High-Definition video content is the wave of the future, right? The clarity offered by these new technologies simply blows standard definition TV out of the water.

So what’s wrong with HD? Why, I’m glad you asked!

#1) Closed Standards
If it wasn’t such a closed standard, the market might be more accepting. The level of DRM just doesn’t make it worth it for me. I have an early “HD Ready” TV which supports 720p, but doesn’t have HDMI or HDCP. “Sorry, you don’t get to play the movies you paid for at full quality.” All the technical capability is there, yet the companies have imposed a false limitation. Meanwhile, the pirates are taking their product, making it better, and giving it away for free. Now, I can totally understand the company expecting to receive compensation for their product, but with respect to their competition (legalities aside), they’re trying to charge more for an inferior product.

#2) Expensive and Unnecessary Hardware Upgrade Paths
My TV is hooked up to a Media Center PC that I built. If I wanted to move to HD, I’d need an input method–either Blu-Ray or an HD Tuner. Over-the-air HD is unencrypted and good for local channels, but that’s all the good news you get. Blu-Ray drives suffer from the aforementioned false restrictions, and to get HD Cable, you need what’s known as a CableCard. Want to buy a CableCard and put it in your current PC? Too bad. It’s “against regulations.” More false limitations. I think I could get a block of enriched Plutonium easier than a CableCard.

Now, even if I did have one or both of those things, to fully output my spankin’ HD signal, I’d need a new video card that has HDCP support (even though my current one is absolutely capable of handling HD-level video). I’d also have to get a new TV that has HDCP support (even though my current one still works okay). That’s about $1200 in unnecessary hardware. Does that make sense to you?

#3) Failure to promote upgrading existing collections
I believe the film studios should have set up an upgrade program, where you can send in your DVDs and get Blu-Ray versions of your movies for a modest upgrade fee. Being able to upgrade an existing movie collection easily and at minimal cost would help acceptance of a new format immensely.

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Background:
I have a watercooled computer in a custom diamond plate case. I call it The DiamondBox. I originally made it in 2004, and you can find the original writeup here. I wanted to provide an update to the project to show you all how it’s evolved in these past two or three years.

Inspirations:
The mentality of this project strays pretty far away from your typical Dell, where you have a pretty plain case that’s cooled by air. Watercooling is more efficient and allows me to cool the CPU better. This lets me crank the speed up to about 40% faster than stock while still maintaining stability. Basically, it saves me money. Sort of. In truth, I save money by not buying a more expensive processor, but I spend more money on the specialized equipment. But what the hell…it’s fun.

The concept of a diamond plate PC comes from the Waterbox incident of 2006 where my acrylic PC had an unfortunate encounter with gravity, and lost. I wanted a PC that was tough as hell and looked like it, but still looked cool and industrial. Aluminum diamond plate FTW!

So, a few days ago, I noticed that there was some cavitation at the outlet of the waterblock (an air pocket, essentially). Water was still getting through, but it seemed like the rate was a lot lower than it should have been. I had noticed some particulate in the loop in the month prior to that, too, so it was time for a coolant flush.

(more…)

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Remember those contests where you bought a pop and under the cap could be a prize? Or you check the inside of your cereal box and you might be a winner? These contests have almost completely disappeared, lately. Instead, companies are giving you random strings of characters and telling you to log onto their web site, then enter the code to see if you’ve won.

Fuck that.

I’ve never entered one of those codes. I’m not going to support what was previously a perfectly consumer-oriented process, and which has now been bastardized to even further promote the company running it. I’m already drinking/eating your product. What more do you want from me? Of course, anymore, I only get those codes when I buy a product I would have bought anyway, so they haven’t promoted squat. I completely ignore the contests.

Of course, if I had entered all the codes, I’d probably be a millionaire by now.

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I originally wrote this about this time in 2006. And it’s still perfectly relevant today.

It’s kind of amazing me right now. Simply put, if students put half as much effort into things like presidential elections and protecting their privacy legislatively as they put into protesting facebook, we might actually have a say in where this country is headed. Of course, I think that direction would still suck, but that’s not the point.

Maybe Generation Y just need to hold our elections, debates, and discussions on facebook. At the end of election day, whichever candidate has more people in their group wins. You can track the process through the feed: “Al Gore posted on George W. Bush’s wall, ‘You so did not win. I’ve got this in the bag. I invented the internet!’” And ‘Jack Thompson’s acting up again. Everybody give him a mean poke!’

I guess I just don’t understand why it’s causing everyone to get bent out of shape.

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I removed the code that integrates with the WordPress User Database, so at least it works again.

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