Damn it. November went by and I didn't even get to mention that it was the 'penultimate' month of 2010. I love to use the word 'penultimate', and so you can imagine how disappointed I am. There's a surprising amount of news this week. Surprising because I still managed to play something like 25 hours of Fallout New Vegas, so I don't know how I managed to find the will to quit the game and search for news. So let's get started …

… with Copyright news. The cracks are starting to appear in the US Copyright Group's attempt to monetize anti-piracy, and they're bringing out the kitchen sink to stop anyone getting into their way.

Document lawyer Graham Syfert is just the latest to try and stop the USCG mass lawsuits, and he did it by producing and selling self-help documents and selling them to those that have been sued. These documents can be used to keep the USCG busy, in the hope that they will eventually drop the case because it's just not worth the trouble. The documents can be purchased for as little as $9.95, but according to the USCG, it's costing them thousands. Which is why the USCG has just sued Syfert. Apparently, it's only okay for the USCG to make money off anti-piracy, and anyone getting in their way is a bad person. Syfert, being a lawyer himself, has fired back claiming that the USCG's actions are "completely insane". And if that wasn't bad enough for the USCG, they are now facing a class action lawsuit filed by one of the defendants of their 'Far Cry' case. The class action alleges "fraud, extortion and abuse" on the part of the USCG. I've always been told that the US is a particularly litigious country, and so I guess the USCG should have expected something like this to happen. And it's interesting to note, that apart from some porn lawsuits, there aren't too many other law firms taking up the anti-piracy settlement business, at least not many that are high profile. Perhaps they're all waiting around to see what becomes of USCG's business model, whether it is workable at all. Which is more reason to hope that USCG fails completely to monetize, so it puts an end to this sort of thing. And hopefully with the porn lawsuits, someone will step up and also claim "fraud, extortion and abuse", particularly the extortion bit, because threatening to make public one's sexual habits does seem a bit extortionate.

The fallout from the recent Homeland Security domain seizures, and the threat looming from the controversial Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), it seems that BitTorrent websites are taking pre-emptive action to protect themselves. Which is why this week, private BitTorrent tracker Demonoid has decided to move away from its .com roots, and instead move to .me, to counter the threat of having their domain seized by US authorities (who have jurisdiction over .com domain names, I suppose). Several private DNS systems have also been set up recently, in case COICA becomes law and thus giving the US government the ability to tamper with the Internet's domain name system. This fracture into a public (both censored and uncensored) and private Internet is exactly what academics and engineers have warned about when they first heard about COICA. And it also again shows that even with the risk of catastrophic damage to the Internet as we know it, the actual effect of COICA in stopping piracy is negligible, because people can simply switch their DNS to an offshore one, and continue to access all the websites the US government doesn't want you to look at.

Viacom is eager to get back to court so they can lose again to Google/YouTube, as they filed their appeal against the June decision which say their copyright lawsuit thrown out of court. More money wasted instead of pursuing innovation, but I guess the lawyers will be happy. In totally unrelated news, Google is beefing up its anti-piracy credentials by buying DRM firm Widevine, as well as implementing several features on their websites that will make it about 2.3% harder to find pirated stuff on the Internet. The first major change is to remove piracy related keywords, such as "torrent", from auto-complete suggestions (so that when you search for "Megamind", the phrase "Megamind torrent" isn't a recommended search term, and only maybe shows up if you type the first few letters of "torrent"). This adds keywords such as "torrent", or maybe even "free download", to the list of naughty words such as "lesbian" that Google keeps out of the recommendation list. I'm sure this will make the entertainment industry slightly happier, although it makes absolutely no difference to those actually searching for torrents (because, what, if Google doesn't suggest it, people are going to stop searching for it?). I'm sure the entertainment industry will be a lot happier if Google actually blocked displaying results for bad keywords, but that would be censorship of the worst kind and would go against everything democracy stands for, which just makes the entertainment industry want it even more. And the idea that "torrent" automatically means piracy should be challenged as well, and unless Google's system is clever enough to distinguish between legal and illegal torrents, then searches like "Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Torrent" will be blocked too from auto-complete recommendations.

