Tuesday, January 30, 2007

eBay Auction: EVERY NES game ever made

A guy from South Carolina has put up for sale quite a package. Not only are you buying all 670 NES game ever made, all in good condition, you're getting the following:

the NES Nintendo System Console (in the box), 4 Controllers, 2 Turbo controllers, NES Advantage Controller (Joystick and Button console in box), Zapper Gun, Power Pad, Power Glove, ROB the Robot (with accessories), 4 Player wired controller (with Turbo) allows up to 4 players, 4 Player Wireless Satellite and Reciever, Grey Joystick controller, Game Genie and the Code Book, RF Switch and AC Power Cord.


There's a picture of all the games stacked up on the auction page (which is quite a sight), and the guy has a 100% feedback rating, so it looks like the sale is legit. But get this: the bid is up to $220,936. That's right, someone's going to pay almost a quarter of a million dollars for a bunch of video games. That seems a bit much for me, but hey, whatever floats their boat.

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Profit losses at Sony

Due to slow sales on the PS3, Sony's profits have dropped in the third quarter. I have to ask: what did they think would happen?

There are several reasons for this, which I had talked about with friends when the PS3 originally came out and that are mentioned in the article. For one, there's the price. It's double the price of the Wii, and still more expensive than the best Xbox 360. And even at that high price, they priced it under the cost of production to try to sell more. They wouldn't have had such a huge cost of production if they hadn't tried to jump start Blu-Ray discs. It took almost a decade to fully switch from VHS to DVD; why would they think that it would only take a couple years to convert to Blu-Ray, especially when HD DVDs are competing against it? On top of the high cost for the console itself, the games are ridiculously expensive as well, even for a next-generation console, once again due to their choice to go with Blu-Ray. Bad idea, Sony.

I'm sure the UMD fiasco of the PSP had something to do with it as well. The only thing the article says about PSP is that its sales have dropped as well, but several months ago many stores such as Target and Wal-Mart began drastically cutting back on, if not eliminating, their stock of UMD movies. The UMD had several things wrong with it that limited sales. Since its storage capacity was so much smaller, most of the bonus features found on DVDs had to be taken out, and to keep Sony DVD sales up, they didn't put in a TV-playback feature, so you had to always watch on the PSP. The only way to watch on a television was to buy a third-party converter, which to install required you to remove the faceplate, among other things. All those issues combined with affordable portable DVD players with TV output combined to destroy any possibility of profitable sales of UMD movies.

In the end, Sony's made some bad choices with their games systems. We'll see what happens as the novelty of the next-gen consoles wear off and they settle in for the long haul. Maybe Sony can redeem the PS3 with some excellent games, but when facing competition like Halo 3 coming this spring and all the original games coming for the Wii that will draw all the casual gamers, it will be a tough sale.

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Sunday, January 28, 2007

New Blog

I've created a new blog to live-blog my reading through the Bible in a year. I'm going to be putting my thoughts or things I notice that I never noticed before in there, and it will serve the dual purpose of helping me stay on track both through accountability and because I'll be more interested through writing about it, and at the end I'll have what amounts to a commentary on the entire Bible, written by me, which I'll enjoy having. Check it out, comment with your thoughts, read it with me even. Feedback would be encouraging.

Jeremy's Bible Blog.

And I'll still be doing this blog, I'm just doing that one as well.

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Saturday, January 27, 2007

Science brings confections to a new level

A scientist from North Carolina recently developed caffeinated donuts. That's right: now you can get even more caffeine with your breakfast on top of your cup of coffee!

Each donut has about as much caffeine as two cups of coffee, but without the bitter taste. The inventor, Doctor Robert Bohannon, has approached several major donut companies about carrying them, including Krispy Kreme, Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks. I can't wait.

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Monday, January 22, 2007

"Old fear: designer babies. New fear: deformer babies"

With genetic engineering and embryo screening and all that, people can have (or will be able to have soon) "perfect" babies ("designer" babies, free of virtually all defects and genetically based diseases, etc.), but now some clinics, just a few, have started designing for defects. Parents that have some condition, like being deaf or a dwarf, are trying to make their babies like that so that they'll be like them. I think that's just sick, at least with things like deafness. Maybe some people don't consider being a dwarf a defect, and I can see how they feel (but I still don't think they should make babies be that way, but anyways...), but there's no way anyone can say being deaf isn't going to make life way harder for the child, as well as depriving them of a lot of good things in life like just plainly hearing people's voices and hearing music, etc.

Not that people with those conditions can't live a virtually "normal" life (whatever that is) and be completely happy, and I guess a small part is the parents' choice, but I think much more is a basic human right to not be forced into a "defect." I don't know if I'd go as far as to say that humans have a right to be healthy, if something like deafness just happens, but I do think it's wrong to intentionally cripple a child to make them like their parents. Things like hair or eye color, even height or something like having an extra finger on each hand or something, I can see designing; I don't know if I would, I doubt it, but those things are mainly superficial and won't really affect the child's life. But things like whether they can HEAR or not...that's a big difference.

