When
· Naughties
· · 2005
· · · August
· · · · 14 (2 entries)
Scary Legals, Redux · I recently covered a story with a happy ending: the nasty (and misleading) legal barbed-wire in front of NetBeans got taken down. Next step: let’s do the same thing for Java.net. Read on for excerpts from the legals, but the bottom line is simple: to non-lawyers (like me), this is scary stuff. The person who pointed this out to me closed with the words “and so I’m not a member of java.net.” ...
On Consumer Video · I think the camcorder vendors are about to make a lot of money. First, there’s the advent of affordable consumer HD. Obviously, the consumer product has all sorts of problems, most notably the lack of high-def players. But if you care about what you’re shooting, this is the first-ever archival-quality option, and that matters. The real reason is that, increasingly, there are a lot of people—I’m one—with a wide-screen TV and a camcorder that can’t fill it. The basic value proposition—take movies that look good on your TV—ain’t there. At one level, it would be really tough to upgrade to 16:9 and not go all the way to HD. But that camera Pogue wrote up (It’s called the “HDR-HC1”, but Sony’s site, gimme a break, I am not so foolish as to link to URIs beginning
sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD in the hope that they’ll last); anyhow, that camera, you’re paying a whole bunch and there are issues. It’s going to be interesting times.