And I guess people searching for what about keywords such as "rapidshare"? There are still lots of people searching for "Windows 7 activated rapidshare" (it's the third post popular recommendation), should that be blocked too? I mention Rapidshare because I wanted to segue into the news about Rapidshare being ordered by a German court to pay eBook publishers a hefty 150,000 Euros fine for not successfully blocking out pirated eBooks from being uploaded and downloaded, as ordered by the court back in February. I guess it's only fair that Rapidshare do make an effort to block these downloads after a court order and everything, and if every publisher wanted to get their content blocked, then they should also go an get a court order. Of course, filtering is never really foolproof, and so the court should take this into account too. After all, it's the users of Rapidshare that's committing the real crime here, and if Rapidshare did their best to prevent it (even if their best does not match up to the content owner's expectations), then they should not be found guilty. This is basically why Viacom lost its lawsuit against YouTube.

And in this week's "Oh no, what has Sony done now" section, Sony's latest SNAFU is to demand music that it doesn't own to be removed, despite the fact that it was uploaded by an artist belong to a competing studio. This "innocent mistake", or so Sony claims, even went as far as Sony lawyers writing to Mediafire and getting them to remove the uploaded home demos, although they did eventually write back to say "never mind". Now this is but one, fairly high profile, mistake. How many other lower profile mistakes have been made by Sony, and other labels and studios in their anti-piracy hunt? And should they not double check that they actually have the legal right to sent off legal threats? But I guess if banks can foreclose houses they don't even own, anything could happen I suppose.

And Ubisoft is back with another form of annoying DRM, but this time I can see the funny side of it. Those that pirated Ubisoft's new Michael Jackson game on the DS will find that all of the music have been replaced with annoying vuvuzelas sounds.

In HD/3D news, regular readers of my Blu-ray sales analysis (which also includes DVD sales figures) will have noted the year on year decline of DVD sales, which is pretty much the norm for most weeks.

And this drop in DVD sales has many in the industry worried, and many are blaming downloads and streaming content, the legal kind, for it. I guess the term "blame" is perhaps the wrong word to use, because this shift was always coming. Music is mostly sold via digital means these days, and with faster Internet connections and more generous bandwidth quotas, the same will be true of movies. For really high quality stuff, stuff that can't be downloaded easily, there's Blu-ray (which has recorded year on year growth). For everything else, downloads and streaming should suffice. And it will really take off once pricing because a bit more reasonable. In the article, there's a guy from the BBC that says that "long tail" is where the future is. And I think I touched on this in my TV Networks for the 21st Century blog post, basically the future may be one where people pay very little per download, but they download a lot more and from a vast library of titles where every TV show, programme, episode, is available to download 24/7 instantly. This is very much a "long tail" approach, as opposed to the more traditional approach where content owners rely on people downloading the latest and greatest in great numbers, while limiting access to their entire catalogue (mainly due to technical reasons, not exactly intentional). And the reason why DVD/Blu-ray has been a huge success (despite what Hollywood wants you to believe … the home video sell-through market basically didn't exist before DVDs), that's to allow people to access their old favourites. And many of Blu-ray's biggest hits have been classics, not new releases – like all the Disney animated classics, Sound of Music recently, classic TV shows – these all have done just as well, if not better combined, than a single new release. And with digital downloads and streaming, the access could be even greater, especially if delivered in an on-demand fashion. There aren't any technical hurdles any more to achieving this (at least for SD content), so the only reason why we're not able to select and watch any episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or Bewitched is more to do with other reasons (irrational fear of unauthorised copying, and also of fear of losing a grip on their existing, outdated, business model).

Also, I've been thinking about the 3D Blu-ray of Avatar and how it's selling for $400 or more. With no signs of a general release (director James Cameron's comments about "2 more years" is worrying), I wonder if this exclusive deal may actually do more damage than good. I'm sure Panasonic paid a lot of money for the exclusivity, but I think this move is actually driving people to consider piracy as an alternative to paying $400 for a single movie, and how will this hurt sales when it becomes available via general release? People have purchased 3D TVs in anticipation of Avatar really, and if the general release is not just around the corner, then expect 3D Blu-ray Avatar to be the most pirated Blu-ray movie of all time (even if it takes about a week to download).

And finally in gaming, I have bit the bullet and ordered Kinect. I've always wanted one to see what it can do, especially when the hardcore games arrive next year (and they will arrive), but in the end, it was all the crazy PC hacks that have been posted in the last couple of weeks. It makes me, as a software developer, want to get my hands on one as quickly as possible just to see what kind of things I can make Kinect do.

