The Next Video Game Consoles

Right now, we're years into the Xbox 360's and PS3's lifespans. The Wii is going to come out with a successor soon, but what of Microsoft and Sony?

Unlikely. They've both said they want to have around 10-year lifespans, and so have some life in them yet. And it seems to be a good bet.

In fact, speaking of bets, I'd like to look into my crystal ball and come up with a few of my own.

My Bet: Sony and Microsoft not only aren't anywhere near done with their hardware designs, they are still working on utter fundamentals of the machines.

Right now, phones are starting to get dual-core processors. Computers with 4 cores are more common, and even some tablets are getting in on that action. A console maker doesn't want to make a console that is going to be outdated almost immediately, but they also want to not have tremendously expensive state-of-the-art parts.

As mentioned in my previous post, telecoms are being asshats and trying to keep us from downloading everything under the sun despite it being increasingly cheap for them to provide us with that. The offshoot of this, especially for Microsoft, is what to do about games. Are they to be download-only? This seems to fit in with the current nickel-and-diming that we see from DLC as of late. If every person or every box that has a game has to have paid for it, then resales (and thus lost money to the publishers) effectively goes to zero. But there might be a backlash from gamers who want to share games with friends, which also would affect the publishers' bottom lines. And we know Gamestop would be devastated if such a thing came to pass.

But, while Microsoft would likely love to make everything download-only, citing faster loading from the lack of moving parts, saving space in the console itself, and cheaper memory as reasons, they are probably wondering about the telecoms right now. Xbox Live is a wonderful thing, but if you have to download gigs and gigs for every game PLUS online gaming's bandwidth above it, people might hit their caps and be displeased, and disinclined to tell their friends and family to buy a console that will cost them more from their ISP.

And conversely, Sony owns Blu-Ray, which Microsoft likely doesn't want to back seeing as they lost a format war to that very format, and their primary competitor in the console wars. Sure, a Blu-Ray has way more storage than a DVD, but if you could just download a game regardless of its size, surely that would be better, right?

It's not a solved issue, I'm nearly certain of it. Physical media are surely going the way of the dinosaur, but I think due to the actions of telecoms in particular, and pressure from gamers and companies like Gamestop to allow resales and sharing, the disk is not going away just yet. Once others like the Amazon Kindle or iPad or other e-readers figure out a system of borrowing and sharing that works well and makes everyone happy, I feel we can transition away from physical media. But until then, we're keeping our discs.

Microsoft and Sony both want their consoles to last another few years, at least. And last they shall. Not just because they want a 10-year cycle, but because they don't know what way to go on even basic hardware specifications yet.

Bad Telecoms

Right now a war is being waged. A slow one, one that may shape the face of the Internet in what I feel is a negative way.

Telecom companies are bringing faster speeds to us, bringing broadband to those that never had it before, increasing profits, and all doing so at a cheaper cost than ever before. Yet, they are fighting for, and getting and implementing, capped bandwidth.

Right now, most ISPs will allow for unlimited bandwidth for each customer. They might throttle back people who likely are torrenting things, sure, but for the average Joe Schmo who just wants to watch Netflix all day, he can.

But not for long, not if the telecoms get their way. With bandwidth caps, you're not only paying more for your bandwidth (that gets cheaper for the telecoms to give us by the day) but you are limited to the amount you can download. But why? Why cap us if they have the infrastructure to provide us all? Why not just keep the abusers of the networks from hogging it all?

Because they can get away with it. And because they're scared. Those are the two big reasons.

Most towns and cities have a very limited ISP list. Some often have just one Internet provider. Near-monopolies or monopolies are bad for business, or rather, bad for consumers. They can raise the prices and cap our bandwidth (and charge us even more when we will inevitably go over) because we have noone else to turn to.

The average person did not use nearly the same amount of bandwidth a few years back. Before the advent of online gaming, HD streaming video like Hulu or Netflix, Youtube and more, we all didn't download as much. Now with these services we download a heck of a lot more. And it'll increase more as time goes on. More video services will be in HD. More people will use Skype to communicate with their families, or their wifi networks and FaceTime with their iPhones, or downloading games or playing those online.

And with these bandwidth caps, we as a people are going to start running into those caps, one by one, more and more of us. And when we do, and are punished for using the services we pay for, we will stop using those services. And that is precisely what the telecoms want.

Netflix is in near-direct competition with cable providers for our entertainment dollar. You can watch tons of shows and movies, many of which are streaming, for around $9 a month. Or, you can pay $40 a month for a fairly-standard cable package, most of the channels of which you aren't watching anyways.

