I can understand why News Corporation wanted MySpace - it’s an advertiser’s wet-dream. MySpace is chock-full of gullible idiots who have more money than sense. Some people seem to think that younger generations are inherently smarter than older generations; they assume human beings are evolving into smarter animals with each successive generation. Half an hour on MySpace blows that bunkum out of the water. Have a look at ten reasons not to start a MySpace account.
Sony’s PR department seems to be suffering from the exact opposite of the Midas touch - everything they touch turns into shit. The latest peanut-in-the-poo is the Kotaku Debacle.
I can’t help but wonder if Sony’s abysmal PR over the past couple of years is going to be hailed as the supreme model of How Not To Do PR. I’m not going to go into what Sony have done wrong - because comments on the Kotaku articles have that covered; but this incident did remind me of a recent furore that erupted in the blogging community over Microsoft giving out free Acer Ferrari laptops loaded with Vista and Office 2007 to prominent bloggers. Sony’s PR team could learn a lot from Microsoft’s PR team - what those guys did was a stroke of genius (I’m going to write about this in a separate post).
A Popular blog starts its life as an unpopular blog that is little more than a repository for personal commentary (like this blog) in its chosen field of interest; but what happens to the blogger’s ethics when he gains a substantial number of readers and begins to wield political influence? That kind of power is a dangerous thing - it can corrupt with consummate ease.
One of the important things to remember is that most bloggers are blogging for nothing. They are not earning a living from their writing (unlike journalists). Does that make them more susceptible to bribery for good reviews / PR? I suppose it all depends on the sort of person who is doing the blogging.
Journalists are obliged to uphold ethical standards. Journalism is an old and established institution. Blogging is a relatively new institution - so there are bound to be teething troubles. History has taught us on many occasions that new forms of media tend to get confused with older forms of media. Blogging is no exception to that rule.
Kotaku seems to be saying that it has ethical standards; therefore Kotaku has journalistic integrity … but does that make the Kotaku bloggers journalists?
Sony announced that the PS3 was going to get a simultaneous worldwide release on 17th November 2006. A handful of weeks before this date they dropped the following bombshell to Europeans: the PS3 release date was going to slip by four months because of blue-laser diode production problems for the machine.
Bombshell number 2: the European PS3 would be substantially more expensive than its Japanese and American cousins. The UK PS3 will retail for £425 when it’s launched on 23rd March 2007; which at current exchange rates translates into $832 US. The US PS3 retails for $600. That’s a difference of $232 (£118). The difference between the Japanese and UK machines is £200.
Bombshell number 3: I knew that something bad was going to happen when Kevin Jowett (Sony’s UK Sales boss) quit just five weeks before the European launch of the PS3. I thought that it was going to be something that would upset gamers on a grand scale (like a gross over-estimation of the number of units to ship on launch); but I never considered Sony would remove PS2 backwards compatibility from the PS3.
Sony knows that the quantity of PS3 titles upon launch is severely limited. They know that early adopters will want to play their old PS2 games (and some newer PS2 releases like Okami) on their shiny new machines while they wait for big PS3 titles like Metal Gear Solid 4 to arrive; so they seem to be actively encouraging a reduction in demand for the PS3.
It’s hard not to come to the conclusion that Sony wants the PS3 to fail - at least in the short-term. It sounds like a ridiculous idea - until you do the financial calculations. Sony has lost $200 US for every single PS3 that’s been sold, so it’s no wonder they want to discourage as many gamers as possible from buying a PS3.
The PS3 will be moving to a 65nm chip die process sometime this year, which will translate into reduced manufacturing costs. It’s estimated that the removal of the PS2 chipset from the PS3 will save the company around $27 per console; so I would guess that the revised 65nm machines will translate into a PS3 design that will lose Sony $100 per console instead of the currently disastrous $200 per console. Scale that up to millions of units and we’re talking about a huge reduction in losses.
The PS3 technology is powerful stuff - there’s no denying that; but it’s also power-hungry under the current design implementation, running at an outrageous 380w. These first-generation 90nm machines need massive cooling elements to stop them from overheating. There’s simply too much energy running through these 90nm machines for them to last. I estimate that there will be a high failure rate of these first-generation machines within two years. Sony knows that European law dictates that they are obliged to either repair or replace faulty consoles within two years of sale. Large numbers of sold consoles translates into large numbers of consoles being replaced or repaired over the next couple of years - which will prove to be a very costly business … so one can understand the corporate desire to paint the European PS3 in an unattractive light to prospective purchasers.
