Video Games

Product Placement in NBC Shows?

I’ve been watching NBC tonight, and I’ve heard references to Madden ’09 and Xbox 360 in two very different shows (Knight Rider and Law And Order). A coincidence? I know the NBC is a partner to Microsoft in certain ventures. Still, wouldn’t it be easier to just run a commercial?

No Time For Love (Or Blogging), Dr. Jones!

I know it’s been quiet here lately. Been busy (travelled 3 of the last 5 weekends), plus the spare time I do have has been eaten up by GTA IV (which was worth every penny, by the way). Things are supposed to be a little more calm for the next little while, so I’ll try to post more often. This post is just a note to say that I didn’t get hit by a bus.

I just got a PS3!

Yeah, I know, they’ve been out since late 2006, but I was a year and a half behind the curve last generation, too. Besides, no games were out that I really wanted to play until GTA IV was released last week. That, and I had to finish up with school. The point is, I bought a 40GB Playstation 3 last week. I upgraded it to 80GB with the old drive from my Macbook Pro (recently upgraded to 200GB 7200RPM beast of a drive), and am now in the process of loading Yellow Dog Linux 6. First impressions? Much quieter than my friend’s Xbox 360, graphics are incredible compared to the old Xbox and PS2, online experience is not as good as Live, but it is free, which is nice. Mad props to Sony for supporting Linux on their game console, even if it’s a slightly brain-dead “big brother is watching you” experience with the hypervisor locking you out of some of the really good bits. I’ve never heard of a console that included instructions for replacing components in the owner’s manual! I’ve been doing some reading on Cell programming – it looks incredibly interesting, even to this Perl programmer who would have to change his entire worldview to get any performance out of such a system. I’m sure I’ll have more to write on this as time goes by.