Slow HD

I’ve found something quite amusing.

Have you ever seen those adverts for Sky Plus HD. And I don’t mean the billboards. I mean the TV adverts.

Have you ever noticed that they all slow down. They go in slow motion.

I’ve been trying to right this next sentence for about 5 minutes and I just can’t get the right words. Finally got there. I don’t see how they can make it look so much better on the advert, on a standard definition TV to make us buy Sky HD. I’m not saying it does look better. It is just slow. But they seem to think that

1. Slowing it down will give us more detail and make us want to buy it.
2. They can make it look like HD on an SD TV.

I don’t think I’ve explained myself properly, but yeah, thats all I’m gonna try, because I’ll just annoy myself if I try more.

Open…

Ok, so I was thinking recently of all the open-source things there are now. Granted, in some cases, they aren’t as featureful, or mature, and their proprietry counterparts, because they are newer, but I can’t think of any proprietry program that there isn’t an open-source counterpart to.

There is even an open-source IM protocol (jabber), an open source micro-blogging tool (identi.ca) and an open-source map (openstreetmap.org).

I was also looking at the progress of open-source programs, and realised that, although they are newer than some, they are progressing much quicker. The problem is, a lot of the time, they are trying to use features that propreitry ones do, so that people wanting to switch to open-source don’t feel like they have to stay with proprietry. However, because of this, they are slightly behind because they don’t know what the proprietry programs are going to be doing.

Of course, in other circumstances, we are ahead of proprietry programs. Granted, Windows Vista Ultimate edition uses some 3D desktop effects, but they are nowhere near the amount in Compiz-fusion.

On the quest for Ubuntu replacement. Part 1: Fedora 9

Ok, so I had heard that the new version of Fedora came out, and I thought I would check it out, as I like to toy with new distros to see if anything can replace ubuntu for me.

So I got the latest edition of Linux Format, which contained a DVD containing Fedora 9.

I booted up the install, installed it onto my laptop, and booted it up. So, pros first

1. Very fast boot time
2. The sideways scroll on my touchpad worked
3. Wireless worked out the box
4. Nice default screen
5. Still uses Gnome as default

And the cons

1. Don’t like packagekit, the new package manager for it, so I installed YumEx…it works, but still not amazing
2. Could not for the life of me, install ATI driver, and so couldn’t get compiz working
3. It seemed to be missing quite a lot of default Bash commands, and I didn’t know why
4. The network manager was a bit iffy…it would disconnect me every like 10 minutes

So, to be honest, I didn’t like it that much, the cons outweighed the pros, so I reverted back to Ubuntu. I’m still on the quest for an ubuntu replacement.

Ubuntu Upgraded

I’ve finally upgraded my Ubuntu to 8.04, so I shall look around it, and see what is good and stuff, and I shall come back with what I think is good and bad and stuff.

Visions of the future

OK, so I just read the latest New Scientist magazine, and saw a competition that they had set up. Called “Visions of the Future”. The only thing annoyed me was the fact that it was in conjunction with Microsoft, however in general it is quite an interesting competition, and it got me thinking. Basically, they asked for you to send in what you think is going to happen with technology in the future.

So this got me thinking about what I think could happen with computing in the future. Now in the past few years, I’ve thought of a few ideas that I think will happen with computing, and then a while after thinking it, I saw things happening to show that it will happen.

For example, a few years ago I raved to everyone I know about how we are going to get wireless electricity. This way, we could have truly wireless laptops…with absolutely no cables if thats what you wish, then, my sister sent me a link showing me that wireless electrcity was actually in development, and it had been used to power a 60W lightbulb.

Then, last year I went really big with a idea that one day we will get an international wireless network…a bit like mobile phone network, but with better signal, and faster. Then, a few weeks ago, I read google’s blog, and they just announced that they were starting up a joint venture with a few companies to create an American-wide wireless network.

So basically its made me think a lot more about the future of computing and how far we’ve come.

If we take wireless electricity, throw in a renewable energy source so we don’t kill the world, add a pinch of international wireless network, use the booming mini-laptop industry and combine it all with IPv6 which is about to come out, and you can get nearly the whole world connected via the internet.

It just shows so much potential.

Microsoft Windows XP SP3

I have been looking into this and have found an amusing number of mishaps and problems with XP SP3.

• Was held up for a week before being released, because of incompatibilities with some of MS own software
• Completely crashed HP computers with AMD chipsets, with no known way of recovery.
• Stopped remote access to Windows Home Server machines.
• Put some computers into an infinite reboot loop.
• Stopped some computers from being able to boot, or even being able to access the bios!!!
• Is incompatible with some software, such as ATI’s catalyst

So, some interesting things with XPs SP3. This could be a number of things. It could be, that Microsoft have become lax with their coding, as the endless reboot also appeared in some Vista SP1 upgrades. It could be Microsoft with their “Screw you…upgrade” attitude…or they might just not be caring about anyone who is using Windows XP, so don’t need to check their patches beforehand.

All in all, I think it would be wise for any unfortunate XP users not to upgrade to SP3 until all the problems are fixed. I’m not sure what SP3 actually adds to XP, or whether it is just more to slow your computer down to make you go out and buy a new one with Vista on it, but only time will tell.