With the recent announcement that the Indy Racing League (IRL) and Champ Car World Series (CCWS) have finally came together as one series, there have been a number of releases about races and teams. Here are some of the recent stories:
Had to chuckle when I saw this video. It reminds me of the day when coffee shops were “Cyber Cafe’s”, which was only a few years ago. Interesting how people think it is so weird or funny now. Enjoy!
Looks like the open wheel unification may be the real deal. Open wheel racing is some of the most exciting racing on the planet and the long overdue merging of the two series will only increase the competition and excitement. It will be wonderful to see some of the races come back together, including Long Beach and Edmonton.
Maybe this will be the year that Indy Car and open wheel racing makes some headway against the NASCAR juggernaut.
Looks like the BitTorrent folks are at it again and have developed a workaround to blocking by Comcast. This is the same old story that always has the exact same ending, you can’t beat the hackers. Period. Be it Comcast, Microsoft, DirectTV or any large company that attempts to create technology to keep people out, there will always be many more people trying to get in..and frankly, some of them are, and always will be, smarter and more resourceful than your people.
From the blog posting:
BitTorrent throttling is not a new phenomenon, ISPs have been doing it for years. When the first ISPs started to throttle BitTorrent traffic most BitTorrent clients introduced a countermeasure, namely, protocol header encryption. This was the beginning of an ongoing cat and mouse game between ISPs and BitTorrent client developers, which is about to enter new level.
Unfortunately, protocol header encryption doesn’t help against more aggressive forms of BitTorrent interference, like the Sandvine application used by Comcast. A new extension to the BitTorrent protocol is needed to stay ahead of the ISPs, and that is exactly what is happening right now.
In the immortal words of David Byrne of The Talking Heads.. “Same as it ever was…”
As someone who tries to take full advantage of the many new, better and legal ways to download electronic content from the industry, there is still much that is not available. This is extremely frustrating. However, the industry needs to focus attention on making content more readily available, with healthy competition to keep prices in check. The ISP’s (i.e. Comcast) need to focus on keeping their tubes big enough to cover what they have advertised and sold to us in the first place. Marketing types need to fully comprehend the meaning of the word unlimited and throughput before they are allowed to willy nilly advertise such silliness at what now is claimed to be unsustainable pricing.
Frankly, it sounds more like building shareholder value to me, but I’ve been called cynical for less.
Yet another finalnail has been driven into the HD-DVD casket and frankly, I could care less. BluRay is emerging as the clear winner in this pointless format war reminiscent of the old VHS vs. Betamax wars. Just in time for well-done electronic distribution to kick the snot out of it. Well done, Sony!
From the article:
The nation’s largest retailer said Friday it has decided to sell only Blu-ray DVDs and hardware in its 4,000 U.S. stores and no longer carry rival HD DVD offerings.
The announcement comes five days after Netflix Inc. said it will stop carrying rentals in Toshiba Corp.’s HD DVD format and instead go exclusively with the rival Sony Corp. technology favored by five major movie studios.
In Mac related gaming news, the fine folks over at MacLife have sit down with Spore creator, Will Wright. I am looking forward to this release and hope it won’t suck the hours away from my life like some other games.
It looks like there is finally some open source competition to Parallels Desktop and VMWare’s Fusion…innotek GHmB’s VirtualBox has arrived. Considerably smaller in footprint and with a end-user price point that will make the others scramble, VirtualBox provides a low cost alternative to running Windows/Linux virtual machines on your Mac. Ars Technica (Love those guys!) has a good article with some of the current limitations and features detailed.
From the article:
VirtualBox is an excellent alternative the two more well-known options, and for personal use comes in at an unbeatable price: free. With Sun’s Tuesday announcement that they have acquired innotek, the company could suddenly become a force in the Mac VM market.
Since I maintain a Windows XP laptop next to my Mac Pro, I haven’t found a whole lot of use for visualization of this type. However, if you are trying to win a corporate platform battle, this may be one more feather in your cap to prove there is not much downside to running Mac’s…even in the Enterprise.
News Corp has been in talks about merging its MySpace social network and other online sites with Yahoo in exchange for a substantial stake in the web portal, according to a person familiar with the matter.
My take is that you never bet against Microsoft. However, how much value is truly left in Yahoo? The combination of MySpace and Yahoo makes sense in some ways. However, make no mistake, if this would occur..it would relegate Yahoo to the bottom of the Internet social heap. Who really even uses MySpace anymore?
If you’re using a TV without the ability to display 1080p video—especially if you don’t have a receiver capable of decoding the Blu-Ray Disc’s DTS-HD signal—an Apple TV rental will be an almost complete substitute for renting the Blu-Ray.
Sporting the traditional ThinkPad black slab design, the X300 isn’t as skinny or sexy as the Apple, but it’s still very slender and attractive, at under an inch thick. Also, unlike the Apple, most of the ThinkPad’s configurations are a bit heavier than the 3-pound weight that traditionally denotes a subnotebook.
Unfortunately, this laptop will not boot OS X natively.
The IRL was seeking permission for alternatives to its April 19 race at the Honda-owned Twin Ring Motegi circuit as it tried to alleviate a potential scheduling conflict with Champ Car’s Long Beach (Calif.) Grand Prix, to be held on April 20.
The options include moving the Japan race to August, the end of the season or postponing it for a year.
Word of the tentative deal came Saturday in an early morning e-mail message to members of the Writers Guild of America West and the Writers Guild of America East. The deal was to be reviewed by members at previously scheduled mass meetings here and in New York later in the day.
Yea! Reality TV sucks and I’m ready for some new episodes of my favorite shows. I hope the writers won a much better deal than the one they had before the strike.
The article also says that Yahoo has taken preventative “poison pill” measures to fend off more hostile takeover attempts.
The decision to reject the offer signals that Yahoo’s board is digging in its heels for what could be a long takeover battle. The company is unlikely to consider any offer below $40 per share, the person said.
Looks like this won’t be decided anytime soon. The Yahoo as we have known will probably change as they do everything they can to build value and justify this decision to shareholders.. Who else will come calling at over $56 billion dollars? What are they holding out for… Facebook money?