Telecoms are pushing through legislation and forcing upon consumers policies that are going to stifle the development of the Internet, all to try and force competition out of business and line their pockets with gold.

Just thought you should know.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the privacy invasion

OK. If you're at all like what feels like 99% of the population, you are freaking out about your phone, car, computer, and more. Why? Because they're tracking you! Without your consent!

Recently, Apple has been in some hot water for tracking users, in a manner of speaking. The phones keep a record of nearby radio towers and wi-fi hotspots.

Less recently, Google has been in a bit of hot water for their StreetView cars taking down wifi hotspots, as well.

Cellphone customers are outraged their phones might be tracking them, or that their search providers online (Google, as the main example here) "remembers" what sites you've visited to give you targeted ads.

"Oh NO! How DARE they!" Everyone exclaims. "Our privacy is being invaded!"

This coming from the masses that put tons of pictures of themselves online on Facebook, let alone their personal information and much much more. This coming from the multitudes of people that use Google Maps and are happy about the traffic information it provides, culled in part (at least) from anonymous users reporting their speed and location when they use the service. This coming from people who have grown accustomed to the notion of privacy as if Apple having an ID number for your phone being completely equal to Jason Bourne tracking your every move, about to kill you because he can.

Look, people, stop worrying. Stop caring. Yes, privacy in some respects is a very vital and important thing. But are you really fighting the right fight here? No, I think not.

If you allow your phone to let Google or Apple know where you are, are you going to be abducted? Is ANYTHING bad going to happen? NO! Think, for a moment, and ask yourself what is actually going on there. What negative effect is there? None. Instead, we reap free benefits instead. Google uses location data from phones to better serve us with their maps and live traffic information that is crowdsourced from us all. Apple wants to do the same thing.

And lets talk about ads for a second, here. If Google knows what sites I visit when logged in to my username, and uses my search history and history of sites visited to deliver better ads to me, how the heck is that a bad thing? Would you really prefer to see a bunch of useless irrelevant ads on websites? I know I sure would rather see things that I'd want and care about.

The point is, these big multinationals may be evil and scary and whatnot, but you really are getting upset about the wrong things. Instead of worrying about some secret operative tracking you personally all day long, which is not the case, how about not putting your entire life on Facebook where people can see every last detail about you?

Zing!

Seems I was right about the Wii2.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/25/nintendo-confirms-next-wii-in-2012-will-preview-it-at-e3/

Score one for me!

Real post to follow hopefully later today.

How Google Gets Better By Giving Everything Away

Google.

A word synonymous these days with search, and even the web as a whole.

Students the world over depend on it for innumerable assignments. Researchers access scholarly papers at speeds hitherto unbelievable. Mothers can search for so many recipes their kitchens creak in dismay, and fathers can sneak peeks at video assembly walkthroughs for that new Ikea table so quickly you might not catch them.

And it's all free.

How the heck does Google do that?

Well, ads, for one. Those semi-unobtrusive ads in the sidebars of Gmail and Google searches. Youtube commercials that sometimes can, sometimes can't be skipped. Ads power the internet as much as the electricity powering our computers and their servers.

Sure, there likely are other sources of income, but I'm not focusing on that for now.

Rather, how the heck does Google stay on top?

How do they return the best search results, fastest, constantly improving and always showering us with nifty new (free!) things?

It's that last part, actually, that I feel is a great part of Google's secret.

Check out A Google A Day: http://www.agoogleaday.com

It's a riddle, posed by Google, that ought take some Googling to unravel. Mysteries that perhaps Ken Jennings (or Watson, the IBM supercomputer!) would know offhand, but the rest of us likely must search for.

And what do we do? Use the convenient and ever-present Google search right there to find the answer!

Now, who would Google make such a thing? Why do they care about the mild entertainment that these riddles bring us? Are they really just interested in bringing a little smile to our faces?

No. Well, maybe, but not in the broader sense.

Google is learning from us. Always. Our search terms, our intended destinations, what we click on and see and check and so on are all monitored. Not in a Big Brother way, and I'll mention why that's not as big a deal as everyone makes it out to be soon. No, Google is giving us the destination. An unusual one, with multiple searches likely needed. They are testing tools, like Google Deja, which allows one to search the internet as it was a day ago, before people like me start posting answers to A Google A Day answers (though I won't post today's answer nor what I searched to get it.)

When you give thousands of people a specific query, something that is hard to put into words, something tricky, we all jam our fingers on our keyboards, find or don't find the answers, and go on with our lives.

But Google watches, and learns. The searches we use, the terms and specific utterances, the nuances of speech we use when searching for something that Google basically asked us to find on our own, is helping them. Their free tools that we enjoy and play with and use and even rely on all contribute to a more powerful, useful, Google.

