IP Milkers NTP(Link Dead) have won yet another victory. It’s annoying when people snap up some collection of obscure and invalid patents then don’t actually do any development at all with them. They then start nipping at the heels of people who are actually making a contribution to the furthering of technology and humanity. NTP didn’t do anything concrete yet they’re the ones that will rake in the dough from someone else’s hard work because that hard work included an implementation of that obvious idea.

BTW, the items for that $200-250 system wouldn’t include any sort of optical or hard drives. I have those already. The current best system I’ve found is:Antec Aria Case $99Biostar TForce6100 $65AMD Sempron 64 2600+ $60256mb Memory $32This is overkill for my application. The case is about twice the size I’m looking for and the processor is at least 3 times as fast as I need… I suppose I could even replace Ruri with this one.

So says the IBM commercial. Unfortunately, my wife watched these commercials and has started complaining about our own proliferation of servers. I have 2 network servers, 2 desktops, 1 firewall (small form factor), and 1 Web server (offsite) Short of backup servers for Precis and Ein, I believe I currently have the optimal number of systems for my house. Precis resides at my work and serves up all my web pages and web applications.

I guess it’s telling that the site is called Red Herring (Link Dead)… Here’s the first quote from the first few paragraphs.Toshiba plans to introduce two models of HD-DVD players at $500 and $800 a pop, the electronics company announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Contrast that with Pioneer, a Blu-ray backer, which plans to sell its player for $1,800 (see Hi-Def DVD Formats Duel at CES).Another plus for HD-DVD?

Pat robertson is a dolt. (Link dead) He’s been saying stupid crap for months now. I wonder if he’s going senile or something. Maybe he always was.

The History of Christmas (Link dead) as a secular american tradition drawn from many religions.

Is it me, or does what they’re planning on using the Galileo system for a massive misuse of technology? ;)

One of the more interesting articles I’ve read through in awhile

They obviously meant… er… somewhat well when they decided to simultaneously release the Xbox360 across many markets, far earlier than it was really fully tested and before it was in large enough quantities to even match the tightly constrained PS2 launch 5 years earlier. In their eagerness to beat the PS3 to market and to get the system out before christmas they have effectively Grinched the US games market for christmas.

Slurp! It’s probably exasperation that is making them do this. The networks were given new blocks of airspace for Digital in exchange for the promise to actually develop them. The networks dragged it out long after their deadline and still haven’t really gone fully digital on their transmissions. Now the government is pulling a different motivator. If you don’t utilize these frequencies by 2009, we’ll deallocate… your old spectrum? :p There’s all kinds of arguments for and against what the government is doing, but I’m going to just tune them out on a “Don’t worry, be happy” sort of thing and look forward to the future of digital television.