In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

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At a small United States Air Force installation in eastern Wyoming, I’m sitting at an electronic console, ready to unleash nuclear hell. In front of me is a strange amalgamation of ’60s-era flip switches and modern digital display screens. It’s the control console for launching an intercontinental ballistic missile or ICBM.

On an archaic display screen in the center of the console, three large letters blink in rapid succession. “EAM inbound,” says my deputy commander and the second member of the launch crew. An emergency-action message is on its way, maybe from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, maybe from the Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, maybe even from the president. We both mechanically pull down our code books, thick binders swollen with pages of alpha-numeric sequences, and swiftly decipher the message.

View the rest of the behind the scenes details, In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie

Google To Drop Support For H.264 In Chrome – Slashdot

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

 

This serves two strategic purposes for Google. First, it advances a codec that\’s de facto controlled by Google at the expense of a codec that is a legitimate open standard controlled by a multi-vendor governance process managed by reputable international standards bodies. (\”Open source\” != \”open standard\”.) And second, it will slow the transition to HTML5 and away from Flash by creating more confusion about which codec to use for HTML5 video, which benefits Google by hurting Apple (since Apple doesn\’t want to support Flash), but also sucks for users.

It is, in other words, a thoroughly nasty bit of work. It\’s not quite as bad as selling consumers down the river to Verizon on \’net neutrality, but it\’s close. And if Google is actually successful in making WebM, not H.264, the standard codec for web video, they\’re literally going to render hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tablets, smartphones, set-top boxes, etc. with H.264 hardware support obsolete.

\”But wait!\”, the OSS fans are saying. \”Isn\’t Google really standing up for freedom and justice, because H.264 requires evil patent licensing?\”

No. Expert opinion [multimedia.cx] is that WebM infringes on numerous patents in the H.264 pool, and will need a licensing pool of its own to be set up, just like Microsoft\’s VC-1 did. So the patents are a wash. This is Google manipulating the market entirely for selfish advantage here, and it\’s all the worse because they\’re pretending otherwise. And it\’s going to be really frustrating watching people fall for it.

(View the rest of the article at Google To Drop Support For H.264 In Chrome – Slashdot)

F.E.A.R 3 Delayed until May

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

Warner Brothers has confessed that F.E.A.R 3, the co-op sequel to Monolith\’s spooky FPS series, has been pushed back to May in order to provide a touch more polish.

\”The F.E.A.R. 3 launch date will now be in May 2011, as we look to deliver the best possible game for our consumers,\” the publisher told us today.

The game was originally pegged for a Winter 2010 release before being pushed back to March 25 in North America. Hopefully this is for genuine polish and not because it\’s rubbish, as I\’m somewhat looking forward to it.

Bond is Back!

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

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Bond is Back!

Deadline is reporting that Metro-Goldwyn Mayer has announced that the next James Bond film has been given the green light.

Set for a release on November 9, 2012, the flick will once again feature Daniel Craig as Agent 007, and director Sam Mendes will helm the flick.

This hopefully means that United Artists is back from their financial issues that were holding up the production of any new James Bond films…