I’ll put this recipe in the category of tasty and fast. The recipe is literally 30 minutes from preparation to food on the table. I like this recipe also because I invented it. It is fashioned around many similar recipes that you can order in most authentic Chinese restaurants.
Ingredients
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Chop finely large amounts of ginger and green onions. In a large baking dish, make a nice size bed of green onions and ginger, and then lay each filet on top of the bed. Then liberally sprinkle more ginger and green onions on top of filets. Mix in a small cup 1 tablespoon of soy sauce and 1 table spoon of sesame oil, 1 table spoon sugar, and a dash of red pepper. (Don’t put in too much red pepper). Slowly pour the soy sauce mixture over each piece of fish just making each fish a little brown.
Cover with tin foil and place in the oven for 15 minutes. Remove the foil, and sprinkle chopped cilantro. Serve with rice.
Yes, you read that right. HD DVD got it right, by bowing out now, because they realized that they are late to market. The concept of a larger optical format delivering higher quality content may have found success 5 years ago. However, in today’s environment, it is virtually a non starter. There are two basic and overpowering reasons why Blu Ray will fail:
1. Pornography. Being from the technology industry, it is amazing to analyze the role that pornography has played in the adoption of new technologies. Before the VHS tape, there was no easy way to consume pornography except a small pornography store on the seedy part of town. But the VHS tape changed all of that, and millions of pornography lovers flocked to the VHS format, purchasing VHS players over the Sony Betamax players.
Here’s the key point. Pornography is the tie breaker in the classic chicken and egg problem of content and players. Let me explain. The chicken and egg dilemma is a classic marketing puzzle. Consumers were hesitant to purchase betamax players because there were not enough betamax movies to play/rent. On the flip side, the movie studios were hesitant to produce and distribute more films in the new format since there were not a sufficient number of players to monetize. And then Boom. Pornography enters. For the pornography producers, it is a huge win since their prior distribution model was inefficient and limited the size of the market.
Hence, in the 1980’s, pornography drove the adoption of the VHS standard. Fast forward 15 years, and a new standard emerges DVD. Fresh off their VHS success, the pornography industry jumps on the new efficient standard. DVD was a quantum leap in video quality, but more importantly, dramatically reduced production and transportation costs. Before the movie industry blinked, there were a large number of DVD players ready to break the chicken and egg paradigm once again. DVD was a huge success.
Now shift to the present. The pornography industry was not moving to either the HD DVD nor Blue Ray. One simple reason the internet. The internet has already leap frogged either optical format. Despite the fact that Blue Ray is the sole HD DVD format remaining, it is hard to imagine a plethora of new pornography introduced in the new format. The reason is efficiency of distribution. It costs a lot less to distribute a movie over the internet than through an optical disk. The business risks are less, and the end user cost is also less. It’s just not going to happen.
2. Video on Demand. On top of this Blue Ray has another huge competitor – Video on Demand. It’s over game, set and match. Video on demand allows one to watch a full HD movie without any new hardware of software. It is amazing! To watch a HD movie within seconds in your own living room that almost rivals the quality one gets in the movie theater.
It is the esssence of efficiency. Straight from the movie studios to my house. They don’t have to stamp the movie millions of times and then place them in boxes, and then shipped out to individual stores. Think about all of the people that are eliminated from the distribution chain. Companies that stamp disks, companies that make boxes, shipping companies such as Fed EX, retail companies such as Walmart and Best Buy, and movie rental companies such as Blockbuster and Netflix. All of these companies will lose with the acceptance of HD Video on Demand.
And who is the winner? We are! Due to the inherent efficiencies, Video on demand will be less expensive. But that’s just the beginning. The efficiency should also allow movies to be made available sooner. And in the longer run, a much wider selection will be available. This is a key point. There is a cost for BlockBuster and BestBuy to continue to carry an old movie like CaddyShack in their stores. In addition, there is downside risk for the movie maker if these units stay on the shelves too long. All of these issues disappear with Video on Demand. Even in the medium term, Video on Demand will have the best selection as well.
I honestly see no way that Blue Ray can compete with these two large market dynamics. Rest in peace, Blue Ray.
Great points as usual, Rob. I think eventually the disc will go the way of the cassette tape, but I think that’s a ways off. I think the market for DVDs is going to be around for a long time.
First, people like to have libraries of movies they can just put in whenever. That seems to be more convenient for the masses right now when it’s a physical DVD as opposed to a huge hard drive. Plus DVDs are more portable, easier to share, easier to play in your car on a long road trip.
