* Netflix pays for their bandwidth * Customers pay for their bandwidth
And yet, AT&T wants more money because they think they have the right to charge Netflix more to pass through their tollbooth.
People aren't paying for "Internet except for Netflix" and Netflix isn't paying their bandwidth costs for "Internet except for consumers."
AT&T, and other providers, should have no right to put up walls. If there are issues of peering, those should be working out at the peering level, and not at the application/service or individual business level.
The news about Apple being willing to pay for AppleTV to have a "special line" to consumers is particularly worrisome and strikes the core of the problems with anti-net neutrality positions: they create unfair markets with barriers to competition. Netflix may complain, but they can (and do! with Comcast) pay if they have to. Apple can afford to pay the gatekeepers as well.
But some new startup (Aereo, for example) or small business? They can't and won't be able to pay those gatekeeper tolls to reach consumers. And they'll be prevented from competing or disrupting.
Big business will thrive in an anti-net neutrality world. Honestly, it might even help Netflix in the long run as barriers to any competing service will be high. But it's anticompetitive and small businesses and startups alike will be prevented from innovating, and maybe even be driven out of the market by an inability to pay these tolls.
Apple now lets you install old versions of Apps on iOS provided that
* You installed the old version when it was available * The developer has not opted out of this policy in iTunes Connect * The new version is not supported on your device
If they dropped the third requirement it might satisfy a lot of what you'd like to see.
You're not a cancer survivor if you had a benign melanoma.
Tumors can be cancerous or benign. They are not cancer if they are benign, by definition. You're the "survivor" of a benign tumor, which is unexceptional since generally everyone survives benign tumors. Sometimes benign tumors can be uncomfortable and occasionally they can press against nerves and cause issues, in which case they are removed. However, they are not cancer, and you are not a cancer survivor.
I have lipoma tumors all over my body (6-7). They are relatively small. Most cannot be seen visually, as they are beneath the skin. Some people have them removed for cosmetic reasons. I have not had mine removed since they do not bother me. They are not cancer.
Some bloggers and commentators online (no mainstream media news sites... yet) have suggested that this bug was introduced by the NSA based on the fact that Snowden's leaked slides showed evidence that the NSA had developed and was working on further ways of targeting and compromising secured iOS traffic.
We know the NSA compromised RSA through Dual EC_DRBG. It's not hard to imagine they wanted to compromise SSL/TLS on Apple platforms.
The bug was found via internal code review according to the credits for discovery, which means nobody else has disclosed they knew about this in the wild (so this is an exposed zero day crypto exploit on both OS X and iOS platforms).
This link is informative - the kicker is he properly indented but obviously duplicated and incorrect "goto fail;"
Maybe this came out due to bad coding practices, but the kind of bug where the code visually looks ok on the surface, compiles and passes without compiler warnings, and works fine aside from allow the comprise is very suspect.
And at the minimum the NSA has been exploiting this rather than alerting people. Our government needs to stop weakening computer security and go back to working for the people, not against them.
The article summary is incorrect. MR Spectroscopy (MRS) is used today to measure molecules inside the brain. Resolution is not great for 3D MRS in clinical applications (due to the tradeoff between SNR and resolution, acquisition times are slow), but it's more than high enough to distinguish between different regions of the brain. And it's very common to perform single-voxel imaging and only get the spectroscopy for a given piece of tissue - for example, where a tumor is located.
MRS easily detects metabolites and ratios, like choline, NAA, as well as things like lipids, and alcohols. It requires expensive scanners, but it works and is used routinely in brain imaging today. The article mentions something that does not work clinically, and is being demonstrated in a lab with a piece of meat. The technology in the article is not a "first step" to understanding molecules in the brain, because we already have that technology today with MRS.
I guess I'm glad they spun off Qt before going back and regressing past the paid-commercial-development trolltech days for Qt.
Admittedly Trolltech used to offer free GPL noncommercial Qt licenses, but that sort of licensing isn't even possible with Windows Phone. Still painful to see open source transition into the most closed model of all.
One in five macs where people chose to install antivirus software have (inactive) Windows malware.
Which is a bit like saying "one in five cars brought to the mechanic get serviced for something." The survey is skewed due to the sample group - most Mac users never install any anti-virus software.
The only places I've seen it installed are on computers in corporate environments where there are already viruses being passed around commonly via email attachment, USB stick, and network drives. These places install antivirus on Macs so users don't forward a virus to Windows users - and it sounds like from this survey, that's with good reason.
