Rampant piracy on the PS3… no eye patch or parrot needed.

“This motion seeks to close the door for rampant piracy that Defendants have illegally pried open in violation of federal and California law”… So states Sony’s legal documents against hackers.

For anybody who hasn’t been following recent developments, George Hotz, the hacker famous for the iPhone jailbreak recently released Sony’s PS3/PSP master keys on to the internet following his successful attempts at hacking the PS3.

These keys allow PS3 users to run homebrew and other unofficial software on their PS3s… as a consequence it hasn’t taken long for other hackers to figure out how to get a few official games working using this new found information and it is highly likely a easy to use “Backup” loader will undoubtedly appear within the next few weeks.

Now this post is not to say whether I think Sony will or will not crush George and his hacking friends but to comment on the quote from the legal documents noted above.

Rampant piracy? Seriously Sony how likely is this?

I believe the PS3 has a user base of just over 40 million worldwide.

How many of those 40 million would have access to a blu-ray recorder? I certainly don’t and I would suspect I’m a lot more tech savy than most of the 40 million users.

Ok, so what if I don’t need a blu-ray player… what if I just download and install games to a hard drive instead? Ok, fair point… but, given the fact the PS3 games are on blu-ray that tends to mean a game could be on average 20GB+. Now I don’t know about you but I do have some download limits and I suspect quite a lot of the 40 million PS3 users probably do too.

So… you do the maths, how many of the 40 million users are going to be trading in pirated blu-ray discs or downloading 20GB a pop games onto their PS3? Yes, some will…. but would it be enough to be considered rampant? I doubt it.

Of course, in 5 years or so time I’m sure 20GB will seem like nothing and probably in 5 years time piracy on the PS3 may be rampant but, by that time, I’m sure most people will have moved on to the PS4 so doubt there would be 40 million users interested in pirating old PS3 games.

Anyway, just my 2 cents, or, as we are talking about rampant piracy maybe I should say just my pieces of eight.

Posted in PS3 | Leave a comment

Kites

Undoubtedly one of my favourites songs of 2010. I can’t get it out of my head!

blah

FYI the track is by a Swedish group called ‘Gravitonas’ which is an Alexander Bard inspired project. And for those of you who don’t know Mr Bard his previous incarnations have included Army of Lovers, Vacuum and Bodies Without Organs… all of whom are also well worth checking out.

Posted in Music | Leave a comment

Beautiful children

It’s late on a Monday night and i’ve just checked the kids before going to bed myself… This is something I do every night and sometimes I am in too much of a rush to appreciate how beautiful they are, sleeping so peacefully and innocently in their beds. Tonight I did not rush.

I smiled to myself as I pulled up their sheets and made sure they were all warm and cozy and wondered what magical dreams they are in?

As much as they fight, scream and drive us crazy… They are beautiful little souls and I can’t help but think how fast time is going by. I really need to stop more often and enjoy the moment with them. Whether it be the magical face I saw on my young son Leon as his Mum read him a story earlier today, the look of concentration as Quinn did a puzzle on my iPad, or the beautiful world according to my daughter Zoe who was telling me about her day at school. :-)

If you have kids too… Stop… Pause… Enjoy the moment… Being a parent is the most magical and rewarding job in the world.

Posted in Leon, Quinn, Zoe | Leave a comment

This entry is posted direct from the iPad

Or more specifically I should say is written and uploaded using the free word press app. Whether I think the app is any good or not will depend on how this post looks once I publish it but certainly I find the app quite user friendly and I must say I am getting quite fast on the iPad keyboard… I had heard some people being critical of creating content on the iPad but it certainly seems easy enough for me to type things up on it.

Anyway, I guess to test this app properly I should probably add a photo so, although nothing to do with this entry… Here’s a photo of my oldest son Quinn from a few days ago when he lost one of his top front teeth… At the time of posting this the other top front tooth is hanging in there by a thread and I expect it will have fallen out by this coming weekend.