Second, there’s a huge segment of the market that doesn’t have access to on-demand video yet, cannot afford the level of service that brings HD on demand to their TVs instantly or they are uncomfortable with using it.
Third, services like Netflix have shown how people like to have DVDs coming into their homes that they can view whenever in the 21 seconds it takes to put the disc in and get it going. When the delivery system becomes very reliable and ultra easy to use — think netflix where you click on a movie and it zaps down to your TV in stunning HD quality.
There is still mongo cash to be made of the Blu-ray format even if it’s big-profit lifespan is only 5 to 10 years.
I have Die Hard 3 on DVD. I really liked it. It was better than I thought it would be. I watched “Elizabeth” The Golden years in HD Saturday night. Good movie. However, It is not any better than the movies in SD DVD played in the correct screen format!! I have viewed a few movies of the Blue Ray DVD’s,
They are substantially better in quality! I mean they rock!! The first thing you will notice is that everything is way sharper, and because of the sharpness the picture has great depth, almost like your are looking into the picture rather than just looking at the picture. HD on demand will succeed purely because of convenience, provided they get the pricing right. But for those that want quality, Blue ray will succeed also. I think your blog is inaccurate about the success of VHS. The success of VHS was not mainly because of pornography, In the beginning, I believe VHS was developed by Matsushita, division of Panasonic. (I could be wrong) Then Sony had there betamax technology already working in the commercial field for a few years. Movie Studios liked the idea of selling there movies after the box office run, So, they approached both Sony and Matsushita on marketing under both formats. However, (here in lies Sony’s mistake and Matsushita’s smart marketing, Sony refused to license their Betamax technology to other electronic Mfg’s. Matsushita however sold the hell out of there licensed VHS technology to anyone who wanted it, and at a very attractive price I’m sure. Because in a very short time the market was flooded with VHS Recorders and players many portables also, I know I had a camera, portable recorder/player and a separate VHS recorder in my family. It was so much better that 8mm movies. So with the proliferation and price crashing do to competitiveness, Sony lost big time.
So to some up the VHS thing: It was the ability of Home Made Family Videos, plus being able to record your favorite movies and TV shows (Unheard of at the time), Commercial Market (Corporate Training, Duplicators and Marketing tapes), then, the movie studios stepped in big time. Everyone wanted a VHS tape recorder/player. Soon afterwards the movie rental market was born, Rental is why and when pornography on VHS was born! There was no internet back then, so distribution was difficult, once Mom & Pop video rental stores exploded in growth, and this happened fast, that’s when the Pornography market started to proliferate. So they were a small player in the big picture of things. How do I know that? I had my own company Microright back then and I marketed our software to video rental and retail stores. I worked all the VSDA (Video Software Dealers Association) shows in Vegas for 4 years. 90 percent or better of the people marketing to the existing rental and retail stores were from the Commercial and Movie Studios. With only a few booths from the pornography market. As the years went on you began to see more and more pornography at the show. So I really doubt that pornography had anything to do with driving the adoption of VHS, just the opposite.
Here’s my take on Blue-Ray: Blue-Ray will only succeed if the pricing and technology of players will be both attractive (under $200.00) and available from a plethora of Electronic MFG’s. I just found this out, Sony does not own or did not design Blue-Ray, it was Panasonic. So Sony wanted that technology in there Playstation 3 player. They are the ones spending the money to push the blue-ray market. Not sure how the Blue-Ray market or how Sony’s cards are in the mix of things in regards to Panasonic selling the Blue-Ray technology to other mfg’s., that is critical to success in my opinion. Then you have the computer market which is a whole other market unto it’s self.
You make some very valid points. I think the only thing that can save Blu-Ray is the tight DRM restrictions that we are currently seeing in digital content. It’s getting better, however there are still some providers that limit the number of watches, or limit to 24 hours.
In addition, easy access to the media room. There is Apple TV, XBox is making waves, Tivo is even making an aggressive move to put downloaded content right to your TV easily. Home theaters are becoming more and more popular, if digital media is going to win you have to give easy access, to non restrictive, high quality (HD) content. There are a lot of problems with this we face. Mainly the ISP’s restricting downloading, and wanting to prioritize traffic. It’s not going to work if this behavior is allowed. No one wants to wait 5 hours for a download, then face DRM restrictions, when putting in a disk is less painful.
We will get there, but it will be painful.
The entire immigration debate in the United States is bordering on ridiculous. It is almost unbelievable that legislation has been passed to build a wall along a small portion of the border between Texas and Mexico. On top of this, the more strident Republican legislators feel that hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars should be spent to expel all the illegal immigrants from the country. A witch hunt of a magnitude unparalleled since the Spanish Inquisition.
