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The story in question: "The DVD War Against Consumers" on BusinessWeek.com David H. Holtzman of BusinessWeek: You need to do some more research. This guy has no idea what AACS does and I'm surprised this article was even published.  For starters, he needs to go to wikipedia.com and search for AACS . It has nothing to do with downscaling non-HDCP video outputs.  It is an advanced content sharing system that enables the exact functionality he is championing. It allows users to distribute the content of HD-DVD/Blu-Ray disc across multiple devices for personal use.  These copies are encrypted, so they can't be shared widely on downloadRead More →

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I saw the third X-man movie this weekend and was very impressed. This trilogy provided the most satisfying story arc of any set of science fiction movies since the original Star Wars (Matrix 3 was kinda of a let down.) Of course, having decades of comic books from which to borrow story lines helps the writing / planning of short- and long-term stories. The special effects and action sequences were a couple of notches above the previous two movies, so I think that make this the best of the three. This movie instantly became one of my all-time favorite science fiction movies and I can’tRead More →

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As soon as I walked into the theater and glanced up at the trailers on the screen, I knew that I wasn’t watching film.  I immediately suspected that I was looking at the output from a digital projector. Digital projection was first introduced in many cities a few years earlies, but not in Indianapolis.  I wondered how digital would compare to film and if it really was an enhancement or just a method of lowering distribution costs.  Make no mistake, the image is superior to film. What I immediately noticed was the vivid colors on the screen.  Images were more saturated without being over-saturated.  IRead More →

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Directed by J.J. Abrams I’ll start off by saying I was not really a fan of the first two movies. They were OK, but not great. Too much action with too little plot to hold it together. I would have definitely waited for this movie to come to DVD before viewing except for the fact that it is directed by J.J. Abrams (of Alias, Lost, and Felicity fame). In general, I’m partial movies directed by those with a background in TV (Joss Whedon for one) because they tend to slip in a bit more character development and are more mindful of plot holes. This wasRead More →

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In: Web
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Say you have a brother-in-law (a.k.a. bother-in-law) and he is a web developer and he develops almost exclusively for Microsoft products. You know, the type that develops those web pages at work that are only viewable in Internet Explorer because they are not even close to being W3C compliant. What is the best way to get him to see the light and switch to Firefox? I’m not sure this is the best way to present the argument, but here are some thoughts: Advantages of the browser itself: Tabbed browsing – once you start using tabs that open with a center mouse button click, you can’tRead More →

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In: Web
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I've been working on a branding project that required consistent use of color throughout every aspect of the company.  The specified standard was a Pantone color.  I figured I'd search the web and find a color equivalency  converter.  I found several, and most all of them gave different results.  So I called Pantone and got the exact HEX (html) / RGB conversion values.  It turns out, only one of the color conversion sites was correct.  And the winner for best Pantone color conversion goes to: SEO Consultants http://www.seoconsultants.com/css/colors/conversion/Read More →

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Seating Location: Third row in the center. This is my second INXS concert in two months. I never thought I’d be doubling-up on INXS, but the first concert was a total surprise and I’m back for more. I was expecting the concert to be pretty much identical to the previous concert. I was impressed that it wasn’t. These guys are a real band. Not only was the setlist extremely different, but the songs they did play were not the same. They weren’t afraid to stick an extended bridge in here and there. The music was just as great as the first show, but the addedRead More →

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In: Home Theater
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As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve build a media server to store all of my music and movies for playback throughout my house. I decided to store everything the original, lossless format. This means that music is stored at full CD bit rate, and more significantly, movies are backed-up with all menus and extras in the original file format. Although I could save a bunch of space by compressing everything to a different format, I want to keep everything in the original format. The drawback is that this requires quite a bit of disk space, more than I originally anticipated. I justed addedRead More →

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Setlist After attending a great O.A.R. concert in Bloomington a couple of months before, I really looking forward to a repeat. My sister-in-law Wendy, who works at Butler, was kind enough to stop by the box office the day tickets went on sale and got Nicole and I some great seats. Unfortunately, there was some confusion about the start time because the Clowes Box Office can’t figure out Daylight Saving Time. The Clowes website has one time, the ticket another, and the O.A.R. website another. We pick what we think is the correct time but arrive about 30 seconds after the O.A.R. starts playing; weRead More →

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I’ve been looking for easy-to-use software to convert DVDs to XVID files to play on my Treo 650 (using the excellent The Core Pocket Media Player). I was about to purchase Lathe from Omniquiti when I found out that it is based on Pocket Divx Encoder, which uses GLP (link to license). In the Lathe forums, those who have purchased Lathe report that also states in the help file that it is distributed under GPL. Unfortunately, according to the thread, they have basically refused to release the codes by ignoring all requests. This is similar to the tactic taken by Simple Devices, as I reportedRead More →