Shameless Words from Shameless Geeks

As expected, Intel will start a new marketing campaign soon after the new year begins. It’s not exactly a big news flash. It has been expected ever since a marketing guy took over the helm.

IMHO, the biggest change will be the modification of the historic “Intel inside” warning label. Somehow, “intel Leap Ahead” just doesn’t sound as good. They should really spend more of their cash on engineering a better product. Fancy logos, silly sayings, and glitzy packaging won’t ward off the big, scary monsters at AMD.

It looks like Song BMG has settled quickly in its disastrous DRM attempts. I can’t say that I’m terribly impressed by the settlement. Many of us who buy CD’s do so in order to avoid all of the digital artifacts in compressed music. IMHO, the cash deal is the better of the two.

I really hope that SonyBMG learned a hard lesson from this. As I’ve stated before, DRM just isn’t worth the risk of alienating consumers. Somehow, I doubt that a simple lesson like this will convince a corporate yes-man when put up against someone promising incredible returns on their DRM investment. It will probably take a few more hits to their bottom line.

Unfortunately, there is an entire industry growing up around the fallacy that you can increase profits just by adding draconian restrictions to your product. Eventually, this will be exposed for the scam that it is, but I fear that consumers will have to endure a few years of idiotic assertions from DRM scammers before the corporate world gets a clue.

Toms has a review of Intel’s new Pentium Extreme Edition that is supposed to hit retail outlets today. IMHO, they have certainly improved the EE, but I still don’t think it beats the higher end X2’s. However, it looks like they may be headed in a better direction. The new EE and the 4800+ seem to split the benchmarks, but the X2 does it with far less power consumption.

My last peek at Intel’s roadmap showed that they were exchanging their MHz obsession for a parallelism obsession. Hopefully, someone from the engineering team managed to strangle the marketing guy who came up with that. It would be nice to see Intel engineering catch up to AMD and make the performance game more competitive. It would also be nice to see the AMD process catch up to Intel for the same reason.

A very short list for the week after Christmas. Onto to the list:

Dead or Alive 4 for the XBox 360 (delayed from last week)

That is it. One game. Even though both Gamestop and EBGames list it coming out this week. I would not get my hopes up that Dead or Alive 4 is coming out this week. Several sites have been reporting it is delayed till some time next year.

… or at least that’s how it seems to those of us on the outside. An anti-spam advocate running for governor thinks it’s OK if he sends just a little. Apparently the guy (who we won’t give a free campaign ad to), believes that his unwanted emailed campaign ads are immune because they are “the truth". If we were lenient enough to allow mass-mailings that the sender said were “the truth", there wouldn’t be any need for anti-spam laws… all unwanted mass mailings would be the truth. Some people just never understand how stupid they sound.

I’ve been a little remiss about converting reviews into permanent posts, I spent a little time trying to rectify that situation today. If you check out the Fiction page, you’ll find that I posted Shinnite’s anime review. If you check out the gamers page, you’ll find out that I’ve added no less than 5 reviews, including a couple of humorous ones. Let me know if you see anything else that deserves a permanent place of honor.

Update:

Forgot to mention my DRM article. You can find it on the Shameless page.

Texas has filed another suit against Sony/BMG. This time, it is for installing SunnComm’s MediaMax copy protection. The suit alleges that the software installs spyware even if the user does not agree to the terms. Sony’s response was “it does not collect the personal information that spyware typically does". Note that they did not deny the collection of information, just stated that it is different from other spyware.

Yet another big company that is so far out of touch with their customer base that they make stupid decisions. As consumers, the only way we have to let them know how we feel is to hit them in the only place they will notice: the bottom line.

Street Fighter: Alpha Generations

One of the newest movies of the Street Fighter series, Alpha Generations follows its predecessors in terms of content: violence, violence, and an abundance of testosterone. Definitely not my genre of choice – and this movie didn’t change my mind otherwise. Let’s just say that any anime that has as much grunting and moaning as it has dialogue does not pass my litmus test – I do not want to shell out $20+ for a DVD of nothing but males sounding like they have The World’s Largest case of constipation.

Now let’s get to the breakdown, shall we:

Menu: (4/5) Rather simplistic as far as menus go, but it serves its purpose quite nicely. The special features section is rather skimpy (only two features) and in the sound menu it’s hard to tell if you actually managed to change what you wanted (in my case, language) – there are no markers denoting either current or default selections. Definitely wasn’t designed user friendly. Kudos to the designers for not including any of those annoying, flashy animations that most American movie companies tend to include.

