Category: Random Ramblings

Anything that catches my fancy as a topic I want to cover. Truly random crap.

Console sales at 6 months

Some clever person has put together a chart showing sales figures for the first six months for recent consoles. The numbers are rather interesting, I think, and suggest last year’s claims about the Wii being a certain-to-fail doom and downfall plan for Nintendo were off base. Of course, I also think everyone who pays attention to the gaming market already realize that the Wii is beating up on everything else out there except for the Nintendo DS, and that last year’s predictions of Nintendo’s death were very wrong.

firstsixmonths.jpgTo steal a term coined by Kotaku, I put together the above charticle juxtaposing the first six month console sales of Wii, 360, PS3, PS2, Xbox, and GameCube. First, the Wii has sold better than the mighty PS2 after the first six months. Amazingly, both the PS3 and 360 sold worse than the GameCube for the same period (!). Cumulative first six month totals in units sold are as follows:

  1. Wii (2,470,000)
  2. PS2 (2,200,000)
  3. Xbox (1,900,000)
  4. GameCube (1,540,000)
  5. Xbox 360 (1,384,000)
  6. PS3 (1,271,000)


The article doesn’t specify initially that these are measures of US sales, but later verbiage in the article makes me think that’s the message. I’m guessing Sony isn’t that happy with these numbers, given that the PlayStation 3 sold around 81,000 consoles last month, putting them way behind Nintendo and Microsoft.

[tags]Recent console sales for first six months[/tags]

Starcraft II announced

Well, since every gaming site in the universe is covering it, and since I claim to be a gamer, I suppose I need to pass on the news that Starcraft II has finally been announced by Blizzard. I believe that at this point, this is news to exactly no one. Blizzard promises big gaming announcement at a big Korean gaming event, the Starcraft2.com website mysteriously got an update recently to point it to something spoooooky at Blizzard’s main domain, and it’s only been an Internet-eternity since the original came out. I’ll admit the screenies look mighty-purty, but even though I enjoy real-time strategy games, I just found the original to be kinda “m3h” for me. But for those of you who are gamers and somehow missed the announcement, consider yourself now caught up.

Blizzard president Mike Morhaime says, “With StarCraft II, we’ll be able to do everything we wanted to do with the original StarCraft and more … We recognize that expectations are high following the long-running popularity of the original game, but we plan to meet those expectations and deliver an engaging, action-packed, competitive experience that StarCraft players and strategy gamers worldwide will enjoy.” Meanwhile, IGN’s man in Korea, Charles Onyett says, “SC2 looks, at least visually, strikingly similar to SC1 – both in unit and map designs.”

[tags]Blizzard finally announces Starcraft II[/tags]

Shirt with redacted number

This is a gift that really few folks currently would understand outside the geek community, but I want it. The motion picture industry has been aggressively targetting bloggers and other manner of web site operators who have published the secret magic numbers needed to allow otherwise unauthorized software and hardware to decode and display high definition video from HD-DVDs. Of course, their actions have made the number spread more quickly than it probably would have otherwise. Since I am a follower of the law, I will not publish the number here. However, I would like to link to this cool shirt that ThinkGeek has for sale and mention to my viewers that this would make a great gift for me.

magic_numbers.jpg

Meeting notes from a recent hypothetical meeting in the AACS-LA* office.

Lessons Learned:

  1. When trying to keep a secret, serving people legal notice re: its existence slightly less than effective. Possibly deploy ninjas next time?
  2. Members of online communities object to posts being removed. Ask owners of affected sites to replace posts with smiley face emoticons.
  3. Allowing lawyers to create public relations policy = bad idea.
  4. “Cease and Desist” kinda does the opposite.

Action items:

  1. See what other numbers we can get. Check on availability of 0 and 1 as vital part of circumvention technology.
  2. DMCA not working: investigate banning computers?
  3. Appeal to the kids. Introduce “Ernie the Encryption Key!”
  4. Expire the key. They can’t possibly crack it again, can they?

No, I won’t tell you what the number is that the motion picture industry is trying to protect. I do think option 1 under the Lessons Learned will serve the company well in the future, though – don’t you?