But it might be a while before my order arrives, because according to my local (as in Australia) wholesale sources, stock is a huge issue for Kinect at the moment. And a quick search online reveals pretty much the same thing, with most online stores (again, locally) out of stock of the sensor + Kinect adventures pack. This leaves buying Kinect as part of a new Xbox 360 bundle the only option for many. It is also sold out on Amazon.com as I type, with 4.5 stars average rating after 320+ reviews. Microsoft has revealed that 2.5 million Kinect units have been sold to customers in the first 25 days of release, which could have been even better had stock been more plentiful. Sony later countered with their own "sales" figures of 4.1 million since release (a bit more than a full month longer than Kinect), but it was later revealed that this figure is the number of units shipped to retailers, not the actual number sold to customers (cue thousands of web editors updating articles at the same time). Although the demand for the Move means the shipped to retailer and sold to customers number may not be that far apart, some of the 4.1 million units may be reserved (ie. stock held) for yet to commence December sales at the time of Sony's sales data, and so in any case, the two numbers cannot be compared without more information.

Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities has revealed, based on access to NPD data, that his predicted "to customers" number for Move is about 2.5 million, the same as Kinect, although over more than double the time frame (since late September for Move, 25 days for Kinect). And of course, every Move controller sold is counted as a single unit, even if purchased by the same household for multiplayer (whereas Kinect has built in 2 player support). Without knowing the pairing rate of Move controllers to PS3s, there's no real way to compare to Kinect sales numbers. If the pairing rate is 1.5 Move controllers per PS3, for example, and taking into account that the Move has been released for twice as long as Kinect, then even taking the 4.1 million as total sold, Kinect is already twice 1.8 times more popular than Move. If the pairing rate was 2, then Kinect is 2.4 times more popular. If taking Pachter's estimates of 2.5 million sold through, then Kinect is 3 or 4 times more popular if the pairing rate is 1.5 or 2. If my maths is right. Which it usually isn't.

And some news outlets are incorrectly stating that the Sony numbers do not include PS Move sales not part of the standalone bundle (with PS Eye) or console bundles. The numbers, from what I can gather, do include it, it just doesn't include separate PS Eye and Navigation controller sales (the Navigation add-on is useless without the Move wand, and you can almost say the same thing about the PS Eye these days, given how poorly it was selling before Move arrived).

It's all quite confusing really, and I think Sony should have just kept their mouth shut unless they really did outsell the Kinect, which looks unlikely at this stage. The same wholesale source I mentioned earlier showed that the Move bundle still had plenty of stock, and more online stores had stock of them on my last search.

Okay, enough fanboi baiting for this week. Have a good one.

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3. Weekly Software Roundup

December 5, 2010	MkvConvert 1.4 Freeware
December 5, 2010	MeGUI 0.3.5.29 Freeware
December 5, 2010	Collectorz.com Movie Collector For Mac OS X 3.4.5
December 5, 2010	Submerge 1.9.4
December 5, 2010	ProgDVB 6.49.8 Freeware
December 4, 2010	MediaCoder 0.7.5 Build 4796 Freeware
December 4, 2010	ReClock DirectShow Filter 1.8.7.3 Freeware
December 4, 2010	PlayOn 3.0.34.1372
December 3, 2010	VideoStudio X3 SP2
December 3, 2010	Fraps 3.2.5
December 3, 2010	XBMC media center Dharma 10.0 RC2 Freeware
December 3, 2010	BluffTitler 8.1.0.3
December 3, 2010	3D Subtitler 1.0.06 Freeware
December 3, 2010	EncodeHD 1.2.224.0 Freeware
December 3, 2010	MPEG-VCR October 2010 Update
December 3, 2010	VDownloader 3.0.733
December 3, 2010	rebox.NET 1.0.0.0 Freeware
December 3, 2010	Cyberlink PowerDVD 10.0.2325
December 3, 2010	MC-TVConverter 1.4.1 Freeware
December 2, 2010	Miro 3.5.1 RC1 Freeware
December 2, 2010	AsfBin 1.8.1 Freeware
December 2, 2010	AVStoDVD 2.3.3 Freeware
December 2, 2010	Avanti 0.5.0 Freeware
December 1, 2010	EMDB 1.22 Freeware
December 1, 2010	doubleTwist 3.0 Freeware
December 1, 2010	Media Player Classic HomeCinema Edition 1.4.2747 Beta Freeware
December 1, 2010	XviD4PSP 6.0 Beta (30 Nov) Freeware
December 1, 2010	ConvertXtoDVD 4.1.8.344 pre-release
December 1, 2010	All My Movies 6.1 build 1305
December 1, 2010	WinMPG Video Convert 9.1.9
November 30, 2010	VidCoder 0.7.2 Freeware
November 30, 2010	DVDAuthorGUI 1.027 Freeware
November 30, 2010	J. River Media Center 15.0.159
November 30, 2010	BSplayer 2.57 Freeware
November 30, 2010	SolveigMM AVI Trimmer 2.0.1011.29 Beta Freeware
November 30, 2010	DVD slideshow GUI 0.9.4.0 Freeware
November 30, 2010	MediaPortal 1.1.2 Freeware
November 29, 2010	eXtreme Movie Manager 7.0.9.8
November 29, 2010	Mp3tag 2.47b Freeware

