Enavigo

So today it was announced that outside of Sony, nobody really cares about its proprietary Universal Media Disc – UMD – which is used on Sony’s PlayStation Portable. (Details)

It was not too difficult for people to make the PSP play movies off the just-as-proprietary-but-at-least-under-your-control Memory Stick memory card. You just compress a DVD and save the file to the memory card. You then look for the movie on the memory stick and play it. So who the heck needed the stupid UMD which you cannot write to or read ANYWHERE other than the PSP?

Is Sony finally waking up to a world dominated by Samsung, LG and cheapo no-name manufacturers. People are not too keen on overpaying to get just the same quality, and worse off – be locked intoa proprietary technology. Apple, in my opinion, is not too far behind with closed formats (read iTunes) and a pricing model that hopefully someone will wake up to.

So last year I was travelling a lot and spoiled myself with a subscription to MLB.TV – MLB’s TV service online that allows you to watch most games live online.
MLB.TV was not cheap, around $90, and now that I am a homeowner I am not going to splurge again.

One thing that is not too clear is that once you sign up, MLB assumes you want to auto-renew. Which means that they will charge your credit card, which they politely kept on file, without your explicit permission, really. They are nice enough to tell you that in an email.

That same email also tells you that if you do not cancel before the first day of the season – you CANNOT cancel or get any refund. How nice?

And how can you cancel? That part is NOT self-service, as opposed to their sign-up process. You have to either call or write them an email. You all know how useful email is in confirming its reception, so I gave them a call. The representative first told me that no, I cannot cancel becaue I committed to the subscription. I raised my voice a bit, got a bit more aggressive, mentioned the supervisor, and he put me on hold. 8 minutes later he told me that my subscription will be canceled and that I will receive a confirmation email within 3 days.

Bastards.