iPhone in South Africa > R7,000

After reading that we will be getting the iPhone on 20 July and then following Steve Jobs' keynote at the WWDC last night on what's new in the iPhone 3G I rushed to find out more. I want one dammit!

I got my dad to phone around and eventually he got hold of someone at Vodacom with some answers. He said that they were only offering the iPhone on their top-end contract of R800 per month, still with a pay-in. That comes to a total of R19,200 plus pay-in!! The person said that this contract was only for phones over R7,000.

Guess who's importing his iPhone 3G?

GB vs GiB

Did you purchase a Seagate HDD between 22 March 2001 and 26 September 2007? Did you purchase it in America? Did you purchase it separately, i.e. not bundled with a PC? If you answer "yes" to all of the above then you are eligible to "free backup and recovery software, or a cash payment equivalent to five percent of the net amount you paid for the hard drive."

If you are as lost and confused as to why, that's understandable. Read this article and that should clear things up for you. Basically it boils down to the following:

Cho alleged that Seagate's use of the decimal definition of the storage capacity term "gigabyte" (GB) whereby 1GB equals 1 billion bytes, was misleading to consumers because computer operating systems instead report hard drive capacity using a binary definition of GB, whereby 1GB equals 1, 073, 741, 824 bytes -- a difference of approximately 7% from Seagate's figures.

The first thing to do is head over to the definition of the SI units. The definition of a GB (or KB, MB or whatever!) has always had it's split between what the SI units call a GB and GiB (take note of the i). According to the SI units, a GB, which is what HDD manufacturers use when stating HDD specs, is 10⁹ bytes and not 2³⁰ bytes as Cho claims.

Cho claims, however, that operating systems define a GB as 2³⁰ bytes. While true, why aren't Microsoft, Apple and other OS companies being sued? Aren't they the ones that have gone against the standard? Most storage mediums are in fact sold by the GB so it should be a lot easier for the OS to budge.

Taking a step back, the GB vs GiB divide dates back many, many years. It's been going on for so long, that really anyone that would notice the difference should be technically minded enough to know about what uses what measurement. There's an easy fix though -- all things using a 10⁹ byte GB should use the GiB unit instead. The standard is out there, it just needs to be properly adopted. There is, however, one reason for HDD manufacturers to budge -- RAM will always be measured in GiB due to its construction, whereas HDDs are not restricted in any way.

On the other side of things, why are there so many restrictions on who can claim? I can understand why this only applies to purchases in America since this case was in American court. However, why does this only apply to HDDs purchased separately? Does this mean we're going to see a spurt of new allegations coming from those purchasing PCs with built-in HDDs? What will happen to DVD/HD DVD/Bluray manufacturers who also use a GB of 10⁹ bytes?

And yes, I have made a purchase that meets the restrictions. And no, I will not be going through the mission of getting what will amount to some measly $10 or something pathetic.

Popcorn Hour A-100

Syabas have finally put themselves into the hardware game, after being in the firmware development scene for many years. What they've come up with is an impressively compact media player at 270mm x 132mm x 32mm:


The unit is called the Popcorn Hour A-100. As with most of these bleeding edge products, we'll have to see how they meet up to what they offer after release (scheduled for 30 October). It's based on the Sigma SMP8635 chip and so it supports H.264 above all the standard DivX, XviD and WMV9 codecs. It streams all media content over Ethernet! A nice feature they offer is downloading of BitTorrents, which is slowly starting to become a requirement for a top spot in this field.

Currently my favourite unit is the Ziova CS505. I would love to try this baby out, but my collection is already large enough. The price is good at $179 though, so it's tempting. It appears to have a lot over the Ziova in not only price ($179) and size, but in features. It's good to see them dropping the DVD drives as they always seem to prove a nuisance on the firmware side and a hence a hindrance to the bleeding edge side of things.

MPC Club Article

Update: MPC has reserved 100 units for those in Europe at a total price of at most €199. Read more.