Another week, another WNR. I know it's easy to get cynical about the Black Friday sales in the US (particularly if, you're like me, not actually located in the US), just like it may be easy to get caught up in the hype, but if you're do your research, there are potentially a lot of bargains to pick up without leaving the comfort of your home. Since Blu-ray is a major topic of this website, I've posted some of the best Amazon Black Friday Blu-ray deals on this page. Most of the discounts are still available, and there will be more on Monday as well, so it's a good time to stock up on some Blu-ray movies. The prices are so good that they're almost HD DVD level! I've purchase a dozen of so movies myself as part of this sale, as there are some really good bargains around for the movies that I had planned to buy anyway (and that's the the trap, is that you end up buying things you didn't really want or need just because they were cheap). More on this in the HD/Blu-ray section of this WNR, including one confession about how I compromised my principles a bit!

I continue to play through Fallout New Vegas, encountering another quite annoying glitch during the week. This one involved the companion Veronica, and how she become frozen in one spot after a certain mission. And this leads me to recommend one most excellent resource for Fallout games, The Value. It is a Wikia for all the Fallout games, and it gives precious advice on how to overcome glitches. And this is also why I prefer playing Fallout on the PC, because you get access to the console, and this allows you to fix the most stubborn glitches. In any case, I solve the Veronica glitch after reading a tip on The Vault. The glitches in this game almost ruin the game, but it's actually quite satisfying when you do find a solution or workaround, and it has become part of the Fallout/Bethesda experience really.

Not a huge amount of news by any standard, but still enough to do some ranting, possibly between the 1800 and 2400 word mark, by my best guestimate. So let's get started.

In copyright news, news broke not too long ago that The Pirate Bay founders have lost their appeal in the Swedish courts. This means that, following the original verdict, the founders now face a hefty fine and prison time of up to 10 month.

Only three of the original four defendants were part of this trial, the other missed out due to illness, but will be certain to face the exact same result. Despite jail time being handed out, the likes of the MPAA are still not satisfied at the result, claiming that the $6.5 million dollars of damages isn't anywhere near the $17 million they had wanted. Talk about being greedy! The case will now most likely go to the highest court in Sweden, even if the prosecutors seem to think this case won't go that far. I can't be bothered to dig up the previous edition of the WNR where I said that this case won't be decided until it is examined by the highest court in the country, and I think I also mentioned that I don't hold much hope that any appeal would yield satisfactory results for the TPB. The cards were stacked against them from the start.

The copyright news this week doesn't really get much better unfortunately, but there was at least one bright spot when there was at least a sign of common sense on Capitol Hill this week, when US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) torpedoed efforts to enact the controversial Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) into law. He has placed a hold on it and it won't be heard before the senate until next year. Unfortunately, I can only see this as a temporary delay, because with so much support for this ridiculous act, it will be made into law and we'll all have to suffer the consequences. Most support it because they don't know any better, or have received enough incentive to support it without asking serious questions. And most know there's no political points being earned by going against the entertainment industry in the US. And that's partly our fault too, for not pressuring out representatives in government in doing the right thing. But the thing is, unless you're someone who reads this or similar blogs and websites regularly, you won't really be aware of the issues, or understand (or care) about them, and it then boils down to an issue of whether people should or shouldn't "steal" (a dumbed down talking point that the entertainment industry has been pushing), and most people wouldn't support stealing. Except we know that copying and stealing are two different things entirely, and that even if it is possible to stop piracy (it isn't), there are certain things that are far more sacred than protecting the dying business model of the entertainment industry. Things like our right to privacy. And freedom of speech. And due process, which systems like 'Three Strikes' attempt to short-circuit by assuming guilt and denying people their right of appeal (or to even address the matter in a court of law, like they're entitled to). And this goes back to what I said a couple of WNRs ago, that we must do more to protect our rights and treat this more than just a matter of being able to "downloading movies and games and stuff", something that the copyright lobby and their supporters has tried to reduce the arguments to. This is about protecting our democratic rights, which politicians these days are too eager to sacrifice in the name of "protecting" us (whether it's terrorism, or the perceived and possibly imaginary threat to the economy, due to piracy).

