How the Interweb killed the PS3

Subject: WiFi in schools

I work at a school as an IT Tech and we have 26 wireless access points around the school which has resulted in the whole grounds being saturated by WiFi signals.

If the Government does take a step back do they want to the pay the thousands of pounds in getting wired lines down all the walls in to each room?

This also creates further problems of the actual staff plugging their laptops in, it is hard enough for some of them to grasp the fact they have to plug it in or it will run out of battery.

Then there is also the large increase in students bringing their personal laptops in to use on the wireless network. With no wireless they would have to plug in which would end up destroying all the ports on the walls which they already do being curious as they are.

Either melt your childrens brains or pay extra taxes so we can put more cabling down, your choice.

James

Subject: He's right, of course

It's obvious that the Internet is to blame, no doubt about that. Before the Internet, Sony would only have let "approved sources" geta glimpse of the console before launch, thereby carefully controlling what was said in the bid to create market interest.

Once the console was launched, Sony would also have been able to keep a short leash on comments, reviews and outside influences. Paper magazines have been revealed as quite easy to subvert - just place a big fat juicy ad contract on them and menace to take it away if they write something that disparages the product. It's surprising how many publishers have been sensitive to that argument.

Unfortunately, the Internet came along, and with it, its host of forums and horde of web sites, too many to check on and impossible to control. And with that came the revelations, the rumors, the people with insight asking annoying questions, the user-based benchmarks and remarks, and such a tsunami of uncontrolled and vastly negative information that the PS3 is, for all practical purposes, a loser already.

Yes, Sony is absolutely right, the Internet killed the PS3. Incidentally, the Internet also allowed us users an unbiased view of a product which, in turn, enabled us to exert that primary freedom we should always have, the freedom of choice.

Were it not for the Internet, Sony would have successfully foisted upon unsuspecting victims a product not worthy of the money, and would have made it a lot more difficult to be aware of the shortcomings of its new toy.

Yes, the Internet is entirely responsible for making it known that the PS3 is a dud. Now, maybe Sony should ask itself if trying to sell a lame product was a good idea in the first place ?

Pascal

Subject: Who needs MS Office when you can buy Tesco Office?

If this is a marketing stunt for them to bring US media spotlight on them as they try to take on Walmart in USA then its a great move.

I'm sure a UK supermarket trying to take on the two giants that are Walmart and Microsoft will make headlines in the USA. And this will cost Tesco relatively little in terms of advertising.

And if the software is actually any good then this it surely will make headlines. Tesco already do "computers for schools", will those computers now come with Tesco Office and AV?

Will Tesco be getting in on the OLPC (one laptop per child) thing? Maybe now is a good time to buy shares in Tesco.

Endak

Subject:Censorship on Maps

Is it just me, or has America done another "American" thing? Do intelligence agents really think that these "terrorists" don't have other, probably easier, ways of accessing map information? I could call up 411 and get the name, location and contact information of 98% of all government buildings in Canada and the USA within minutes. It really doesn't matter if we can see these buildings from the top.

Use roofs, you lazy, stupid bastards! Really, it doesn't hurt, and it prevents rain (water droplets that fall from clouds), youngsters throwing stink-bombs into your premises, and those pesky middle-eastern National Geographic Spy Satellites from delivering your highly classified information regarding who's paying for lunch on Thursday.

A fellow Google Earth spy,

Stanley Marshall

Subject: Big fat momma

Hehe, yes, it's actually getting slower but(!) we know why - tons and tons of addons which are getting bigger. You can't escape that, I myself have only a few classics like Adblock and Forecastfox and that's enough to slow you although that is acceptable for what you get (by-by ads).

On the other hand it is preety easy to find out why people are complaining about memory problems. We all got used to tabs, and lots of tabs. IE 7 has tabs but you don't see people using it much in that way, more like the old school window-to-window scheme. It is Firefox that taught us tabs globally speakingm, and so you are bound to have as much as 10 pages loaded into it.

Especially if you open 30 tabs looking at porn, hehe, and so you know, closing those empty download or picture tabs does not free the memory ;-) Just open a lot of pictures and stuff and you'll see your page file rise up to 800MB and higher. Close them all, still the same usage ;)

Nice to see such a thing in the news :-D

P-modo

Subject: DELL and LINUX

I may indeed be a linux fundamentalist, but I think that anybody buying a PC mostly to watch DVDs has a problem. You can get a much better dedicated DVD player for a small fraction of the cost.

True, a lot of people buy their PCs only for multimedia purposes, but those are well served by Windows (who cares if you PC crashes twice a day or is infected by viruses and acts as a zombie... your MP3 and WMA files still play just fine).

However, there are plenty of serious users that use the PC for some productive work... and the multimedia files are most often a problem, not the way around.

So I think a lot of people will still benefit greatly from this offering.

Hardcore gamers and MP3/WMA listeners will obviously stick with Windows for the foreable future.

My 2c,

Igor

Subject: Internet designers get second bash at Internet

A quote from this new item 'It also developed the @ symbol'

I think accountants have been using the @ symbol for hundreds of years!

WQ

Subject: Pentium E2000 line

Howdy! I had a question for you guys, since you, well, know everything.

The Pentium E2000 line: I'm sure you all know about it. Basically a super cheap Core2Duo/AllenDale/whatever you want to call it.

When is it coming out? Ever? This weekend, there were a lot of laptops sporting "Pentium Dual Core" stickers in the newspaper: For example: Bestbuy

So evidently they ARE out. Will we, the loving public, be able to buy them, or are they OEM only?

