P2P in the Future

I hope you all caught the Oscars tonight because Jon Stewart was great. The show was mostly only worth watching to see him, and there were a few surprises (like best original song), but that's to be expected. I ordered this pretty little camera this morning along with a 512 MB memory card and a slim leather case after checking it out at Best Buy, and I'm now anxiously awaiting its arrival. You should all be excited as well because you'll get to see some original pictures up here in pretty sweet quality (and maybe even movies). More about that when it comes in though. Robert Cringley puts out some pretty cool editorials, and I particularly enjoyed his most recent one about P2P being the future of media distribution despite ISPs trying to do traffic shaping. It's clear that it's going to be difficult for individual servers to handle distribution of video games and movies and such at this juncture in time, and P2P seems the most logical way to fix this problem (though he strangely doesn't think BitTorrent can accomplish this). He mentions a few current services, and the one that really piqued my interest was Peer Impact. In this service, you can serve the files you buy and get paid for each byte someone downloads from you of the file. I think this service may require a slightly more careful format of files to prevent production of fake files just to garner the money, but it's otherwise a great idea. Cringely thinks that ISPs will eventually come around and develop a service of their, and while I agree that this would be very beneficial to them, I think it will take them a little while because I'm sure that they don't see a need for it quite yet. Aren't you glad you visited today? Now you know the future!

Sorry, it's not really a new iPod quite yet. That picture along with a couple of others just surfaced today and it's the best mockup that I've seen yet. There are many reasons that we have to believe that it's a fake, but a damn good one, and I hope that this is what Apple really is making. Maybe it could come with a glove so as to not blemish the screen? Or maybe I'm just talking out of my ass. It's funny to think back to a time when Apple didn't have all this speculation following them, but do you remember when they allied with Microsoft? This video shows it all, and it's quite amusing to see Mac geeks boo Internet Explorer and Bill Gates. Speaking of Microsoft, they scaled back their claim that they'd beat Google in another 6 months after realizing how cocky it was. They didn't say anything about what they should've though: Origami. A lot of Internet geeks are predicting an announcement at Cebit in Germany this week, and I'm inclined to agree with them. Lastly, CNN Money has a short article about the hidden cost of outsourcing: less customer satisfaction. Companies need to realize that people will pay for better quality; not everyone is a cheapskate.

It looks like we don't have final estimates of the box office yet, but it's pretty clear that Madea's Family Reunion will win it with around $13 million in its second weekend. I'm a bit surprised that 16 Blocks ended up in number two rather than one, but at least Dave Chapelle's Block Party got the most money per theater. Hopefully I can see Block Party this weekend as IGN's new clips from it have enticed me further. I'm sure that you're all more interested in the Oscars though, of which the winners are listed here. I'd give more commentary if I saw more movies last year, but a friend had some pretty good predictions. The Independent Spirit Awards were also awarded this weekend with Brokeback Mountain taking top honors there and a couple of Oscar winners also winning there. With the Oscars come the Razzies, and I think that they're pretty spot-on this year. It looks like Michael Keaton will not be in Grind House as we had previously expected, but I'm sure that it will do just fine without Mr. Mom himself. Lastly, a teaser for Rocky VI was on Sylvester Stallone's site before it got taken down and a YouTube user put it up, who I'm sure will have to take it down sooner than later so you may want to check that out now. It's nothing special, just Stallone doing some voiceover work.

Now for some Unconscious Mutterings:

I say ... and you think ... ?

1. Upgrade::Software


2. Happy ending::Fairy tale


3. Stale::Bread


4. Tripping::Wire


5. Working::Hard


6. Explicit::Language


7. Happy place::Friends


8. Tornado::Warning


9. Medication::Drugs


10. Muppet::Kermit