All of this defies logic for one and simple reason – economics. Here in Myrtle Beach, there is a large and vibrant population of immigrants. Where ever I go, it is just as common to hear Spanish spoken than English. But that is my point. The immigrants are out doing the things that consumers do. They are at Walmart and Best Buy. One observation. Unlike me, immigrants almost always seem to pay cash. Walmart and Best Buy must love that. One day I went to the dentist, and I was the only English speaking patient in the whole place. My humble dentist is raking it in.
So here’s the question. What if we boot all of the immigrants out of the country. What would happen? I’ll use one simple example. Immigrants don’t live on the street. They all rent houses, apartments, condominiums, etc. What would happen if suddenly there were millions less people available to rent apartments and houses? The price of real estate would plummet overnight. Pretty strange to want to boot out legitimate tenants from their houses, while housing prices are spiraling downward.
The reality is that the immigrant population has become an integral part of the American economy. Here’s a news flash! Immigrants rent houses, buy cars, go to the dentist, drink beer, and go out for a night on the town. They earn money and they spend money. The more people that our economy has making and spending money, the stronger the economy.
The American economy has been the #1 economy in the world. But that is going to end shortly. In the next 5 years, China will become the #1 economy in the world. There is one simple reason why they will overtake us – their population. China’s population is between 4-5 times the size of the US. Hello? If we are going to compete on the world stage, we don’t need less people. We need MORE people. Throwing the immigrants out would just widen the gap between us and China. Call me crazy but I still want America to be #1.
Overall, the American economy has done a splendid job of integrating the newcomers. Unemployment has never risen during this period of expansion. Yes, there are injustices where a taxpaying citizen loses priority in a government welfare office to a non tax paying immigrants. These are the friction points of the debate, but I view them as anomalies. Each and every American has benefited from the immigrants because our economy is stronger, and it helps us compete on the world stage with the Chinese.
But there is one big hole in this argument. To be honest, we have no idea on the number of immigrants in the country. In the news, we hear numbers that vary from 10 – 25 million people. But we really have no idea. How would anyone know? The reality is that no one knows how many people enter the country and leave the country. Worse yet. We have no clue. Not even close.
This election is going to come down Barak Obama and John McCain. McCain being from a border state has a fairly liberal attitude toward immigration, and so does Obama. Lost in everything is the real issue of border security. At the very least, we need to understand the numbers and the people coming in and out of the country. This will be the only way we can monitor and control our economic growth through immigration.
But I am on the opposite side of fence on this issue. We don’t need less people, we need more. We should be adding people into the economy as fast as possible as long as for each immigrant added, the economy expands. Here’s the beautiful part. If the economy stops expanding, we won’t have to turn off the spicket. The immigrants will just stop coming. The reason immigrants are in our country are purely economic. If the economic opportunity no longer exists, they will no longer come. So far so good, so bring them on!
I have always loved to cook ever since I had to cook for myself in college. My goal has always been to cook better food than I was able to buy at a restaurant. Once I moved to South Dakota, this became a very simple task since there were not very many good restaurants in the surrounding areas. But now that I was at Gateway, there was a very practical matter. Since I was working so many hours, I had little time to cook. So therefore, I started cooking in mass quantities on the weekends, and then freezing as much as possible. For me a good recipe is not only delicious but also should freeze and microwave well.
Now that I am married and live in two countries and work at home. Having a good healthy lunch is essential to my lifestyle. This recipe is one of my all time favorites. Everyone that I have ever served this meat loaf loves it and asks for the recipe, so I thought I would share.
Meat Loaf
Prepare the box stuffing in the microwave which usually includes adding butter and water. At the same time, begin cutting the mushrooms into small pieces. They should be diced but does not have to be too small because they will shrink when baked. Mix everything together and bake for one hour.
The secret to this recipe is the italian sausage. Since it has seasoning, no other seasoning is necessary. Also, the stuffing has a small amount of seasoning. It is very important to keep the ratio of italian sausage and ground beef fixed. Too much ground beef, and it turns out a little dry, and too much sausage and it it a little too crumbly. Afterwards, two big helpings in a quart sized freezer bag. Works great for lunch for two people with a salad. Sometimes there aren’t so many left over for the freezer since everyone likes it so much. Happy eating.
Posts like this, remind me that I need to get back into the kitchen and cook again.
Wow, the cooking way of this dish is great, I’ll try it later and I hope it tastes delicious. Just one suggestion: If you add some cooking pictures it will be easier to follow!