Posted in iPad | Leave a comment

Best birthday present ever…

I had been drooling over an iPad for quite a while and, for my 39th birthday last weekend, my wife surprised me with a 64GB Wifi model… best birthday present ever.

Absolutely loving it so far. The immediate best points in my opinion is the instantaneous boot-up time and the incredible battery power. I purposely did not want a 3G model as I can convert my nokia 5800 into a wifi hotspot and, with a cheap 1GB monthly plan on virgin, that is working great for getting the iPad on line when I’m out of my local wifi’s range.

Anyway, I’m slowly working my way through various apps on the iTunes store so will probably share some of my favourites in later posts.

Thanks Steve for making these great toys… and bigger thanks to my wife for letting me have one! :-)

Posted in iPad | Leave a comment

Swim Zoe Swim!

I think my 6 year old daughter Zoe’s swimming is coming along nicely… She certainly isn’t scared of the deep end anymore!

blah
Posted in Zoe | Leave a comment

Salt and Sand

Been watching a couple of movies the last few nights to pass the time whilst my other half is busy at work.

Yesterday I watched “Salt“. My wife is not a fan of Angelina Jolie but I personally don’t mind her (would any man really?)… I wasn’t expecting too much from this movie but I must say I was pleasantly surprised. Lots of action and a couple of good twists in the story. Definitely recommended if you want some mindless entertainment – I’ll give it a 7 out of 10.

Second up, today I started watching “Prince of Persia : The sands of time“. Note the word ‘started’, unfortunately I stopped halfway because I just found it all rather boring. Too much special effects and very little substance. Not sure if I can be bothered wasting another 50 minutes or so of my life to watch the second half so can’t give it a score.

Posted in Movies | Leave a comment

Last weekend of the hockey season

Today was the last Saturday morning hockey session of this season for my son Quinn. Unfortunately I didn’t due to a flu I didn’t get to go and see him play his last game but my wife tells me he really did great and put everything into his last game.

Of course Quinn got the obligatory end of season trophy for his collection…

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Blog resurrection 2010

I have been neglecting this blog during 2010 but finally, in a frenzy of behind the scenes tinkering, I have updated the Word Press software that drives this page up to the latest version.

The header of the blog is still annoying me and several old posts now look a bit messy so I still need to spend a bit of time redesigning things but at least the overall design is now more 2010 and integrated into the world of twitter, facebook and other social media sites.

Posted in PC & Internet | Leave a comment

Zoe’s 6th birthday

Just a quick blog post to link to my daughter’s 6th birthday youtube video…

blah
Posted in Zoe | Leave a comment

A Hardly Normal Purchase

I’ve been looking around for a Nintendo DS Lite for my youngest son Leon’s upcoming birthday and have been toying between the idea of buying him a new DS versus buying a second hand one.

His two older siblings both had new DS’s so my initial preference was to buy him a new one too but, on the other hand, Leon is getting his DS earlier than his siblings so there is a concern that, at only age 3, he will not necessarily treat his DS with the care and respect that I might prefer.

Anyway, after seeing the price of a few second hand DS’s I was still keen on buying him a new one so started to shop around the Canberra stores to see what was available.

Most of the major department and video game stores had prices around A$199 for a DSLite with no games. JB-Hifi, my usual shop of choice for electronic items had a price for a DSLite on its own of A$179 – I would have asked if they could improve on that price but in typical fashion it was hard to find a free salesperson to talk to.

I therefore went to JB’s sister store, Clive Anthonys, who also had DS Lites on their own for A$179 (no surprise that they were in line with JB Hifi) but with a sign on it saying “Less for cash” (something this store always promotes itself on). I therefore asked what was the less for cash price they’d do it for… after some checking the salesperson advised that they actually could not improve on the A$179 as they didn’t have sufficient margins to offer it any cheaper. After therefore expressing my disgust to the salesperson that they shouldn’t put a less for cash sign next to the consoles if they had no ability to reduce the prices I decided, at my wife’s suggestion, to visit Harvey Norman.

