Posts by Mike Dailly

Of laptops and US border searches

What is reasonable?

I think the big difference is that when they look through your luggage, they dont keep the contents. I suspect no one would mind if they ask you to flick through files/folders, but copying it and keeping it is too much.

Data pimping: surveillance expert raises illegal wiretap worries

Isn't this basiclly stalking?

Aside from the nastyness of handing over private records, I'm fairly sure if someone was following your everymove you could get them stopped on grounds that they are stalking you....computer or not... you have the right to go about your life without that kind of attention.

Woolworths stores to stop selling HD DVD

Sad day for the consumer.....

Yes, the evil of Blue ray has won. And its a sad sad day. Whaterver happened to treating the consumer with respect? Not Sony; hell no. They bring out hughly expensive hardware, then just as its starting to pick up, they change the spec and make everything they've sold so far (aside from the PS3) obsolite.

And whoes to say they won't screw with the public in the future? So if you want a Blue Ray player, you HAVE to buy a PS3 other wise it could be killed off within a year!

Warner Bros gives all its hi-def loving to Blu-ray

Sales will tell....

First, I do think simply claiming that BlueRay has 10 billion players (or whatever) is wrong, as only a fraction of them will be used for video playback; most are for games. HDDVD sales are all for video/movies. So it would be interesting to get real figures. I do know many that have a PS3 and do watch movies, but most simply dont own one (in the UK).

The other big concern is that in the UK, BlueRay is simply more expensive. Until pretty reciently a player would cost you around £600, and films were around £5 more. This is changing a little, but HDDVD is still quite a bit cheaper.

The other issue is region coding. Now its true that americans simply dont care as they (for the most part) dont watch anything other than region 1 (and probably dont even know any other regions exist), but here in europe its a major factor. I like HD DVD because not only do I get region free but on some disks I get both versions, so on my projector, I can use the HD version, and on the TV I can use the DVD version.

I think this time next year it will be pretty much decided, and I hope HD will win, but what I suspect is BlueRay will win in the US, but may not in Europe; at least its not a done deal.

I dont even know which BlueRay player to buy as they've just changed the spec and made many players redundent - I wouldn't be happy if I'd bought one of the early £1000 blueray players to "support" the format.

HDDVD format is stable, region free, and simply cheaper with the added bonus of dual HDDVD and DVD. I really hope it wins..... but only sales will tell...... (or doggy backdoor Sony deals).

Ships pollute more than planes

It never ends.....

CO2 levels will neverf be solved by cutting back - ever! The world economy is growing fast, and cutting a little off everything will only slow it down, it wont fall. Goverments have to get to gether and invent new technology or its just not worth it. Even if the UK just switched off everything for ever, we'd still be stuffed. It has to be a world solution with new tech, or we should all just go home and wait for the earth to kill us all.