Plot: (1/5) Ever heard of PWP – Plot, What Plot? Maybe it makes sense to those who have actually followed the Street Fighter series – one of which I am not – but both the plot itself, and its execution, leave a lot to be desired. The basic premise is this: Guy kills master. Guy kills fellow student. Student of fellow student, a.k.a the Protagonist, debates revenge but after getting kicked around (literally) decides it isn’t worth it. Guy fights Protagonist. During fight, Protagonist suddenly has The Hero’s Epiphany. Protagonist defeats overpowered Guy. Guy has The Villain’s Epiphany, transforms from bloodthirsty villain to not-quite-so-bloodthirsty villain with a new goal in life, beat the Protagonist (wasn’t he doing that already?).
To top things off, the classic rehashed plot is executed rather poorly, demonstrating, once again, that CAPCOM is about as capable of suspense as they are capable of filling in plot-holes. For the record, suspense means I’m slightly confused but intrigued and waiting for more. What it does not mean, however, is that I’m sitting back, scratching my head in confusion, and hoping to God that it would all make sense later – something CAPCOM doesn’t quite understand. If you find yourself thoroughly lost within the first five minutes, don’t worry, they’re simply flashbacks that are pivotal to the entire plot – they’ll make sense later.
Of course, given that the director, Ikuo Kuwana, was an animator in Neon Genesis Evangelion, the confusing beginning might have a second explanation. Despite such, the confusion with Eva was done with style – its quite a feat to reproduce, a bar that the staff of this movie couldn’t quite reach.

Music: (3/5) The music was actually not that bad. There were a few places where I was listening to the music and ignoring the movie – not quite sure if that’s more telling of the music or plot. However, a few good pieces does not an OST make – if it’s ever brought over to the US, I doubt I’ll buy it.

Characters: (1/5) Cliches ring true – the best fighter in the entire movie is a perverted old man. He’s also the best character there, too – everyone else died too soon, came in too late, or were rather weak in characterization to begin with. It’s rather hard to make the audience feel a lot toward the characters in a movie, but it was rather obvious that CAPCOM was relying less on good characterization, and more on the affection viewers might have acquired through the rest of the Street Fighter series. Either that, or they tried making them interesting and flopped spectacularly – I’m not sure which is worse, enthusiasm without talent or talent without caring.

Ending: (2/5) The best part about the ending was the elation that it was all over. No, seriously. The ending fell just about as flat as the rest of the series. I have to cut them some slack, though – Alpha Generations is the prequel to Street Fighter Alpha, and its always harder to write a movie when the ending has already been predetermined.

Subtitles: (2/5)Which came first – the subtitle or the dialogue? The most logical answer would be neither, they would come together. The wonderful timers of SF:AG didn’t necessarily agree with this philosophy, but neither could they agree on the right answer between eachother. So, obviously, they had a very long and involved turf war, including deadly ammunition such as nerf darts and rubber bands. The losses suffered by the post-it notes became so great that the two sides decided to hold a truce: for 80% of the movie, the dialogue and subtitles would appear together and the other 20% of screentime was split in half, with either the dialogue or subtitles coming before the other.
But, seriously, the lack of thoroughness appalls me. One quick run-through of the movie would have caught the timing mistakes,

Total: (13/30 –or– 2.17/5) All in all, Street Fighter: Alpha Generations made me ponder the wisdom of accepting a job without knowing the exact details. A lover of anime I am, but even I have my own personal preference. I would recommend this movie to those who are already fans of Street Fighter, and to those who are big fans of action/adventure and fighting anime, such as Dragon Ball Z. I wouldn’t, however, recommend this anime to lovers of other genres, like comedy, or those that feel characterization and plot are essential.

But, as I’ve said before, I’m not a fan of fighting-based anime. If you feel you must see it for yourself, go right ahead. However, I would strongly caution renting it or watching the copy of someone else to avoid investing both time and money into this movie. Trust me, you’ll probably thank me later.

It looks like hackers are using BitTorrent to share movies from unsuspecting PC’s. That’s right… you can share Disney movies without ever having to watch them, or even knowing that you are sharing.

Nice. Now the MPAA can theoretically hack your system, share files from it, then sue you for sharing their IP. Of course, MPAA would probably have to take computer literacy classes first, but that’s another story.

After all of the bad publicity stirred up by the CCA, I would have expected a response by Activision or Infinity Ward by now. Instead, the only thing that has come from either is a post claiming that they are back from vacation, and looking at the problem. Obviously, they heard nothing.

One would think that 1200+ servers and thousands of gamers screaming in pain would have gotten their attention. They could have replied with a date when they would announce their plans. They could have announced that they would have an anti-cheat soon. Instead, IW responded with an unbelievably curt reply that they are back from vacation and looking into things.

Since I’m now disgusted with spending my own money to supply a server to a bunch of useless cheaters, I’m taking the game server off-line for good. It’s become apparent that there isn’t going to be a response in any reasonable amount of time. It’s time to move on and admit that Activision/IW bilked me out of $50 for CoD2.