Apple's Mail software (and Microsoft's Outlook for Mac) cache attachments locally on the user's disk, so it's very easy to "have" malware and viruses if you just receive email (even without opening it).
It's a bit ridiculous to claim they are "infected" however, and again, the sample group is not really representative. That said, I don't think Macs are in any way immune from viruses. Apple's iOS-like sandboxing and signed-app requirements would likely help OS X considerably in this regard, but of course every decision that increases security by removing control from the user also infuriates free/open software proponents and hackers. Think of jailbreaking iOS and how Apple patches security holes - this is maddening for people who want to jailbreak, but is ultimately an attempt to fix a potential infection vector.
Citrix already has a close relationship with Amazon. They have testing images available, white papers on how to integrate private and public EC2 cloud "farms" with your existing Citrix infrastructure, and not only promote Amazon AWS/EC2 for corporate usage, but make it easy for admins to draw on it as a test base for learning and playing with their new software offerings.
It wouldn't surprise me if they have plans to tie in per hour or other commoditized Citrix licensing with Amazon at some point in the future.
As they do all of this they will inevitably move closer towards Amazon and further away from Amazon's competitors. I don't see this as a surprising development.
I think is less about OpenStack and its relative merits and detriments, and more about Citrix and their corporate partnerships and strategic direction.
ogg is not hardware accelerated on your laptop, and if you're still using a PDA then you're a couple generations back anyways.
All modern smartphones (anything that runs android, pre, iPhone, even most of RIM's stuff) play H.264 and have hardware acceleration for it, many "dumbphones" even play H.264.
Netbooks all have H.264 hardware acceleration...
sorry that your decade old 3Com Palm Pilot doesn't play HD video, don't blame google for that one.
Additional Restrictions (we are working on these!)
*Videos with ads are not supported (they will play in the Flash player)
Ads will still play, and will in fact inflict flash on you. There's really no good way right now to force people to watch advertisements if the whole video is H.264 (since you could just scrub past the ads), so I can understand this, even if I don't like it.
What they'll probably eventually do is break the video up into a bunch of shorter videos, with ads in between. Then they can load each part in sequence, and enforce a timer on the ad portion so even if you scrub through the ad you still have to wait for the timer.
I've been using ClickToFlash with safari for a long time now, which suppresses the flash in youtube videos and plays them in H.264 (when possible) directly. This is a tremendous CPU boon on a netbook - I can't play flash, HD or otherwise, fullscreen, but quicktime plays H.264 just fine. Flash is a horrible monster, and with all the vulnerabilities and instability that it brings along with it, the faster youtube moves away from it, the better.
It's a Windows Internet Explorer problem, not a Mac OS X Safari problem.
the "bug" is that Safari has the users desktop as the default download directory, and will automatically download files if you go to some websites. This is normal and fine behavior. The problem is that Internet Explorer loads files from the desktop on launch, which means if you craft a malicious library and put it on the desktop Internet Explorer will happily load it.
Microsoft should fix IE to avoid loading files from the Desktop.
Linux on the desktop shouldn't be the goal anymore - 2008 is the year of linux on the laptop.
Vista won't run well on the increasingly popular lightweight and low end laptops like the eepc, olpc xo, and what are sure to be many imitators. People have demonstrated they're willing to use linux on these machines, and Microsoft has demonstrated they Don't Get It.
It's not hard to teach people the basics of networking. When you hold people's hands, you make it so they won't have to learn, so they don't. Require them to learn how to fish and they'll be providing for themselves. I know you'll say it's crazy, it's impossible, no normal person could ever learn responsible computer use... but get off your high horse. People routinely learn much more difficult things than using computers - and if they have a motivation to learn how to do things, they will.
In fact, you've proven this. You say people will figure out how to "infest" your network with unlicensed software, but that's assuming individuals will figure out how to do this. You're probablly certain they will - and why? Because it's probably already happened. You spend your time fighting against your tricky users, who find all the holes in your policies and install skype, or limewire, or whatever the unauthorized flavor of the month is.
IT creates an oppositional environment where users are pitted against systems administrators. Is it a surprise that people find ways around the IT department's rules? Imagine if these energies were placed towards helping the system, helping the network, helping resolve instead of circumvent. Sure, not everyone may be willing to expend effort, but there'll be enough people who will take responsibility for themsleves and share with others.
