Geek vs Life

Check this out. Someone actually built a working jet pack. If I weren’t so afraid of heights, I would so want one.

The dust has cleared and one winner was left standing as Toshiba announced earlier today that it would halt production on it’s line of HD-DVD players.

With Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Pioneer and JVC backing the Blu-Ray, it was pretty much just matter of time before HD-DVD spun it’s last cycle and went the way of the Betamax.

The news follows the announcement last week that Netflix, Walmart and Best Buy were going to phase out the use of the HD DVD format. With fewer and fewer options when it comes to finding the format in stores or even studios who would release movies that way, Toshiba has made the right albeit hard decision.

Implications of the HD DVD demise reaches even further than just the movie sales market, the video game market will feel the shockwaves of this as well.

Last years hot topic issue was net neutrality and how we had to protect it. Battles were fought, petitions were signed but on Thursday September 6th, the following happened:

“The Justice Department this week issued its support for a tiered approach to Internet service, and said that the imposition of net neutrality laws would hinder the continued growth of the Web.”-Chloe Albanesius, PCmag.com (Sept 07)

“The Justice Department today said Internet service providers should be allowed to charge a fee for priority Web traffic.”-Dibya Sarkar, Seattle Times

“The Bush administration believes that government regulators should be “highly skeptical” of net-neutrality regulations and instead rely on competition to protect consumers.”-ZDnet.co.uk

Thought this was pretty interesting while I was trolling around the newspapers. Appearently Microsoft has come up with a new “tabletop computer” that uses hand movements and touch to manipulate what you’re doing. For now they think its going to be pretty commercial, if it is used much at all in the next few years, but it’d be really interesting to see how they do gaming on this thing (rock paper scissors with your computer… heh)

The company plans to unveil a computing device today called Microsoft Surface, featuring a 30-inch screen embedded in an acrylic tabletop. The device’s electronic guts are hidden in the low-slung table’s thick pedestal.

At first glance, Surface is reminiscent of an old-fashioned arcade game table around which patrons played Pac-Man. But there is no joystick here, and no mouse or keyboard either. The device is controlled by touching the tabletop display.

Two years ago, Verizon was the first cell phone company approached for the exclusive iPhone contract. Verizon declined the deal because Apple wanted too much.

Apple would, according to the agreement, get a percentage of the cellular contract and would control where the phones were sold, as well as be the primary service contact. Verizon felt that Apple would be coming between them and their customers.

Cingular didn’t think so, so when Verizon vetoed the deal, they were waiting with open arms.

Read more here.

Apple really is scary, if you ask me. Mad with power. Building giant robots with freeway on ramps for arms and hearts as black as night. Oh, wait…no. That’s me.