Weekend

It's Memorial Day weekend, the prequel to blockbuster summer fun that most people spend at barbeques, camping, road trips and the like.

Me? I'm home still fighting this crud I've had for the past six days.

I've gotten so desperate to get better that I've actually turned to Chinese medicine, namely Nin Jiom Pei Pa Gao, also known as "Oral Demulcent Sore Throat Syrup".

The active ingredient in this thick, dark goo is 650 mg of elk bark per teaspoon. It's a sucrose and honey base infused with, I kid you not: loquat leaf, fritillary, balloon flower root, snakegourd seed, sand root, senega root, tuckahoe, licorice root, ginger root, five-flavored seed, and peppermint. You know, to make it taste good.

Seriously, most of those things sound like plants you'd find only on the wrong side of an Oblivion gate.

Carded

I've had a nasty, persistent cold all week. I went to Long's drugstore to restock on cold medication. I grabbed their "Tussin" cough syrup and some Comtrex capsules. When I got to the checkout, the clerk asked to see my ID. I showed it to her, but that wasn't good enough. I had to remove it from my wallet and hand it to her. Then she punched the license number into her computer. Okay, I hadn't brushed my teeth since this morning, but I was still far away from anything resembling meth mouth.

People have been up in arms about the Patriot Act, but far more disturbing and extensive breaches of privacy and civil rights have occurred under the failed War on Drugs.

Good Old Hugo

One of the more enjoyable games I've played over the past couple years was a title called "Mercenaries", which was essentially a military-themed Grand Theft Auto-style open romp through a fictional invasion of North Korea. Now, part two is in the works, and the action centers on a fictional invasion of Venezuela.

Apparently the game has pissed off Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who thinks it's a psychops plot by Bush to prepare Americans for a real attack on his Bolivarian utopia.

Amazingly, the commenters on video game blog Kotaku are actually defending Chavez, saying he's not a dictator, was democratically elected, and has won the love of the people. Hmmm. Let's take a look at Mr. Chavez's track record, shall we?

He first made his name in 1992 by leading an attempted coup, which failed and landed him in prison. This passionate committment to the democratic ideal pretty much set the tone for the rest of his political career.

After a pardon by the successor of his coup-target, he was in fact elected president in 1998, and within a year of taking office had once again proven his love of democracy by barring the National Assembly (the Venezuelan Congress) from holding meetings. Legislative business continued -- conducted by a 7-man committee made up of Chavez cronies.

In the 2000 parliamentary elections, the voting was so dodgy that not even the Carter Center gave its approval. Emboldened, Chavez went on to declare the "enabling act", which essentially allowed his word to be law for one year.

By 2002, many Venezuelans had had enough, and half a million people took to the streets in protest. Appalled at this revolting display of free speech, Chavez let loose gangs of his thugs on his own people, killing several and injuring scores of others.

As of last year, Venezuelan oil production was not even up to 2001 levels because Chavez had sacked all the competent industry veterans and specialists who opposed his half-baked nationalization schemes. The cronies he installed may have known how to curry favor, but they had no clue how to run actual oilfieds.

Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have catalogued numerous abuses under Chavez. He has openly moved to form alliances with Russia and China, two of the most illiberal major states on the planet that have zero consideration for quaint "Western" concepts like liberty, democracy and free speech.

Yup, I can't wait to get my hands on "Mercenaries 2"!

Holodeck

A real-life holodeck.

Let's see, this set-up includes 96 graphics chips, 24 projectors, an 8-channel sound system, and motion-tracking. It costs $4 million today. What do you want to bet that it will cost $2,500 in 20 years and that games for the Xbox Six will be required to support it?

Sony's Going Down

I've been meaning to weigh in on the news of PlayStation 3 pricing but just haven't had the drive to make it happen.

Sony's big news at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in L.A. last week was that the PS3 will cost at least $500, with a higher-end model to go for $600. The dual-pricing scheme resembles Microsoft's decision to make "core" and "premium" versions of the Xbox 360, separated in price by $100. Sony initially heaped scorn on Microsoft's plan, saying it would confuse the customer, but it turns out they owe a huge debt of gratitude to Bill Gates, whose market researchers apparently correctly figured there was little downside and some potential upside to such an untried pricing mechanism.

Both versions of the PS3 will come with Sony's Blu-ray next-gen DVD format for hi-def movies. The $500 model has a 20Gb hard-drive while the $600 one comes with triple that storage, plus built-in Wi-Fi and HDMI digital outputs that will be needed when 1080p become available.

By contrast, the Xbox 360 basic version costs $300 and has no hard-drive, while the premium version costs $400 and has a 20Gb hard-drive. Microsoft said that later this year it will sell an add-on hi-def DVD player using HD-DVD technology that is a rival format to Sony's Blu-ray.

Sony's pricing is very interesting because it doesn't point to a clear outcome in the console wars. If Sony had come it at $700 it would have been game over for them because being double the 360 clearly would have been too much for most consumers to swallow. And if they'd come in at $400 or under, they would have put the fear of God into Microsoft. This sort of splits the difference and it is hard to predict how consumers will react.

