Last night, at my local DVD store, I purchased a Blu-ray disc for RMB 80 (USD 12). The same disc on Amazon costs USD 17.50 (down from USD 35). It is safe to assume, just like every other title in the shop, it is a fake. When Blu-ray was introduced there was doubt as to its viability due to the rise of Internet delivery and competition from HD-DVD. But the appearance of fake discs means Blu-ray has arrived as a standard. It must be viable because there is a big enough market for pirates to be shipping discs. Therefore, I…

As I wrote yesterday I don’t miss consuming UK media very much. Bizarrely and very meta-ly, some of the UK media I do listen to is about… media. Media podcasts. Media Talk from the Guardian and The Media Show from BBC Radio. Both available to me as free podcasts. Both highly recommended and appreciated. I can also listen to real-time streamed radio from all the UK stations. Audio it seems can cross borders with ease.

John Graham-Cumming has a blog entitled A year without TV. I know how he feels. I moved to Asia in 1997 so I’ve had 13 years with close to zero TV. I also don’t miss it. The few channels we can get are mostly international news channels (CNN, BBC, CNBC etc.). A constant looping source of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) meant to be watched in 20 minute chunks. TV fast food.

Adobe have posted a blog “explaining” why Flash can not be made open source:

CNNIC recently updated its rules about who can register a .cn domain name. Basically only registered companies in China. OK. This was on 11 December 2009. GoDaddy wait until 5 February 2010 until they send an email to registrants with details of a list of paper work that must be submitted by 12 February 2010. That is, they give us one weeks notice. Here’s the thing. They don’t say in the email where the paperwork is to be submitted. Or if it has to be paper. Or if scans are OK. Only it is to be submitted. Duh!…

When I wrote about the PsiXpda I made a snarky reference to the long time it was taking for Nokia to release Symbian as open source. Well, what do you know? As soon as I write about it they go open source. Apparently ahead of schedule - though that seems a bit arbitrary since (if I recall correctly) when they started there was no schedule. And the Symbian Source page says… “Not all of the code is yet available under open source licences.” Odd that.