Believe me, I’ll be remembering this when the next version comes out. I’ll remember that CoD2 was a downgrade from CoD:UO. I’ll remember that the creators and marketers didn’t give a hoot about any experience I had while playing online. I’ll remember the disappointment of catching my first cheater after having the server up for only a few days. I’ll remember the realization that I had purchased what should have been a $30 expansion pack for CoD. I’ll remember, and I’ll find a better place to spend my $50 next time.

For all those video game companies that did not see the poor sales coming, you where warned. Two years ago Gamespot sat down with Michael Pachter, senior vice president of research for investment banking and brokerage firm Wedbush Morgan Securities, after E3 about his predictions for the future of video games. In this interview Michael predicted: that the Nintendo DS was going to sell better then the PSP. That soon consumers where going to get sick of the sequels. Destroy All Humans would flop. And that EA is due for a fall. How ironic that all of those points came true. Okay so he was wrong that Acclaim may just make it. Still four out of five is not bad. Now if the video game companies would just listen maybe they would be having such a bad year.

Here’s one to brighten your day:

A child pornographer in Germany turned himself over to authorities because of the Sober worm. It seems that the virus arrived in an email telling him that he was under investigation, so he turned himself in. As far as I know, this is the first time that a virus has managed to perform a community service.

As with all pedophiles and child pornographers, his punishment should involve the force-feeding of Viagra and a meat grinder. Luckily, he was stupid enough to be caught and removed from society.

The New York Times has posted an article about why the XBox 360 has failed to take hold in Japan. The simple answer is the games. The long answer is best answered by this Japanese blogger. If Microsoft wants to win the Japanese market over they better start making Horse Racing games, pretty boy action games and Pachinko games.

According to this Gamepro article the XBox has outsold the XBox 360 this season. Too bad game sales are doing so bad this season.

Even though it is up significantly this year, online shopping hasn’t killed the shopping mall. As the article states, it appears to have changed it a bit, but it hasn’t taken more than a few percent of the business away.

I’m glad of that, even though I was never much of a mall rat. It gives me someplace to send the Mrs. while I’m shopping online

According to this, Barbie is often the object of mutilation. That begs the question: What is Barbie’s real job?. Is she a teacher? I hope not… I don’t really want anyone to teach little girls how to torture. I guess we’ll never really know that one.

Having raised two girls beyond the age of Barbie has taught me one thing… It doesn’t matter how she starts out, Barbie always ends up naked and headless at the bottom of a box.

Another week and another short list of games the week before Christmas:

Chaos Field for the Gamecube
Dead or Alive 4 for the XBox 360
Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie for the PSP

Wow a list shorter then the E3 list. Games of note of this week are Dead or Alive 4 which is the latest masterpiece from Team Ninja. And Chaos Field which is a 2D arcade shooter from Japan. My pick of the week is: Dead or Alive 4. Team Ninja always make good games and if you have a XBox 360 this is a good buy for it.

Game Gossip has posted some new screen shots of the Vivendi Universal Games upcoming RTS, Joint Task Force (JTF). Normally I could careless about RTS but after what I saw at E3 this year I really can not wait for this one to come out. When I played JTF it felt a lot like the first time I played Starcraft. Granted this was a early build copy but can not wait for this game to come out next year.

Well, today is the day of the big CoD2 strike. I fully support the community in their efforts to push Activision/InfinityWard into releasing an anti-cheat for their games. If you have any question about that, look for a server named WE SUPPORT CCA: Shamelessgeeks.com . I’ll keep it up until the strike is over, or until I decide to completely abandon the cause and put up a Quake4 server instead. Once pushed to that extreme, I’ll start advocating the boycott of ALL games with either the InfinityWard or Activision name.

It’s really disappointing that the only response from IW so far has been an anemic “we’re looking into it". You would expect that a company would pay more attention to the MP server admins after they release a MP-oriented game. The whole thing is beginning to sound like Microsoft’s initial response to hackers (Gee… nobody really hacks, so why should we waste money stopping hackers?).

As of 11:15 AM EST, the results look mixed. A quick browse of the CoD2 dedicated servers I found online showed 400+ servers displaying We Support CCA at the beginning of their server name. I googled the cod2 strike progress in an attempt to find something that would give me a better sense of the overall response, and found a list of 855 CoD2 and CoDUO servers that contained the term CCA.

Unfortunately, the above numbers are at around 10% of the total servers out there. The only real way to get the attention of the greedy MBA’s in charge is to shut down the multiplayer aspect of the game so thoroughly that it will affect sales. I was able to log on to a few low-ping, open sites without trouble. In fact… most of the open sites I saw were completely empty. As long as all of this is true, why would Activision/IW pay any attention at all?