Now I must admit I usually avoid Harvey Norman like the plague. Normally it is the most overpriced rip-off store in Canberra. However, I may have to re-assess that opinion now as they sold me a DSLite with Guitar Hero on Tour package for A$150. I don’t particularly want the Guitar Hero game but can probably sell that on Ebay for about A$25 bringing the cost of a new DS Lite down to A$125, over 35% cheaper than many stores in Canberra!

So there we go, a hardly normal purchase from Harvey Norman! How bizarre… maybe I need to keep them in mind next time I want something electrical after all!

Posted in Nintendo | Leave a comment

District 9

Just when I was beginning to think every film I watched was going to be mediocre or a total dud I’m blindsided by a gem of a movie like District 9!Based in South Africa and filmed for a significant portion in a documentary style this is a whole new take on the “Alien Nation” style story.

I personally didn’t recognise any member of the cast but I think that also helped work in the film’s favour and made it much easier to believe the story could be real. As with all my commentary on movies I will not go into the detail of the plot as I especially do not like to spoil a film that I recommend you go and see. A must for sci-fi fans and I suspect it is also a film that even movie watchers who normally shy away from sci-fi films may appreciate.

I’ve given it 9 out of 10 on the IMDB.

district-9-poster

Posted in Movies | Leave a comment

Sherlock Holmes

Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch are two of my all time favourite movies. Both directed, admittedly in similar style, by Mr Guy Ritchie when he was still cool. Unfortunately I’ve not been impressed with much else in Guy Ritchie’s later career.

Anyway, the point of that introductory paragraph to this post is the fact that I have just finished watching Sherlock Holmes and the first thing I noticed in the credits was “Directed by Guy Ritchie”. Oh yeah I realised to myself… I forgot this film was directed by him although really, given the style of direction I should have realised!

So, although I watched the whole of Sherlock Holmes not realising it was a Guy Ritchie film, it makes no difference to my conclusion (so why did I share that info then – well, why not!). And my conclusion Dr Watson is that it was, on the whole, rather a disappointment.

I thought after watching some recent crap films such as Armored and 2012 that this film may be a breath of fresh air. I was wrong. Or maybe I’m just getting too picky.

So what was wrong with it? Well I’m not going to give spoilers away in case you haven’t watched it but my prime problem was that I just didn’t feel that excited or drawn into the story. It was all rather dull. The acting was reasonable, the costumes and the excellent effects of bringing old London to life were great, but the excitement of the story was not.

It is clear the ending, although nicely concluded, left the opening for the next chapter of a Sherlock Holmes adventure and I guess it will be interesting to see how that one pans out and if it is any better. If you look on IMDB it is already listed as being in development stages.

My rating that I have just given it on IMDB is 5 out of 10. Possibly harsh but I just wasn’t that impressed. Probably my expectations were too high having noted it to have an average rating of 7.7 on IMDB (or at least did at the time of this post).

Posted in Movies | Leave a comment

Leon

No great story to tell… was just taking a couple of photos of Leon “watching” TV using my Nokia 5800 and decided to stick them up here on the blog just for the hell of it. Hard to believe the little chimp will be 3 years old in only a few weeks time.

Leon TV

Posted in Leon | Leave a comment

And if this works, it will be known as four play

So my Facebook, Twitter and Youtube accounts are now all linked together. The missing link is my blog… and I figure if this blog is to be resurrected it really needs to also automatically make itself known in my facebook and twitter feeds. So, let’s see if this works or not…

Update: Oh yeah baby! We are linked! All systems operational… blog, facebook, twitter and youtube are all up and running! The “Wuggle in your face” campaign for 2010 can now begin lol!

Posted in PC & Internet | Leave a comment

Blog resurrection? Let’s not get too excited…

Just purchased a new computer and thought, whilst setting it up, I’d have a look at this “Windows Live Writer” application. Seems to link up to my old blog rather nicely so who knows, maybe I’ll start to post some stuff here again!

Whilst writing I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Years… boo hoo I’m back to work on Monday after having a three and a half week break!