If you look back in history, people originally used computers together, sharing access, tips, and source code. Now it's all top down - someone dictates what you'll do and how you do it. You, as the unempowered user, receive prebuilt restrictions, prebuilt computers, prebuilt binaries. You can't tinker, you can't fix, and you aren't even supposed to poke around.
The problems of restriction in DRM, restriction in EULA, restriction by not providing source code, restriction in IT are all the same. Instead of educating users and providing them the ability to solve problems, IT mirrors large software companies and media companies, and removes any control, forcing them to be "stupid." When users can't even diagnose on their own, and are forced to run to IT for the most minor software install, the bureaucracy justifies itself. IT is necessary because it's been made necessary. Dumb down the users and they need someone to hold their hand. But create a community of educated and empowered individuals and people will share information.
In a community of empowered users people don't just share solutions, they create solutions.
If Net Neutrality laws were in place, the ISPs couldn't be "having discussions" over whether they can extort the BBC into paying them extra. Service providers would then be forced to market and sell their services honestly, because they couldn't get someone else to pay for the bandwidth they're selling.
The BBC pays for upstream bandwidth. Consumers pay for downstream bandwidth. But ISPs don't actually have the bandwidth they're selling, so they want the BBC to pay as well for the bandwidth consumers already paid for. It's ridiculous.
Of course it's not true for something Apple is making additional revenue from - that's how SOX works. For the AppleTV, or the iPhone, they can claim the rental revenue, or subscription revenue balances out the new features. For devices that have no further revenue stream after purchase, according to their accounting they need to charge something. If they charge less than a couple bucks, they'll actually lose money due to processing fees - this is why many stores have "$10 minimum" for credit cards, by the way. Charging $20, of course, includes some profit, but you can't blame a for profit corporation for trying to make money. Apple isn't a church, despite what many Mac Users would like to believe.
Sarbanes Oxley is complex, and Apple's already been burned by one accounting scandal. They don't want another - they're playing it safe.
Poaching is really the only way to guarantee quality. The best way to do it is to find some company that just got purchased or merged recently, and look at the projects that were really well done, but are either getting axed due to redundancy or are just being caught up in bullshit.
Programmers, good programmers, like to get things done. They don't like to see their stuff get thrown away, deal with bureaucratic nonsense, or live with the nighmares of daily "integration efficiency" meetings (substitute buzzwords as necessary). When companies get bought out, people almost always leave. If it's a small enough company, then the really good developers might have contracts to continue with the new place, or might receive enough stock/cash to just retire -- but with the big companies, the businesses that have solid products, teams of experienced developers, and the nonsense and management structures associated with size, well, that's the ripe target for poaching.
You can, of course, get people who are happy where they are, in stable jobs at good companies. But you'll pay top dollar, and a significant premium above that for the effort of ripping them away from all that. Finding the unhappy developers can be the best way to get talent - they want to do good programming, but the bullshit is standing in the way. Promise them a job without bullshit, maybe some creative control... and they're yours.
There was a story a few weeks ago noting the discrepancy between Apple's sales numbers and the number of subscribers on AT&T and other services using iPhones.
Looks like that million+ phone "gap" is thanks to China.
Blu-Ray is spelled "incorrectly" in order to ease its protection as a trademark. HD-DVD isn't even a word, so I'm not sure how spelling is a valid criticism. What does HD-DVD even stand for? High-Definition Digital Video Disc? Versatile Disc? Does that make sense in a context of storing data instead of movies?
Blu-Ray refers to the blue lasers used on the disc. Since a Blu-Ray disc can store more than just movies, it makes sense to give it a name that applies to more than just movies. It's also a shorter name, (who wants the five syllable mouthful of HD-DVD?) easier to say, and more importantly, deciding which format is better based solely on the name is fucking stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
Put another way:
* Netflix pays for their bandwidth
* Customers pay for their bandwidth
And yet, AT&T wants more money because they think they have the right to charge Netflix more to pass through their tollbooth.
People aren't paying for "Internet except for Netflix" and Netflix isn't paying their bandwidth costs for "Internet except for consumers."
AT&T, and other providers, should have no right to put up walls. If there are issues of peering, those should be working out at the peering level, and not at the application/service or individual business level.
The news about Apple being willing to pay for AppleTV to have a "special line" to consumers is particularly worrisome and strikes the core of the problems with anti-net neutrality positions: they create unfair markets with barriers to competition. Netflix may complain, but they can (and do! with Comcast) pay if they have to. Apple can afford to pay the gatekeepers as well.
