Friday, April 28, 2006

Stupid Decisions Part II

Mario?

The Texans have lost it. It was a win-win situation in deciding between Reggie Bush and Vince Young. They choice neither. This is like being given the choice between a BMW and a Porshe and saying, "Nah, my Honda is doing just fine".

Now if they had chosen Bush there was always going to be part of the crowd that would say "See how well Vince is doing? We could have had him!". But at least you would have Bush. Now we get twice the effect; every great play by Reggie or Vince is going to illicit groans.

I was getting really excited for the Texans after the coaching change and the new direction they seem to be taking. But now i just won't care about the team. I don't wish them ill (unlike some people), but I won't care.

Stupid Decisions Part I

I'll try not to make fun of this. I think I will probably keep calling it the Nintendo Revolution. Nintendo Wii just sounds stupid. It really seems like Sony and MS are the serious businessmen whereas Nintendo is just happy to be in the game, sitting in the corner smoking a joint.

And as far as a maker of consoles goes, I'll take the businessmen. Leave the dope for the game developers. Most gamers like to get high anyway, right?

The only saving grace of this console is the cost. It's supposed to be 200 or lower. The wild card that the entire project depends upon is the controller. If it works well and is intuitive, then it really would be revolutionary.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

/* No Comment */



I'm not sure whether this affects CougarCS or not but I thought I'd bring it up.
Found it at thinkgeek. But I think it was an old idea anyway.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Patent Wars II

I can't even make sense of this lawsuit. Lucent has some kind of patent on displaying dvds. They are suing MS for the 360, but not the original XBOX because it can replay dvds. Because the original XBOX "used a dongle to enable playback of DVDs. The dongle was provided by a Lucent licensee. The current version of the Xbox does not use the dongle; therefore, it is decoding the video in the console."

This is what a dongle is if you're curious.

[Scratches head and quits thinking about it]

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

NetFlix vs. Blockbuster

This is weird and alarming. Netflix claims they have patented their little wishlist/queue and blockbuster ripped them off. Still further they are suing saying that "dvd rental for unlimited amount of time without late fees" was one of their patented ideas.

As a Netflix user I am very weary of their policies. Their throttling practice really annoyed me when I had more time for movies. But how far can they take this suit? I also have a Gamefly account which does the exact same thing as Netflix/Blockbuster's Online service except it is for videogames. Will Netflix sue them next? And can you really patent a business model? Has that ever been done before?