[tags]Perfect gift for the geek in your life, The shirt the motion picture industry doesn’t want you to have[/tags]

Kantor on Brambleton Veterinary Hospital

I’m not normally one who links to other sites and articles just to give links, but I really can’t help but respond to Andrew Kantor’s request for links back to his story on poor service and Brambleton Veterinary Hospital nor his follow-up article from the day after. And when he has even more troubles with a veterinarian from the hospital and has to write more, well, I just have to let both my readers know about it.

If you live in Roanoke, Virginia, I strongly urge you to avoid the Brambleton Veterinary Hospital in Southwest Roanoke County. The staff there is incredibly unprofessional, and it makes me worry about the quality of care the animals receive.

(If you don’t live in Southwest Virginia, ignore this post. Or, if you’re feeling kindly, link to it. That’ll push it up on Google. 🙂

We have been customers of Brambleton Veterinary Hospital for more than two years with our three dogs and two cats. We’ve always paid our bills immediately and never had a problem. We’ve also brought in injured strays to them, as well as animals we’ve fostered for the local SPCA.

. . .

We have been customers of Brambleton Veterinary Hospital for more than two years with our three dogs and two cats. We’ve always paid our bills immediately and never had a problem. We’ve also brought in injured strays to them, as well as animals we’ve fostered for the local SPCA.

So there you have it. A recommendation on which veterinary hospital to avoid.

[tags]Kantor’s troubles with Brambleton Veterinary Hospital[/tags]

The IT crowd coming to US television

Last year, I downloaded the entire &ldquot;The IT Crows&rdquot; British television show via BitTorrent and watched it after reading numerous recommendations for the show from the various geek sites I visit. Tonight, while catching up on my boingboing reading, I find that the show is coming to the US market on NBC this fall. If you are a geek and haven’t seen this show, you really need to watch it. If you aren’t a geek but ever have to deal with tech support, you might also enjoy the show.

The struggling NBC network is turning to science fiction this fall in a bid to lift ratings and appease advertisers and investors, announcing several new dramas whose story lines range from robotics to time travel.

. . .

Later in the year, NBC will roll out &ldquot;The Lipstick Jungle,&rdquot; based on a best-selling book by &ldquot;Sex and the City&rdquot; writer Candace Bushnell. It will also introduce the &ldquot;IT Crowd,&rdquot; a comedy about misunderstood techies, during the 2007-08 season.

The show is well worth watching. I’ll be watching the US released episodes for sure, even though I’ve already seen all the British versions. (via boingboing)

[tags]The IT crowd coming to US television market, Geek TV show on NBC this fall[/tags]

Do it yourself air conditioning zone controls

Hack-a-day recently had a link to a project for doing your own zoning and computerizing your air conditioning system.

servo-zone-damper-had.jpgI’ve been planning to computerize my A/C once I buy a house. I stumbled across this simple vent mod. A $10 servo was added and controlled with some off the shelf computer servo controllers. Personally, I have visions of doing this along with several 1-wire temperature sensors. Check out the DIY zoning project for more ideas along these lines.


I’d love to have the time, energy, and drive to do something like this. I’m a huge computer geek, which contributes to my desire to computerize and/or automate everything, but automated or computer controlled home climate conditioning would just be so damn handy. (via Hack-a-Day)

[tags]Do it yourself home climate zone controls[/tags]

More signs of PATRIOT act abuse

It seems like I’m the only one who cares about this, but I keep posting it to remind people how much our government has been abusing unnecessary powers granted by a bad law in response the the September 11th attack. As the subject title indicates, I’m talking about PATRIOT act abuse here. In particular, here’s the details on a news program which reviews some specific instances of illegal monitoring, data mining, and spying on American citizens.

“So many people in America think this does not affect them. They’ve been convinced that these programs are only targeted at suspected terrorists. … I think that’s wrong. … Our programs are not perfect, and it is inevitable that totally innocent Americans are going to be affected by these programs,” former CIA senior attorney Suzanne Spaulding tells FRONTLINE correspondent Hedrick Smith in Spying on the Home Front, airing Tuesday, May 15, 2007, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS (check local listings) and available for viewing after broadcast at www.pbs.org/frontline .

. . .