But some new startup (Aereo, for example) or small business? They can't and won't be able to pay those gatekeeper tolls to reach consumers. And they'll be prevented from competing or disrupting.
Big business will thrive in an anti-net neutrality world. Honestly, it might even help Netflix in the long run as barriers to any competing service will be high. But it's anticompetitive and small businesses and startups alike will be prevented from innovating, and maybe even be driven out of the market by an inability to pay these tolls.
Apple now lets you install old versions of Apps on iOS provided that
* You installed the old version when it was available
* The developer has not opted out of this policy in iTunes Connect
* The new version is not supported on your device
If they dropped the third requirement it might satisfy a lot of what you'd like to see.
and someone to take their money willingly.
You're not a cancer survivor if you had a benign melanoma.
Tumors can be cancerous or benign. They are not cancer if they are benign, by definition. You're the "survivor" of a benign tumor, which is unexceptional since generally everyone survives benign tumors. Sometimes benign tumors can be uncomfortable and occasionally they can press against nerves and cause issues, in which case they are removed. However, they are not cancer, and you are not a cancer survivor.
I have lipoma tumors all over my body (6-7). They are relatively small. Most cannot be seen visually, as they are beneath the skin. Some people have them removed for cosmetic reasons. I have not had mine removed since they do not bother me. They are not cancer.
Some bloggers and commentators online (no mainstream media news sites... yet) have suggested that this bug was introduced by the NSA based on the fact that Snowden's leaked slides showed evidence that the NSA had developed and was working on further ways of targeting and compromising secured iOS traffic.
We know the NSA compromised RSA through Dual EC_DRBG. It's not hard to imagine they wanted to compromise SSL/TLS on Apple platforms.
The bug was found via internal code review according to the credits for discovery, which means nobody else has disclosed they knew about this in the wild (so this is an exposed zero day crypto exploit on both OS X and iOS platforms).
This link is informative - the kicker is he properly indented but obviously duplicated and incorrect "goto fail;"
https://www.imperialviolet.org...
static OSStatus ...
SSLVerifySignedServerKeyExchange(SSLContext *ctx, bool isRsa, SSLBuffer signedParams,
uint8_t *signature, UInt16 signatureLen)
{
OSStatus err;
if ((err = SSLHashSHA1.update(&hashCtx, &serverRandom)) != 0) ...
goto fail;
if ((err = SSLHashSHA1.update(&hashCtx, &signedParams)) != 0)
goto fail;
goto fail;
if ((err = SSLHashSHA1.final(&hashCtx, &hashOut)) != 0)
goto fail;
fail:
SSLFreeBuffer(&signedHashes);
SSLFreeBuffer(&hashCtx);
return err;
}
Maybe this came out due to bad coding practices, but the kind of bug where the code visually looks ok on the surface, compiles and passes without compiler warnings, and works fine aside from allow the comprise is very suspect.
And at the minimum the NSA has been exploiting this rather than alerting people. Our government needs to stop weakening computer security and go back to working for the people, not against them.
The article summary is incorrect. MR Spectroscopy (MRS) is used today to measure molecules inside the brain. Resolution is not great for 3D MRS in clinical applications (due to the tradeoff between SNR and resolution, acquisition times are slow), but it's more than high enough to distinguish between different regions of the brain. And it's very common to perform single-voxel imaging and only get the spectroscopy for a given piece of tissue - for example, where a tumor is located.
MRS easily detects metabolites and ratios, like choline, NAA, as well as things like lipids, and alcohols. It requires expensive scanners, but it works and is used routinely in brain imaging today. The article mentions something that does not work clinically, and is being demonstrated in a lab with a piece of meat. The technology in the article is not a "first step" to understanding molecules in the brain, because we already have that technology today with MRS.
I guess I'm glad they spun off Qt before going back and regressing past the paid-commercial-development trolltech days for Qt.
Admittedly Trolltech used to offer free GPL noncommercial Qt licenses, but that sort of licensing isn't even possible with Windows Phone. Still painful to see open source transition into the most closed model of all.
Microsoft Surface (RT) does apparently ship with Windows Defender.]
So yes, Virus Scanner included/required.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQhhtvuZwVg)
One in five macs where people chose to install antivirus software have (inactive) Windows malware.