Some people say they can see how someone who is deaf or a dwarf could say, "I want a child like me," but you would think that would be outweighed by a desire to make life as easy and pleasant as possible for their child. As I said before, there is nothing wrong with having a "defect" (if you want to call it that) like being deaf or a dwarf, but it is definitely going to make life more difficult for the child. I don't think this is going to become a huge problem anytime soon, if ever, but I think it's something people are going to have to face at one point or another.

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Thursday, January 18, 2007

Political bloggers may be forced to register as lobbyists

S.1, a lobbying reform bill in the Senate, if passed, would force everyone, including bloggers, to register as a lobbyist and report quarterly to Congress if they comments on government policy or tries to start a "grassroots" campaign and communicates to 500 or more people.

That wouldn't be me, because I don't really talk politics on here and I DEFINITELY don't have a 500-person readership (maybe 5), but it still really annoys me. How could they justify that? People engaging in their First Amendment rights by saying what they think and trying to get people (normal people, not elected representatives) to act on it are now lobbyists? That's ridiculous, and people have called and written about Section 220 (the part of the bill that discusses this) to the Senate, as well they should. That annoys me almost as much as that previous bill trying to take away Net Neutrality that was defeated due to the huge public response, and hopefully this one will meet a similar fate.

Article on Section 220.

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Thursday, January 11, 2007

If they had to shoot each other, at least it was over something important

70 year-old man shoots friend during argument over the height of James Brown's career - who, by the way, still hasn't been buried.



On an unrelated note, a situation in Dallas has me interested. Pizza Patron, a Dallas-based pizza chain has decided to accept pesos at their locations, and people are mad about it. While I'm interested to see where the fight leads, I think the people complaining are focusing on a non-issue. Their point is that this is America, so they should use dollars (which the stores still accept, obviously), and they think Pizza Patron is catering to illegal immigrants. My view is that since 60% of their customers are Hispanic, it makes business sense to do it, regardless.

Also, plenty of other places in cities in other countries where there is a high concentration of Americans accept American dollars, just because people are prevalent there that have them. We always went to Progresso, Mexico to shop on our mission trips, and while we normally had pesos to spend most of the shops took dollars as well since it is a big tourist town due to its proximity to the border. I don't think the pizza place's decision is really a big deal. Thoughts?

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Wednesday, January 10, 2007

To all the tea-drinkers out there...

Tea is healthier than water.
Now scientists are saying that drinking three cups of tea per day is just as good as drinking plenty of water, if not better due to some possible extra health benefits of tea.

But! Milk, the destroyer, will ruin those same health benefits!
By adding milk to your tea, you lose the artery-relaxing effects that tea has. There are proteins in milk that screw it all up. So if you're drinking tea because it's healthy, forgoe the milk.

Next, the Germans who figured out the milk thing are going to study whether green or black tea is more healthy for you. They think the reason studies have been inconclusive in the past is that green tea is normally drunk with milk and black tea isn't.

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Sunday, January 07, 2007

Amazing Photo Gallery



I've had this gallery in my favorites for quite some time now, and every so often I'll just go and stare at some of these pictures. How can anyone be this good? Really, if you follow one link off this website, make it this one: A gallery of photographs by Leo Palmer.

These photos make me want to travel so much more every time I see them. Egad, the wanderlust.

Landscapes are my favorite type of art, and, although he only has 6 of them, they're incredible.

This photograph makes me just shake my head in amazement.




"A dark rock landscape with snow capped mountains in the background, a coral sea & stormy sky.
In reality rotting wood & peeling paint on the side of an old rowing boat."

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Thursday, January 04, 2007

What's going on around the country

Nancy Pelosi became the first female House Speaker Thursday

Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport has decided to battle some Muslim taxi drivers
For the past several months, many of the cabbies at the Minneapolis-St. Paul international airport have been refusing fare to people carrying alcholhol and people with dogs, even if they're disabled. Muslims consider dog saliva unclean and those that refuse fare feel that carrying someone with alcohol is "cooperating in sin." The airport is going to vote on putting in new regulations that would fine cabbies that refused service for those reasons or if the trip is too short.

North Korea is preparing another nuklear test
According to a senior U.S. defense official, North Korea has everything put into place to conduct another test without warning or notice. The intelligence community is divided as to whether they will actually test again or not, with some saying they probably won't and others saying they most likely will within the next 2 to 3 months.

Due to all the pictures of Saddam's hanging that have been broadcast, multiple kids have hung themselves emulating what they saw on TV.

National Guardsmen overrun by gunmen at Mexican border in Arizona

Oil dropped below $56 a barrel due to warmer winter

Obama will probably run for president - probably make an announcement concerning that soon



Sorry I don't have anything more interesting or something other than links to update with; I haven't really felt like or had anything to write about recently that would fit here.

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