Let's take a look at another example. The free (of course) and wonderful (also of course) Google Voice.

I'll leave it up to you to explore it if you've not heard of it, but I'll say it's great. Let me instead focus on one small part, here. In their voicemail features, Google Voice transcribes your voicemails for you. How cool! You can get them via text or email.

These transcriptions are solid black text if it's sure of the word(s), and grayer as the believed accuracy goes down. This is a fairly one-way street. Yet, in these transcriptions, there is a little box on the right that asks if the transcription was useful or not. If you say yes or no, it asks if you can "donate" the voicemail to Google.

This is the key.

There is, I feel, nothing wrong with letting some Google engineer listen to my voicemails. Likely, they aren't going to anyways. It's probably just going to go through automated processes. And as I said before, I'll get into why I don't care if they are listening in on me (when I say then can, which really is pretty much always.) The kicker is this: Google is getting free, real-world data from me and thousands like me from their free service. Very very valuable data.

Their tools transcribe audio for me, I decide if it was good or not, let them know, they can piece it apart and together and all which ways to make their service better.

And I'll continue to use it, for free, and notice it get better! Hooray for me!

No. Hooray for Google. Through their clever giving away of many services and features and asking for tiny bits of data here and there in return, they gain over time absolute GOBS of very very useful data. Data that helps them make the best tools, make those already best tools better, and continue to dominate the search market.

That is why they're on top, and doing it giving away so much for free. Because we pay nothing and they reap rewards from it anyways.

Long time no see

Hello, Bloggosphere!

It's been a while.

I realize I abruptly dropped this blog like it was hot most of the way through my time cavorting around Europe, but now it's time to get down to brass tacks, as they say. Time to hear what I have to say, domestically!

And one of the things that I'd love to discuss, albeit unrelated to linguistics in this case, is The Future. And what an exciting Future it's planning to be!

See, there are things I notice, little patterns or missing things, little tells from corporations and the ebb and flow of technological progress that makes me feel that certain things are bound to happen, and I happen to feel I can guess when they're coming.

Case in point: Hearing about various movies that have come out, I've noticed we as a society (or rather Hollywood as a group?) has been rehashing many of the oldest tales. Myths and tales abound, from the Easter Bunny (the upcoming Hop) to a horror-film remake of the Little Red Riding Hood. So the other day I say "I guarantee there's going to be a Hansel and Gretel movie coming out within the next year or two."

And guess what? There is!

I saw, the next day, an ad for a sequel to an animated Red Riding Hood movie that apparently is about Hansel and Gretel, a slight retelling of the old tale.

Oh, sure, I could just claim I thought of that before seeing the ad!

Well, that was just a warm-up. There are other things out there, and I plan on letting people know about them.

Here's my big prediction for this post: Somewhere in June 7-9 of this year, Netflix is going to make an announcement, probably at E3 (though almost certainly during it, and I won't discount the possibility it's before or after... but I'll stick with my predicted date for now)...

Streaming 3D movies. You heard me!

But how the heck are we going to watch streaming 3D movies? On our 3D TVs? Yes. But not just that, and that's why they will announce it around E3. The 3DS is going to have it.

Oh yeah.

Nintendo has already said their little Wunderkonsole will be getting Netflix. But if the 3DS does 3D... of course. It's a no-brainer!

Still, it hasn't been officially announced by anyone, so this is still a valid prediction.

Also, as a bonus soothsaying, I'd like to say the Wii2 wil be unveiled then too, but no guarantees. We'll see.

Travel to Nürnburg

One thing about my travels is that they are so flexible. I have an EU Rail SelectPass, which gives me ten days of travel, as much as I want within each of those ten nonconsecutive days, over a two month period. Terribly handy. As a result of this, I save money and do not need to make my plans horribly far in advance. And, if I miss a train or decide to take an earlier one, or anything else, I can do so and rather easily at that.

This has come in handy once or twice so far when I missed a connection due to a late arrival, and would again prove infinitely useful again this day, my day of travel from Brugge to Nürnburg. We were scheduled to make our way from Brugge (with a few stops, of course) to Frankfurt's airport and train station, or perhaps a train station that's merely really close to the airport. Either way, it was named Frankfurt Flughafen, which means airport, and it was a train station. I'll leave the delicate semantics of it to another time.

Apparently the day I left Brugge was a bad day for Europe. An enormous storm had been ravaging the continent and ended up killing more than a few people. Power outages, debris strewn about, and so on were the general order of the day. I said apparently because the train on which I was travelling didn't see so much as a drop of rain. Grey (gray? I always forget which is the American spelling, and prefer the letter e) skies, to be certain, but no horrible storm from our point of view. Yet the effects of the storm's earlier passing were indeed felt when our train came to a stop perhaps five kilometers from the station. Walking distance, really, even with one's luggage.