The only bright side of this is that Activision/IW’s disdain for their gamers is coming into public view. I hope that one of 2 things happens:

1. Activision/IW has a few real gamers around who can tell the MBA’s how serious this is. So far, all that has come from those guys is an excuse that they were all on vacation.
2. The community-at-large figures out how little Activision/IW cares and boycotts all of their current and future games. Hitting them in the bottom line should get their attention.

I’ll forward information as I get it.

Update 12:45 PM EST

Nearly 1000 strike supporters.

I missed the part about the strike starting at 6:00 PM. I’ll check again then to see how it all goes. I’ve been looking around at the posted opinions, and find that they fall into 5 categories:

1. Most people are realists. They fully support the action, but don’t think Activision/IW will do anything. Many also say that they will avoid Activision/IW in the future.
2. Many people are idealistic. They believe that this strike will actually result in attaining the goals.
3. Some have already given up and changed games. This is probably the group that we will all end up in eventually.
4. Some believe that the strike is a bad idea. They want to let IW fix the problems in due time. (Note: though most people like me disagree with this opinion, it is a valid one. It’s OK to disagree, but some of the venom I’ve seen spewed against these people is unwarranted.)
5. A few actually believe cheating is OK. these all seem to be either cheaters themselves, or flamebait trolls

Update 6:00 PM EST

About 1200 strike supporters. Not bad, but maybe not enough.

The good news and the bad news: support is at about 15% right now. That’s enough to look serious, but probably won’t sway IW/Activision. I’ll continue supporting the strike for a while, but I’ll eventually give up and change games.

Well, at least NASA intends to fix foam problems before they cause a crash. This time, they’ll just remove a section that protects a cable tray. No telling yet whether the new plan will cause a delay in the scheduled May 2006 launch. Obviously, NASA doesn’t want to sacrifice any more astronauts.

The big question is: when will they finally get a handle on this problem? Shuttles flew for 20 years before this problem popped up. What changed in the last 5 years or so that causes chunks of foam to start dropping off?

Chris Morris of CNN/Money got his hands on the Nintendo Revolution this week. Chris really liked the way controller worked and felt it was very revolutionary. I look forward to playing with the controller once Nintendo releases the Revolution. Till then I am going to have to settle for reports by Chris and others. If I am lucky, I may get some ‘hands on’ time at E3.

Gamespot has posted the first interview with Victor Ireland since he announced that he has closed Working Design. Victor may have killed Working Design by being gamer first but he did change gaming for the better. Before Working Design it was a novel concept for a game to have good grammar or for that matter words spelled correctly. We have Victor and the Working Design crew for thankfully ending that trend in RPGs. Hopefully someone will pick up the work he did on Goemon and force Sony to publish it here in the states. In this age of sequelitis we need more companies like Working Design making games for gamers.

In a story that sounds like an old Benny Hill episode from the 70’s, police in New Zealand are chasing a man in traction. Can’t you just picture good old Benny in one of his trademark sped-up chase scenes in a traction halo and arm casts running down the street with a bunch of London’s finest following him? Hilarious!

If the cops can’t catch this guy, just how good are they? Maybe they should all go back for remedial calisthenics and a vision test.

Wired has posted an article about a recent update by Sony Online to the MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies that has wrecked the game and driven away most of its membership. The changes include: streamlining the character class from over thirty down to nine including adding the ability to be a Jedi from the start. Changing the combat from a fairly complex system to a simple FPS style system that rewards twitch ability over brain power. And removing most of the elements that made Star Wars Galaxies a unique experience. In addition to the above the update is fairly bug ridden.
Adding insult to injury Sony Online released the expansion pack “The Trials of Obi-Wan” one week before making the upgrade. Knowing full well that all the significant upgrades to character classes that pack promised would disappear when the update would occur.
Sony Online claims it did all these changes to make Star Wars Galaxies more like the core material and bring in new players. Instead of having that effect it appears the changes instead have brought about the death of the game. I guess the arrogance of the Beast from Tokyo is never ending.

Working Design owner and founder Vic Ireland announced yesterday on his forums that he has closed Working Design. Working Design was best know for bringing Japanese RPGs like Lunar and Arc Lad to the states. Vic’s main reason for closing the doors was the inability of the Beast from Tokyo to approve games for the United States.
In his final goodbye he stated in addition to above that it is pure idiocy on the beasts part for failing to see the market for those games here in the states. The only good news in his goodbye is that he is working with Microsoft to bring to the states the Japanese only RPGs for the XBox 360.
We here at Shamelessgeeks salute Vic and the staff of Working Design for all the hard work they have done to bring over the treasures that we otherwise would have never seen. In there honor I will fire up my unplayed copy of Growlanser tonight and cry.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you’ve probably heard about the CoD2 strike that is planned for December 17. Take it from someone who has a dedicated server running: A strike is a good idea. Allow me to tell you about one of my personal experiences with cheaters.

