Just posted this directly from my iPhone! Ain’t technology grand?

During a post-Red Sox victory celebration in 2004, a woman was killed after a police officer called in to control a rowdy crowd shot her in the eye with what was designed to be a non-lethal projectile that would release pepper spray upon impact.

More recently, a Polish man moving to Canada to live with his mother was killed by a taser used by Canadian authorities to subdue the man, who had been acting erractically after being at the airport for 10 hours.

If you do not agree with me, think about the issue this way. If the Canadians can kill someone with these weapons, are these weapons really non-lethal?

After the death of the cd long box, I propose the banning of the cd jewel case sticker. I understand that the name of the band and the album title being displayed on top makes searching through cd racks easier for everyone, but does it need to be a sticker? If anything, I propose that the delay of instant gratification presented by the sticker after the purchase of the cd is un-American and should be banned in order to preserve freedom and our way of life!!!

Every time I buy a cd, I struggle with these stupid stickers. Many of these stickers were made in complete disregard of sticker technology that has been developed since we landed an American on the moon. Instead, these stickers use a substance that never actually comes off the jewel case long after the sticker has been disposed of.

Join me as we make a difference in our daily lives…or at least our lives on Tuesdays when new cds drop at your local cd store.

Some of you will suggest the use of the cd jewel case sticker razor that can be purchased at some stores. I suggest that this is not a solution because this only allows one to cut the sticker in order to open the cd jewel case. It does not get rid of the sticker problem. The only solution is to propose legislation for a total band. Also, let us use this as an opportunity to slip legislation into the bill to ban Rob Thomas from all music studios…Gospel has been spoken…

you’ll need audio for this one:

Here is a description of the second video: “This is a solid-state Tesla coil. The primary runs at its resonant frequency in the 41 KHz range, and is modulated from the control unit in order to generate the tones you hear.”

As ready as I was to call “gimmick” on the iPhone, as I did (and still do) with iPod Video, I gotta say that this iPhone looks like the real deal — useful as well as stylish. But here is where I’ll observe something unprecedented: Japan’s cell phone industry just got outplayed by an American!!

This is a watershed event and a joyous moment for the mobile consumer: American cell phones have long been laughably primitive compared to Japan’s. I’m now very curious to see what the rest of the American market does to keep up.

This is the first installment of “g’s Corporate Management S-List,” a supernicety.com exclusive.

Background: The PlayStation 3, for those of you who haven’t been following, is going to launch at $600 this November. Yeah.. six hundred dollas. People originally speculated it would $400-ish like M-soft’s Xbox400, except Sony decided to foist its high-capacity and high-cost Blu-Ray HD movie drive on gamers. Because GAMErs buy GAME consoles primarily to watch HIGH-DEF MOVIES on, I guess? Also note that the PS3 was originally slated for a spring ‘06 launch, but that too was held up because of Blu-Ray.

Gamers around the world are pissed off at Sony, but our hurt feelings aren’t main the reason we won’t be buying PS3s. The reason PS3s won’t move is that we don’t need a Blu-Ray player, and we especially don’t need one that costs SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS.

For my part, I loved my PS1 & 2, and I still buy games for my PS2. But I’m not sure if I’ll ever buy a PS3. If I do, 3 conditions will have to be met:
1. The price has dropped to the $250-300 range of its competitors.
2. I have incidentally acquired an HD-capable TV.
3. Blu-Ray and the PS3 haven’t bankrupted Sony.

In other words, for me to buy a PS3, Sony and I both still have to be into games in 2008 or 2009.

Conclusion: If Sony managed to price a devoted gamer and PS fan like myself out of the market, then their market share is soon to collapse. This is a very frightening time to be a Sony shareholder.

This probably could have just been a comment to k’s post, but worldwide vindication of our gripe deserves its own post.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060530-6939.html

With Japan unsurprisingly leading the way, people around the world are simultaneously PO’d for its gas-faced Bluray and hopeful that Wii will provide some much-needed variety from heavy-metal-music FPS’s (xbox) and generic 3d action (ps2, generally), both of which got played out sometime b/t 2000 and 2001, depending on your tolerance for reheated shit. The old-school 2d Nintendo games are what excite me the most about Wii, personally. Screw PS3, I’ll just get a Wii and 17 pieces of chu-toro, and be far better enriched.

The first loss was seeing a Pinot for about $3 cheaper than what I paid at Wal-Mart. But that was a wee preview of the carnage to come.

This is the coffee maker I got for about 14,000yen last summer. (*$1.00 = 105yen at time of purchase)

This is what almost made burst into tears in the middle of Target.

Notes:
-The Japanese one isn’t sold under the “Black and Decker” brand — it’s called “DeviceStyle” and purportedly designed and built in Germany.
-The caraffes on those two things were identical. The designs of the base units were also almost the same, except that the cheaper one had a timer (which, mysteriously, is unheard of on coffee makers in Japan [their up-market rice cookers, by contrast, have more special abilities than Kit from Knight Rider]).
-The Japanese one is 1.2L, the B&D is just 0.8L. For what it’s worth, I was looking for a relatively large one. Perhaps that’s why it cost more.

I have only myself to blame. I lose.

I should make a business of this. If I could get 2 suitcases full of coffee makers thru customs at Kansai Int’l, I could practically pay for my plane ticket with the proceeds. Who’s in?

True facts:
1. If you hate a particular game’s controls, that means that you hate that game.
2. If a console has awful controllers, that means that most of that console’s titles were designed to be played with awful controllers — in which case, refer back to True Fact #1.

A little bit of history…

Good console controllers: NES, SNES, PS1/2/Dual Shock, Saturn, most pre-2004 handhelds
So-so, but still-playable controllers: old-sch00l Atari, Genesis, PSP
Awful, just absolutely unplayable*: Xbox, Dreamcast, N64, Gamecube, Nintendo DS,
….and perhaps introducing the PS3 (from IGN):

Memo to Sony: In addition to whatever alien lifeforms you plan on selling this thing to, there are also humble humanoids who must make do with two (yes, sadly just 2) hands that each have four fingers in a row (not rearrangable into any sort of “grid” formation or anything), one lonely thumb that can only press one button at a time, and a palm that can’t really bend much, let alone reach and press buttons. Pls check self. Thanks, GKS.

The good news, you ask? For starters, even with this goat-antler controller, the PS3 itself looks cool. And unlike the PS2, it ostensibly has potential not to be en retard vis-a-vis network play.
—
*Except for some FPS’s, I guess.