This stop was no mere small delay, as the conductor got on the PA and announced to us in no uncertain terms that they were uncertain as to when we'd be going again. It seems that a tree had managed to get onto the tracks. This dismayed everyone but me, as while I did have a travel plan, I was not unduly worried about arriving at my destination at any particular time. As seems to be the case when there is any delay of more than a few minutes, we began to speak to one another in the train. I met a nice woman named Nicole perhaps in her thirties and a girl roughly my age whose name escapes me, and was sitting across from a kindly old man who looked about as stereotypically “Old Man German” as one can imagine without leiderhosen and a mug of beer in hand.

One thing mentioned by the old man and agreed upon by Nicole was that the tree on the tracks was rather unusual as there's a rule somewhere that trees cannot be within 20 meters of the tracks. Of course. It'd keep the tracks from having trouble every time there's bad winds. Or so I said to the others who all agreed with the old man, but I knew in my mind it was a load of baloney. As I type this we're traveling through a forest on a different train and there are trees awful close to the train at times. Myth busted.

Another thing that became stranger still was the next update we got from the conductor. In America if one's plane is late you usually are told the bare minimum of information, probably not actually related to whatever problem there was anyways. Here in Germany they were frighteningly specific. We were told that the train was stopped, and would remain stopped for a rather long time but uncertain how long. The tree on the train tracks was on fire, by the way.

Wait, what? I must have misheard in German, or forgotten what the word was that I'd heard.

I asked Nicole after the announcement if I'd heard correctly. “Oh yes,” she said, rather nonchalant about the matter. The tree on the tracks was indeed on fire. Good job understanding!

My slight pride at understanding the rapid-fire PA system German notwithstanding, I was somewhat concerned, and my concern grew once the conductor came back on the PA, now in English. It seems that not only was there a tree on fire on the tracks but the entire Frankfurt station was a madhouse, with many many trains late or canceled and so on. We were advised to stay on to the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (main train station) and transfer there if that was at all doable for where we wanted to go, as once we started going again it'd probably be easier to get around and that less trains were late there. Now that I write this, we might have been near the Hbf and told to stay on to the airport, but I can't remember and fortunately it's not a big detail.

I went on my computer and used my USB internet dongle to try and check the Deutsche Bahn website and find a timetable to see what was late and on time and so on. The site was completely down, probably an inadvertent DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service, basically when way too many people try to connect at once either accidentally or maliciously.) It was at this time I found out Nicole was going to Nürnburg as well, and I asked her if once we arrived wherever she felt was best if I could tag along, and she said yes.

So I settled in for the long haul, as it seemed that whether or not a large storm was in the area at the moment we would remain there for quite some time. I jokingly said we could all watch a movie, and everyone looked at each other and then to me and asked what I had. Huh. Well, the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, all three, in German. Oh yes, that will do fine, let's watch the first one! In English!

English, huh? I'd been stumbling around with German for a good couple hours during the train ride so far with the old man and then continued on with Nicole and the other girl since we'd stopped, and we could have been speaking English? Ah well, it was awful good practice and opened me up to code switching when I needed it now. (Code switching being the sudden change of language, perhaps even mid-sentence, in my case used when I don't know a particular word in German.)

So I loaded up PotC into my computer and put it on English but with German subtitles, as I think the old guy's English was not terribly good. But we all agreed that the voice acting is always best in the original language. I set the computer on a little table in the train and we all sat on the opposite side and watched the movie. It was fun, actually, and really helped the time pass. We finished the movie perhaps ten minutes before the conductor got back on the PA and said that the tree had stopped burning and had been moved from the track, and we'd be on our way soon. Hooray!

The rest of the train trip was relatively uneventful, and we stayed on past the first stop and got off at Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (I think, as I said it might have been the airport) where things picked up again. The station was completely packed to the gills, people everywhere. I stuck close to Nicole since she knew German better and had more motivation to get home quicker. We passed right by the service desk which had literally hundreds of people in line, a crazy sight. We found a timetable board and then a train that would bring us to Nürnburg, arriving fairly soon if all went to plan. It somehow did, and we got on that train while hundreds of other travelers would be stuck waiting for directions from the service desk for hours possibly. Hooray for savvy traveling! The rest of the trip to Nürnburg was also uneventful, and Nicole and I watched the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie together, getting most of the way through before we arrived. On that note, I really like this new computer I have, the battery lasts for well over 6 hours even when watching movies.