My poor eyes, Sony!

So its E3 this week and all the major console makers are announcing their new gaming hardware or software and Sony has thoughtfully decided to put E3 announcements and trailers up for download in HD on their Store interface from the PS3/PSP. For some reason however, they've changed the background to be mostly white so that the list interface is now essentially white on white making it practically illegible on my very bright HD CRT. The normally slick and easy to use interface is almost impossible to read now:

Excuse the redraw effect, its hard to take photos of a CRT and I was in a rush to get this posted. You know, there's a place for interfaces like this. I'll have comments about what I see when I figure out what I've chosen to download and can see again.

Privacy while surfing

A Canadian judge recently ruled that police did not need a warrant to request the information on an Internet subscriber from an ISP based on their IP address. The judge said that one's actions on the Internet have no expectation of privacy.

Most people I know would be very unnerved to think their behaviour online is somehow public data, or that their surfing habits could be linked back to them with a simple unwarranted request. While the case in question was one of child pornography for which many would feel this action was justified, the judge's ruling did not take this into any consideration as far as I noticed and as such this warrantless personal data request may be repeated for any type of online investigation. I am not a lawyer mind you.

Some people have been asking what the difference is between an IP address and a physical address. Everyone should expect their phone number or address will lead back to their personal information via a simple reverse directory of course. As I said on a discussion about this story on Slashdot though,

One of the primary differences is that IP addresses are left behind as cookie crumbs everywhere you go online. In real life, you wouldn't leave your home address and telephone number on business cards laying on the street at every intersection with a date/time stamp indicating that you'd been there, would you?
While the type of information seems similar, the resulting availability of personal behaviour data that is discoverable as a result is unnerving.

While I feel that most peoples' behaviour on the Internet is reckless an that people should take their personal information more seriously (by using encryption on E-mails, anonymizing proxy servers, etc.), I think the very fact that people do not take this seriously is proof that there is, contrary to this judge's opinion, an expectation of privacy online, however unwarranted.

The great DTV transition

So you have a kitchen with several ovens. You make roasts in those ovens, but your roasting pans are huge, and you could really get away with smaller ones. You decide you'd like to be able to fit two or three roasts in each oven instead of one, by using smaller roasting pans. Not too difficult is it?

Just like the old roasting pans, analog TV signals take up a lot of 'space' in the radio spectrum used for broadcast television. Digital TV signals take up less, because of the ability to compress the data somewhat and other efficiencies. Unfortunately, unlike roasting pans, switching signal types means breaking all the TVs in America. Not as easy of a choice.

The FCC and government decided that to make room available for more high definition broadcast programming, the switch to Digital TV ought to be made. Industry groups didn't want to change, people don't like change, but its a good change to make eventually, so they went ahead and set a deadline -- February 17th, 2009 in the United States of America. As of today, most people don't seem to yet be ready for the transition or don't understand what it is or what they need to do so Congress has agreed to delay it until June 12th of this year. In Canada, this isn't relevant until August of 2011.

There will be more annoying commercials until then, referencing the government's website about the transition. There will be retailers griping and consumers worrying, but its all very simple really: it probably doesn't matter to you.

Do you have satellite TV, or cable? Then it doesn't matter, breathe a sigh of relief and ignore all the commercials and warnings.

If you don't have either satellite or cable, you're watching TV through an antenna (either built-in or not). In that case, if you have it nearby or can find a copy elsewhere, check your TV's manual to see if it has an "ATSC" tuner. If it only has an "NTSC" one, you don't have digital TV support on it, and will need a digital tv 'box' unless you want to buy a new TV. No ATSC tuner, no free TV after June 12th.

If you can't find the manual for your TV, and you don't have satellite or cable, and you're worried you won't be able to watch TV, then call the manufacturer of your TV and ask them. The technicians at Sony or Panasonic or whomever should be able to assist you.

Now there are a whole bunch of other issues involved in the switch to digital, but very few of them will be beneficial to you, the consumer. Mostly, this is to make the FCC's and other regulators' lives easier and they threw a bone or two to the broadcasters as well to grease things along.

