With my experience of controling runspace objects it didn't take much to create a Powershell host that could run as a background process. Since running shell scripts in background is not an unheard of thing I decided to create a project to do just that. PSGhost is a Powershell host that can run scripts in background or scripts that define their own GUI.

 

It's a really simple application. The binary is only 16KB. It should be easy enough to use if you know how to us Powershell.

I must make a security advisory about PSGhost. Since it runs completely silently in the background, shell scripts can be run with out the user even noticing. Be sure to store the PSGhost binary and all your shell scripts in a location that is writeable only by you or your system administrator.

I just read this on Engadget and feel that I need to make a statement, both as a consumer and as developer. Sony's format war is born of arrogance, and ignorance.

 

Sony seems to think that forcing everyone to buy their formats will force everyone to bow their consumer rights to them. The MemoryStick format lacks even readability on any platform that is not controled by Sony. The UMD proprietary format also rather useless seeing that I can not watch the movies printed on them on, for example, my computer, the old television in my bedroom, the high definition television in my living room, or on my notebook computer while I'm out on long boring trips. No, Sony's proprietary formats can not, in most cases, be used in non Sony platforms.

So why would I want to use a Sony owned format. The answer is simple. I don't want to use a Sony format! I'm just saying that there is plenty of entertainment to be had that doesn't involve any proprietary formats and much of that is also free!(Side note: I ask myself why am I not in Toronto right now.) As for Blue-Ray I can say that I will not be very interested until there are at least 3 companies selling writable disks for about USD$3 each.

Sony's success has never been of it's own making. Take a word from the mega-est of megacorps. I didn't buy a PS2 just so that I can say that I have a PS2. I bought a PS2 because Square, Bandai/Namco, Nippon Ichi, EA, etc. released games for the PS2. Sony you need to stop focusing on media formats, and put your focus into building the best programable platform available.

In my humble opinion the best programable platform available is the PC. The x86 and x64 architectures have by far the largest volume of executable code and tools available for them. The reason obviously being because Intel didn't intentionally limit the x86 programmability. Thus people are free to make operating systems, free to make applications, free to make... games on Microsoft Windows!

 

In summery I hope that Sony doesn't forget the developers.