The Furtive PS3

This post is going up early tonight because I have a Texas Revue practice at 10:00 PM tonight. I'm feeling pretty craptacular right now because I bombed my CS 337 test simply because it was too long. If I had like 30 more minutes, I could've totally aced it. I should've budgeted my time better, and it's sad to know that my GPA will finally falter so it's tough to deal with that. It's just always been a nice cushion for me, but I guess I have to just accept not being perfect (unless I make a 100 on the remaining tests in this class). The Diffy Q test looks like it will be much easier (tomorrow) in comparison. I totally forgot to mention this yesterday, but Merrill Lynch came up with some figures for the PS3 components and came up with an $900 price tag. The also claim, quite reasonably, that the console won't ship until late this year or next spring, which would really Sony (according to them). It sounds like t heir reasoning is just based on lesser revenues for this year, which I think is flawed logic if they can squeeze the system price down and have better games out at launch. It's not surprising that Sony commented on it today saying that they're sticking to their target release (this Spring), but no specifics to address the pricing information. Many people (myself included) are still skeptical about them shipping so soon, and it has been discovered that it will only support 720p resolution, not the full HD 1020p in order to save CPU cycles. This whole situation is a big mess for Sony, and while I think they will take a heavy loss on the sale of each console (at least as much as what Microsoft is currently stomaching), I don't know that $900 reflects the discounts they must be getting. E3 isn't too far off though, so expect more as May approaches.

For a game that you can play right now, check out Blueprint, which is an addictive puzzle game that I just blew 10 minutes on. I must say that it's the most fulfilling time killer I've played in a while. Google has secretly been building a Trusted Tester program to give priority to friends and family members of Google employees to try out their betas. I don't know that these people are much more trustworthy than normal techies, but it should make for an interesting experiment. The mp3 format has been around since before the Internet even became mainstream, let alone the advent of Napster, but doesn't that make it a little outdated (especially since it is a lossy format)? There has been a failed attempt to improve it, and now one mp3 licensing group is working on a surround sound mp3 format to satisfy audiophiles, and supposedly current consumer electronics can easily be upgraded to read it. I think that if they get big players to go along with it (like Samsung and Apple and the like) that it could be huge, especially since its licensing price is zero. Lastly, the British podcast "The Ricky Gervais Show" has become the first podcast to offer pay-for-download episodes at $7 a season (edited: thanks to anonymous comment for the correction; this price point sounds much more worthwhile), and apparently it's quite popular (though I don't care much for it). This will undoubtedly spur more if it does well, but I hope that my favorites still stay free (with ads). If I wanted to pay for podcasts I'd just get XM or Sirius.

Warner Brothers has a pretty good marketing team behind A Scanner Darkly, and they just released this one that seems to stand out from its predecessors. What doesn't look good are the new covers for Empire magazine featuring some X-men 3 characters in their horrid-looking costumes. I can't begin to imagine what Ratner was thinking. There is some pretty decent comic movie news though: the lead role Silver Surfer is slated to be Keanu Reeves, who has become slightly better with each movie he's done in recent years and I think overall can do great with this role. If you want to see what the next Bond car will be, take a look at the prototype for the Aston Martin DBS, which is derived from the DB5 (also on that page). I've shown a sketch of it before, but this one is much better. However, I personally feel that they should go with the DB5 to better fit the time frame in the novel. There's a trailer up for Open Season if you're interested, but it's extremely lackluster. Lastly, if you like Super Mario and you like Kill Bill, then you must see this.

I'm going to keep on with Monday's a Bitch this week because of its interesting series on the 7 deadly sins:

Pride

1. Do you have a problem admitting youÂ’re wrong?
Only when I strongly argue my case only to have it all fall apart. It's a bitembarrassingg, but I won't blindly continue on with a false argument. I'll cede defeat when necessary, despite a little struggling with it.

2. Would you rather watch someone important to you walk out of your life or beg them to stay?
Probably beg them to stay. If I let them walk out I'd probably be consumed with guilt and/or sadness like 30 seconds later. I don't like being in bad terms with people; it throws off my karma.

3. Are you the kind of person who would rather try your best and fail, or not try for fear of failure?
I'd rather try my best and fail in academic issues, but in many social issues I find myself not trying because of rejection. I'm trying to change things, but I've been too swamped lately to think more on it.

4. Have you ever expressed interest in someone high above your status, where your chances of being rejected were very high?
Not yet, and I doubt I will. I guess we never know what the opposite sex could do to us, but rejection really sucks more than people may claim it does.

5. If you made a contribution to a charity would you want credit, or would giving be enough?
The selfsatisfactionn is good enough. To be recognized would be superfluous since the benefit is really in increasing your positive balance with the universe in a sense. I like to think of it as accruing nice points to save for a rainy day (like today for me) when you have a difficult situation to face.