The bottom line is that Sony must be pretty confident in the PS3’s long-term future to adopt this crazy corporate strategy. I will write about that in another post.
Software piracy is rampant in China. It's been estimated that 90% of software in use is pirated. (Cheap-skates!)
China will surpass the USA on Internet users. (Interesting...)
Botnets are becoming a serious security problem. 50% of pirated copies of Windows have been hacked with malware. (Nasty...)
Therefore, China is going to become a botnet farm and it will strangle the Internet. (Aaarrgh!)
... but thankfully, the Chinese love Linux. They're even producing their own computers with Linux. (Phew!)
It still amazes me how moronic people are in this Internet Age – an Age where digital information can be copied an infinite number of times and beamed around the globe in the blink of an eye.
Common sense dictates that anything personal and private should not be digitally recorded ... but if it absolutely has to be recorded then sensitive data should be protected by encrypton.
This incident (and many others like it) reinforce my belief that the evolution of technology and humanity run at vastly different speeds - human behaviour is just as stupid now as it was ten thousand years ago.
HTML email has always been a very bad idea.
I can still remember the first HTML email that I received from a friend (almost a decade ago). It was an unpleasant experience – big type mixed with small type, shitty fonts in shitty colours over a shitty coloured background. It was like watching my email program being raped.
I can still remember the first HTML spam email that I opened. I opened the email and basically watched a webpage load in front of my eyes – which if you know anything about computer security is a very bad thing indeed.
Email should consist of two parts: plaintext for the message that you want to communicate; and the ability to attach a binary file - if you absolutely have to send anything other than plaintext.
I’ve been using the internet long enough to remember how good email used to be before the dark-ages of HTML and spam.
Most people who use computers don’t have a frigging clue what they are actually doing half the time. If we had the same level of global incompetence with driving skills it would be probable that most people driving would be crashing their cars every other trip. We wouldn’t put up with that level of chaos on the roads, so why do we put up with HTML and spam in emails? Computers and their networks are a vital part of our economic infrastructure. They are as important as roads.
It seems fitting that Microsoft should be the company to scale-back support for HTML email in Outlook (seeing as they were the buggers who introduced it – I’m thinking of Outlook Express in Windows 98).
I applaud Microsoft for having the common sense to do this. I just wish that they had gone further and completely removed support for HTML rather than have the ability to render HTML in a Word engine (a decision which was obviously taken to lock people into Office, but hey, that’s Microsoft for you).
Microsoft has a responsibility to improve the security of their products like Windows and Office (because they are so widely used by the business community), but the community also has to share some of that responsibility and train their staff properly so that they can recognize security threats on their computers. Only a joint effort will improve computer security for everyone.
If you’re going to miss HTML email then I have some simple advice: put your HTML message on a website server (where it belongs) and include a link to it in your email.
There’s been a lot of focus as of late on the three Rs in British education. What’s the point of a kid leaving school with excellent qualifications in art and media studies if they can barely string a sentence together and balance a cheque-book? The three Rs are basic skills that every school-leaver should possess.
I can see a similar inadequacy in the blogging realm. Naturally, every blogger should possess the three Rs, but they should also possess the three Cs – the ability to carefully choose their words (because words are powerful things); the ability to express their thoughts in a candid manner (because political correctness is despicable); and the ability to keep their blog posts concise (because their readers’ time is valuable).
There’s been some fuss over the National Security Agencies (NSA) code “contribution” to Microsoft's new Operating System (OS) Windows Vista. The proposition is as follows: the NSA colluded with Microsoft to provide "backdoor access" through Vista to facilitate clandestine computer surveillance.
I believe that government agencies like the NSA have been “contributing” to Microsoft’s Windows OS code for a long time - not just with Vista. It’s in their interests to have the capability to spy on as many people as possible. Various versions of Windows run most of the PCs in the world. Windows is also a “closed-source” operating system - meaning that it’s not open to inspection by the general public.
It’s interesting to see nobody up-in-arms about Apple "seeking the advice of the NSA over security issues" for Mac OS-X (which also happens to be a closed-source OS).
It's obvious that anyone in need of a secure OS isn't going to choose a closed-source product like Mac OS-X or Windows Vista - they're going to choose an “open-source” OS like Linux. Linux code is open to examination - giving the user peace of mind that they are not being monitored.
There is the argument if you’re not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to fear but I don’t accept that reasoning. We are all entitled to privacy.
There have recently been many foreign governments that have switched from Microsoft Windows to Linux.
I’m under no illusions about computer security - if the NSA wants to spy on you they will do it - whatever OS your PC is running.