simonb.com: a 35mm comedic short about a man

Sparkle is a programmers tool that automates application updates.

ChocoFlop is a CoreImage based image editor currently in pre-release. Looks good.

The audited 2005 financial statements for the Mozilla foundation are online. Income from search kick-backs was USD 50 M. Profits after tax where about USD 26 M. Wonder if any of this money will find its way back to the unpaid volunteers… See also Mitchell’s blog.

A list of portable digital audio recorders.

• Edirol R-1 (oddly not on edirol.com)
• Edirol R-4 Pro
• Fostex FR-2
• M-Audio MicroTrack
• Marantz PMD660
• Marantz PMD671
• Sony MZ-M200
• Sound Devices 702
• Tascam HD-P2
• Zoom H4

find and grep are the programmers friend. But when using Subversion find will also decend into .svn directories. Generally we don’t want this to happen. The following find command will skip .svn directories. For more type ‘man find’ at your favorite prompt.

 find . \( -type d -and -name .svn -and -prune \) -or -type f -print

Firebug 1.0 beta is out. If you’re a web developer you need Firebug. It makes a lot of things easy that used to be a pain. It is marv.

Coding Horror has an excellent summary of software project postmortem resources.

In response to my comments on the CER EVD article there’s a new post on the CER IT blog and a corresponding one on Gareth’s personal site in which he defends the original post. Good for him. He also misinterprets what I wrote. In the spirit of a blogging conversation I respond below.

First, let me define what I mean when I say success in relation to disc formats: a disc format is a success if content providers are making lots of content and consumers are buying lots of discs. For example, CD, DVD, PS2, XBox etc. By lots I mean millions not dozens.

The news reports claim that China manufacturers will stop making DVD players in favor of EVD players in 2008. And because most DVD players are made in China the implication is that EVD will take off. Well, hang on. An EVD player is also a DVD player. So they’re not really stopping to make DVD players - just wrapping the DVD player functionality in an EVD box. EVD player sales may increase but it may not be because the consumer wants to play EVD discs. For example, if the Chinese consumer needs to buy a new DVD player and the only choice is an EVD player or an EVD player priced the same a DVD player, of course they’ll buy the EVD player. Note, lots of EVD player sales does not translate as a success for the EVD disc format (see above). If you’ve got an EVD player but are only playing DVD discs then it’s just another piece of consumer electronics with features that are not used.

Another definition of success is profitability. How profitable will it be to make EVD players? Well, look at current DVD player manufacturers - not much. In the world of consumer electronics and particularly in China there is very little markup over production cost on sales prices. The real money is in the content and licensing. Well, to get income from licensing you need someone who wants to use the intellectual property and is willing pay for it. Which, with a new standard, is an uphill battle as potential licensees need to be convinced of the standard’s viability. Maybe companies will be lining up to pay EVD royalties but I doubt it.

Another way to cut costs to the manufacturer is to reduce license fees. So, for example, remove the DVD functionality. I find this highly unlikely. The consumer will not buy a player that can not play their existing discs. Also the idea that taking out the DVD functionality removes all of the patents used in DVD is wrong. There are patents on the physical optical disc technology that are valid no matter what logical format is present and some patents that hold true even if the physical format changes.

It has been known for CE products to be sold below cost price to push out competitors. This is one reason DVD players are now so cheap and the number of manufacturers is decreasing. Another reason to sell below cost price is to build an installed base. This is the reason XBox-360 and PS-3 machines are priced as low as they currently are. In the games industry the strategy is to make a loss on the player in return for greater profits on the content sales. But the games console market differs from the video disc market in the following ways. There are many video disc player manufacturers but only one manufacturer of a particular game console. So any kick-back the hardware manufacturers get from software sales is spread out rather than going to one place. (Assuming such a kick-back exists and can be successfully claimed.)

Movie content does have an advantage over games when it comes to new formats. Once you have a movie it does not take much to re-author for a new platform. (Disney does this all the time.) Compare this to games in which software needs to be re-written for a new platform. Of course, the studio has to agree to put out the movie in the new format in the first place. I doubt movie studios will be lining up to author EVD discs and pay EVD royalties given the amount they loose on pirate DVD movies in China. Of course, another way to increase the number of EVD discs would be for the local pirate to start producing EVD as opposed to DVD. Anything is possible I guess.

