Rotophonic

The geeks are out in force tonight in Pasadena, California waiting for the release of the Sony Playstation 3. While I’d naively hoped to come home with one tonight, it appears the PS3 Profiteers and those without a job holed-up in this middle-class tent city will be the only ones lucky enough to win that prize.

After stopping by all the big box retailers in the area, including Target, Circuit City, Best Buy and Walmart, it appears that very few of the diehard fans will end up with a box tomorrow moring. Most people were reporting that between 10-20 PS3s would be available at each store…and I’m sure a lot of those are the less desirable 20GB model.

The most lively location was the Pasadena Best Buy, where bleary-eyed gamers and entrepreneurs were mingling in the final hours before Best Buy finally supplied them with the Holy Grail of gaming this year.

One cluster of folks were gathered around a 17″ LCD monitor playing FIFA 2007 on a Playstation 2, powered by a long extension cord stretched across the parking lot from someone’s car. Another guy, armed with a laptop, kept tabs on the latest PS3 prices on eBay via Best Buy’s WiFi network. Most were slumped in their collapsible chairs or passed out in their tents waiting for tomorrow morning.

The luckiest guy in the group has to be Alberto, who had waited here since Monday morning to be the first one with a PS3. He proudly displayed the provenance for his future PS3, a front-page article in the Pasadena Star-News showing him occupying the first chair in line. “Tom Cruise will definitely pay an extra $300 with this,” he beamed, pointing to the article.

Needless to say, no spare PS3s were to be found tonight, especially with Sony lowering their launch allocations for most stores. Most of us will probably need to wait until Spring 2007 to get one.

The burning hypocracy of Judy Miller… Does she think that the world has forgotten her completely bogus Iraq WMD story–that she so dutifully double-sourced (Scooter Libby, source 1 and Ahmed Chalabi, source 2)–without even considering that those two might have a direct interest in trying to snow her?

From an article in the Capitol Journal:

The blurring of entertainment and news and the relaxing of journalistic standards can be seen in online bloggers who are critical of people without giving them an opportunity to respond or who don’t post corrections when they learn that what they have posted is wrong.

Um… That’s wrong, wrong, wrong. I realize that I’m just a blogger with poor ethics, but how much easier could it be for you to respond to my post here? Respond away!

No corrections? She clearly reads blogs about as much as she checked her sources on her Iraq psy-ops news stories she so dutifully published for the Bush Administration and that shifty guy Chalabi. Corrections are made all the time right in the post…sometimes even striking out the incorrect text so the reader can see just how wrong the writer was.

Did the New York Times run a correction for the 8 months of vaunted journalism they did before the U.S. invaded Iraq? Please…

“I’m worried about bloggers,” she said. “(A post) starts as a rumor and within 24 hours it’s repeated as fact.”

And she scoffs at the blogging world as opposed to newspapers like the New York Times where reporters repeat her “facts” so many times that our country goes into a bogus war?

[via ThinkProgress.org]

While they may be on the verge of being sued by Apple for their “egregious” use of the suffix “pod”, the makers of the WinePod are really on to something. With a self-contained, USB-enabled, smart wine making machine, I’m sure to become a total lush in no time.

Bust out the credit card, purchase the $3,499 WinePod and then the WinePod folks will sell you ready-to-use frozen grapes (or pick them from your own vineyard…lol). The device is pretty much foolproof after that. You can even post your progress online and chat with other wine makers. The WinePod uses WirelessUSB to transmit your wine making progress from the garage to your computer (or to wherever you passed out).

Clearly a very big step up from brewing beer in your closet with your Mr. Beer, the WinePod is very slick and it even looks good. [via Uncrate]