Well, excuse me if I can't wipe this smile off of my face today, but it seems that SONY will finally be lowering prices on its PS3.
Why? Well, in a word... NINTENDO. While SONY was standing on the shoulders of giants, namely the Playstation and Playstation 2, Nintendo went back to the drawing board, designed a new slingshot, and fired its killing blow.
They decided that they would focus on non-gamers, and young children. Two demographics that don't focus on graphics and processing horsepower. It seems now, however, they are pulling in everyone in between.
Now it is no surprise that I loath SONY. But it hasn't always been that way. Back when they were *just* and electronics company, SONY was focused on making the best products possible, with features that their consumers wanted and demanded. And they thrived.
Unfortunately SONY's turn to the Dark Side™, once they got into the music and movie business. Talk about selling your soul to two devils! You see, unfortunately, the features desired most by consumers are not in the best interests of the music and movie industry. Portability of the content is what we want, Digital Rights Management (rights of the movie companies, not yours) are what we get. Blu-ray is SONY's master plan incarnate, or "inplastic" as the case would be. I'm surprised Blu-ray disk players don't count how many people are in the room, and start shooting people if there are too many.
Anyhow, back to Nintendo. The following are my reasons why the Nintendo Wii has made the PS3 its bitch, ordered from most important to least.
By now you know that the Wii's controllers can detect where you're pointing it and where you move it, and how fast you move it. The curiosity on how this functions is enough to drive sales.
People, this is not simply "thinking outside the box", this is thinking outside of Euclidean geometry.
Now normally, I am against wireless remotes because I hate dealing with batteries in things that don't need them. Normal controllers don't need batteries because you're not usually going to play them more than 10 feet away from the console. In this situation, wireless it the only way to go, otherwise you'd be yanking the console onto the floor every 5 seconds.
The PS3 costs $600 US, the Xbox 360 is $400 US, the Wii is $250 US. Which one are parents going to buy for young children? Which one will entice non-gamers to try something new?
It seems that SONY is now realizing that "This generation has shown that consumers are far more price sensitive than previously thought". Noooooo... I was so looking forward to selling my car to buy one of these. Maybe if I stop eating meat I can afford a game.
Now SONY is contemplating a $100 price cut.
SONY has to deal with "My kid beat up a hooker after playing Grand Theft Auto". Nintendo has to deal with "I smashed a window on that home run when the controller slipped out of my hand". You can't even read that without smirking. There's a whole website dedicated to Wii Controller Mishaps. You can actually buy a shield to protect your TV now.
There is only one Wii. Not the expensive Wii with all the features, and the cheap Wii, with minimal features. This isn't Goldilocks and the three bears here. No one wants to be burdened with the stigma of having to own the crappy version. The Wii was designed for inclusiveness and team play, not dividing people between rich/poor boundary lines.
I think SONY just launched the 20 GiB PS3 just to convince themselves that everyone WANTS to give them all their money and justify the expensive price. They conveniently leave out the fact that the 20 GiB PS3 has almost none of the features of the expensive one.
It is well known that Nintendo does not have other divisions to allow it to lose money on its hardware. Despite the $600 price tag, SONY loses money on each PS3 that it sells. The Wii was designed to profit from every sale, despite its low price, from the beginning. You gotta respect that.
Just to end on a high note, here's a video with a song ridiculing the PS3. I like it, despite the fact that it seems to be pro-XBox. The music is really great.
So, until next time, buy a Wii, and keep on having fun!
"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Wii would like to kick Sony's ass
Monday, June 11, 2007
US Mint 50 State Quarters Checklist
Although I am based in Canada, I travel frequently to the United States. One of the things that has fascinated me here is their 50 State Quarters program by the US Mint. Yes, I know the Canadian mint did the same thing years before. I already have all of those provincial quarters, so I was looking for a new coin to collect.
Anyhow, I have looked high and low for an official checklist of quarters, but I could not find one. So I made one up myself. It is available here. Click on the checklist icon to download it. You'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader. It checks in at about 4 MiB.
I would have linked to the original Word Document, but at 16.5 MiB, it is just too big.
Version 1.4
Updated on 2009-03-14
Version 1.3
Updated on 2008-08-16
Version 1.2
Updated on 2008-01-06
Version 1.1
Updated on 2007-06-12
Version 1.0
I don't know why some of the images don't look good, they were fine before the PDF conversion. Hopefully I can remedy that in future updates.
One more thing, the two columns marked D and P indicate the Denver and Philadelphia mints, respectively, where the quarters are minted. The D or P appears on the lower right of the heads side, behind Washington's ponytail. Every quarter has a D and P version.
Should be useful for all you coin collectors actively collecting these coins.
Until next time, keep on having fun.
Monday, May 28, 2007
The Coolest Shuttle Picture You'll See Today
In keeping with RadioFreeG's space themed radio show, I present to you the coolest shuttle picture you'll see today.
See that little speck on the left along the centreline? Clicking on the picture will open up a super-size version of the photograph, scroll to the middle left and you will see a silhouette of the space shuttle undocking from the International Space Station, with the sun in the background.
This photo was taken in a cow pasture in France, after tracking the paths of the two objects for weeks.
Look up, and keep on having fun!