President Bush described his anti-terrorist measures as narrow and targeted, but a FRONTLINE investigation has found that the National Security Agency (NSA) has engaged in wiretapping and sifting Internet communications of millions of Americans: The FBI conducted a data sweep on 250,000 Las Vegas vacationers, and along with more than 50 other agencies, they are mining commercial-sector data banks to an unprecedented degree, and they have even been assigning suspicion ratings to anyone who travels across a U.S. border.

. . .

Although the president told the nation that his NSA eavesdropping program was limited to known Al Qaeda agents or supporters abroad making calls into the U.S., comments of other administration officials and intelligence veterans indicate that the NSA cast its net far more widely. AT&T technician Mark Klein inadvertently discovered that the whole flow of Internet traffic in several AT&T operations centers was being regularly diverted to the NSA, a charge indirectly substantiated by John Yoo, the Justice Department lawyer who wrote the official legal memos legitimizing the president’s warrantless wiretapping program. Yoo told FRONTLINE: “The government needs to have access to international communications so that it can try to find communications that are coming into the country where Al Qaeda’s trying to send messages to cell members in the country. In order to do that, it does have to have access to communication networks.”

Spying on the Home Front also looks at a massive FBI data sweep in December 2003. On a tip that Al Qaeda “might have an interest in Las Vegas” around New Year’s 2004, the FBI demanded records from all hotels, airlines, rental car agencies, casinos and other businesses on every person who visited Las Vegas in the run-up to the holiday. Stephen Sprouse and Kristin Douglas of Kansas City, Missouri, object to being caught in the FBI dragnet in Las Vegas just because they happened to get married there at the wrong moment. Says Douglas, “I’m sure that the government does a lot of things that I don’t know about, and I’ve always been OK with that–until I found out that I was included.”

And there is a lot more to the article. I will not be home to watch or record the program (and my wife has filled the DVR with Star Trek episodes…), but thanks to the great wonder that is the Internet, I’ll be downloading it and watching it later. (via Tingilinde)

[tags]Reviewing more PATRIOT act abuse, Looking inside government agency’s abuses of the PATRIOT act[/tags]

The truth of Truthiness

I’ve been using the term Truthiness for years now. I’m not sure where I picked up the term, but I’ve always used it as a word indicating something full of absolute truths. It turns out that a couple of years back, Stephen Colbert started using the word in a different context. Since Colbert has a few more viewers than I have readers, I suppose I’ll have to switch over to his meaning of Truthiness and come up with a new word for my now out of date meaning of Truthiness.

“Truthiness is what you want the facts to be, as opposed to what the facts are. What feels like the right answer as opposed to what reality will support.” – Stephen Colbert

So Colbert wins this round.

[tags]Colbert steals Truthiness from me, The real meaning of Truthiness[/tags]

Recording industry presses Congress to raise royalty rates for standard radio

Very recently, I wrote about the announced spike in royalty rates for Internet-based radio stations. After Congress stepped in to delay or even prevent this, the Recording Industry came back with a solution that is clearly designed only to insure evenness in application of the proposed new royalty rates.

As a means of eliminating the appearance of disparity between the performance royalties about to be charged to US Internet streaming music providers such as AOL Radio and Pandora, and what terrestrial broadcasters pay for the same privilege – which, for that category, is currently zero – lobbyists representing the recording industry, according to Billboard magazine, are pressuring Congress to resolve this problem by extending essentially the same sharply higher performance royalty rates imposed on Internet radio to all broadcasters.

If such a measure were to become law, an industry which once had the problem of overcoming the appearance of paying off radio broadcasters to increase the airplay for their songs — a practice known as “payola” — would begin charging broadcasters in all media for the privilege of having their songs played.

I can think of no more effective way to reduce your consumer audience, eliminate as many redistributors as possible, and alienate the vast majority of your customer base than to not only overcharge the providers for the online audience but to also raise your rates to existing terrestrial providers by two orders of magnitude. It appears that Recording Industry executives really are trying to eliminate their industry and make themselves irrelevant even more quickly than the Internet is already doing.

[tags]Recording Industry presses Congress to raise terrestrial broadcast royalty rates 100 fold[/tags]