More of the details for the Xbox 360 2007 Fall Update were announced by the Xbox team today. Interestingly, the Xbox 360 now supports playback of DivX and Quicktime (H.264 and MPEG 4) encoded video files from the Xbox Dashboard... BUT NOT WHEN USED AS A MEDIA CENTER EXTENDER.

In the last Xbox dashboard update, when video playback functionality was added to the Dashboard but not Media Center Extender, I bought the explanation that these were two different applications. I figured this might explain some lag in development. But now another half year has passed and still no support for additional video formats when using the Xbox 360 as a Media Center Extender.

Does Microsoft take seriously the use of the Xbox as a Media Center Extender? Just asking!

Having just read Joseph Asch's interesting discussion of the Dartmouth Governance Committee Report (HT:Joe's Dartblog), it occurs to me that are at least two alternative approaches that would:

• satisfy the concerns of the governance committee that there be no greater number Alumni elected Trustees (because of a fear of divisive elections),
• while increasing the size of the board by eight Trustees (to allow more diversity, more expertise, more slots for donors), and
• maintain parity between Alumni and Charter Trustees.

Those two alternatives are:

1. Add eight Charter Trustees for a total of 16, but give each of the eight Alumni trustee 1.5 votes, while each Charter Trustee has one vote, on matters coming before the board. This retains voting parity between Alumni and Charter Trustees while adding only the desired eight new Charter Trustees.
2. To the extent that giving certain trustees greater voting power than others proved problematic as a matter of corporate law, the board could enact a more complicated series of requirements for supermajorities between Alumni and Charter Trustees that would have the same effect, e.g. (i) any action of the board approved by fewer than 16 of the 24 members would only be effective if at least one Alumni Trustee also voted in favor of such action, (ii) any action of the board approved by fewer than 15 of the 24 members would only be effective if at least two Alumni Trustees also voted in favor of such action, etc. As with the current split of Alumni and Charter Trustees, adopting a resolution would require the support of at least one Alumni Trustee and one Charter Trustee, and otherwise maintain voting parity between the two classes of Trustees.

Of course, the governance Dartmouth Governance Committee has given the impression in their roadshow that meetings of the Trustees are amiable and achieve consensus on most issues. Taking them at their word, this would mean that these provisions would be of little importance, but also of little hindrance to the day-to-day functioning of the board.

Given that, either of these proposals would make for a fine settlement of the Association of Alumni's lawsuit against the College.

My last post led me to think about what has most increased our family's enjoyment of family photos and videos. It is the presence of an Xbox 360 acting as a media center extender NOT any new camera technology.

Creating photos and videos seems to get far more attention that how to view those photos and videos despite the fact that as a practical matter the latter is as, if not more, important. The existence of a media center extender (in the form of Xbox 360s in our house) has meant that photos and videos get viewed (and enjoyed) many times more frequently than before. Photos and videos that would have collected dust previously now get seen multiple times.

Many (most?) people already have a PC that can act as Media Center. Any of those people can buy an Xbox 360 for less than $300 and get easy access to home photos and videos (as well as many other neat features) on their TV through an interface that is clean on a box that is easy to set up and stable.

If you aren't going to use your Media Center PC for recording TV, I think you really can get by without a PC dedicated solely to Media Center duty and just add the Xbox as an adjunct to an existing PC.

Of course other alternatives exist (like many networked media players and Apple TV). All of them are potentially better investments than a new camera too, but I think there are some good reasons to prefer Media Center and the Xbox 360:

• Great user interface.
• Great expandability of capability of the the Media Center back end via software and hardware additions.
• Getting a great console game system for free.

Think about it.

My interest in the above product was piqued by this review linked to by Engadget.

Engadget concludes:

Overall, the HD1000 wasn't totally slammed nor lifted up on a pedestal, but we'd probably hold off on this unless you're cool with a "jack of two trades, but master of neither."

That might be true for many, but maybe not for me, for several reasons:

• The ability to put this in a coat pocket means that I am much more likely to take this product with me on family weekend outings. A subpar camera that you take with you is superior to a great camera that stays at home.
• I seldom take both a video and still camera with me anywhere for the same reasons of bulk. This potentially solves that problem.
• I am not that unhappy with my current video camera (Sony TRV-18) and still camera (Minolta Dimage Z3). My biggest gripes about each are: (i) the bulk and time to download and compress video from the TRV-18; and (ii) the bulk and low light performance of the Z3. The Xacti VPC-HD1000 potentially addresses all but the poor low light performance concerns. 