I Have a TV

Remember my post about my home theater? All I was waiting for back then was the TV. Well, it arrived on Friday and was installed on Saturday. Unfortunately the news of its arrival has been swamped by my participation in the ICFP. Nevertheless, it is here!

Up until a week ago we were going for the 42". Well, that all changed when the price dropped by a huge amount. We are now stuck with an even bigger 50"! I tell you, seeing these things in the stores is one thing. Having them in your own home...that's the first time you truly see how beatiful and how enormous these beasts truly are! Here's an attempt at trying to awe you readers out there, although it barely touches the true beauty this thing reveals:


A couple of weeks ago we got a PS3. I was amazed at the graphics on an SD TV..you can imagine my amazement when connected to this beast. Currently we're waiting for the real games to come out so we only have Resistance and Motor Storm. I am anticipating the launch of GT5, which is said to be the first ever full 1080p game.

We also have one of these wonderful devices hooked up. It streams divx content over the network. I tell you, with an HD panel you can't not notice the low quality of divx. That's to be expected, but I didn't realise just how noticeable it would be.

Then finally we have Multichoice's PVR, which there isn't much to talk about.

You have to see and hear it for youself to understand just how amazing the whole setup we have going is. The guy that came to install the TV said the sound was the best he's ever heard, and he even has the same amp! He also loved the Ziova - to the point where he's trying to get one for himself now. :P

Interactive 360º Light Field Display

As humans we naturally see in 3D. However, most people have only ever seen visual playback on a 2D television. Most have come to accept it. Recently though, there have been advances in 3D film.

Getting to the point, today I came across this new 3D display being developed. I urge you to at least look at the images in the paper as it is really fascinating, and if you have the bandwidth the video shows off the technology very well. It is basically works by spinning a mirror and shining light onto it to produce a 3D image viewable from all angles. Since the mirror spins at a high speed, it creates the illusion of a 3D object.

As you move around the image, so you get a different view. This allows for "view-independent effects such as occlusion." It recreates the object in real 3D space, so there's no need for any special glasses such as IMAX 3D. It also allows for a number of people to gather around the display and watch from different angles. The rendering is so efficient that they can display fully interactive scenes.

If you're interested, there is plenty more to read up about it in the paper. It goes into a fair amount of detail on how the display functions and the rendering behind it.

Microsoft Surface

Before reading any further, check out http://microsoft.com/surface/ and make your own judgment.

First thought is it's cool, brings back memories of Minority Report. However, after some thought it really looks too good to be true. And here are some reasons I feel it is doomed to failure:

1. Think of the iPhone for a moment. Isn't this the sort of thing Apple have promised, just much smaller? It's 1/20th of the price and surely has far more real world uses.
2. Those demos are crooked. They make the thing appear so easy to use. Far more so than necessary.
3. Apparently they've yet to write any software other than what's included in the demos.
   
4. From the little I've read, it appears that to have the thing identify an item it needs to be barcoded. Now whose barcoding their glass?? Remember that these are at first only being sold to hotels and other public places. So what's the incentive to barcode your belongings if you're only going to be using it briefly?
5. It's expensive - $10,000!!
6. They took 5 years to develop it.
   
7. The last piece of hardware Microsoft tried selling was the Zune.

Please, I'd like to hear if this is just be being anti-Microsoft or if other agree with me. Of all the computer scientists I've asked, they agree with my opinions.

And thanks for all the birthday wishes everyone. Had a great day yesterday!! :D

Home Theater

At the end of last year we started adding a pool room to our house. It's been dragging on a bit over the past few month. Last month we got the pool table (officially giving it pool room status), but today was where the fun started.

Today we purchased the first piece of our soon to be home theater - the surround sound system! We're still waiting for the plasma to arrive in the country, but we got a little anxious and connected the speakers to one of our "old" TV's. I tell you, this thing makes some serious noise!!

The plasma that we're waiting for is a new Panasonic 42". From the reviews I've read it's quite a beauty. Haven't seen it yet, since it's brand new - yet to reach SA. They claim it should arrive end of the month the latest. Oooh...just too excited!!