I didnt blog much last month - I just couldnt find anything to write (or even rant) about for once! Lets hope this month will be better :)
Playstation
First off I want to talk about my favorite whipping horse - Sony. I had stopped blogging about my Playstation since Ihave basically given up on Sony. Sometime last year, I
noted that Sony India is refusing to release the PSN in India as internet speeds are too low. Whats amusing is that they are still
toeing the same line... In the face of
EA launching a games download store in India, Steam, XBox Live (
including Games on Demand) and iTunes Store ALL being available here, Sony India still feels comfortable insulting their customers' intelligence by giving the excuse of internet speed. Its like some manager thought up some BS to be told to his acolytes and then started babbling the same nonsense to customers without thinking things through...
Sony has dropped the price of the PS3 in India to 19,990. So for now at least, the PS3 is MUCH cheaper here - an Arcade XBox costs Rs. 17000 in India, so M$ is definitely fleecing customers a bit here... A
hardware comparison seems to indicate that the PS3 is a clear winner. Alas - the truth is that people buy consoles for games and Sony is seriously deficient in that area. This time aorund Sony has dropped the ability to install Linux from the PS3. I wonder why the PS3 is the only system that keeps
losing features as time goes on...
Some good news on that front - or maybe not - having dropped backward compatibility from the PS3, Sony seems to have figured out a new business model. Since they are not getting much by the way of good games this time around, why not make people buy games they have already bought for the PS2 again - by
releasing them as PS3 editions. This is just amazing - if you cant do backward compatibility HOW are you running these games on the PS3? What a scam!
The other interesting thing that has happened is the
backlash on Sony's own PS3 forums
against Firmware 3.0. Not that I care - I havent updated my PS3's Firmware beyond Firmware 2.50. I dont want to risk the FW update bricking my PS3, especially when none of my games need it! However, Sony as a company seems to be out of touch with what its customers want - they certainly deserve everything thats coming to them :)
P2P and Downloading
Sometime back, I had
blogged about Seeqpod and the
Yahoo Pipe I made for it. Well, I have taken down my Yahoo Pipe, but it seems the Songbeat people are more resilient - they are back as an
Adobe AIR app this time...
Also, it seems the Pirate Bay will soon be dead. Not to fear - guides abound on how to
switch to Usenet or use
another tracker. Someone even
cloned the entire Pirate Bay itself - pretty amazing. This is a losing proposition for MPAA/RIAA and allies - they are concentrating on shutting down means of distribution of pirated content, only to have people come up with a newer, better, technology. Instead, something is wrong with their whole business model I feel.
Signing Out
I had
written about how people were combating the extremely slow Ff 3.5 by optimizing its SQLite DBs. It seems someone els ehas
figured out how to do that without even requiring you to download the SQLite executable. All things said, its still amazing how much control FF gives you over itself. On the photography front, I have been
taking quite a few pix with my cellphone camera with fiarly average (OK - pathetic) results. There is
an article out there on how to use your DVD lens as a super macro lens for your cellphone camera. I might try that out sometime this week :) Lastly, Nokia has launched a
legal music store for India. Is this the first digital music store in India? I am not sure - but still a step in the right direction :) I havent looked into this too much - its probably loaded with DRM, which means you would be well advised to steer clear of it...