I joined the ShamelessgeeksCoD2DM server that runs on this very machine as the 19th player. I noticed that a few players were really dominating, but nothing looked strange to begin with. I’m not that good of a player (too busy to develop the skills), so I don’t get upset about coming in dead last at the end of a map. I do, however, make sure to watch the killcam every time I get whacked.

I was watching how I got killed, and noticed that the player’s gun sight was following me as I walked down a flight of stairs out of his view. Wall hack? probably. I switched to spectator and followed the guy for a while. Sure enough, he wasted a lot of ammo trying to shoot through walls. Not only was he hacking, but he was pretty damned stupid too. About then, one of the other players started to complain about the same guy.

So… I tabbed out of the game, fired up my console utility, wrote down his name, then gave him a 5-minute ban. I was slow to boot him, and I thought a 5-minute ban was pretty lenient. The worst part about it is the announcement that he has been banned for cheating.

I rejoined the game after the usual 30 second reload. When I finally got back, I found that the number of players had gone from 19 to 5. The remaining players were all grateful, but a little puzzled. It looked like they had been playing with 14 cheaters.

If this kind of thing doesn’t bother you, then you must not be paying attention. If you think that cheating is fun, then grow up. If you can’t put in the time to develop your skills, then just admit that you suck.

I provide the server as a perk to geeks, hoping that they will associate the web site with the game server. Since I make nothing from either, it is all out of my pocket. I really hate to think that I’m spending all of this money so some knuckle-dragging, crayon-eating, hyper-juvenile moron can pretend that he has skills.

Personally, I applaud the efforts of the gaming community to push IW into an anti-cheat function. Here’s something you can depend on: If IW doesn’t do something soon, I’ll be participating in the strike. You can also believe that, if the strike doesn’t work, I’ll be taking down the server permanently.

You heard it from me here, a few months ago, and now experts agree: politicians are bad for your health.

Well, okay, not that (though I’m sure they do). Instead, one MIT professor has weighed in on the “video game violence provokes real-life violence” debate and his conclusions are, well, basically what any geek who could proudly claim an IQ of 140 because he scored 70 twice on an IQ test would have thought up of. (Cheers to you, Shameless!)

Reality Bytes, so have a lame pun!

The only points I could contend with are 7 and 8. My opinion (and the research I’ve seen) completely differs from 7 and while I agree with point 8, at the same time his evidence is..well…

Lets just say that I think I know which studies he’s talking about, and if it really is the Bobo doll studies he’s talking about, then he quite frankly missed the entire point. The point of that study was the modeling of behavior, and to see from which source (reallife, action media, cartoons) children were more likely to demonstrate a learned behavior of violence from - hence the bobo dolls. That study, btw, found that children were more likely to mimc behavior from the three sources in this order: real-life adults, real-life adults on tv, then cartoons.

Gee, a lighthearted post turned into psycho-babble. I’m quite sure shamless is now sorry that he might, indeed, be getting what he paid for. XD

Over the weekend, Spike TV aired its annual Gaming Awards. Just like last year it was junk. Most of the games that won awards were jokes. Some of the games had not yet come out when this award show was filmed. The skits pandered to the lowest common denominator, and again there was way too much focus on celebrities. I was going post my review of it, but thankfully, Netjak beat me to it.

It looks like Sony has decided to re-examine the DRM issue. It’s about time, too. I’ve been an outspoken opponent of DRM on simple realism grounds for quite a while now. I can’t see how any entertainment company could believe that they would be able to get away with something like this for long. Maybe The Beast from the East is finally starting to come to it’s senses.

(BTW… I think I used the hole digging analogy better here and here.

According to an animal behaviorist, dog panting may be a form of dog laughter. Now if they could only explain what it means when a geek starts panting over a photo of a nude girl. Never mind… I figured it out.

Another week and another list of upcoming games. Again not much this week as we get closer and closer to Christmas.

Armored Core: Formula Front for the PSP
Final Fantasy IV Advance for the Gameboy Advance
Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows for the XBox and Playstation 2
Pocket Dogs for the Gameboy Advance
Ultimate Block Party for the PSP
SnoCross 2: Featuring Blair Morgan for the XBox
Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland for the PC
World Championship Poker 2: Featuring Howard Lederer for the PSP
WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2006 for the PSP

Not much too pick from this week unless you are PSP owner. That is if any of them where any good. Here is the note worthy games:

Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows - Another game I played at E3. The only thing of note I remember about this game was that I meet John Romero when play-testing it. Who had a hand in designing the game. The only other thing I remeber about it from E3 was, it was fairly bland game.

Final Fantasy IV Advance - 15 years after it was released in Japan for the Super Nintendo comes the latest port of Final Fantasy IV. Personally I prefer the Playstation port, but if you are looking for a good RPG for your Gameboy Advance this is one. With the Gameboy getting one, why have they not yet released a Final Fantasy collection for the PSP?