And so we move on to the news this week that Homeland Security closed down another 80 websites suspected of providing pirated content. The only positive is that due process was followed, that warrants were obtained via the court, but it doesn't really matter if the process itself is flawed. My biggest problem with this is that I have no idea if any of the websites/domains seized were really illegal, and who determined their status. I don't trust most judges' level of technical understanding to pass judgement on technical issues such as this, and perhaps when faced with such overwhelming force (Justice Department, Homeland Security, ICE), and some scaremongering about the consequences of piracy (billions of jobs will be lost!), most will just go along with whatever is in the warrant request. And if one of the 80 websites was truly innocent, what's the process of appeal, and what kind of compensation would be due if the website was deemed by a court of law as not guilty, compensation for the financial and emotional damages caused by the temporary closure of the website. I mean, this is not like going after drug dealers or counterfeit drugs, there are a lot of complicated issues involved in determining whether a website is guilty or not of copyright infringement, issues that must be addressed in court before any punitive actions can be handed out. And what if the domain really did host illegal stuff, but it was uploaded unknowingly by third parties, or as part of a user-generated section on the website – is if fair that the entire domain is taken offline? It would be like shutting down blogger.com because somebody created an account on there to share pirated MP3s. This scenario could be avoided via a DMCA takedown notice, but these seizures bypass the very laws that were created to avoid situations like this. And this is why COICA is so controversial, in that it gives the US government even greater power to do all of this and more, and on a much larger scale as well, potentially killing off tens of thousands of websites in one fell swoop, and many by "collateral damage". And this is why anyone who knows and cares about the Internet ought to be against COICA, and many prominent companies and individuals have already spoken out, but all will be silenced by the constant chattering of lobbyists into the ears of those that can decide the fate of COICA. Senator Wyden excepted.

And so the next step would be to even make talking about piracy illegal, which is what the RIAA attempted to do this week, and caused some collateral damage of their own in the process. PCMag.com posted an article after LimeWire was shut down, examining the possible alternatives that are still left. This is a valid discussion, because it points to the fact that even though it took years and millions of dollars to bring down LimeWire, the next LimeWire could pop up in a matter of weeks or could already exist, and thus making the whole process an expensive, and pointless, exercise. And for this, the RIAA and its cohorts sent a letter to PCMag.com's CEO, attacking the website for daring to suggest alternatives and supporting and encouraging piracy in the process. It then attacked PCMag for simply referring to another article, published by TorrentFreak, regarding LimeWire being resurrected. The problem is that PCMag didn't write that article, it was PC World, by facts and accuracy does not matter when one is acting the bully like the RIAA and Co. are. PCMag are standing firm by their journalistic principles, and refuse to be silenced and used as a scapegoat in the RIAA's attempt to blame someone, anyone, for the piracy problem. Anyone except for themselves for sticking with a dying business model, even when alternatives and opportunities were presented, opportunities that were eventually taken by the likes of Apple with iTunes. The only bit of innovation the RIAA and its members have come up with recently has been new ways to sue and intimidate those perceived to be their enemies (the Internet and anyone who uses the Internet), and of course the whole failed DRM experiment.

