While browsing all the anti-Sony sentiments over the “revised” PAL PlayStation 3 I found this YouTube movie that sort of sums it up pretty well from GamerCastNetwork.com guys who are big XBox 360 fans.
Monthly Archive for February, 2007
A study by Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego University claims that college students these days are more narcissistic and self-centered than ever before after the self-esteem movement in the 1980’s that apparently went too far. The study asserts that narcissists lack empathy, are adverse to criticism and self-serving. The rise of blogs such as MySpace and vlogs like YouTube help foster narcissism apparently.
Read about it from MSNBC here.
In a Kotaku article Brian Crecente was tipped off that a certain Mike Foster from The Porn Talk was prepping a FUD campaign against consoles and the Wii in particular with his talk “The Wii’s Dirty Little Secret” which starts with (yes, I have a hard time taking it seriously) “The Wiittle Porn Problem for Nintendo’s Best Selling Game Console”. Apparently parents are to be warned that kids may be accessing porn via the Wii due to its wifi support (what about the XBox 360 and PlayStation 3?)
Read about it here.
Roughly Drafted has written a good article about the FairPlay DRM here which discusses it quite in depth. In other news EMI has backed out of discussions about dropping DRM altogether.
From what I can tell EMI is basically asking for a bucketload of “insurance” money to lose DRM on the off chance that people somehow get the idea that paying for music then pirating it will cause them to lose more money than someone ripping a CD and dumping it onto the Internet P2P systems. Apparently Apple and Microsoft aren’t really keen on being [ab]used and the majority of astute people figure that EMI is being pretty silly. Read about it from Ars Technica here.
The simple solution from my point of view is to make DRM apply to rental situations only to restrict playback beyond the set number of times or time and date, while content that is owned is digitally watermarked sans DRM so the user can transcode, copy, backup or otherwise do what they like with it. Leaked copies on the Internet or P2P systems could then be tracked to a user who takes responsibility (if possible) for it. Streamburst was looking into something like that here.
John Gibson at Fox New apparently has been pushing the Anna Nicole Smith story since her death on 08/02. No big surprise there, however the interesting thing is John Gibson is calling reporters who moved past the Anna story to cover the Iraq war as “Those people are snobs” and that “…people are a little weary … of your war coverage…” as opposed to the people who are probably tired of hearing from John about Anna’s death.
To wrap it up John ironically says about the other reporters that “… [they're] too high class for that (Anna) story. [They] won’t stoop to what you want to hear about.” - presumably, the Anna story and not what’s going on in Iraq. So, what we have here is that the death of some celebrity is more important than the numerous US soldiers and Iraqis that got killed since her death? Way to go Fox!
Charlie from The Inquirer rips Sony a good one after the announcement that they’re skimping $27 (presumably US?) bucks by chopping off the IOP, EE and GS from the PlayStation 3 and replacing it with less-than-reliable software emulation instead and charging more to boot. Sony has decided to publish a list of working/non-working games on March 23, so if you had a preorder forget about knowing what works until it’s in your hands. Astute buyers will either a) hold off selling their PS2’s or b) wait for updates to get the full functionality, if ever.
Read about it from The Inquirer here. Think I’ll pick up a Japanese or US PS3 at this rate, but it all seems to point to the fact that Sony should have either a) done this from the start and b) waited 6 months for games + hardware to catch up.
Apparently the European PlayStation 3 will be less backwards compatible as compared to the Japanese and US models, according to Sony spokesmen. This is due to presumably emulation software that can be upgraded to take care of the backwards compatibility while they can remove the IOP, EE and GS to save on costs. So, the upshot is that EU PlayStation 3 models cost more while there’s less hardware in it, less backwards compatibility and we’d have to be the guinea pig for the upcoming JP/US emulation software? Looks like I’ll buy a JP or US model after all…
Read about it from Reuters here.
M@Blog writes about some recent racist actions that were directed to him while on the train. Read about it here. It think it’s kind of extreme but probably something in the media has flared up the less-than-friendly Japanese to cause this. Some of the comments are interesting, pointing out that most places are racists or fascist (USA being one, towards Asians) in one way or another.
It looks like iMate is going all out with its new range of PDA smart phones due this April with 520 mHz Intel XScale CPU, 256 MB ROM, 256 MB RAM, 640×480 VGA screen, quad-band GSM and tri-band UMTS/3G with HSDPA. Yes, it runs Windows Mobile 6. Links to the full specs on PDADB below:
• iMate Ultimate 5150
• iMate Ultimate 6150
• iMate Ultimate 8150
• iMate Ultimate 9150
The 5150 is a slide up numeric keypad phone, the 6150 is keypad free, the 8150 is a standard keypad phone while the 9150 is a clamshell. Probably the best is the 8150 with the keypad on the front, the dimensions are 50 x 94 x 11 mm (or 90 mm for the 6150). To compare, the Motorola V3 Razr is 50 x 98 x 13.9 mm - so these things must be tiny!
Steven Henderson, a self-professed “hopeless” student convinced his father to purchase £10,000 worth of gear to convert waste oil from local restaurants into 1,000 liters of biodiesel a day. After the father gave it a go in his Land Rover he’s sold on it since it runs better now, and they save about £300-400 a week (so that’s about 1/2 year before they catch up) even though they have to pay 27.1 pence per liter due to tax. Read about it here.
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