Love to see an article/response in letter section/whatever about this. A ~80/70 USD Core2 derivative would be... well, hot. Oh so hot.

Matt Wreede

Subject: Arrrgh, wifi

I think we can say with certainty that childrens' skulls are thinner than the skulls of the knee-jerk alarmists who are freaking out about EMI just because it's a different wavelength than the stuff they're used to being bombarded with.

David

Subject: Sanskrit manuscripts

Great, now all we have to do if find someone to manufacture a Sanskrit keyboard so we can enter a search query!

Steve

Here's one, Steve. And here's some cunning Volish advice. Ed.

Subject: Krazy Karakkers Komments

All over the internet, I see people giving the PS3 more credit than it deserves. If it's not analysts declaring the PS3 the console war winner of the future, it's hardware sites talking about the power of the almighty Cell. That must mean I'm to blame for poor PS3 performance, since when talking about the PS3, I could go on for hours about how much of a waste of money it is.

No one cares about the fact that all 'next generation' games center around graphics. And since the PS3 is using a 90nm, 128bit version of the 2 year old 7800gtx, I doubt it will keep up with the 'truly next generation' Xenos in the Xbox360, despite how powerful its overpriced media CPU may be. The PS3 really is just a 360 with a BluRay drive(whether you want it or not), a seldom used motion sensor, and(eventually) a 3D version of Live! messenger.

Krakkers would get shot illin' like dat up in my hood. Word!

SuperB

Subject: E3? You mean E1.5

I'm surprised the folks at the Inquirer still refer to the shell of the show that remains as "E3". I would expect it to be referred to as E 1 1/2 or something witty...

There is a new show that is looking to replace the loss of E3: http://www.eforallexpo.com/

games news link:

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/753/753360p1.html

Take care,

Woof

Subject: Great

I better get my tinfoil hat and lead lined underwear.

Charles

Subject: Hard drives are on the way out.

Do they seriously think that by 2011 we'll be seeing *more* hard drives in use? Why? It took HDs about 3 years to go from 500GB to 1TB. Back in 2002 your largest single drives were about 100GB. Meanwhile flash has quadrupled in capacity at the same pricepoint in the last year (just bought a 16GB Corsair Voyager for $139, and you can find a 64GB stick for an unreasonable price). If we plot the curves on that, both 2TB HDs and affordable 2TB flash devices will appear in 2010. After that HDs will be left to making little dust devils with their spinning platters. Unless Moore's law has a serious issue by then (which I doubt given how many more process generations are already in the labs), magnetic HDs are going to be thrown on the heap with tape backups, MO disks, and paper tape.

The scary thing is if flash density continues at this rate, we'll rapidly approach the point where a single device holds more minutes of compressed audio than the average person lives. Followed by video and then HD video not all that much later.

GLDM

Subject: Tesco Office

This is rebadged software - it's a rebadge of Ability Office 4, and is a reasonable package. However, unless it's a lot better than the Ability version, it struggles with more complex Word and Powerpoint documents, such as tabulated information.

All in all, OpenOffice.org is a better allround bet, but without as pretty an interface.

AG

Subject: UK Government slammed over phoneline scam

Dear Editor

I write in reference to this week's incorrectly published report by your PDA and Comms Editor Tony Dennis “UK Government slammed over phoneline scam” (21.5.7, 10:50hrs)

The original article claims that “the official telecoms enforcer ICSTIS .. has no real powers”. I also note the same editor has published a second article entitled “ICSTIS spinnerette gives yours truly a very hard time” (22.5.7. 20:45hrs) which provides more accurate information about the regulation of lo-call 0870 and premium rate 0871 numbers and by whom. I thank you for publishing this second report to your readership.

To clarify the following to all parties and provide your readership with a fuller explanation:

ICSTIS is the premium rate services regulator and will commence regulating 0871 numbers as from January 2008 as part of its wider remit delegated to it from the media and communications regulator Ofcom. 0871 numbers involve revenue share between service or information providers and network operators and hence will need to be regulated by ICSTIS. 0871 numbers are non-geographic, primarily used for customer service contact centres and calls cost up to a maximum of 10p per minute. ICSTIS regulate 0871 numbers because, where revenue share between service provider and network operator is involved, consumer interests will need to be protected. Our role is to minimise consumer harm and ensure that both network operators and service providers build-in code compliance into their current and, more importantly, future commercial service offerings.

Ofcom will continue to monitor and regulate 0870 numbers which are also national non-geographic lo-call services but cost up to a maximum of 3p per minute. There is no revenue share between information / service provider or network operator. Since there are no commercial revenues to be shared from 0870 numbers, 0870 number ranges are therefore not classified as premium rate services and hence do not fall within our remit. Consumer harm is minimised by the fact that there is neither commercial revenue share nor potential for misleading callers or users of lo-call 0870 numbers costing up to a maximum of 3 pence per minute.

With reference to ICSTIS's regulatory powers, we have the power to fine organisations such as service providers, information providers and also network providers up to £250,000. We also have considerable powers to shut down offending and non-code compliant services.

Continued overleaf …

With reference to ICSTIS rebrand and new name, this is planned for Autumn 2007 and will be launched nationally along with a new industry compliance service provided to the premium rate services industry to ensure code compliance is factored into their business operations.

I trust that this clarifies our position and that you will undertake to include these four points of information in your next news update so that both the industry and consumers receive accurate information about our remit and powers and future adoption of the 0871 number range.

Parool Patel
Head of Communications