Which is a bit like saying "one in five cars brought to the mechanic get serviced for something." The survey is skewed due to the sample group - most Mac users never install any anti-virus software.
The only places I've seen it installed are on computers in corporate environments where there are already viruses being passed around commonly via email attachment, USB stick, and network drives. These places install antivirus on Macs so users don't forward a virus to Windows users - and it sounds like from this survey, that's with good reason.
Apple's Mail software (and Microsoft's Outlook for Mac) cache attachments locally on the user's disk, so it's very easy to "have" malware and viruses if you just receive email (even without opening it).
It's a bit ridiculous to claim they are "infected" however, and again, the sample group is not really representative. That said, I don't think Macs are in any way immune from viruses. Apple's iOS-like sandboxing and signed-app requirements would likely help OS X considerably in this regard, but of course every decision that increases security by removing control from the user also infuriates free/open software proponents and hackers. Think of jailbreaking iOS and how Apple patches security holes - this is maddening for people who want to jailbreak, but is ultimately an attempt to fix a potential infection vector.
Citrix already has a close relationship with Amazon. They have testing images available, white papers on how to integrate private and public EC2 cloud "farms" with your existing Citrix infrastructure, and not only promote Amazon AWS/EC2 for corporate usage, but make it easy for admins to draw on it as a test base for learning and playing with their new software offerings.
It wouldn't surprise me if they have plans to tie in per hour or other commoditized Citrix licensing with Amazon at some point in the future.
As they do all of this they will inevitably move closer towards Amazon and further away from Amazon's competitors. I don't see this as a surprising development.
I think is less about OpenStack and its relative merits and detriments, and more about Citrix and their corporate partnerships and strategic direction.
ogg is not hardware accelerated on your laptop, and if you're still using a PDA then you're a couple generations back anyways.
All modern smartphones (anything that runs android, pre, iPhone, even most of RIM's stuff) play H.264 and have hardware acceleration for it, many "dumbphones" even play H.264.
Netbooks all have H.264 hardware acceleration...
sorry that your decade old 3Com Palm Pilot doesn't play HD video, don't blame google for that one.
Ads will still play, and will in fact inflict flash on you. There's really no good way right now to force people to watch advertisements if the whole video is H.264 (since you could just scrub past the ads), so I can understand this, even if I don't like it.
What they'll probably eventually do is break the video up into a bunch of shorter videos, with ads in between. Then they can load each part in sequence, and enforce a timer on the ad portion so even if you scrub through the ad you still have to wait for the timer.
You can't use it in firefox because mozilla refuses to support H.264
Wake up, nobody uses ogg theora. Sorry guys, patent/royalty-free is great, but in this case it's just not happening.
H.264 is hardware accelerated on just about every mobile device. Ogg Theora won't even play on them.
I've been using ClickToFlash with safari for a long time now, which suppresses the flash in youtube videos and plays them in H.264 (when possible) directly. This is a tremendous CPU boon on a netbook - I can't play flash, HD or otherwise, fullscreen, but quicktime plays H.264 just fine. Flash is a horrible monster, and with all the vulnerabilities and instability that it brings along with it, the faster youtube moves away from it, the better.
newsreader refers to usenet through the NNTP protocol. It has nothing to do with RSS or the New York Times.
It's a Windows Internet Explorer problem, not a Mac OS X Safari problem.
the "bug" is that Safari has the users desktop as the default download directory, and will automatically download files if you go to some websites. This is normal and fine behavior. The problem is that Internet Explorer loads files from the desktop on launch, which means if you craft a malicious library and put it on the desktop Internet Explorer will happily load it.
Microsoft should fix IE to avoid loading files from the Desktop.
Linux on the desktop shouldn't be the goal anymore - 2008 is the year of linux on the laptop.
Vista won't run well on the increasingly popular lightweight and low end laptops like the eepc, olpc xo, and what are sure to be many imitators. People have demonstrated they're willing to use linux on these machines, and Microsoft has demonstrated they Don't Get It.
It's not hard to teach people the basics of networking. When you hold people's hands, you make it so they won't have to learn, so they don't. Require them to learn how to fish and they'll be providing for themselves. I know you'll say it's crazy, it's impossible, no normal person could ever learn responsible computer use... but get off your high horse. People routinely learn much more difficult things than using computers - and if they have a motivation to learn how to do things, they will.
