SED: The Next Wave

Today was Props for Profs (students invite professors to a fancy dinner), and I'm still stuffed. Just look at that dessert! I had two slices of cheese cake because it was so good. The fruit fly situation continues, meanwhile, and one of my traps is working quite well, but there's still more than 50 of them left. Moving along, I find it fascinating that it took television sets over thirty years to reach true evolution. I guess you can call the switch from black and white to technicolor pretty big, but the addition of LCD, plasma, and DLP have totally transformed how we see the world around us (fictional and non-fictional). They all have their flaws though, but a new format called SED challenges the balance. I briefly mentioned this at CES time, but now GotFrag has a great article explaining all the other formats and why SED is so cool. Namely, it's power efficient, has a hemispheric viewing angle, and great response time (i.e. great news for picky video gamers). The specifics of how it works are probably too technical to try to understand (I've already tried and failed, but it essentially looks to reach a middle ground between CRT and LCD that results in numerous advantages. People may tout their LCDs as great, but they just jumped on a bandwagon a little too quickly (unless they have DLP, which is actually worthwhile), but in a dark room and at far viewing angles they're pretty much screwed. So do the smart thing and wait until next year for your next major television purchase.

The dude getting sued by Apple for revealing "trade secrets" (which were of products that never came about, if they were even in production) wrote an editorial for CNet about how important this case is for our First Amendment right to free speech, and he's completely correct. If Apple wins, our society will enter a slippery slope where money gives you power over what people can and can't say about you, and this would be very bad. Just keep that in mind when you read about the hearing on April 20. If you're still willing to buy an Intel Mac, then be sure to at least hold off until the summer because prices on these chips are almost assuredly going to go down in price and better chips coming out as well. Having a 4MB cache would be pretty nuts, which is what the new "Merom" processors will offer. Disney will soon be offering shows for free online the day after they air, with commercials that you have to watch though, and they're starting with Desperate Housewives and Lost. I will actually use this service if they allow me to forward through an episode (not the commercials, the show itself for split viewings), and this is what I've wanted all along so I'm excited to see how it turns out. If you want to try to relieve your memory woes with Firefox, here's a neat little fix that moves some of the memory to your hard drive. I've been too busy tonight to try it out, but it makes sense that it would substantially relieve the problem. It looks like the PS3 will not be shown off much at E3 next month, which is a pretty big disappointment since everyone is so anxious to see gameplay. This is really only helping out Microsoft more and more, but I suppose that the PS3 launch could still blow us all away (which it must to not fail miserably). Lastly, it looks like the tech industry really is holding strong with a 40% drop in job cuts from this same quarter last year, which is pretty impressive improvement. So glad I stuck with CS.

A number of pictures have popped up today. The best one is actually from X3 revealing a pretty minor spoiler, but I didn't want to post it here for fear that people would be mad at me. Instead, I'm showing you this poster from Talladega Nights, which still looks like it will be pretty hilarious. There are less thrilling posters for Cars over here, but they look better than some of the earlier ones. We also have a number of new pictures from MI:3, which were obviously provided by the studio and look very good. Again, this movie had better be pretty sweet. Lawrence Bender and Mike Farrell have optioned the rights to the Terry Schiavo story, and I have no idea why. Would people really be willing to watch a movie about that crap? I sure as Hell wouldn't. VH1 premiered a new clip from The Notorious Bettie Page, which I'm guessing will be a sleeper hit because it looks a lot better than my initial impressions of it had told me. Lastly, Kiefer "Badass" Sutherland has signed on for three more seasons of 24, and will become executive producer next season. I wouldn't be surprised if they killed the show after three more seasons, but at least it'll have been a good run.

Now for some Monday Madness:

Do you like to shop?
Oh yeah. I don't like spending too much time on it, but I do look forward to getting new things despite the regret later of having a lighter wallet.

IF YES, answer the following:

1. What is your favorite store? Why?
I'm going to go with Amazon.com just because I can see user reviews and product pictures and such. I do more research than just Amazon.com reviews when making major purchases, but they're usually rather representative of general opinions.

2. Do you only shop when there is something you specifically need or want or do you sometimes go shopping just for "something to do?"
Usually when there's something I need. Like I'll have to go shopping pretty soon for swimming trunks since my current pair sucks and I know that I'll have pool/boat parties to attend in May, and August, and probably a Schlitterbahn trip at some point in the summer.

3. Do you prefer shopping online or in stores?
It really depends. Overall though, I like going to the store because usually you can see things in person (like clothes and such) and it's easier to return things. However, shopping online is usually cheaper, so I sometimes get the best of both worlds and visit a store before buying online (like with my digital camera).

4. Do you have a shopping buddy or are you perfectly content going alone?
I'm content going alone, but I do like going with someone else because it's more fun that way. I've had a pretty good time when shopping with my girl cousins because they have better taste than me and know what looks hot =P