventually come out. 

Disclaimer: I prefer Blue Ray for two reasons.  1. The capacity of the format is much larger which means it's better for backup on computers (not movies) and there are actually burners for it.  2. I don't like the companies releasing players for HD DVD.  They are mostly known for cheap, low quality products.  If there were more diversity in that camp, I would probably settle for it on price factors.