Analyst Says...

"Buried in an analyst's memo, written shortly after last week's Electronic Arts earnings call, was a hidden gem. According to the widely read team at Wedbush Morgan Securities, Sony may delay the release of the PlayStation 3 until 2007--if exactly the right conditions prevail.

In a research memo sent to investors, Wedbush senior analyst Michael Pachter set up the following scene for a delayed PS3 launch. It starts with the current-generation Xbox being priced down to $99 post-Xbox 360 launch, but no lower. Concurrent with that situation--an Xbox 360 at an unspecified price and the Xbox at $99--Sony would drop the price of the PlayStation 2 to $99.

There are two components to that pricing strategy: the first is that a $99 PS2 would offer a significant distraction as the 360 launches. As Pachter states: "We believe that the company will attempt to disrupt the Xbox 360 launch with a price cut, and as a result may succeed in diverting attention away from the higher-priced next-generation console." Full Article

I personally think that given a choice between the PS2 and Xbox 360, there is no way I will spend $99 of my Xbox 360 spending money for a last generation console. The Xbox 360 will be a new console, therefore, people will be more excited. Yeah, you save $50 from the current PS2 pricing, but is $50 that much? Just trade in some other system, and maybe you'll lose one game with the price, get it used! I have no doubt the PS2 will go down, but it delaying the PS3 for it the right move?

Tales of Tech Support

Everyone encounters the bad customer service people, who might work at some computer company, but don't know how to open up the Internet themselves. I had to deal with some today actually. I have some stories, but not nearly as funny and/or sad as these poor people. This site has a list of the really bad tech support conversations. Here is an example.

Me: "I was thinking of installing Linux, but I was wondering if you knew if the modem works under Linux."
Tech Support: "Oh, I'm sorry, we only support Windows."
Me: "I know. I was just wondering if you knew if it was possible."
Tech Support: "But we only support Windows."
Me: "I know, but just to save me some time, have you heard of anyone that got Linux to work with the modem?"
Tech Support: (getting annoyed) "Why can't you just use Netscape?"
Me: "Uh, wha? It's not a browser, it's a--never mind. Thanks for your help."

Just Google for help, the little box is way smarter. Oh yeah, don't forget to get Netscape as your new Operating System.

Block Firefox Pop-ups

You wanna know how to block pop-ups in Firefox? You don't get pop-ups in Firefox now that those crzy hax0rs have figured out ways to infiltrate your system, using a program called Flash? Lucky. Well, for the rest of us, try the instructions given on this blog. Of course, most of you are lazy, so I will post the instructions here, to help you.

1. Type about:config into the Firefox location bar.
2. Right-click on the page and select New and then Integer.
3. Name it privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins
4. Set the value to 2*.

The possible values are:

* 0: Allow all popups from plugins.
* 1: Allow popups, but limit them to dom.popup_maximum.
* 2: Block popups from plugins.
* 3: Block popups from plugins, even on whitelisted sites.

Great Video Game Music

I am pretty big into video game music. After having various Mario and Zelda songs stuck in my head the past month, I have searched the net over and over for some downloads. I can't believe I didn't stumble upon this site until now. It has variations of over 19,000 video game songs. Of course, since it's legal, they aren't the original files, they are played by someone else. And they are all in MIDI format. Either way, they have enough music to keep you satisfied, and I haven't thought of a game with good music that isn't in their database. (ok the Katamari Damacy only has one, but still) So go there, and get the Mario Overworld song that has been stuck in your head all week.

Another "I'm Back" Post

I am back from the trip to Savannah/Fulton Illinois. I had a great time, and in between mulch fires and sour crout pizza, I was actually able to get on the computer. This mostly consisted of some Digg, http://www.gmail.com, and other random site checking. A lot of cool stuff happened, but I am only reporting the recent and/or cool. A lot of posts will be discarded, but you can check out my digg.com account that has a lot of news on it. I won't post tomorrow either, having the Fancy Farm Picnic down here (it holds the world record for biggest barbeque!) so I will post a few today.