Global Nerdy

That's right, you didn't misread that: I'm recommending the PlayStation 2, not the 3.

I'm not recommending the PS2 if you're looking for a gift idea for the must-have-the-latest thing sort of person; chances are, he or she probably offloaded their PS2 months ago on eBay or at the local used games shop and is jamming on a Wii, XBox 360 or PS3 (possibly all 3) and doing so on an HD-capable TV set to boot.

I'm recommending it if you think about it in these terms…

• If your Christmas budget is limited, or if the budget of the person getting the gift is limited.
• If you do have money to burn, think of it as a “stocking stuffer”, or drop one in a Christmas charity box.
• As a safe choice for someone who's curious about console gaming and who's been meaning to try it out. I know a lot of designer types who fall into this category; they don't own consoles, and since they tend to use Macs, their gaming options are rather limited.
• If you're looking for something cheap and fun to liven up the coffee break room/frat house/RV/arctic research station
• If you think of it as a DVD player/CD player/MP3 disc player that does more than just play movies.
• If you think of it as a second console (after all, it's no longer unusual to have more than one computer in a household).

…then the PlayStation 2, currently listed on Best Buy's U.S. site at US$129.99 and at their Canadian site for CDN$129.99 (just under US$114) — and possibly less at other shops — is a cheap and cheerful Christmas gift.

Now consider the edges that the PS2 has over the third-gen consoles that are getting all the press attention these days:

It's Old.

It's a weird selling point, but for consoles, a little age is a good thing. In fact, from this point comes all the other selling points for the PS2.

Unlike computers, there isn't much of an upgrade path for consoles, if any; once released, console developers can't count on the user upgrading the motherboard, RAM or video card the way PC game developers do. This constraint forces console developers to come up with clever ways to eke every last cycle out of the machine.

When a console first comes out, the developers for that console may have had a year's worth of experience developing for that console; oftentimes, it's less. That means that they've got the basics of programming the machine down, but haven't yet had time to fully explore all the capabilities of the machine. That's why “release titles” — games released right at the debut of a new console — aren't as good as titles that come out later on in the machine's lifecycle.

As a machine released in early 2001, there's about 7 years' worth of development knowledge for the PS2 out there. This means that development teams should have a very good idea of the PS2's capabilities, limits and workarounds for any constraints. This, more often than not, translates into good games.

It Has a Big Library of Games

As an established console, having been on the market for 6 years and having moved over 111 million units (according to this Sony site), the PS2 has a library of titles in the thousands. According to Wikipedia, there were 8,181 PS2 titles released worldwide in September 2006 (4,554 in Asia, 1,319 in North America, and 2,308 in Europe). The library becomes even larger if you count original PlayStation games, since the PS2 is capable of playing them.

Better still, many of the top titles for the PS2 are currently available as “Greatest Hits” re-releases at half their original price, which is less than half the price of a typical third-gen console game. You can save even more by buying them used; stores that carry used PS2 games abound.

A big library means more than just a good market for new and used games, it also means that someone near you also rents them out.

And In That Big Library, Some Great Games!

Not only is the library big, but there are a lot of great titles in it to, from sports titles like Madden Football and the NHL series to shootin'-and-killin' series like the Grand Theft Auto, Medal of Honor, Metal Gear and the Tom Clancy series, to music games like Dance Dance Revolution and Karaoke Revolution, to name only a few.

Even Now, There are Some Must-Have Titles You Can Only Get on the PS2

Among them are:

• Bully
• Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories
• Dragon Quest VIII
• Final Fantasy XII
• God of War
• Gran Turismo 4
• Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II
• Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari
• Okami
• Shadow of the Colossus
• Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves

Don't Forget Hardware

There are all manner of peripherals for the PS2, made by Sony and third parties, from controllers to cables to memory cards to dance pads and even decorative appliques, should you be the sort of person who like dressing up their machines.

It Goes Anywhere

It's a minor point, but it's still a point: the second-gen version of the PS2 (the currently-available slimline one) is small and light. If you travel with it, it travels well. If you don't travel with it, it's unobtrusive.

And Finally: It's in Stock!

With all the attention being focused on the XBox 360, Wii and PS3, you won't be locked in a Tom Arnold-vs-Arnie Jingle All the Way-style fight for a PS2. That's one less shopping headache.

In Conclusion…

Amidst the hype for the latest, greatest electronic doo-dad, don't pass up the PlayStation 2 as a gift possibility. Under the right circumstances and for the right person, it just might be the perfect gift.

The theme is geeky DIY over at Red Hat Magazine's holiday gift list. Better still, they're running a contest where the prize is everything on the list. 'Tis better to give and receive.

[W]e want to hear from you. Enter to win the gadgets in this gift guide by telling us what you'd like to see in Red Hat Magazine in the upcoming year. The best ideas will win the loot, and good entries will win something cool, too. Here's the fine print.

So, in the best spirit of free and open source, I'm redistributing somebody else's list of gift ideas!