I would not want to to buy a new camera only to take a step back in one area. Although this camera might be subpar in video and still performance by today's standards, it seems to hold out the possibility of providing me just the improvements I was looking for in my old technology cameras.

There are a few games that I wish I had played to conclusion rather than just the short snippet I actually played: the Half Life Series; Grand Theft Auto Series; and Knights of the Old Republic. This list isn't definitive in any sense because it takes no account of games I did play and is based on hearsay and is limited to the gaming systems I have owned (PC and Xbox). But it is interesting that all of these involve a stories and continuing critical praise long after many people played the originals. I have been skeptical of those who compare games to movies, but perhaps there is more similarity there than I thought.

An excellent post by Marc Andreessen (ht Kausfiles) on the potentially transforming effect of a prolonged writers strike on the future of the entertainment industry. One aspect of the information age means the ability to change industry organizations quickly-- and this industry is no exception.

Chris Lanier questions whether there really is a market for a Windows Media Center server given that it would probably be as expensive as a Media Center PC (which can already sit in a closet and act as a Media Center server.I do not know how large the market is, but I certainly would have an interest in such a device at the same price as a Media Center PC.

I was skeptical of Windows Home Server for the same reasons Chris is skeptical of a Media Center Server: you can already have a PC act as a server; and this is just as expensive as a PC. What I did not count on what that by making the server run like an appliance-- with some extra features but less functionality overall than a PC-- this would be an attractive device. I now realize that is the case.

I think the same might be true for a Media Center Server product. Media Center runs best when it is the only thing running on the PC. Ian Dixon and Pete Stagman remarked on this on a recent Media Center Show. Among the features I would like to see would be: automatic updates and antivirus protection; better self diagnoses of problems (e.g. if a tuner is not working try automatically restarting the tuner or rebooting); the ability to select programs to record and make playlists from a web interface; and the ability to replicate playlists and other setup characteristics between extenders easily.

Until Mark Cuban's post about the value of Facebook, i.e. "The beauty of Facebook, as opposed to Myspace and other social networks is that the people on there are for the most part who they say they are, and Facebook does their best to dismiss those who aren't." I had never given Facebook much thought at all.

That post convinced me that it was worth taking a look at facebook. So unlike other Web 2.0 sites, I created a profile. The ability to search for other real people led me to discover that other people that I knew also had profiles and to add them as friends.

In and odd sort of way, I found the experience of exploring Facebook, joining groups and networks to be like creating a character in an RPG-- only the character is me. I have seen in passing discussion about how Facebook users tend to stay on the site for long periods of time (another thing that makes it valuable). I think a big reason for that is the same as the reason why World of Warcraft and Diablo 2 have a tendency to eat up time.

I am running though a collection of application install files I have downloaded with the intention of checking them out. This is the latest installment of the series:

RenameMaster - a fairly powerful (includes scripting!) rename utility with a GUI. This looks like the best such utility I've seen. Kept.

Resourcer for .NET - "Resourcer is an editor for .resources binaries and .resX XML file formats used with the .NET platform. Resourcer allows editing of name/string pairs, import of bitmaps/icons and and merging of resources from different sources." Kept -- for if I ever try .Net programming again.

StartRight - replaces all your applications run at startup so it can start them more slowly, making the system more responsive. Seemed to install ok, but I'm a little leery of actually trying this. It is intriguing enough to keep around, but not yet compelling enough to use.

WinDirStat - an application the nicely helps find where the files that are filling up your hard drive are located. I have found this is an especially thorny problem on my C: drives where so many caches, temp and hidden files live. Has a nice graphical representation and seems to work ok, so kept.

Savage - "Combining real time strategy and first person action, Savage delivers the next level in multiplayer gaming. Instead of sending mindless computer drones into battle, imagine organizing real human players on a crusade to conquer your adversary. Choose to be a commander, and you will play an in-depth RTS game, researching technologies, mining resources, and issuing orders to your units. Choose to be a warrior, and you will play an intense game of first person combat, wielding your weapon of choice to strike down the enemy." Had I known this was a gime, I probably would not have installed it, but while running the installer I found the above description, which seemed potentially interesting. Unfortunately, it did not install a program group, thinks I have a PCI graphics card and seems to require a CD Key. Deleted.

Secure Data Organizer - Hold the promise of letting me someday have strong unique passwords for everything. Given its promised ability to work with my PDA and enter usernames and passwords automatically. It seems to function ok too. This is a project for another day, so I'll keep this until then.

