http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/04/google-planning-to-open-the-vp8-video-codec.ars So, Google’s planning on using Vp8, and mozilla is as well. And they’re going to “Open” it.Which makes the fact that Google is still funding ARM optimization for vorbis/theora interesting.One possibility is that Google won’t entirely open VP8 up. They may open it up for software royalty free, but keep hardware optimizations as something you license from them. On2 already has chips for VP8 decoding and encoding. Or they could license the code that generates VP8 files, while making decoding fully open and free.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/04/steve-jobs-weighs-on-iphone-os-dev-controversy.arsThey counter the complaints about quality, standards compliance, and added costs when comparing native code to cross platform code. Also showing how many of the apps Apple is holding up as standards are actually using techniques that apple now prohibits.http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2009/06/introducing-android-scripting.htmlOf course, Android supports scripting languages, including apparently editing and interactively executing code right on the phone.I wonder when I’ll get to have an android phone here at work…

This is from the drudge report, has no permanent links though, so I’ll just copy the whole text. GOOGLE FRANKENSTEIN: MACHINES TO CHOOSE YOUR NEWSMon Apr 12 2010 08:15:34 ETGOOGLE CEO and Obama political activist Eric Schmidt declared this weekend that his machines will help decide what news you receive! News sites should use technology to PREDICT what a user wants to read by what they have already read, Schmidt told the AMERICAN SOCIETY OF NEWS EDITORS, where a few humans still remained in the audience.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/01/microsoft_open_source_gm/Microsoft is trying to clean their image up when it comes to open source…http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/04/microsoft-offers-much-needed-fix-for-windows-oss-development.arsThey’re even making their own APT/DPKG sort of package management thing for windows to permit real distributions of Gnu and other open source software to be easily installed on windows. A development I welcome…http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/06/microsoft_ooxml_standards_fail/However, they’re still fighting a few turf wars over their Word and other Office application dominance…So, MS… Reformed, or still the iron fist?I’m not entirely convinced that they’re more evil than Google…

Bad month for books and games. Been too busy to do that, so I’ve mostly been multitasking videos in amongst other things.Books7. The Lion of the Farside - Interesting ideas behind this one. Alternate world sitting parallel to depression era america. Farmer marries a strange woman who turns out to be from the other world. People from the other world kidnap her, he follows. Games.2. Last Rebellion - One of the easiest rpg’s I’ve ever played.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/as-much-as-one-percent-of-the-internet-is-now-using-ipv6.ars1% of the internet has IPv6.Yay!Hopefully we’ll be able to get to 10% within a year or two…

Has anyone else had problems with Netflix DVDs dropping out of their queues lately? It’s getting quite annoying. I have 35 dvds that they’ve just entirely stopped carrying. Sometimes entire series have disappear, sometimes the middle dvd in a series… I bought Fate: Stay Night’s last dvd, but I really can’t do this for every series that I encounter missing discs on, especially if my interest in the series is only marginal (Such as the Kiddie Grade series, which has lost no less than 5 out of its 8 discs in recent months.

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/03/why-new-hard-disks-might-not-be-much-fun-for-xp-users.ars4096 Byte Sectors soon… Time to break yet more software that made assumptions that certain variables weren’t going to change. :)I find the discussion of EFI instead of bios to be interesting. I wonder what it would take to convert existing boards to use that instead of bios? Would they be able to get most systems using EFI?

I’ve been using Last.fm for a long time. One problem just keeps cropping up with it, along with others. Bands with the same name are irrevocably lumped together never to be separated out.Last time it was Goner, where a one-track-band made a single track and posted it up to last.fm, and managed to take over the entry for a band which had 3 whole albums out. This time I ran into the fact that there are two bands named Pollyanna.

Here’s a note to anyone who owns a PS3 or PSP.If you haven’t played it already, go buy Grandia from the PSN store. It’s a bit dated, but it still rates as one of the best games released for the PS1. $10 is a steal compared to what I paid for it on Ebay. The battle system is really what makes it good. It’s not a time-sensitive battle system, but it is time dependent.