That is it. My pick of the week is: None of the above. There is nothing on the above list that I would recommend. Gauntlet is fairly bland and not worth it at $50. Final Fantasy IV while it would have been a pick of the week 15 years ago has lost all its charm. I am sorry but most Final Fantasy fans have played it to death. Even though I am sick of it, it is still a very good RPG. That is if you have not played ten times in a row.

If you want a XBox 360 go to Japan. It just launched in Japan and is readily available in most shops. That is if ignore Gamespot’s article about how the launch was a smashing success with huge lines and a massive sellout across Japan. Thankfully Kotaku had a man on the ground in Japan who brought us the truth. That is the lines where less then stellar and the XBox 360 is readily available at most locations. And you can get good cocoa out of vending machines. So who do you believe Gamespot or Kotaku?

Gamespot recently posted an article comparing the Nintendo DS against the PSP. In the end they deiced to call neither a winner but two very unique and different type of gaming machine. That is the DS unsexy but has good games and the PSP is very sexy but has poor games.

This reminds me of discussion I had with a Sony developer about the PSP. It went sort of like this…all games are now shooters….the PS3 looks real good….when I was a kid our fancy graphics where stick ons that you put on the TV…the PSP is very sexy. To which I responded: “yhea know, I love the PSP because it gets you laid". To which he responded, “it would be perfect if it actual had good games like the DS.” So remember if you want to get laid buy a PSP. If you want a gaming machine buy Nintendo DS. Just do not blame me when you don’t get laided or get stuck playing sucky games.

I haven’t seen much online chatter about Fedora Core 4 having display artifacts, but I certainly was. It wasn’t a huge problem, but it was a big annoyance. Basically, if the display was mostly black (ie, if I used the default Fedora background image), I would see random horizontal streaks of white flashing through the display. This did not seem to happen if I put up a few white terminals, or if the majority of the pixels on the screen were non-black.

The good news is that the 5.12 version of Catalyst (X.org version 6.8.20) has completely eliminated the problem. If you have seen the same streaks, I would recommend the upgrade. Note that this is an ATI proprietary driver, so you may want to watch for “tainted kernel” issues if you intend to do Open Source development.

The machine in question:

• Athlon X2 3800+
• Sapphire X800 Pro
• Fedora Core 4

Troy Wolverton has posted an article on TheStreet.com discussing how the PSP is losing all its hype to the XBox 360. Troy is 100% correct on this point. What little media attention the PSP was getting vanished once the XBox 360 came out. That is because the media moved on and now has a new darling to talk about and pick on.

Troy also discussed the reasons the PSP failed to catch on fire like it was suppose to. The main reasons he gave for the PSP failure were: the lack of good games, the price point and the loss of hype thanks to the XBox 360. Troy also wrote that the PSP may gain sales this Christmas as an alternative gift for people not able to get a XBox 360. From that comment it looks like Sony may be attempting the Dreamcast Gambit.

The Dreamcast Gambit is where system A is sold out, so another company B that makes system B tries to capture some of demand for System A. This happened five years ago when Sega attempted to increase the sales of the Dreamcast when the Playstation 2 sold out at launch time. This gambit works well in the short run since system B’s sales goes up. In the long run it does not work since sales of System B and its games go down as supply meets demand for System A. That is because most consumers really just want System A and will take System B as an alternative till they can get system A. When consumers finally get System A they abandon System B… That is, unless the company making System B gives consumers a reason not to abandon it. Or the company that is making system A fails in a huge way to the follow up after the launch of system A.

This gambit failed for Sega with the Dreamcast and ultimately forced them to cancel the Dreamcast. Whether the Dreamcast gambit will work or not for Sony is still out there. That all depends on how Sony and Microsoft follow up their systems after Christmas. Right now signs are pointing to a failure if Sony attempts the Dreamcast gambit.

Enough gaming econ theory, lets get back to the subject on hand. While I agree with Tom 100% that two of the big reasons the PSP failed was the price point and lack of games. I think neither of these where the main reason.

The main reasons I think the PSP failed are: Sony does not understand the hand held market, the marketing of the PSP was poorly done and the PSP does a lot of thing Okay but not one thing well. The biggest failure had to be the marketing. When the PSP first launched, as I noted here, the Sony marketing department seemed more interested in promoting God of War than the PSP and the games for it. Two weeks into the launch Sony finally started actually marketing the PSP on the web and TV. By then however it was too late.

The next failure was to run the same commercial for 6 months. I still see the same commercial from April when the PSP launched on the TV and the web. Most consoles at this point in system launch cycle have moved away from advertising the system and on to advertising the games. Granted, very few PSP games are worth advertising, but there were a few. Sony choose not to advertise them on TV. On the flip side I have seen a ton of ads for UMD movies marketed along side the DVD advertisement.