Link

Tags: Gift ideas, open source, Red Hat

There's a funny Craiglist New York ad for a web developer. Written in language that is very close to “legal” C# (I gave it a quick peek, and even put it into Visual Studio just to be double-sure; it won't compile), it lists these details:

• The successful candidate will get a fast machine with dual monitors
• The job is located in midtown Manhattan
• The application will be implemented in C# and ASP.NET
• They would prefer it if you had experience with the following:
  • Microsoft CMS
  • SQL Server
  • XSLT
  • JavaScript
  • Design Patterns
  • Technical Architecture
  • UX Design

What the ad doesn't reveal is the name of the company — at least not directly anyway. You have to figure out the company name by writing a program to decrypt perqvgfvtugf using the ROT13 algorithm, and then submit the code for your decryption program to the company.

It's a cute way to promote the position, and the “make the ad look like code” tactic seems to have worked: it's already near the top of the list at Reddit.

Link

Rafat "paidContent" Ali notes a move by a boring old standards body that might have big implications for the adoption of movie download services.

A major hurdle in the legitimate download-to-burn services taking off has been removed: At its Nov. 29 meeting, the DVD Forum gave formal approval to a new type of recordable disc that will accept movies encrypted with CSS, the same copy-protection system used on retail discs, for playback on set-top DVD players, reports Video Business.

This could eventually mean that movies downloaded from the iTunes Store, Movielink, and others become much more useful. Generally speaking, you can only play the movies you download from these services on the computer you downloaded them to. Even when you can burn a copy onto a recordable DVD, that DVD isn't playable on the DVD player hooked up to your TV.

I say "could eventually mean," because, of course, the media companies selling their movies through these services might not be so interested in permitting their customers the right to burn regular DVDs. I would expect them to ask for restrictions on the number of times a downloaded movie can be burned at the very least (the same way that you can only burn an audio CD from an iTunes playlist a handful of times, although that can be circumvented by modifying the playlist).

The funny thing is that would never have been a problem had the studios and consumer electronics manufacturers behind the DVD standard not designed CSS from the start specifically to not work with recordable discs. The goal, of course, was to combat piracy. Instead, this design flaw has resulted in a situation where legitimate movie download services are less useful to paying customers than are the free sources trading in unlicensed content.

Link

Tags: DVD, CSS, download-to-burn

I like to keep up with events in the old country, whcih is how I ran across this item in the Globe and Mail about how one of Canada's largest media companies was getting into the social media game.

Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc. is working on a plan that could soon see Canadians broadcasting their own cooking, gardening and home improvement shows on the websites of The Food Network, HGTV and other channels.

The strategy was unveiled yesterday when Alliance announced a partnership with GS New Media to create BlogTV.ca, a Canadian website patterned after a popular Middle East site that lets people broadcast live through webcams to computers and cellphones.

Alliance Atlantis is licensing the BlogTV service from Israeli company Tapuz, who appear to license the service on a geographic basis, so only Canadian users will be able to access BlogTV.ca (apparently the geolocation service Tapuz uses is a little shaky—I've seen a few Canadian users complain that their access requests were denied because the site was for use by Canadians only). That doesn't sound very web 2.0 to me. Hell, it doesn't even sound web 1.0. Obviously Tapuz wants to sell this thing a bunch of times over, but the geographic limitation of their business model is completely at odds with the way the internet works.

It would appear that the service will initially launch focused on live streaming. In other words, flip on your webcam and, hey-presto, you're broadcasting through BlogTV (BlogTV also allows users to record their broadcasts for later play). The focus on live, unedited video strikes me as weird, although I suppose it's one way to discourage users uploading copyrighted content as they do on YouTube. Unfortunately, it's also one way to discourage users from visiting the site and making it successful, as they've done with YouTube.

I suppose I should thank god it's not actually blog TV—watching people blog would be booooring TV.

It looks like techno-journo-bloggo Matthew "Geekwatch" Ingram doesn't think much of BlogTV either.

In contrast to BSkyB licensing YouTube's platform, this deal is kinda "meh."

Link

Tags: BlogTV, Alliance Atlantis, Tapuz, YouTube

Over at RFID Lowdown, they've got a list of 51 “cool, surprising and scary” futuristic uses for RFID tags, and hey, not all of them are privacy-threatening. Here are a few:

• Tracking cars for location data and traffic reports and to prevent theft
• Following things through manufacturing/processing, whether it's food or products
• Following things through the supply chain, as it changes from a tree into Kleenex
• Navigation aids for the handicapped
• Replacements for the postage stamp
• Tagging items to prevent theft/shoplifting; tagging Alzheimer's patients who are prone to wandering
• As “dongles” to prevent unauthorized access to computers
• Tagging patients so that doctors don't perform the wrong procedures on them; tagging medicine so that you get reminders to take them or not to take the wrong ones
• Shopping: Having your shopping cart say “people who bought what you boguht also bought…”, dynamic pricing, self-scanning checkout
• Dealing with clutter or large collections of items
• Telling if the soccer ball really did cross the goal line
• RFID-tagged clothes so that your smart closet will tell you not to wear that shirt with those pants
• Sorting garbage and recyclables: so your smart bin can tell you which goes where

Link

Why should The Daily Show have all the fun?