Upgrade your music/movies

So a lot of people are talking Steve Jobs comments on the DRM issues. I haven't read it yet. But it made me think about the digital economy for content/entertainment.

People have been buying music at 128 kbps (MP3 or AAC or WMA) or DVDs in 480i resolution, and with DRM. If they want to get a better quality music/video or without DRM, they would probably have to buy it again. In software you usually get free upgrades or pay less than the full product for an upgrade (even Microsoft does it). So it should be the same for music. If you want to buy the same music in lossless or transparent, you shouldn't have to buy the whole thing again. That was necessary when you had to buy a physical object to upgrade your qualiyt (tape/LP to CD, VHS to DVD). But from digital to digital, there's no need. The only problem is to do that you need some DRMs :(

So the non use of DRM might actually mean there won't be cheap upgrades... How ironic !

The Universe Is Too Big For Aliens

According to this study, we haven't really met the aliens (officially speaking) because the universe is too big and it would take them too long to probe it and find us at the time we are developped.

There's probably some truth in this, but it considers that travelling at the speed of light is not possible or even close. But it's already possible in labs. It doesn't take in account teleportation that already exists in labs too, the use of dark energy, maybe telepathy and all that stuff we don't understand yet. So I think the answer is not there yet... Maybe we are the first ones to be that advanced in the universe ? Or that the matter is not travelling, only the souls ?

New Concepts Catalog

This article lists all the modern concepts that will shape the future of science and intelligence.

I haven't had time to read them all and the related articles, but a lot of them seem interresting.

DivX is bye

It's now official. I'm going to leave DivX, Inc. on the 31st of January. I will be concentrating on the CoreCodec products like CorePlayer and also on matroska related stuff.

For the whole time at DivX I have worked on DrDivX which is open source and available on SourceForge. I hope the project will still continue and evolve even after I left. Maybe I will still contribute here and there. Especially since it relies on a CoreCodec product: CoreMake to create the project files on Windows (MSVC++ Express) and Mac (XCode).

I decided to leave because I've been working on 2 jobs at the same time for many months and it's exhausting. Now that CoreCodec has some financial stability I can safely switch to this prefered job and work on the technologies that we create.

The revolution according to Apple

So yesterday Apple unveiled the iPhone. There's a lot of buzz about it, but once it gets down what will remain ? Engadget list a few of the missing features. But Apple presented it like there was nothing close to this before...

So what's new about this (smart)phone ? The big touchscreen. Even a technology they call multi-touch. So maybe the revolution for Apple is to be able to use 2 buttons (fingers) when the Apple computers only do one (unless you buy a 3rd party mouse).

That's it. All the rest exists and is available elsewhere. The iPhone will be available in June in the USA and in Q4 in France. Far from revolutionary and a big late. If Nokia release their internet tablet that does 3G phone they are done...

Free Will

What is free will ? IMO that's (so far) the main difference between machines and living objects. And it's more than a technical debate, as it implies that we are just machines and that sophisticated machines could have it too (as an inate property ?).

This article covers what free will might be after all... That's the first time I see it mentioned, while I've been convinced that's a crucial point for the future. If machines can have free will too, then they can decide on their ownn (and without us).

A bevy of experiments in recent years suggest that the conscious mind is like a monkey riding a tiger of subconscious decisions and actions in progress, frantically making up stories about being in control.

“If people freak at evolution, etc.,” he wrote in an e-mail message, “how much more will they freak if scientists and philosophers tell them they are nothing more than sophisticated meat machines, and is that conclusion now clearly warranted or is it premature?”