The another big marketing failure was Sony’s attempt to market the PSP as a multimedia machine and not a gaming machine. When gamers heard about all the neat multimedia things and UMD disk their eyes perked up a little. However when they found out the cost of the Memory sticks and UMDs most gamers gave out a loud groan. Then they heard how it was a multimedia machine and many felt Sony was abandoning them in favor of the MP3/movie crowd. Sadly, this attitude may be correct as Sony continues to push the UMDs over the games.

In addition, the MP3/IPod/Gadget guys yawned at Sony’s attempts to market to them. Again because of the PSP battery life and lack of a decant amount of storage. I am sorry but 1 GB no longer cuts in the MP3 gadget market.

This all adds up to Sony not understanding the Hand held market. The hand held market is not like the console market. The games that do well in the hand held market are either long games that can be played for long hours, short, quick, pick me up games, or games like Tetris that can do both. So far the only game that meets that requirement is Lumnies.

Another big factor that Sony missed was the price point of hand held games. Hand held gamers expect to pay 15-30 dollars per game. Yet Sony is trying to sell PSP games in the 25-50 dollar price range.

Another issue is that gamers expect the price of an old game to drop after six months. This has also not happened. PSP launch titles still sell for around $40. Even the crappy ones like Tony Hawk Underground 2.

The PSP can still succeed as Troy pointed out. That is if Sony does a few things. First, Sony needs to figure out a way to increase the battery life and increase the maximum data storage for a low price point. Second, Sony needs to get more good games out there for the PSP that hand held gamers like. Third, Sony needs to lower the price point of the PSP and the PSP games. Fourth, Sony needs to get on the marketing ball and start advertising the games not the system or the UMDs. If most of that happens Sony could just make the PSP into a success.

Ati released Catalyst 5.12 today, with a claim of significant performance increases for multi-core and HT machines. I downloaded and installed the new package. I’ll let you know if I see a difference.

There is also a new ATI driver for Linux available. This one appears to have a self-install utility that will cost you about 57MB. I’ll let you know how that one works as well.

Ign tonight posted an article that is supposedly the specs for the Nintendo Revolution. I have no comment yet and will hold judgment for now.

After reading the latest news about Sony/BMG’s latest DRM debacle with MediaMax 5, I’m left wondering whether anyone at Sony/BMG has an IQ above 50. I don’t say that lightly… I believe it is a valid question. But before I go any deeper into the question of executive intelligence, lets present a few facts, some of which the whole world seems to be missing.

Fact 1: DRM isn’t designed to stop pirates

Most people define a pirate as someone who steals the music and makes copies of it for public consumption. If you are that determined to steal the music, there is a low cost way to do so… it is called a patch cord. That’s right, just buy a $5 cable that plugs into the line out of one sound card, then attach it to the line in of another sound card. Voila… a near-perfect copy, no matter what your DRM software tries to do. If you are a sophisticated, high volume pirate, you might even spend a few $k to provide a copy that is an improvement over the original. For those of you with a single computer… don’t fret. Many sound cards will allow you to patch the line-in and line-out jacks and use them at the same time.

Fact 2: DRM isn’t designed to help “starving artists” as the music industry states

The only artists who ever make any money at all from record sales are the ones who are already mega-rich. Those who are still trying to ‘make it’ seem more likely to get a statement telling them how much they owe the record company. Don’t believe it? Check out www.janisian.com.

Fact 3: DRM companies already know that their software is ineffective

A few years ago, I was involved in some Internet radio work. Part of my job involved adding tags to music that would be used to trigger events. While asking a not-to-be-mentioned DRM company about some of their watermarking techniques, I threw in a question about how they protect their music from the simple patch cord copy. After several non-answers that were essentially just restatements of their sales brochure, one of their execs told me that their software was meant to keep honest people honest. A few years later, when a company named Sunncomm actually tried to sue the guy who told everyone to disable the autorun feature by holding the shift key, their knowledge of how bad their software was became obvious.

Fact 4: DRM software providers have a TERRIBLE track record

In the past, DRM has been easily defeated by holding down the shift key, changing Windows settings, drawing on the CD with a fine-line marker, and by running Linux. This doesn’t even include the patch cord method. Meanwhile, DRM has been responsible for security holes and seriously irritating customers. It seems that the only competent part of the DRM community is the marketing staff.

So… if DRM software does nothing except raise the barrier to illegal copies by the cost of a patch cable, just exactly who is it stopping? Would it be those nasty pirates who can’t afford the $5 entry fee? Sounds like the real target is the law abiding citizen who wants to archive his collection, not the pirate.