"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Lock-Down Your Wireless Network
Well everyone, its been sometime since my last post here at DCTS. I've been racking my brains trying to come up with an interesting and useful post for everyone. Finally my girlfriend suggested writing about wireless network security.
Now the first thing to know is that no wireless router is impenetrable. Our main goal is to apply enough layers of challenge to logging on to your network that any potential attacker will move on to other targets.
Now make you get a router, not a hub or a switch. Routers have more advanced data flow control, giving everyone on the network faster access. Routers also have better security features.
Once you've purchased your router of choice, it is normally configured through your web browser. You type the IP address of the router where the web page would go and you surf to your router. Your router's manual will show you how to do this.
1) Change Your Default Router Password
One of the first things an intruder will do once on your network is to lock you out of your own router. All routers have known default passwords, the first thing you must do is change it to something that is not easy to guess and is at least 8 characters long or longer if possible.
2) Enable WPA or WPA2 Encryption
Always enable WPA or WPA2 encryption. WPA stands for Wi-Fi Protected Access, and it is an encryption mechanism so that if someone tries to snoop in on your data flow, they won't be able to tell what is going through. WPA2 is an advanced, more secure form of WPA at the expense of compatibility with older wireless devices. Enable WPA2 initially then downgrade to WPA if you can't connect. Never use WEP, an old encryption method that is no longer considered secure. Windows XP SP2, Vista, Mac OS X, and most current Linux distributions all support WPA and WPA2.
If the router does not support WPA encryption, don't buy it (or return it).
These options will usually appear as WPA-PSK or WPA2-PSK. PSK stands for Pre-Shared Key. Essentially you need a password to be given to you before you can log on to a WPA/WPA2 protected network. You can select passwords up to 64 characters. It is advisable to use all 64 characters.
I use this site for my passwords. The second set of characters entitled "63 random printable ASCII characters" is the most secure. Copy this to a text file and save it in a secure location. You may want to edit the password and remove any question marks, spaces, and O's and zeros, and L's and capital I's (O's and zeros tend to look the same, as do lower case L's and capital I's).
Only wireless devices need the password to connect, computers using network cables do not.
3) Change and Hide Your SSID
Your SSID (Service Set Identifier) is essentially the name you want to call your network. Make it something unique, but nothing that can identify you directly, otherwise an intruder will be able to move closer to your house to get a stronger signal. "Frank's Pad" is a poor choice, while "Sticks and Stones" is a better choice.
You can also "Disable SSID Broadcast" so that if a wireless device is scanning for available networks, yours won't show up on the list. Note however, that there are devices that can see your network even if you turn off the SSID Broadcast, so this option alone will not help you.
I have found in the past that I have to turn on SSID Broadcast when connecting a wireless device for the first time. Afterwards, that same device will still be able to connect after the broadcasting has been disabled again.
4) Enable MAC Address Filtering
All network devices have a MAC address, essentially this is the device's unique name, desktops only have one unless they have more than one Ethernet port. Laptops that have an ethernet and wireless connectivity will have two MAC addresses. To find out what yours is got to Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt
A black window will appear, type ipconfig /all and hit enter. The item listed as you Physical Address is your MAC address (I don't know why they changed the name).
Your router can be setup to only allow specific MAC addresses to connect to the network. This option will affect all devices connecting to your network, not just the wireless ones, but it is highly recommended.
5) Limit the IP Range
Every computer on your network is given and IP address, that is how the router directs data flowing to different devices. Most routers will let you limit how many IP addresses can be assigned at once. Determine how many computers need to be connected to your network at one time and set it at that. In my house it is not unusual for all 5 computers to connect to the network, so my system only has a range of 5.
This has two-fold benefits. First, an intruder won't be able to get on if all the IP addresses are in use. Secondly, if someone in your house can't connect to the network while everyone else can, it's a warning sign that someone is on your network who shouldn't be.
6) Static IP Addresses
In what may be considered overkill, I assigned each MAC address its own unique IP address, so that even if all other security layers worked around, they system won't assign it an IP address preventing it from communicating with the network. Not all routers offer this feature.
After all this work, remember to export your settings to a file. Save this file with the password from before. This way if your router gets reset by a power out or something, you won't have to spend the tedious time getting everything back to its iron-clad state. Believe me, nothing makes you question security like entering 10 MAC addresses in by hand 20 times! All you have to do is get the router to import the file you saved and BOOM, your router is back to secure.
Now yes, this will make it difficult to add new devices to your network, but that is the point. You don't want to make it easy for *ANYONE* to connect to the network. Convenience is sacrificed for security.
UPDATE (2007-06-11) - Regarding Magnum's question in the comments area in regards to whether the multiple layers of security will affect connection speeds. Excellent question. I do not believe that the security here will affect your connection speed. You see, the security is only invoked once you attempt to connect to the network. After evaluating your computer against all the security requirements, then you will be assigned an IP address. Once you get an IP address, your hand has been stamped, so to speak. Until you disconnect your connection should not be re-evaluated.
Remember, a secure network is like an onion, they both have layers. Now parfaits also have layers. Have you ever met a person, you say, "Let's get some parfait," they say, "Hell no, I don't like no parfait"? Parfaits are delicious. Sorry... slipped into the wrong movie.
So surf safe, and keep on having fun.
"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"
