Around 2003/04, I bought a used original xbox from a friend of mine.  In the moment it probably seemed like a pretty foolish investment, considering the Xbox 360 was ready to, or had already hit the open market.  I purchased this aging piece of hardware without regard to its product shelf-life, because I had other more nefarious plans for it.  For weeks it sat in my office, no games to play on it, no Television hooked up to it, it just sat, and waited.  During that time I was reading, printing, compiling and testing, collecting all the information I would need to take this aged “game console” from a single purpose appliance to one of the most robust and powerful media hubs known in existence.  To this day even I have not found a more powerful and flexible media center on which to play my multitudes of media types.  From this single box, I can watch all my PVR’d television shows, video podcasts, and DVD rips.  As well as and extensive number of codecs/formats: mp3, mp4, avi, mkv, ogg, thm, divx, xvid, and the list goes on and on.  It will even play media that has been compressed and RAR’d into archives right from within the RAR file itself.

The Media Center for Xbox, or xbmc has taken the original hardware to it’s limits and is no longer developed for that platform.  Thankfully the developers saw “outside the box” and have moved the concept onto a more universal platform that has continued to grow and mature.  It makes an excellent replacement to the media center editions of Windows, linux installs, or AppleTV reloads as well as a liveCD/USB installation.

Recently the project has gained some traction with some sponsorships from IPTV startups Boxee and 9×9 Networks.  This is a major win for an open source project.  With active and interested subscription services using and supporting the platform, there is no place to go but up.  While XBMC in it’s current iteration has no peer (especially in the private “closed source” sector) it appears that it will continue to exceed expectations for some time to come.

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The event I miss most from the Olympics, Summer AND Winter, is the Medal Race.  There are no more competitors for the biggest and most entertaining aspect of the Great Games.  I blame Ronald Reagan.  I think destroying the Olympic Games should be given to his credit.  After all, it was he who single-handedly tore down the Iron Curtain and destroyed communism in the former USSR.  Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union the Olympics lost their appeal in the medal grab.  The competitive spark is now relegated to individual events depending on their relative popularity with the viewing public.  Without that political tension, it might as well be a Saturday afternoon at your favorite Pee-Wee sporting event in your community center.

The political homogenization of the games is nearly complete.  It’s almost pointless to even mention the competitor’s country of origin, because quite often they train elsewhere with coaches from leading countries in the cold-war era.  Even the judged competitions (regardless of not being a sport to begin with) have been generified to the point where we don’t even see the individual judge’s scores, just the composite.  Mark off another potential rival.  Even American Idol knows you have to hate somebody.  How boring would it be if Randy, Simon and (formerly) Paula just sat silently while an announcer, or electronic scoreboard gave the results of the audition.  So now all the competition comes down to people we never heard of, with some oblique reference to a country they “represent” moderated by anonymous judges.

Without a rivalry the Olympics are boring, thanks a lot Ron.

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So there is this article about Windows 7. It goes on at length about the naming process for the Windows line. Then there is the follow up article, that is the explanation for the naming scheme. Now all I can think of is the Animaniacs singing about Windows Versions.

FIIIIIRRRRSSSSST There was Dos,
That Bill Gates bought
really a steal,
or so we though

Then Apple’s “Lisa”
Showed us a mouse
and soon after
Windows one came out

But it was just and overlay
’cause DOS still ran everything anyway.
And so it was with Windows 3
and 3.11 respectively.

Then came Windows 95 and we all thought that to survive
We must upgrade immediately or we’ll be left behind the scene.
And so we all clambered aboard and purchased Windows number 4
Only to find that right behind would be Windows 98.

Nine-teee-eight!
Oh how we thought that that was great.
Windows Nine-teee-Eight!
We thought it was divine!

But there were bugs and Billy thought
Lets march a new release on out
and so “SE” became the norm
with patches flying like a storm.

The internet was the new big thing
and IE 4 had us on a string,
Outlook express kept our email
And everything seemed good and well.

But Bill would not settle for millions and millions
He really wanted trillion billions
so two os’s came the same year,
but with different names.

We watched the trick of ME with surprise
as it crashed and crumbled before our eyes
But 2000 seemed rather stable and stayed alive,
So they called it Windows 5!

Then came XP! “Just a point release” or so they say,
Win-dows EEECKS-PEEEE! Really saved Old Billy’s day.
We’ll make More MonEEYY! If we put two versions out,
One for work and one for Home!

And so this OS ran and ran
everything working according to plan
but the longevity of the silly thing
screwed up Bills releasing scheme
For Another OS to take it’s place
and boost profits into outer space.

So Bill killed XP, he pulled the plug
and rolled out Windows Vista.
No one knew that Windows 6
would go right down the Shitstah!

Now all eyes look forward to going back
to all that vista seemed to lack
And we can Only hope that Windows 7
Is not “MS Bob Centennial Edition!”

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Resistance is futile…
The Borg Collective

At some point back in the last millennium, there was this pop-culture phenomenon called Star Trek that invaded most every part of a normal American’s life. So much so that the culture could not escape the effects of some of the social commentaries that occasionally saturated the scripts of this Sci-Fi diversion. It was during this time a menace was revealed. A race of one mind, one thought that worked and acted in perfect harmony, outside of the influence or concept of individual thought, THE BORG.

Once the evil was conceptualized in fiction, it did not take long for internet to answer with the real-world identity of this ultimate bogey-man, one William Henry Gates III. His singular mind, that drives the cube-ship known as Microsoft, was almost instantly recognized for its nefarious process of assimilating technology and re-branding it Microsoft. Their steamroller tactics were almost directly from the play-book of the world smashing Borg of fiction. If it were not for the brave actions of some overly-litigious free thinkers, I would probably be blogging with Microsoft WordPress, and paying for the pleasure to boot.

Apparently, the MS Borg plans for universal digital domination have ceased or slowed in direct proportion to the ratings of the Star Trek franchise. We can all breath a heavy sigh of relief. The worst is over now and Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS) is beginning to flourish.

Or is it? (more…)

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