And so Sony's crusade against Playstation 3 hacker George "Geohot" Hotz continues. After Sony getting all of Geohot's computers and access to server logs and personal details from many of his websites and social media accounts, Sony has now been given access to Geohot's PayPal account, and all information within it - including of the people he has had financial dealings with.
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Member since:2008-04-10
I've said it before: some companies have this amazing knack to ruin a perfectly good idea. Sony has this far more than any other company. Movies on memory sticks could have really taken off, but noooo, Sony had to cripple those. UMDs were nice, too. And Minidiscs. Minidiscs and UMDs were what everyone thought floppies would evolve into. Sony killed Betamax, and I am frankly AMAZED they haven't killed Bluray. I think the only reason Bluray has survived is because as poorly managed as it is, HD DVD was even worse off in that regard. A rare example of a company directly competing with Sony and somehow fucking up even worse.
Sony repeatedly miss and squander opportunities, and overwork things people don't care about (if we're LUCKY they're working on something we don't care about, anyway). Imagine if they'd brought the app store downloadable game concept to the PSP earlier. Before the slim came out, for example. Imagine if they'd set up (or if they did, I never heard of it, so perhaps advertised) a PSP music store. Sony, one of the biggest record labels in the world, selling direct to your pocket. I'll be extremely disappointed (not that I'd buy from there anyway) if the NGP and the new lineup of XPerias like the Arc and Play don't have something like this.
Member since:2010-03-08
Even today, the original MD could compete with modern storage media in some areas. It is, to the best of my knowledge, the most reliable cheap high-density storage medium ever attached to a computer, and as such it would be perfectly suitable for archival purposes. The underlying technology is pure physics genius, and I just can't figure out why no one has taken it one step further, save for Sony themselves with Hi-MD. Maybe it was patented ? Guess we'll never know...
How Sony managed to screw this up by inventing DRM and using a pre-alpha release of that technology on MDs remains beyond me.
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues.""Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently.
"In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies.
"The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing."The Verge has learned that HTC's Chief Product Officer, Kouji Kodera, left the company last week. Kodera was responsible for HTC's overall product strategy, which makes the departure especially notable on the heels of the global launch of the make-or-break One. It's not just Kodera. In the past three-odd months, HTC has lost a number of employees in rapid succession." I really hope HTC pulls it together.
"It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian 'sid' at the time of the Debian 'wheezy' release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release." Important note: 75% of Debian packages are supported bu Debian GNU/Hurd. Impressive.
"The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run."There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they're holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International, which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world. AOI hasn't filed a tax return anywhere in the world for the last five years, yet it earned $30 billion in income from 2009 to 2012, according to a Senate report released yesterday." Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many more - these companies might not be breaking any laws, but it's obvious to anyone that what they are doing is scummy.
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
Member since:
2010-03-08
The worst here is that Sony *are* able to program decent software. My Sony compact camera is just wondrous for its price, firmware included. Firmware wasn't my MD recorders' big problem either. No complaints on the overall usability and stability of my parents' Sony TV and HDD recorder's software either.
The problem is that when Sony focus on making money from a product *after* it is sold, terrible things happen. This is when you get SonicStage and Connect Player. Home appliances that will display photos but not videos from an USB pen drive, forcing you to use the low-res chinch connectivity if you want to show your own videos to your parents. And, apparently, the PSN is another victim of this mysterious law of nature.