One of the giants is due to control of home
entertainment, or at least share a piece of the pie

OME time in the past, Google’s media player was mentioned as an interoperable tool of value — somewhat of a milestone even. We now hear about a partnership involving DivX, Pioneer and Google Video.

LAS VEGAS–Video technology company DivX is partnering with Google to make Google Video accessible on a variety of consumer electronics devices, the companies announced Friday at the Consumer Electronics Show here.

Meanwhile, the world is also being informed about Yahoo Go TV (in German). Apple continue with their entertainment industry push for domination. Their video and photo iPods come to mind. Lastly, Microsoft reveal that the XBox 360, which may play HD-DVD owing to a Toshiba alliance, is striving to take control of our living rooms.

What would you be told if you stuck one of
those babies in a public cluster machine?

can assure you that technology might arouse your appetite. Have a look at the selection of USB drives that go on sale these days. Some time ago, data loss disasters were mentioned. Pets chewing media were among the main culprits. I imagine that making USB drives look like food warrents their arrival to a dog’s stomach. I’m off to an 8 AM lunch! Where has that USB pen gone?

A single slide from my talk on data recovery (XHTML)

Below is a snippet from an amusing BBC article.

One incident involved a dog that used a USB flash drive as a chew toy and almost ate all its owner’s data.

[...]

But top of the list is an old laptop containing key company data that was found filled with cockroach corpses.

It seems as though computer disasters and Darwin awards are becoming a golden source of joy to the computer literate. This could leverage tentions. People should never be humiliated for being unfamiliar with technology, but then again, this is a blog…

Similar items:

• Data Loss Humor
• iPod nano Crash Testing

I happened to find these astounding monitors, which reminded me of spherical desktops. Put in the words of the vendor: “The Elumens VisionStation allows for a fully immersive display of 160°. The VisionStation’s ultra-wide FOV creates an amazing sense of space and depth, without need for goggles or glasses“. All the same, such a display would of course be quite pricy. It doesn’t appear to offer substantial and pragmatic benefits unless one uses simulators.

Also see: Another odd use of a dish