Little Big Awesome Planet

Okay so its Little Big Planet, but its pretty awesome, actually. A 3D sorta 2D platformer puzzle game with layered depth and online scores and collaboration and gestures.

Yes, gestures. Playing a game and being able to make your character dance or give thumbs up or stick his tongue out is remarkably entertaining on its own. Even more so when playing in a group with friends online.

Now, I've got a little more LBP experience than many people these first few days after its launch since I was in on the beta and got to play it with friends and family then too. My daughter is only 6 and loved it, especially playing community levels and then assigning words to describe them.

The community aspect of the game is very well done, and this is most apparent by how upset everyone was the last day or so with the servers not connecting well -- it really affects things being able to play together and share levels.

Yes, you can create your own levels, with logic and puzzles and stories and characters and movement and vehicles and and and ... its very complex and huge and entertaining if you're the creative type.

Speaking of playing online though, in case anyone else ran into this problem, I had to port forward UDP port 56759 on my router to my PS3 to invite friends into my session. It would appear LBP doesn't make use of UPnP port forwarding functionality, which is somewhat disappointing.

Criterion treats you right

Criterion Games loves their users, its obvious. Not only have they committed to "a year of Burnout", a year of updates and free additional features to their beautiful Burnout Paradise, but they keep improving the game's quality and distribution as well.

On the PS3 they've added proper 1080i support, using the processor to render the game at 720p and 1080i (and also added better 480p support for those pre-HD people). On both the PS3 and 360 they've added additional online content, and rules updates and a new news and calendar system. They're soon releasing their next major content update featuring bikes (motorcycles, not cyclists) and they're working on a new island full of additional content too, all for free.

As if all this weren't enough, and in case they weren't selling enough copies already, they've now announced on the official Playstation blog that they'll be releasing the full game as a download from the PSN store for just under $30 so you won't need a disc copy at all.

No, I don't know how big the download will be (although since the full game also ships for the 360 on DVD, it must be under 9GiB, not including updates). Yes, it is very clear for those who haven't played the game yet that the content on the disc version and the download version will be the same, that updates are available to both and that the motorcyle pack and coming trophy update are not for the download version only, so don't worry.

The question is, can I find someone to buy my disc copy for $30 so I can purchase the downloadable one and not need to put the disc in each time I want to play. I already play Warhawk this way, and I love my other downloaded games like Super Stardust HD for this too. I must say though, even though I upgraded my PS3 hard disk to a 120GiB 7200RPM model, its almost full again. Time to upgrade again.

Sometimes users are fun

Anyone who works in technical support is familiar with some of the incredibly funny situations that can arise on the phone when dealing with customers. I was recently shown an entire website of computer stupidities, many of which made me laugh out loud, for real. Take a look, unless you've called tech support because you don't understand your computer, in which case you may find yourself on the list.

• Customer: "I lost some of my files. I archived them, but when I went to retrieve them, they were gone!"
• Tech Support: "What program did you use to archive your files?"
• Customer: "I used DOS -- but now I can't find them!"
• Tech Support: "Ok, what program are you using to do this?"
• Customer: "I used 'undelete', but they aren't there."
• Tech Support: "Uh...what command did you use to archive your files?"
• Customer: "I used 'del' and the filename."

It turned out that the guy had been deleting files, which would free up disk space (he liked that), and when he wanted a file again, he would undelete it. Apparently he actually got away with this for a while, until he discovered 'defrag', which overwrote his deleted files.

If you have your own stories, make sure to share.

Home, its real, honest

There's no secret to the fact that I enjoy my Playstation 3 immensely, but the long drawn out saga that has been Sony's new Home feature is almost embarrassing at this point. Announced well over a year ago, Sony promised an open Beta by last summer and that never materialized. A website purporting to have instructions 'soon' about how to enter the beta process is now very stale. Some users who got into the closed beta have been leaking information about the state of Home as it goes along, but Sony has been very tight-lipped about it.

Well now it seems there's a new way to get into the beta testing, if you're wanting to do that. Simply download the new PS Home theme from the Playstation Store tonight and you'll be entered automatically. I'm sure quite a few people will jump at that opportunity, despite not knowing the size of this lottery nor how many will make it. I know I will.