Skip to the Future

There are several "hot" technologies out right now that I'm making a conscious decision to avoid. The problem is that they're not really innovative, and will soon be subsumed by other, better technologies. Let's examine a few, shall we?

Apparently the Blu-Ray media format recently won the next-format wars. Actually, both formats were losers. That's because the "HD" (high-definition) was the real key, and not what it was being stored on. In fact, physical media is going to become increasingly irrelevant as downloads take over as the primary means of content distribution. I'm not going to buy a Blu-Ray player. Partly that's because they're so insanely expensive still. And the prices went up once retailers knew they had the consumer by the short and curlies! I'll build a home media computer with networked storage and streaming instead.

And then there's those new "energy saving" compact fluorescent light bulbs. They're significantly more expensive than the regular incandescent light bulbs. So they're energy savings take quite a while before they pay off the difference. And then there's the fact that their light isn't appealing to everyone. I'm going to hold off and wait for LED light bulbs to come on the market. LEDs consume little energy and they're not toxic waste. Yeah. Compact fluorescent require special handling and disposal methods. Oh, and don't break one on the floor!

Don't Reward Sony

Back in the day Sony tried to corner a developing market with their own proprietary format in the hopes of reaping huge licensing fees from anyone publishing on the media. That format was Betamax, and I think most everyone know how that turned out (VHS FTW).

This time around instead of the VCR market Sony's gunning for high definition optical discs. Sony's format is the Blu-Ray standard while the opposing standard is HD-DVD. Now personally, I prefer HD-DVD because it's simpler due the the fact that the same laser that reads HD-DVDs is backwards compatible with regular DVDs. 10 points right there. Granted, Blu-Ray has a larger storage size, but not significantly enough to outweigh the fact that Blu-Ray plays need two separate lasers to support legacy DVDs. Sony also shoved their players out prematurely to not be behind the HD-DVD release. Those original players didn't fully implement the Blu-Ray standard. Most reviewers also couldn't discern much of a difference quality-wise in either's audio or video.

Now all the news is about how Blu-Ray is winning this high def war. If it wins then I think we all lose. Having an entire market beholden to a single primary source like Sony is bad for all consumers. We all need to speak out by voting with our pocket books for HD-DVD. Having said that, I've purchased neither yet. My early adopter ways have long fell by the wayside.

And as if you needed one more reason to not support Sony's standards-autocracy plans there's wireless USB. Wireless USB is going through standardization right now. But all of the sudden Sony smells blood and launches their own version, TransferJet. Coincidence? I think not! Fight the powah!