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Gray Lady confirms Wii's early success
You can always count on the New York Times to confirm what most people have acknowledged as conventional wisdom weeks ago. To that end, the Gray Lady today has an article looking at the relatively warm welcome the Wii has received when compared to the PS3. The Times recounts more now-tired tales of hard-to-find Wiis, PS3s piled in shops, and the Wii's potential appeal to new gamers ("My husband broke a sweat playing golf on there," one mother declares). The biggest fireworks come from Sony spokesman Dave Karakker, who derisively calls the Wii an "impulse buy" and Nintendo marketing head Perrin Kaplan, who angrily argues that Sony's reports of slow Wii shipments are "absolutely inaccurate." Save it for the ring, fellas. Possibly the most notable thing about the article, though, is the absence of any practical discussion of the Xbox 360 and its effect on the next gen race. Sure, the 360 might seem like old news compared with the more recently released systems, but it does have a multi-million unit head start and just this past holiday saw a multi-platinum ultra-seller. Surely its impact warrants more than a passing mention in the eighth paragraph. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in.]
Researchers hack RFID credit cards. Big surprise.
RFID has been riddled with so many problems, it's amazing that anyone even has a shred of confidence in this technology at all. Our latest security problem du jour is that credit card companies are apparently issuing plastic that relays your digits wirelessly; as you might have guessed, security researchers are checking into this, and in a demonstration for The New York Times, easily hacked a University of Massachusetts computer science professor's newfangled RFID credit card. In short order (and with his permission), a researcher working with RSA Labs was able to steal the professor's name and credit card number that was being transmitted in cleartext -- thereby poking massive holes in Visa, MasterCard and American Express' claims that these card include "the highest level of encryption allowed by the U.S. government." Predictably, the credit card companies have already dismissed claims that the populus will be greatly affected by this hack. Brian Triplett, senior vice president for emerging-product development for Visa, told the Gray Lady: "This is an interesting technical exercise, but as a real threat to a consumer - that threat really doesn't exist." Well, Brian, care to put your plastic where your mouth is?[Via TechDirt]
Microsoft to start its own chip design lab for new Xbox
Ah, Wintel. The mere convergence of the words "Windows" and "Intel" harkens back to a simpler time (call it the 1980s and 1990s), when Microsoft and Intel were literally joined at the hip. Microsoft provided the software, and Intel brought the brains. Today in the aught decade, everything's all whacked -- Apple has partnered with Intel, dumping IBM. Meanwhile, Microsoft is in the video game business, and now powers its Xbox with IBM chips. Well, get ready for yet another change in the who's-in-bed-with-whom story: Microsoft is leaving IBM. Who's the lucky bride? Itself! Yes, that's right, according to a report in yesterday's Gray Lady, Microsoft will be starting its own chip design division, with the ultra-creative name: "The Computer Architecture Group," and will be split between Redmond, Washington and Mountain View, California. The venerable NYT adds that Microsoft will use the lab to beef up chips in the next-generation Xbox (the Xbox 720?), and will be headed by Charles P. Thacker (pictured here working on the CAG gang sign). He's formerly of the legendary Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, where he helped work on the original Alto and the invention of Ethernet. All that aside, we're kinda concerned that IBM doesn't get too depressed over this development, and hope that Big Blue will at least get the kids, the car, and the house.[Via TG Daily]