In fact, you've proven this. You say people will figure out how to "infest" your network with unlicensed software, but that's assuming individuals will figure out how to do this. You're probablly certain they will - and why? Because it's probably already happened. You spend your time fighting against your tricky users, who find all the holes in your policies and install skype, or limewire, or whatever the unauthorized flavor of the month is.
IT creates an oppositional environment where users are pitted against systems administrators. Is it a surprise that people find ways around the IT department's rules? Imagine if these energies were placed towards helping the system, helping the network, helping resolve instead of circumvent. Sure, not everyone may be willing to expend effort, but there'll be enough people who will take responsibility for themsleves and share with others.
If you look back in history, people originally used computers together, sharing access, tips, and source code. Now it's all top down - someone dictates what you'll do and how you do it. You, as the unempowered user, receive prebuilt restrictions, prebuilt computers, prebuilt binaries. You can't tinker, you can't fix, and you aren't even supposed to poke around.
The problems of restriction in DRM, restriction in EULA, restriction by not providing source code, restriction in IT are all the same. Instead of educating users and providing them the ability to solve problems, IT mirrors large software companies and media companies, and removes any control, forcing them to be "stupid." When users can't even diagnose on their own, and are forced to run to IT for the most minor software install, the bureaucracy justifies itself. IT is necessary because it's been made necessary. Dumb down the users and they need someone to hold their hand. But create a community of educated and empowered individuals and people will share information.
In a community of empowered users people don't just share solutions, they create solutions.
If Net Neutrality laws were in place, the ISPs couldn't be "having discussions" over whether they can extort the BBC into paying them extra. Service providers would then be forced to market and sell their services honestly, because they couldn't get someone else to pay for the bandwidth they're selling.
The BBC pays for upstream bandwidth. Consumers pay for downstream bandwidth. But ISPs don't actually have the bandwidth they're selling, so they want the BBC to pay as well for the bandwidth consumers already paid for. It's ridiculous.
Of course it's not true for something Apple is making additional revenue from - that's how SOX works. For the AppleTV, or the iPhone, they can claim the rental revenue, or subscription revenue balances out the new features. For devices that have no further revenue stream after purchase, according to their accounting they need to charge something. If they charge less than a couple bucks, they'll actually lose money due to processing fees - this is why many stores have "$10 minimum" for credit cards, by the way. Charging $20, of course, includes some profit, but you can't blame a
for profit corporation for trying to make money. Apple isn't a church, despite what many Mac Users would like to believe.
Sarbanes Oxley is complex, and Apple's already been burned by one accounting scandal. They don't want another - they're playing it safe.
Poaching is really the only way to guarantee quality. The best way to do it is to find some company that just got purchased or merged recently, and look at the projects that were really well done, but are either getting axed due to redundancy or are just being caught up in bullshit.
Programmers, good programmers, like to get things done. They don't like to see their stuff get thrown away, deal with bureaucratic nonsense, or live with the nighmares of daily "integration efficiency" meetings (substitute buzzwords as necessary). When companies get bought out, people almost always leave. If it's a small enough company, then the really good developers might have contracts to continue with the new place, or might receive enough stock/cash to just retire -- but with the big companies, the businesses that have solid products, teams of experienced developers, and the nonsense and management structures associated with size, well, that's the ripe target for poaching.
You can, of course, get people who are happy where they are, in stable jobs at good companies. But you'll pay top dollar, and a significant premium above that for the effort of ripping them away from all that. Finding the unhappy developers can be the best way to get talent - they want to do good programming, but the bullshit is standing in the way. Promise them a job without bullshit, maybe some creative control... and they're yours.
There was a story a few weeks ago noting the discrepancy between Apple's sales numbers and the number of subscribers on AT&T and other services using iPhones.
Looks like that million+ phone "gap" is thanks to China.
Blu-Ray is spelled "incorrectly" in order to ease its protection as a trademark. HD-DVD isn't even a word, so I'm not sure how spelling is a valid criticism. What does HD-DVD even stand for? High-Definition Digital Video Disc? Versatile Disc? Does that make sense in a context of storing data instead of movies?
Blu-Ray refers to the blue lasers used on the disc. Since a Blu-Ray disc can store more than just movies, it makes sense to give it a name that applies to more than just movies. It's also a shorter name, (who wants the five syllable mouthful of HD-DVD?) easier to say, and more importantly, deciding which format is better based solely on the name is fucking stupid.
Hi8 was tremendously successful. Just because you're too young to remember it doesn't mean it wasn't popular.