Archive for June 19th, 2008
Yahoo adding ymail.com and rocketmail.com. Apple sold 5 billion songs and wants to top itself with movie downloads. China says no, we have no plans to bust Microsoft. Verizon upping speeds of FiOS to 50 down and 20 up. Nice! Should be perfect for peer-to-peer. Suddenly propaganda machine cranks up the noise to develop car mileage benchmark called gallons per 10,000 miles. Why? ATI forces nVidia to cut prices. One in three IT people are spying on each other. Kids busted for changing grades. May do 38 years in prison. Peachy.
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The first 3rd party instruments for Rock Band are going to be available for purchase starting June 22nd. [ Mad Catz ] was given official approval from Harmonix to become the officially licensed 3rd party manufacturer of instrument controllers for Rock Band, and it looks like their wired Bass controller for the Xbox 360 is the first out of the gate.
The wired bass will be available on June 22, for the Xbox 360, and will be priced at $69.99. The bass will include the Mad Catz dual-strummer which is basically a split strum bar that allows the player to use to fingers to strum up and down simultaneously, which should help to get some of the faster solo sections down better.
Complete list of features for the bass:
- Licensed Fender Precision bass styling
- Custom finishes for enhanced realism
- Comfortable thumb rest
- Whammy effect via volume knob
- Split strum bar for fast finger action
- Oversized tuning keys
- Durable plastic construction
- Wired USB connectivity
A wireless version for the Xbox 360
Mad Catz also offers a wired mic, that integrates the controller buttons as well, and for me, this is huge. Having to use a separate controller to navigate during game play was always a little annoying, especially if you are singing and playing an instrument at the same time. Apparently this is already available for the Xbox 360, but shipments are still forthcoming. The street price for this gem is $59.99.
Here are the mic features:
- Built-in controller - easy navigation through all in game menus
- High quality soft-touch finish
- High profile pop / wind screen
- Convenient lock/unlock button
- Wired USB connection
The Rockband guitar has always kind of annoyed me, so much so that I actually went out and bought the wireless Gibson guitar to use for Rockband instead of the official one. However, if you are looking for a more unique guitar to use in your band, Mad Catz has that solution too.
Fender has officially licensed this guitar and it is a replica of the Telecaster, and looks pretty awesome. So far, this is only available to Xbox 360 users, and will come at a price of $79.99 and it is wired. Hopefully a wireless version will be avialable soon, but nothing official has been said about that.
Guitar feature list:
- Licensed Fender Telecaster styling
- Perfectly scaled with high detail
- Built for speed - new, improved strum bar and quick response fret buttons
- Programmable strum
- Telecaster Bridge Plate used for Whammy
- Smooth Hot-Rod Red finish
Finally, the best for last.
Mad Catz has created two different drum kits that truly make Rockband a better experience. The first is a portable drum kit. It will be available on the 15th of July, and will run $49.99.
It touts a small form factor, and quiet pads and will allow you to take your band on the road much easier then you currently can. I am very excited about this, as my nephews constantly have me loading up the band kit in my car to go over to their house to play. The portable kit also features foam tipped drum sticks to assist with the noise dampening.
A little more exciting is the actual Premium Wired drum kit. The kit is based on authentic electronic drum kits, and has an added high hat, with a usable foot pedal, and a crash cymbal. The drum heads can be adjusted up and down and swiveled.
The drums will be available on August 15th and will be a on the higher end price wise at $149.99.
This set of equipment is a very very solid addition to the Rockband game, and may even make it less worthwhile to move over to Guitar Hero : World Tour, since these additions address a lot of the upgrades that GH4 is touting.
When this question gets asked, most companies will look suspiciously at the front door, or at the companies firewall, and while outside hackers or a Social Engineering attack against the nice and naive receptionist are valid threats, recent studies show that maybe you should be more concerned about the “police” you hire to monitor your companies digital information.
According to U.S. information security company Cyber-Ar, who surveyed 300 senior IT professionals, one in every three admitted to secretly snooping on other users data, and almost half said they had accessed data that was not relevant to their role in company.
Mark Fullbrook, Cyber-Ark’s UK director stated:
“All you need is access to the right passwords or privileged accounts and you’re privy to everything that’s going on within your company,”
Administrative passwords, which can seem innocuous to most, are the keys to the kingdom for IT people, and while general user passwords are changed frequently, most administrative passwords can remain the same for long periods of time, allowing previous IT employees unlimited access to corporate information.
Does this mean that you need to keep a crook eye on the geeky sysadmin who seems to have had just a little too much coffee? No, not really. Unfortunately this is a double edged sword. Preventing your IT staff from having unlimited access prevents them from doing the job they are paid to do, but opens up the company to the possibility of data leakage.
The only real solution is proper background and hiring standards, developing IT employees to be long-term employees, and doing regular password audits, especially post termination.
Apple’s iTunes Store has sold and served over five billion songs to date.
The digital download service is the number one music retailer in the US and features the largest music catalog with over eight million songs.
Apple also said that iTunes customers are now renting and purchasing over 50,000 movies every day, making iTunes the world’s most popular online movie store as well.
iTunes also offers a catalog of over 20,000 TV episodes and over 2,000 films, including over 350 in high definition video.
As an Apple TV owner, I can say with some confidence, that barring any foolishness from the broadband providers that Apple will likely dominate this industry for some time. None of the other internet set top boxes come even close to matching the usability and convenience of the Apple TV.
Users can rent movies and watch them on their Macs or PCs, all current generation iPods, iPhone and on a widescreen TV with Apple TV. iTunes Store customers can also purchase new movie releases from major film studios and premier independent studios on the same day as their DVD release.
Oh, and RIAA and MPAA… Suck it. This proves that if you find a viable online way of providing content, people will pay for it. Stop trying to muck it up and get on board…