The FastSilicon.com crew has been curious to know how many Xbox 360 units have
been shipped back to Microsoft for repair. To get an idea, we
recently went to our local UPS store to evaluate the situation. Several workers described a steady stream of Xboxes flowing through
the store daily. Each day, the store processes between six and ten Xbox 360s. This does not include repaired boxes received for return delivery to the consumer. A local worker, who wished to remain anonymous, has
been shipping these Xboxes since he has worked there. He described Microsoft customers who have come in with their 3rd, or even 4th, Xbox 360. This is not an uncommon occurrence. He has experienced more than a few tense and angry
customers due to this unfortunate circumstance. No employee has worked there long
enough for us to determine how long this has been happening, however, it became apparent that this has been going on for quite some time.
The question becomes, why does Microsoft keep sending out the same
defective Xbox? It may be refurbished and in working condition, but it
is the same defective design that is going to fail for the same reason.
Some users have gone through as many as seven
Xboxes, with an average turn-around of three weeks. A few have even reported
turn-around times of up to 10 weeks. Worse than that, Microsoft does not
reimburse users for their Xbox Live subscription down-time beyond a month.
Microsoft needs to get their act together. How are customers going
to react to the next Xbox? Microsoft already has trust issues with
their customers. This will only serve to aggravate, or destroy, their already tenuous relationship with gamers. Product reliability should never be a coin toss. Hopefully, Microsoft will somehow push their
65nm Xbox sooner. The blow-back from the holiday season will be severe if the same issues extend beyond the coming year. Continued design flaws and poor customer service may open the door for either of the other competitors to step up.
The band Radiohead recently released their new album "In Rainbows" in a bold and surprising new way. They have made their entire album available for download before the release of the physical cd. It is available on or before the 3rd of December, 2007. As an added bonus, they have made the cost of the album a personal affair. Essentially, the only cost required is the payment processing fee of 45p, or around 90 cents U.S.. Beyond the payment fee, the listener is free to pay whatever he or she feels the album is worth. The success of this approach to marketing has yet to be revealed, however, it appears very promising. Some of our own friends have paid well over a 100 US dollars for this album, in support of the band's decision. Even the underground piracy world of torrent sites are reacting to this news with respect and admiration, prohibiting the album's availability on their sites.
With the current distribution model, artists end up with very little of gross sales. Bands can even end up owing the record company after everything is said and done. This new system Radiohead has implemented allows the money to go directly to the band. This is not like Apple, either, where the money goes to Apple, record company, and then artist, in descending order. Wierd Al is one of those artists feeling the burn of Apple's I-Tunes music price distribution scheme. He even has his album availible on his myspace account. Many other artists are considering following Radiohead's lead with their new albums.
There have been some complaints in the
community about the format that the music is presented in. Unfortunately, the
music is in a 160KB/s mp3 format. It would have been preferable
to use 192KB/s format, and extremely nice if they chose 320KB/s. This
format choice has made some consumers second guess a download purchase, opting to wait for the limited edition box set. Most will pay for the album through the download, and "illegally" download the higher quality versions when they are released. Either
way, we at fastsilicon.com admire Radiohead's pioneering move that will hopefully turn the music scene on its head.
Buy the album here , even if it is just to support this kind of distribution model.
With
the Radeon HD 2900 XT outperforming the Geforce 8800 GTX with the release of
new ATI drivers, it’s time to see how it performs compared to a Geforce 8800
Ultra. Our friends over at TweakTown.com have done just this with interesting
results. Of course, we at FastSilicon.com feel the Nvidia offerings are better
at this juncture, but for those hardcore ATI fans, the 2900 XT packs a hard
punch at a lower price point. Combine this with Crossfire, and you’re looking
at one sexy ATI system.
AMD’s ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics card really does
continue to show how it can be a dominant card in the market and that the next
offering from AMD/ATI should be a strong competitor, we think.
Sure, Nvidia’s GeForce 8800 Ultra continues to win but at pricing starting at
around or sometimes over 40% of the HD 2900 XT, you would expect it too as
well. You throw in the fact that the Intel P35 is the new “in” chipset (which
currently only supports Crossfire for its dual graphics system) you really have
to look at the HD 2900 XT as the graphics card of choice.
ASUS have got a fabulous HD 2900 XT package as well - the inclusion of
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. alongside the normal Black Box is excellent and at least you
feel you’re getting something extra for your money.
We Stumbled across an interesting report about the GA-P35-DS3 not passing EMI compliance. We happen to have one in our labs, but it has no effect on anything else. Not that we would expect anomalies with the levels still fairly low. Newer boards are emerging that are packed to the brim with features and bandwidth, companies might have to start considering these tests more as a design obstacle when enough EMI is generated to possibly start affecting other components in the case. Not to mention pacemakers and other medical devices are susceptible
THESE DAYS, Electro Magnetic Interference (EMI) compliance
is required for nearly all electronic stuff sold in the EU, US and
most of Asia. This encompasses various US, FCC and CE tests, among
others. So, the user's assumption would be that all such products
do pass the tests.
Well, not always - Taiwan's ETC (Electronic Testing Center) labs
sometimes comes across major brand products which don't exactly
pass some of the EMI tests.
A fairly recent example is Gigabyte's GA-P35-DS3 mainboard,
based on the Intel's P35 chipset, one of which may have been lying
in waste, dropped on the floor of Taiwan's spanking new 300 km/h
Shinkansen high speed train somewhere between Taipei and
Kaohsiung...
