The ScooterBlog

Thanks to a couple of comments (who knows where they found the article, maybe the wonders of Twitter, where I can be followed?), I was reminded of the article I posted back in October noting that Nintendo had maybe backed right into the best storage medium for their Wii system, the SD card slot, and if they made it SDHC compatible, it could truly be something that would supplant the need for a dedicated hard drive, without adding bulk.

So, imagine my interest in reading on CrunchGear that Nintendo may be working on a USB Hard Drive. There would be only one way I would like this idea over SDHC (we’ll get to that in a minute), but really, as a first reaction, why not just enhance the functionaly of the SD slot?

The one commenter on the CrunchGear post may have hit the reason for that. Nintendo may not want it to be an open format that can be competitive, they’d rather make their own thing that they could charge far more for in 32GB and 64GB portions. I sincerely hope they don’t plan to do it with the pictured flash drive in the CG post! Couple of reasons for that:

• Unless it’s a super small form factor, it would add a lot of bulk to the back of the case. Not that Nintendo cares, but there’s no good reason to ruin good cases and system setups by changing the form factor of the system, even a little bit.
• A USB drive isn’t going to offer any serious performance enhancements over a SDHC card, random writes will still be painfully slow in either case.
• If it’s a USB drive, expecting it to somehow stay “proprietary” isn’t realistic. Give hackers three days with that thing, and you’ll be able to roll with your own USB drive in a Wii, that’s a promise.

SDHC cards are up to 32GB, they’re  not horribly expensive (under $100, and even around $40 for a 16GB one), and with the way the Wii has built up to this point, it’s hard to imagine, even in a world of streaming and video downloads, that a Wii would need more than 16 gigs on board.

So what would the exception to this be? A true solid state hard drive. Even a basic core model of these drives would offer extremely fast read and write times, and as long as they avoid the JMicron chipset that has befallen some of the cheaper models (or pair them like the OCZ Apex does to offset the stutter problem), they could put a device together which would blow away even the DVD drive in access speeds, and provide one great experience and relief to load times.

I would also offer the argument that if Nintendo wants to secure these drives and prevent piracy through some method, such as hardware or software based encryption, the solid state would be the way to go, such operations would incude too many random writes and performance would suffer on flash media of lesser quality. Nintendo would be heroic if they offered this strictly as a software encryption method, and left the hardware side open for people to tweak with, but I think that is going to be asking a bit much.

We’ll see in a few months what they come up with. If it’s a full fledged SSD that doesn’t break the bank, I’ll line up to get one. If it’s just a glorified SanDisk flash drive, then I’ll just yawn and move on with my life and go back to enjoying the Homebrew Channel some more.

We go through an interesting paradox every year at college sports seasons. On one hand, many people argue for a tournament in college football, recognizing the importance of conferences and strong at large teams. On the other hand, many of those people do not like the automatic berths that cause only the top ten percent or so of D-1 basketball schools to get an at-large berth. This in many ways is comparing apples to oranges, but the same principles apply to both. That means the 65 team setup right now? It’s just fine. Here’s why:

People have argued that if we are going to have this “fairness” of inviting one team from each conference, then just invite everyone. In case you didn’t think about it, you already do! The conference tournaments provide the perfect way for all teams, even if you are winless, to a least have a nominal chance to make the tournament. Heck, compared to 30 years ago, where winning your conference was essentially the only way to qualify, the mix now is perfect. You are guaranteed to get the top teams but also get the conference champs. Give me the best schools AND ones wbo have actually won something.

The argument is made that it would be a better tournament if the true top 65 schools were in. I could not disagree more. Imagine this. There are 31 conference champs, and 32 NIT qualifiers. While I understand that many of the 31 would qualify anywAys, watch a round or two of the NIT and think about whether you would rather watch some 17-15 middle of the road big school or a conference champ who has actually (gasp) won something. No doubt in my mind, give me the 25-6 no name school.

The charm and allure of this tournament is built as much now around the small school everyone can get bebind as much as it is the big schools too. Cincinnati at a putrid 18-14 and a horrible ending wouldn’t make you care, but a cinderella school in the Sweet 16? Now you’re watching!

Let’s not forget the final factor; money and gambling. The NCAA will never admit it, but gambling and bracket pools are a large part of the current success of the tournament. These brackets are far more fun and challenging with the current setup than they would be with a 1 seed playing, say, an ACC school that went 5-11 in conference but was still one of the best 64.

There is merely one rule I would enact, also built around conferences. That any team who wins their conference regular season title gets at minimum an NIT berth. Constant success for teams across the board should be rewarded and seeing some of these smaller schools might give the NIT a boost too.

So there you have it. The tournament formula is fine. Please do NOT change it!