My initial feeling is that Sony's video game dominance is nearing an end. What are they touting most about the PS3? Oddly, it's not the games, which appear to be on par with the 360's. It's Blu-ray first. The PS3 is thought to cost Sony some $700-$800 to make, with the biggest piece of that coming from yet-to-be-finalized Blu-ray hardware. By selling the boxes at $600, it appears at first blush that Sony is subsidizing the consumer. Let me flip that around and posit that, because consumers are the ones subsidizing Sony's Blu-ray fixation, because they have no choice about whether the technology is included. If the PS3 was a pure gaming machine, it might only have a price tag of $300. But this way, Sony gets a couple hundred extra bucks per box to offset its Blu-ray costs.

Sony wants Blu-ray in tens of millions of homes to make sure it wins against HD-DVD. I guess the two technologies deliver equally good video, but HD-DVD has another data layer that would allow regular DVD and hi-def DVD versions of the movie to be carried on one disk. This is sort of smart because people could future-proof their movie collections years ahead of actually buying an HD-DVD player. Plus, I'm just not sure how many people use their game consoles as a primary DVD player. Maybe college students do, but with DVD players available for $50, I would bet the vast majority of people have standalone players. Another point is that hi-def DVD is only worth it if you have a hi-def TV. Now, how many college students have HDTV? I am guessing that those with the means to throw down a couple grand for an HDTV aren't going to be satisfied using a game console as their primary hi-def DVD player.

If that wasn't concern enough, Sony has to play catch-up to the Xbox Live service, which Microsoft has spent the past four years beefing up and polishing. Sony scoffed at Live when it first came out, saying gamers wouldn't want to be locked into a Microsoft system. But the centrally controlled online functionality and consistent user interface of Live has proved to be one of Microsoft's aces. It will be tough for Sony to match right out of the gate.

Of less concern, but still telling as a measure of how Sony is thinking these days, is their decision to badly ape the motion-sensing controller of Nintendo's upcoming Wii console. The inclusion of axis-sensing features in the PS3 controller is so clearly a blatant attempt to steal Nintendo's thunder by saying "Look, we do motion-sensing, too! No need to buy their product!" Sadly, it might actually dupe some folk who don't realize that the Nintendo controller does motion in a much deeper way, with angle, force and acceleration all being reflected in gameplay. Sony's controller might let you waggle a plane's wings, but Nintendo's will let you hit a soft grounder or put some real-world muscle behind a virtual home run. That Sony felt they had to rush to include some sort of motion-sensing tells me that the team is too fixated on what everyone else is doing that it isn't really focusing on what Sony can do best.

Don't take my word that Sony is losing its mojo, check out this video of the doors opening at E3. Sony's booth is on the left, Nintendo's is on the right. Watch where the stampede heads. Now, to be fair, I was E3 in 2001, when the big story was supposed to be the Xbox. Microsoft even announced a price and launch date for the first time, but Nintendo's GameCube stole the show as people were wowed by the quirky games on display. However, Xbox sales pulled ahead of the GameCube's, pushing Nintendo to third spot in the console who's who list. So what you see may not reflect the world in 5 years' time.

However, there's no doubt that Sony is in deep trouble right now. The company that practically invented personal audio with the Walkman completely missed the MP3 boat and they are flailing about in desperation to stay relevant in an iPod-dominated world. Sony also failed to see the shift to flat-panel television, and gave Korean rival Samsung an opening to steal the crown in that market. If the PS3 bombs, Sony is going to be in a world of hurt.

I had kept myself open to the possibility of buying a PS3 as well, but nothing I've seen in the past week has convinced me that I absolutely need one. I will buy a hi-def DVD player in a couple years after a clear format winner has emerged and when the cost is reasonable. There aren't any exclusive Sony games I just gotta have. The graphics don't look like they're going to be better than my 360's. And the online service is a big unknown. In fact, I've been a lot more intrigued by the Wii than anything Sony's doing. They have the motion-sensing controller, and they've eschewed hi-def, in essence saying: "We don't care what the other guys are going. You want a hi-def space alien shooter, go buy one of them. What we're going to give you is something quirky and fun that you've never seen before." By doing this, they are staying true to what Nintendo is all about, differentiating themselves from the pack (okay, a pack of two), and as a result are generating all kinds of interest and praise and likely purchases.

It was Sony's game to lose, and from here it sure looks like they're hell bent on doing just that.

Addendum: As I was getting ready to post this, I came across this take on Firing Squad that also argues that the PS3 is dead in the water.

Hot for Teacher

First there was that teacher who banged her student. No, not the skanky Mary Kay Letourneau, but that hot blonde one in the news a couple months ago.

Now, there's a Florida high school teacher who poses for bikini calendars.

Oh yeah.

Don't Hurt Iran's Feelings

TEHRAN, Iran - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's abrupt dismissal of a letter from Iran's president might only strengthen hardline attitudes and mistrust of America, some Iranians warned Tuesday.

Huh.

Would this be the letter that proclaimed democracy and liberalism had failed and urged us to resign ourselves to theocracy? Hmm. Why didn't I see any news stories about how that letter might only strengthen hardline attitudes and mistrust of Iran?