The Annoying, Greedy Next-Gen

Wave goodbye to the last holiday we have until Thanksgiving, Longhorns! At least you only have to wait 4 days until the big Ohio State game, so be thankful for that. A really striking article today was Gabe Newell's thoughts on game development for the Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles. This guy is the founder of Valve so you can imagine his slant towards the PC console, which for those of you keeping score at home has been screwed up the ass for quite a few years now thanks to pirates who take away a lot of profits unless you're Valve and you pump out revolutionary games like Half-Life 2 or you're Sierra (The Sims). Back to the point though, he makes great points about how the new consoles are more concerned with beating each other and maintaining a chokehold on the industry rather than making it easier to make games. Wouldn't it make more sense to make a console that is easier to develop for (and cheaper, mind you) so that you can sell more games and get more royalties rather than try to lock out your competitors and produce really pricey hardware? You would think so, but both camps are greedy (Nintendo hasn't said enough about the Revolution to have any say yet). For those of you keen on a game development career for the glamour this is something to think on about regarding how crazy the industry really is.

There's very little tech news today, as expected given the holiday, but I'll start it off with some outsourcing buzz. There's rumors that Microsoft is planning to send 1,000 jobs to China, but they claim that it doesn't mean that they'll lay off people in Redmond. Much of the article actually drones on about the Google lawsuit, but I'm just surprised to see communist China rising as a hub for cheap labor. The BBC is running a great article about how new initiatives in several countries for national ID cards may be useless as identity thieves get even smarter about how to use your money. They don't seem to offer an immediate solution, but reliance on technology surely isn't the answer.

The only thing to speak of in movies today is the box office figures from the 3-day weekend showing Transporter 2 on top with an impressive $20.3 million considering that the original only made like $25 million total. It knocked The 40-Year-Old Virgin to number 2 with $16.6 million, and The Constant Gardener clutched onto the #3 spot with a respectable $10.8 million since it opened in only 1, 346 theaters. If you're really desperate for movie news you can instead check out this highlight reel of Longhorn quarterback Vince Young and prepare to be awed.

There are a couple of other things I did want to cover. I find it curious that the housing boom may continue stronger than ever despite the hurricane as victims try to settle in new homes thanks to lower mortgage rates (in anticipation of a possible pause on Fed rate hikes). Will the bubble ever burst? Since Katrina is such a priority for Bush he's deciding to give William Rehnquist's job to John Roberts, who will probably be confirmed and I think will be better (read: less conservative) than former Chief Justice Rehnquist.

I've decided to try the Question of the Day II meme this week:

How did you come up with the name of your blog? Does it mean anything, or is it nonsense?
I started it out as wanting to be a total tech blog, but I didn't want a boring name like "The Tech Vent" or something like that. Just kidding, Ronak. But seriously, I wanted something kind of catchy, and I definitely wanted it to mock/celebrate my being a nerd, so this is the best I came up with. Of course it evolved to also carry movie news and a few other random things pertaining to current events, but I think it still maintains the same original objective.