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RIM chalks up blackout to "insufficient" testing
It's probably of little consolation to the addicts among us who spent several terrifying hours in connectivity withdrawal -- and even less consolation, still, to the newly liberated -- but RIM's apparently figured out how its notoriously reliable back end came to a crashing halt this week. The company is now pointing its finger at "the introduction of a new, non-critical system routine" to its caching mechanism as the culprit. "Non-critical," indeed. Anyway, it seems said system routine was not put through enough testing ahead of its deployment to RIM's production systems -- and to make matters worse, its failover setup (hamsters on wheels, perhaps?) didn't pull through, significantly delaying the amount of time to get everything back online. We suspect most users are still a little too shocked at the chain of events to be steamed (yet), so consider this your strike one and two, RIM; just make sure it never happens again.
Massachusetts tries Jack Thompson's failed Utah game bill
Massachusetts' legislators have been offered up HB 1423, a game bill which seeks to "restrict the sale of video games wih [sic] violent content to minors." "Harmful to minors" is defined as content describing or representing nudity, sexual conduct or sexual excitement, "so as to appeal predominantly to the prurient interest of minors." Section four of the bill is where the civil rights lawyers are going to have a field day. It states a game is harmful to minors if it "lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors." That's about as broad as making brush strokes with Mr. Fantastic's super powers.Why does this all seem oddly familiar? This bill was created with the assistance of Jack Thompson and similar versions were shot down in Utah and deemed unconstitutional in Louisiana. Mayor Thomas Menino, one of the petitioners of the bill, was one of those who pushed through a ban on M rated game advertisements on the subway and got very upset during the infamous Aqua Teen Hunger Force bomb incident. Hopefully this bill will die somewhere along the path, because we're sure the citizens of Massachusetts aren't looking to pay back the ESA when this bill is deemed unconstitutional in the courts ... again.
Wii Warm Up: Negativity
We've noticed something lately, and thought it worth mentioning this fine morning: there are lots of people talking about the "failure" of the Wii. We've seen dozens of op-ed pieces on the various things that have "killed" the Wii (lack of supply, lack of games, lack of third party support), and we see lots of rousing posts on various interweb forums about how Nintendo can "turn things around." Frankly, these kinds of pieces make us rub our eyes and make comic faces that demonstrate our disbelief. Is this bizarro world? Because in this world, we see a lot of people playing Wii. We see a lot of people buying Wii. We're watching Nintendo ooze money right now. So, uh, just what is it we're missing here?
Tech designed to die
Kris Wagner posts an amusing Wired News column asking if technology companies design a life-span into products, forcing customers into a money-spending cycle. While the conspiracy has existed as long as our technology has failed, it's hard to make the next jump to nefarious, Tomorrow Never Dies-style meetings where company leaders maniacally ask for bugs to be added into products.Our informal poll around the Joystiq offices suggests that most of our game hardware has never broken. But a few of us are cursed with failure mojo, with one writer having had problems with an Xbox 360, PS2, SNES, and GameBoy. Is game hardware built better than iPods, or do we just pamper it more? (We've never taken an Xbox jogging.)
Honda Asimo takes a nasty fall
You know how you're watching those hidden camera or funny home video shows and someone gets hurt real bad, and you're laughing at them and pitying them simultaneously? That's how we felt when we saw Asimo fall down a set of stairs during a demo. It's ugly, man. Aismo turns its head and falls back, seized up like a clenched fist as sparks fly -- and yet it keeps on chattering away to the audience as robo-medics rush to the scene. One day we're going to pay for this. Video after the break. [Via Pink Tentacle]
iPod USB Power Adapter Beats Zune on Amazon
By all accounts, the Zune has been and will be a big failure for Microsoft, and now there is hard retailer data to back that up.Tucked inside a MarketWatch article on APPL's all-time high and the prominence of the iPod is this absolutely delectable statistic: "...Microsoft's new Zune media player, despite heavy marketing, came in only at No. 75 on Amazon's list of 100 best-selling electronics, trailing items such as Apple's $29.99 iPod USB power adapter, at No. 65."Not much more commentary on this from me today, just something quick to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.[via Jupiter Research]
Chinese television satellite fails to deploy, millions disappointed
You know how everyone's talking about how China is going to overtake us in jobs, research, and innovation in the next few decades? Well, allow us to insecurely and self-consciously jab at our friends across the Pacific. See, the Chinese government had this fantastic idea that it was going to provide free satellite TV to every household from Urumqui to Beijing. Except there was one small problem -- the Sinosat II satellite, which was launched late last month, didn't deploy its solar panel nor its antenna properly, basically making it unusable. Of course, the SINO Satellite Communications Co. Ltd. is unwilling to confirm the mechanical failure, even though the problem was reported by the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy. The Agence France Presse reports that SSC is still going forward with the Sinosat III launch sometime in the first six months of 2007. Best of luck with that, guys. Really.[Via Fark, photo courtesy AFP]
Nokia firmware scare bricks E70s
As we recently reported, Nokia's been dabbling with the whole do-it-yourself firmware upgrade phenomenon as of late. We applaud the effort -- in our opinion, getting the latest and greatest software for your devices should never be any more challenging than connecting a cable to your PC. Murphy's Law being what it is, though, initiatives like this are never going to be without their flaws. Many E70 owners who gave the update process a whirl in the past few days (present company included) were horrified to find that the procedure magically transformed their multi-hundred-dollar bundles of S60 joy into paperweights in just a handful of minutes. It happened to us, and it's not pretty; the phone teases you by turning on and dutifully displaying the "Nokia" logo, but that's as far as she goes. Rumor has it Nokia did the right thing by pulling the offending firmware and quickly replacing it with a new one, but that's little consolation for the folks bidding farewell to their handsets as they get shipped off to Nokia service centers around the world. We're going to give the upgrade another shot with our fresh E70 today and we'll pass on the word if we end up with a second brick -- wish us luck.Update: We've got good news and bad news. The good news is that we don't have another bricked E70 on our hands. The bad news is that the latest and greatest firmware being offered by Nokia isn't yet available for the US-friendly E70-2 variant (which is what we have). Let's go, Nokia! Americans want faster refresh times when switching to landscape mode just as much as Europeans do!
Risen assembles worldfirst of Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian
Ratherbrute sends along a tip that Risen, a guild over on Alleria-A, has reassembled the legendary Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian Medivh, not seen since the destruction of Dalaran. Unfortunately, their website is bombed out at the moment, leaving us without their pics of the forming, but a few are floating around, and we're sure lots more will show up as word spreads.Congrats to Failure, who, after recieving the world first of the item, immediately used it to port everyone in Ironforge to Karazahn, which ended up killing a bunch of 1st level alts (who had actually made a guild called "Failure's Atiesh Fanclub"-- you can see a "zomgatiesh" guild in the pic above, too). That's what you get for trying to follow in the footsteps of Medivh, fools! Congrats to Risen and Failure on picking up the world first of this incredible staff.[ Thanks, Ratherbrute! ]Update: A previous version of this post had the wrong server listed for Risen. Apologies and grats again.
Why Sony Connect failed
Cnet has a great article up detailing how Sony's Connect (their answer to iTunes) failed so miserably. Sony, by all rights, should have the position in digital music that Apple has, but a series of missteps ensured that Sony would be... well not so successful.They tried, they really did. They hired a former Apple employee, they wanted to use the Walkman brand, but it never worked out. Read the gory details, if you dare.