Now back to the original question. Assuming that all of the above is true (not much of an assumption, you can prove the first two very easily… the last two should be fairly obvious), what entertainment executive in his/her right mind would choose DRM? It won’t stop pirates, and it will only irritate the average customer. About the only explanation I can think of is that someone fell for the DRM company’s hype.

Just to be clear… I don’t condone the theft of music. I don’t frequent P2P sites, I don’t download music, and I loathe the real “pirates". However, I do like to make additional copies of legally purchased Cd’s for my car and for work. I have several computers that I use for playback while I am working, and I resent any big company’s assertion that it is OK for them to create security holes in my system to install software that has no chance of actually accomplishing it’s goal. Shame on you music industry… you are biting the hand that feeds you.

The Street has posted an article about how the used video game market is growing and the supposed negative effects it is having. In reality, used video games are actually helping the game market, not hurting it. Here is why: Since margins on games are very small, used games enable places like EB Games to turn a profit. If the video game stores did not have used games, places like EB Games and Gamestop would disappear. This happened in the 90’s when video game publishers lowered the profit margin on games. The video game stores that embraced the used market survived and the ones that did not either merged with ones that did or perished.

Most consumers buy new games by trading in old games. The main reason new game sales are down is not because people are buying less games. It is because the trade in deals stink right now at most video game stores. When the trade in deals are good the sales of new games go up and the sales of used ones go down. When the trade in deals are bad the sales of new games go down and the sales of used games go up.

The main reason for all the bad trade in deals is the current generation cycle. Most video games companies are overstocked on current generation used games and want to get rid of inventory… Hence bad trade in deals. When the next generation gets up and going the trade in deals on stuff like XBox 360 will get a lot better as the video game companies rebuild their used game inventories.

How do I know all this? I am an avid video game collector and am friends with 30-40 video game store managers in the Virginia/Maryland area. When managers need their used numbers played with, they call me. That is because I can trade in and will buy enough used games to effect their numbers. Guess what… When the trade in deals are good, they call me to trade in games. When they are bad, they are call me in to buy used games. When the deals are good the managers will often also mention how wonderful their new sales are and how poor their used sales are. When they are call me in to buy used games, they will mention how wonderful their used games are doing but how poor their new games are doing. It is not hard to draw my conclusions from there.

Check out this story about a young woman who wanted to kill 4 men for a block of cheese. She thought she was going to steal cocaine, but it turned out to be cheese. She thought she hired a hitman, but it turned out to be an undercover cop. IMHO, they should tack on a charge of criminal stupidity. I smell a mental deficiency defense coming.

It looks like the sinking of the Titanic happened more quickly than originally thought. So… If the sinking only took 5 minutes, why did the movie drag on for 3 hours?

It looks like the litigation over XBox 360 overheating problems has already started. The whole thing begs the question: did Microsoft know about these problems before the release date? If they did, but released anyway to beat Sony to the punch, then the whole thing may blow up in their faces. It couldn’t happen to a nicer company

Tom’s has a road map of future Intel chips on it’s page today. Once you get through the copious ads, you’ll probably get the feeling that Intel has traded it’s MHz obsession in for a multi-core obsession. Only the future will tell whether they have chosen the right path this time, or whether AMD will be able to capitalize on another mis-step.

Hopefully, Intel will bounce back enough to wake up AMD, but not enough to put them out of the competition. I’d like to see these two companies in a technology slugfest that lasts forever.

Another week and another very short list as we head into Christmas weekend. Onto the list:

Animal Crossing: Wild World for the Nintendo DS
Battles of Prince of Persia for the Nintendo DS
Bust-A-Move DS for the Nintendo DS
Dragon Booster for the Nintendo DS
Mario Tennis: Power Tour for the Gameboy Advance
Pac-Man World 3 for the Nintendo DS and PSP
Pinball Hall of Fame for the PSP
Prince of Persia Revelations for the PSP
The Sims 2 for the PSP
Super Mario Strikers for the Gamecube
Tokobot for the PSP

A lot of handheld games but not much else for everyone else. This pick of the week: Animal Crossing.

The United States Postal Service and DC comic announced this week that the USPS plans to launch next year a series of stamps that feature the super heroes and comic covers from the DC Universe. The vast majority of the stamps feature the well known DC superheroes, that is the heroes from the TV cartoon the Superfriends, like: Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Aquaman, Hawkman and Batman. The other heroes feature where a bit of a surprise to me that they where include over some others and where: Green Arrow, Supergirl and Plastic Man. For each hero featured in the stamp they will get two stamps: one being an action shot of them and the other a comic cover staring them. Some of the cover are fairly famous like Batman 1 for Batman but some like the Flash cover are not so famous. The USPS also announced that they plan to launch a line of stamps feature characters from Marvel Comics in 2007. So for all of those who wanted a stamp featuring Spiderman you are going to have to wait a year.