And DRM has been in the news this week too, but in regards to the use of it in the gaming industry. Gamasutra, one of the most respected gaming industry website on the Internet, has had one of its bloggers write an interesting article examining the failure of DRM, and how illegal copying can be prevented. The conclusion seems to be one that I've come to as well, in that the solution is to add value to the gaming experience, not to take it away via horrible DRM. Value adding explains the success of Steam, and even though it does use DRM, it is pretty weak stuff, and in fact probably better than buying off the shelve due to the lack of need of a DVD check. The best DRM should prevent casual copying, but should otherwise be invisible to the end user, and if it forces gamers to connect to an online service for authentication, free value added services should be given as compensation (achievements, community, social features …). But even the best, or worst (as in draconian), DRM will not prevent copying by those that really want to copy it, and groups with the skill to hack away, as Ubisoft's DRM experiment showed recently, and so really, there's no point to DRM at all. And this is a point shared by at least some game developers, including the developer of The Witcher series, and operators of the classic, DRM-free, gaming website GOG.com. In fact, their CEO and co-founder, Marcin Iwinski, goes on to say that DRM treats customers like criminals. Iwinski believes there's no need to debate whether their upcoming game, The Witcher 2, should use DRM or not, simply because he believes DRM doesn't work. And this is why The Witcher 2 will be released DRM-free. Iwinski also criticized the way DRM adds restrictions that the pirated versions are free from, calling it "totally stupid". He also attacks online based protection, saying that it isn't fair to people who want to play games when they're away from a reliable Internet connection. And it's hard to argue against any of these points really. The industry, when it relies on DRM, is basically trying to sell something that's not as good as the pirated version even when you don't consider the price, and then getting mad when it's not selling well. I mean this is an industry that isn't even bothering to print manuals any more, and yet it expects us to jump through hoops just to play a badly bugged game that it rushed through testing. But luckily, there are still the smarter companies that are doing more innovative things to stop piracy, things like bundling physical collector's items that can't be pirated, building immersive online experiences and communities, being innovative with pricing, and either not using DRM or at least not overdoing it. And then you have companies like Ubisoft.

Moving on from the ranting to happier grounds, as mentioned before, I did take part in the Black Friday sales on Amazon, trying to take advantage of the historically favourable AUD/USD exchange rates (not as favourable to be honest this week).

And yes, I did completely compromise my principles on an issue I've ranted about a lot right here. That's right, I purchased the theatrical Blu-ray version of The Lord of the Rings movies, despite bitching about it for weeks back when it was first released. My rant then was about how the trilogy boxset should have included the extended edition, as opposed to the theatrical edition, and should have at least featured some new extra features and put them on Blu-ray at least even if they weren't HD (the extra features are actually on DVDs, and probably could have fitted onto a single dual layer Blu-ray, but that would have made the boxset look famished). Also, the first movie had a sub-standard transfer, although some of it was unavoidable it seems (a fact that wasn't available at the time of my original rant).  In my defence, I didn't buy the box set, but only the individual movies separately for $7.99 each. And at that price, some of these shortcomings, can be forgiven (certainly better than paying $65 for the boxset anyway). So "I won't be buying it" really meant "I won't be buying it unless it's heavily discounted and I must join in the hype of Black Friday or I will feel left out".

Well, at least I didn't pay $400 for a copy of Avatar on 3D Blu-ray.

Kinect is in the news again this week, and funnily, it had almost nothing to do with gaming. The news broke last week that only a week after the release of Kinect, it had been hacked, and Microsoft couldn't have been pleased at the development.

Then it turn out that they didn't really care either way, because the "hack" wasn't really a hack at all, at least according to Microsoft's definition of what a hack is. What happened was that somebody wrote open source drivers for Kinect so that it can be used on the PC, and because Microsoft intentionally (or they claim now) left the USB thingy open, Microsoft claims they were always hoping something like this would happen. I'm not sure about that, but Microsoft do have a history of mixing Xbox 360 and PC compatibility (the wired Xbox 360 gamepad works perfectly on the PC, and even the wireless one can be made to work via a dongle). And "unofficial" drivers aren't new, the Sony Sixaxis controller has a PC driver, and even the Wii-mote has one too.

Anyway, what was more interesting was how people decided to use the open source drivers and write their own PC based Kinect applications. And if you follow the link above, you'll see videos of object recognition, a Minority Report style web browsing experience using a simple Javascript add-on. And even a man boob tracker (not a typo). It just goes to show that Kinect has serious potential, but only if the right software is there for it. But that's always the hard part, and the reason why the Wii is struggling now is because, apart from Nintendo, nobody really knows how to makes good games for it.

And I was way off.  I'm already over the 2700 word mark, and so my guestimate wasn't really close at all. But if you remove the Black Friday and Fallout related waffle, then it just about gets in there. So I probably should stop typing now, wish you all a great week, and type something along the lines of "see you next week".

See you next week.