And finally to complete the post I’ll test the photo posting capability of this application…

santa 2009

Posted in Family | Leave a comment

Lost

I may have been lost in World of Warcraft but that doesn’t mean I haven’t still been following the best show on TV, namely Lost.

I’ve really been enjoying season 5 and just wanted to take the time to post my thoughts about the main cast at the moment.

Firstly let me start with my favourite character… that award goes to ‘Juliet’. I guess that is probably a surprise choice given the fact that she has not been in Lost since the beginning. I can’t really explain what it is about her but, ever since she started appearing in Lost a few seasons ago I have really come to enjoy her more and more as time goes on. I also see from surfing around the net though that I am not alone in cheering for Juliet. I think that really is a great achievement for the actress Elizabeth Mitchell to come in to an established show and play a character that has become so popular. Lots of respect.

elizabeth-mitchell-as-juliet-burke.jpg
Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell)

Well after my favourite character, the next tier of characters I enjoy watching include, John Locke, Sawyer, Sayid, Ben, Desmond and Miles.

In my indifferent list we then have Sun, Jin, Hurley and Daniel.

And in my, bloody hell they’re really starting to annoy me… Jack and Kate… which is scary given the fact they are considered near the top of the main characters. Jack is really getting on my nerves and ranks as the character I’d most love to see get killed off even though that is very unlikely to happen… I truly wish he hadn’t come back to the Island. And although I’ve not minded Kate in the past it’s probably the fact that, as Juliet and Sawyer were very happy together, I don’t particularly want to see Kate stuffing things up for them.

Anyway… just felt like telling the world how much I still liked Lost…. and particularly Juliet :-)

Posted in Lost | Leave a comment

World of Warcraft

There you go… 3 simple words that should hopefully explain why this blog has been so neglected the last couple of months. As I mentioned “The Guild” in my last post it shouldn’t really be too surprising that I had to go check Warcraft out should it???

Anyway, I’ve been busy playing my main character of a human warrior… if you’re curious to see how I’ve been progressing (level 48 at the time of this post) please go check out my stats on the armory by using this link.

Posted in PC & Internet | Leave a comment

Dr Horrible is far from horrible…

Last night I was idly surfing around the Xbox 360 dashboard and decided to download a video entitled “The Guild.” I found it to be a quite amusing little series of webcasts about a bunch of addicted computer geeks playing a World of Warcraft clone…

Anyway, after watching a few episodes I looked up the show on Wikipedia and was very impressed to see that the lead actress of the show was pretty much responsible for it’s whole existence. This actress, Felicia Day, impressed me and I  decided to surf over to her webpage to learn more… geez, a self confessed internet/gaming junkie and yet very attractive! Truly a rarity and not surprisingly a true pin-up girl for the male gaming population! She truly does sound like a gamer’s perfect girlfriend!

Anyway… I read on her page that she recommended, if interested in seeing more of what she had done, to begin by checking out “Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog“. Ok… why not, I have nothing better to do so I downloaded a copy last night and stuck it on my Ipod today to watch at lunchtime.

OMG!!!! What an awesome production!!! I LOVED IT!!! I need to buy it on DVD asap!

I don’t want to spoil it too much by saying a lot about it other than, if you’re looking for something to watch and, like me, had missed this when first released last year, you need to go find it now!!!

Posted in Television | Leave a comment

Sleeping bubba

Yesterday we took a day trip to Sydney primarily due to the fact we still had a Sydney Tower / Aquarium / Wildlife pass from Quinn’s photo competition haul from earlier this year.

Anyway… there are a few photos up on Facebook of the Sydney Tower but thought I’d also share this photo here on the Blog of Leon sleeping on the way home. Our little boy may be growing up quickly but it is photos like this that make us think he is the cutest baby-o in the world…

Admitedly this sleep turned out to be a 10 minute micronap and then he stayed awake for the rest of the journey outlasting the staying power of our other 2 cherubs!

babyo.jpg

Posted in Leon | Leave a comment