Now the misinterpretation. Below is a quote from Gareth’s blog:

“...that this is a new attempt by China to have its own standard and it is a most serious attempt. Simonb disagrees. He may well be right. But he is totally wrong to suggest that the manufacturers are not doing it.”

Gareth makes two claim:

1. That I disagree this is a serious attempt at a new standard. I don’t.

2. That I suggested that the manufacturers are not doing it. I didn’t.

My only criticism of Gareth’s entry was the lack of discussion and analysis that I expect from CER. My suggestion is that EVD will not be a success in terms of number of discs using the EVD standard and in terms of profitability.

At the end of my previous entry I had the following paragraph:

“While we’re on the subject, lets explode the myth that China can do nothing about piracy: try buying fake Beijing Olympics branded goods.”

This was in no way meant to imply anything in relation to Gareth’s writings. It was put in there because piracy is relevant to the discussion of new content standards.

One last thing. I wish Gareth would link back to my original entry so that those that are interested can read what I actually wrote in its entirety. To me that’s only fair.

The IT News blog from the China Economic Review has an entry about EVD. The entry is (at best) poorly researched. I’d expect a little more quality control from CER.

First, the entry is more or a less a carbon copy of the article on Xinhua. The only added analysis being the rather wide eyed “What will be amazing is if this takes off...”

Second, if the author had spent a few minutes with Google he could have found out that this is old news. Here, for example, is a link to an article from 2002 describing the (then) new EVD system EVD players were already introduced into the market years ago and sunk without a trace - no content. (BTW Google also shows that this entry on CER is re-produced verbatim on Bloggeroff by the same author)

Had there been a little research, a discussion on why EVD failed the first time would have been interesting. EVD failed because of a lack of content and lack of HD screens. I don’t see this changing any time soon. Hollywood is certainly not going to jump on the format second time around - all their movies are already available in China on (pirate) DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-ray are in the market now and direct download is taking off. It would be amazing if Hollywood were to do a content deal for EVD.

Let’s look at the patent issue. If you consider the royalties as part of the cost of manufacturing then the manufacturers are selling below cost price. The price competition is totally self-inflicted. The Xinhua article claims that there are now fewer than 150 DVD player manufacturers in China because of the royalty cost. Or, put another way, there are 140 too many DVD player manufacturers in China. And there’s strong competition because of a history of price cutting going back to the VCD days.

The above argument about manufacturers going out of business because of royalties assumes the manufacturers are actually starting to pay royalties. If the current situation is the same as the past, no royalties have been paid. So the whole argument is academic.

While we’re talking about patents lets examine the claim that EVD will have lower royalties than DVD. This is totally bogus. EVD will have higher (or the same) royalties because it is a DVD player AND an EVD player. So there is the DVD royalties and the EVD royalties. Even assuming EVD is free for China manufacturers the royalties have not gone down, they’ve stayed the same.

While we’re on the subject, lets explode the myth that China can do nothing about piracy: try buying fake Beijing Olympics branded goods.

One of the first things I purchased when starting university was a Casio fx-580 calculator. At the time this was an amazing machine because it did complex numbers - something engineers spend a lot of time pondering. I still have it on my desk and use it every day. Over the years, though, the screen had started to fade. That is, at least, until five minutes ago when it was cleaned for the first time in twenty years. And underneath? A shiny - non-faded - screen. Here’s to another twenty years of muck. They don’t make ‘em like they used to.

A voyage from idea to realisation across an ocean of compromise.

You’re given the task of designing a logo for City TV - the annonying TV channel played in Shanghai taxis. (There shall be no quiet places.)

Do you:

a) Flex your creative muscle and design a new logo. (How hard can it be right?)
b) Bastardise a cultural icon.

Before you answer remember you’re in China.

Mmmm. Text shadow effect.

Q: What’s the answer to life the universe and everything?
A: 42

Which just happens to be this weeks number. Expect great things.

Via 43 Folder fave web tools

osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to restart'

From Mac Geekery

So I’ve just done my regular emerge sync etc. It seems that everytime something new is installed printing stops working. The current issue was fixed by adding a line in cups.conf which explicitly tells it which network address:port to listen on. Why this worked before we’ll never know.  So here is the saving line:

Listen 192.168.1.2:631