After years spent suing everyone on earth, rather than innovating or adapting to the realities of a changing market, SCO Group files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware Friday. This basically ends the upcoming SCO vs. Novell trial, which was set to begin Monday. We hope anyone who has vaguely paid attention to industry news the last few years had the sense to dump SCO stock years ago. The Inquirer Reports...
ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON, both SCO Group and its subsidiary SCO Operations, Inc. filed voluntary petitions for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.
Trading in SCOX was halted on the NASDAQ exchange ahead of the news but resumed before closing. SCO stock lost 43% on the news, ending the day at 37 cents per share.
The bankruptcy filing canceled the SCO v. Novell trial that had been scheduled to begin Monday in the courtroom of US District Court Judge Dale A. Kimball. It automatically stayed that lawsuit and all of SCO's other pending litigation with IBM, Autozone and Red Hat.
A Chinese national consortium (consisting of university engineers, government officials, and a Chinese video standards group) alongside the DVD Forum (arbitor of the HD-DVD standard) has come to an agreement regarding the components to be used in China's forthcoming CH-DVD standard. Why is this an important development?
Apart from differences such as encoding formats (the Chinese favor their own AVS codec), this means that a country with roughly 20% of the population of the earth is behind a standard that is mechanically and optically favorable to HD-DVD. With Chinese manufacturing capability behind it, CH-DVD should be a huge success there. With the Chinese economy being what it is, prices for such a format have to be within the reach of its indigenous customer base. Given these premises, HD-DVD will be a huge beneficiary of the economies of scale that will come into play here.
It is still too early to tell who will win the high definition format war. The two leading formats, HD-DVD and BlueRay, barely account for single digit percentages of worldwide video sales. Still, if history is to be our guide, one or the other of the formats will indeed take off when players cross the $200 and $100 price thresholds. With this new development, it appears likely that HD-DVD will get there first.
Ubisoft has released totally free versions of the games Far Cry , Prince Of Persia: Sands Of Time , and Rayman Raving Rabbids on Fileplanet today. These releases may be part of a growing trend to recycle content through ingame advertising, something all 3 of these releases utilize to be "free". With the explosive growth of online advertising revenue, perhaps this will become a sustainable business model? The Inquirer reports...
Out of these three games, Far Cry is the most well known one. The game
appeared from nowhere - actually, from German studio ran by Turkish
brothers- and single-handedly wiped out launch effects of Doom 3 and
Half-Life 2. This is the game that surprised the market, and with later
appearance of 64-bit enhancements and graphical tweaks, this game still
looks rather actual. This was also the very first title to offer HDR
(High Dynamic Range) - in a form of manual controls.
NEW YORK - Armed with a soldering iron and a large supply of energy drinks, a slight, curly haired teenager has developed a way to make the iPhone, arguably the gadget of the year, available to a much wider audience.
George Hotz of Glen Rock, N.J., spent his last summer before college figuring out how to "unlock" the iPhone, freeing it from being restricted to a single carrier, AT&T Inc.
The procedure, which the 17-year-old posted on his blog Thursday, raises the possibility of a cottage industry springing up to buy iPhones, unlocking them and then selling them to people who don't want AT&T service or can't get it, particularly overseas.
The GlobeAndMail reports a somewhat misguided story about internet domain registrars, like Register and Tucows, allowing registrars to pay an additional fee that allows them to keep their registration records anonymous. In this age of decreasing privacy and increasing fraud, it is just a good idea. Consider that any 13 year old can WHOIS an open DNS record.
In the article, the argument is being made that this helps terrorists stay anonymous, too. Now let us pretend to be a little rational. The last time we checked, you are innocent until proven guilty, at least in the U.S.. Espousing racist, terrorist FUD on a website does not make you a criminal, it merely makes you intolerant and stupid. Locked registrar records can be unlocked with a court order, as we well know. We have had to do this ourselves, after recieving threats from a nutcase last year. Do we give up the tenants of liberty and the rule of law because we are afraid of what the boogeyman might do? Benjamin Franklin put it succinctly;"those who would sacrifice a little liberty to obtane temporary safety deserve neither liberty, nor safety."
People who use loopholes and weaknesses in law to stay hidden will always do so. People with criminal intent cannot be controlled by anything less than due diligence and hard work. It will always be this way. This is a fools argument, leveraging people's fear of the terrorist boogeyman to make an argument with no merit. The GlobeAndMail reports...
This service is hugely popular: Civil-liberties advocates and anyone else who values their privacy flock to it. But it's also very useful to another group of people, halfway around the globe: On one of the world's largest pro-Hamas websites, viewers can download martyrdom videos that feature the diatribes of masked men shortly before they launch deadly attacks. Look up the registration info for that site, and you'll get that Yarmouth address and phone number.
The challenge this situation poses is not unprecedented. Years ago, authorities noticed that child pornography websites, though often operated from outside North America, made use of North American anonymous-registration services. In response, a large number of watchdog groups began hunting down such sites to force the registration firms to shut them down.
“There's nothing near that level [of public monitoring] with terrorist websites,” says Wade Deisman, Director of the National Security Working Group at the University of Ottawa. Government intelligence services don't have the resources to manage the scale of the problem. “I haven't seen anything that comes even close to addressing this issue,” he says.
NEW YORK - Armed with a soldering iron and a large supply of energy drinks, a slight, curly haired teenager has developed a way to make the iPhone, arguably the gadget of the year, available to a much wider audience.