Episode 4 - Format is the Enemy of Content

Yes we still exist. However, working at a University you tend to get sorta busy during the term. We aplogize to our listeners, especially faithful commenters like Markus and Rachel, not to mention our recent emailers, Tom and Autumn.

The amazing thing is that, in the four intervening months between episodes 3 and 4 there has been no change in what we wanted to talk about. Format wars affect us all. Indeed, the writer's strike going on in the US right now (which means no new episodes of House, Numb3rs or the Unit, much to Dave's chagrin..) is about formats. Writers get nothing for internet video. So that is why they are on strike, seems like a good cause.

The classic format war is VHS vs. Beta back in the 1980s, and now we have HD DVD vs. Blu Ray. In between we had Amiga vs. Atari ST vs PC vs Apple, we had cassettes vs records, hell, you could even consider Papyrus vs. Paper, sorta....

This comes up of course in Ken's line of work. What if you have a database that was built in the 1970s that nobody now knows how to rad? Dave mentioned that on Star Trek they never seem to have a problem reading alien computers, indeed, it seems that everyone uses some for of UNIX in the future...

Please email us, and thanks for you patience.

Enjoy Episode 4