PS3 And Inconveniencing The User

 General, Media  No Responses »
May 312007
 

Sony have recently upgraded the firmware available for PlayStation 3s; one of the features is for “upscaling” DVDs to HD resolution. Not exactly the same thing as blue ray, but definitely worth having especially given my situation. However Sony will only upscale DVDs over an HDMI connection to the TV; if you are limited to a component connection for some reason, you are out of luck.

Now this is not solely Sony’s fault as there is an agreement in place to not release equipment to upscale over any kind of TV connection that does not support anti-piracy measures such as HDCP(?). That rules out component cables.

So what is the reason for this ? To prevent piracy, but who is going to pirate “upscaled” DVDs which will offer quality less than blue ray disks and won’t play on DVD players ? Seems a little unlikely to me, or at least it is unlikely to be a serious commercial threat.

The media companies are yet again inconveniencing the legitimate consumer in the name of preventing piracy despite the evidence that pirates can get around the restrictions anyway.

Wildlife And Farming

 General  No Responses »
May 262007
 

There’s a news item on at the moment about some endangered bears in the Italian Apennine mountains, and the farmers there who are not so keen on them because they steal what the farmers produce.

What I can never understand is why the most obvious solution to this is not tried. Farmers raise livestock to sell in the marketplace; if a wild animal steals that livestock, they lose money. Make up that money fairly (with the price set to what it would have been in the marketplace) and the farmers are likely to stop grumbling so much.

Hell, instead of grumbling about wild animals (and in some cases wandering off in stealth and attempting to terminate the careers of some wild animals) they are likely to suddenly start encouraging the wild animals to breed!

The Motorist, The Pedestrian, Roads and Council Tax

 General, Politics  No Responses »
May 262007
 

A bit of an odd mixture, but this all occurred to me when I was waiting 2 minutes at a pedestrian crossing for a chance to cross the road in 10 seconds; at which point I would have to do this all over again.

It occurred to me that most of the cars whizzing past my nose were being driven by people who didn’t pay the local council tax which funds the local roads whereas I do. Seemed a little unfair that they get more time to get across the crossing than I do, when it is my money paying for everything. Don’t get me wrong … whilst I might like the roads to be a bit cheaper, and we should spend more money on public transport, I still think the roads are worth having.

Of course it is not a simple matter where every pedestrian is a tax payer and every motorist is an outside who doesn’t pay the council tax. And motorists will say that their road tax is being used to pay for the roads … which is true for motorways (which I’m not commenting on here), but not the case for local roads.

I just think we need to redress the balance between the pedestrian and the motorist a little more.

Historically we have gone to an enormous amount of effort to keep traffic moving, and it is time to accept that it just isn’t possible with the levels of traffic we can have in today’s cities. And giving pedestrians a bit more priority on the roads is the polite thing to do given that we are helping pay for the roads. We need equal time to cross the roads that motorists have to cross the pedestrian crossings, and we need more pedestrian crossings.

If it takes a motorist 20 minutes to traverse my city rather than 15 minutes, so what? The motorist will still be well ahead of the pedestrian who will take an hour or more for the same journey so they will still be well ahead.

You Know You’re Getting Old When …

 Film, General, Humour  No Responses »
Apr 282007
 

Whilst watching TV you wait for the adverts despite the fact your bladder is bursting. When the adverts come on, you rush out, visit the loo, make a coffee, get a sandwich, and get back to find the programme has started whilst you were absent and you’ve missed a bit.

The you realise that with a PVR this was so unnecessary :-

  1. You could have pressed <pause> at any time.
  2. And you were watching a recording anyway.

Time For Healthy Packaged Food

 General  3 Responses »
Apr 172007
 

One of the things that irritates me whenever there is any kind of programme on TV about healthy eating is re-learning just how bad pre-packaged meals are. And even more, every time I get lectured to by some pompous food guru who tells me I just need to spend the time to cook my own food to eat healthily.

But I don’t want to use my spare time to cook. I don’t really enjoy it, and I’m often in need of food when I arrive back tired from doing something I prefer. Convenience food is ideal for me, except for the health aspect. I’m quite happy to eat healthily and do try, but convenience food is too convenient to give up.

So why is convenience food bad ? The traditional trend has been for manufacturers to add salt and sugar to cheap ingredients to make them taste ‘better’, and to reduce the price. I would be quite happy to spend a little bit more for a healthier product and I dare say many others would be too.

Rather than be told that we need to cook our food from scratch, it would be better if the TV pundits told us that but also tried to persuade the manufacturers to produce healthier convenience food … perhaps by highlighting products that are good. No matter how hard people campaign, many people will not switch from convenience foods, so improving convenience foods will probably have a greater effect on the health of the nation than just telling us we need to behave better and not be so lazy.

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