Tinn - a nice notepad replacement that the author stopped working on in 2005. Still better than Notepad! Kept.

SWINE - a real time strategy game from 2001 (I discover via a web search while installing). Runs, but doesn't grab me enough to make me want to play instead of testing some more applications. Kept for a rainy day.

Torus Trooper - a Tempest-like freeware game. Unfortunately, it is old and seems flaky under Vista. Deleted.

Sim Acquarium 2 - ThreatFire doesn't like this. An aquarium would be nice, but it is not worth any risk. Deleted.

I am running though a collection of application install files I have downloaded with the intention of checking them out. This is the latest installment of the series:

PhotoMapper - allows adding GPS EXIF tags to photos. This is something I'd like to do at some point and although I probably won't end up using this software, I like the idea and it installed fine, so I'll keep it around.

Radio Liner - works much like ripcast in that it saves music files being broadcast by internet radio stations complete with artist and title information. Ripcast was usually off by a couple of seconds, in where it split files making it an imperfect substitute for the original music. That meant that I never really used it as the time to correct tracks made it not worthwhile. I don't know if Radio Liner suffers from this problem, but I'll keep it around to see at some future date.

Reflector - dot Net class browser. For when I take up actual programming again. I'll keep this around too.

Free Registry Defrag - works and installs under Vista. Supposedly defrags and compresses your registry. Seemed to work without incident. Whether it does anything worthwhile is another question. I'll keep it around unless I found it has created some problem.

Registry Distiller - cleans references to nonexistent files out of the registry. Acts like a HTML application. Scanning process took about 3 minutes-- not too bad. Found 912 pointers to non-existent items, although Vista would not permit changing the vast majority of them. I'll keep it around unless I found it has created some problem.

Threatfire - a rootkit scanner recommened by PC Magazine. Installs and functions fine. Kept. 

I am running though a collection of application install files I have downloaded with the intention of checking them out. This is the latest installment of the series:

MyViewPad - a simple graphics editor akin to Vista's Gallery View, but with a few more features. Free and functional. Potentially useful for the tag information it displays. Kept.

Net Traffic Meter - installs, but doesn't give any indication of actually measuring my net traffic. Deleted.

N 1.3 - A jumping puzzle game in flash. Kept.

Nethack 331 - Has a graphical interface and runs fine (except I could find the quit command). I'll keep it around for historical interest.

Neverball - Installs fine. A game with a Marble Blast Ultra feel to it. Kept.

Paint.net - nice Paint program. Kept.

Pekka Kana - a game. Installs Ok, but I have no reason to think I'd play this. Deleted.

Cass Sunstein and Thomas Miles have done an empirical study of voting patterns on the Supreme Court and have classified certain justices by their degrees of "activism" and "partisanship." I responded in the comments (and others responded elsewhere) that the study took insufficient account of decision-making by the agencies below and therefore produced an unreliable measure of partisanship. Sunstein and Miles respond to their critics with another post, but the defense of the partisanship results/characterization seems unpersuasive. I reprint the further comment I made here with a little better formatting:

Perhaps some undetailed aspects of the study address the potential for skewed agency decision-making to affect the "partisanship" results, but how that might be is not clear from the above explanation. The proposition that measuring challenges by industry and interest groups can serve to calibrate whether an agency skews "liberal" or "conservative" in its decision-making seems overly simplistic for several reasons:

• First, what decisions are challenged is itself a function of many factors other than whether the decision was liberal or conservative, e.g. how likely the challenge is to succeed, pleasing constituencies that think the agency should have done more, etc. Liberal agency decisions would be challenged by interest groups as not being liberal enough in these circumstances.
• Second, there is no good reason to believe that agencies might not exhibit this tendency in both Republican and Democratic administrations as the inclination to increase agency power is not necessarily linked to party affiliation.
• Third, industry and interest groups don't necessarily all fit conventional definitions of liberal and conservative.
• Fourth, return to the world posited in my response to the initial post of the study: (i) agencies have an inclination to overstep the bounds of their authority in a way that favors liberal results, (ii) a justice believes the agency has overstepped its bounds in each case reviewed by the court and consistently rejects interest group challenges that regulations were not extensive enough and upholds industry challenges that the regulations were too extensive, (iii) that justice would be described as a conservative partisan in the parlance of the study, even though that terms does not really capture what is going on, which does not necessarily have anything to do with partisanship.

The study seems interesting and the use of the data innovative, but given its limitations, using the term "partisan" still seems unfair.