171: The average power consumption (in watts) of the Playstation 3

Something that you may not know (mostly because – until a few minutes ago – it has been flying under the radar) is that Apple and NBC have been engaged in a little pissing match this week over the price of downloads on the iTunes store. In a nutshell, NBC unilaterally decided that they were going to double the wholesale cost of their shows to Apple, and the iTunes store would have to charge more than double to consumers. If you sit down and work this out (which we will do in just a moment here) it is pretty obvious that this is nothing more than pure and unmitigated greed. To wit: There are 24 episodes of the average television show in a season. If you wander down to your local Best Buy or whatever you will find that a single-season box set of DVDs tends to run about 48 bucks – about 2 bucks an episode. Not coincidentally, this is the cost of single episode of any given show on the iTunes store. The only real difference is that there is a lot more profit to the original rights holder (like, oh, let’s say NBC) because they don’t have to license media, press disks, product packaging, ship things, etc. etc. etc.

Apparently the concept of “a lot more profit” was lost on the big brains that run NBC, because they wanted to double their take. Five bucks an episode – the equivalent of charging 120 dollars for a single-season box set. Apple’s response, send out just a few minutes ago, was fairly quick and – from a consumer standpoint – quite gratifying:

Apple today announced that it will not be selling NBC television shows for the upcoming television season on its online iTunes Store. The move follows NBC’s decision to not renew its agreement with iTunes after Apple declined to pay more than double the wholesale price for each NBC TV episode, which would have resulted in the retail price to consumers increasing to $4.99 per episode from the current $1.99. ABC, CBS, FOX and The CW, along with more than 50 cable networks, are signed up to sell TV shows from their upcoming season on iTunes at $1.99 per episode.

If you aren’t adept at translating corporate-ese, this distills down to “Fuck you, you greedy pricks.”

Amen.

17: The average power consumption (in watts) of the Nintendo Wii

If you are one of the legions of Halo fans out there, you will be all a-twitter to know that the game has gone gold, final master, and is being pressed onto DVDs even as you read this. The game hits stores September 26th, but I would guess that it will take until about the 7th or 8th until a copy is filched from the pressing plant and posted to the interwebs.

Start your clock. Torrents ahoy.

There is a hilarious interview on canada.com with Jeff Bell – one of Microsoft’s senior apologists and a man who is obviously out to try and plug some of the leaks that have sprung in the good ship S.S. Xbox. He checks in with not one but two howlers that are worth repeating. On the “complete denial of reality front” he says:

Let’s be honest. There’s only two major franchises that don’t appear on our platform: Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid.

Hmm. I guess Mario, Pokemon, and Zelda aren’t “major franchises”, which seems odd since they are the number one, two, and three top-selling videogame franchises in history.

Later, he comes out with this world-class gem that can only be filed under “wishful thinking”:

We will outsell the PS2 and PS3 version of Madden this Holiday Season combined.

Oh, yeah. I am guessing he forgot that there are 20 times as many PS2 consoles in the wild as there are Xboxen. Outsell the PS3 version? Sure, that’s easy. Outsell the PS2, which remains a slavering juggernaut despite Sony’s best efforts to kill the thing off? Not a fucking chance. If anyone reading this knows Jeff Bell, tell him to drop me a line … I’d love to place a bet on this one.

Best. Video. Ever.

For the doubters, no, Bosco was NOT the only candidate. Not only did he defeat two human candidates to win his first term as mayor, but he successfully defended his office in two subsequent elections. He served as mayor until dying of old age in his third term, and is now immortalized with draught tap formed in his likeness at the local pub.

13: The number of years that a dog named Bosco was mayor of Sunol, Ca.

It’s like the squirrel can read my mind. Amen, brother, amen.

Ninjawords is far and away (and then some more away) the fastest on-line dictionary tool I have ever seen. It is not as complete as some of the more monolithic offerings, but the whole mess is driven by a wiki-based lexical source so you can assume that there will be an increasing amount of detail as time rolls on.

And did I mention how fast it is?

Really amazingly fast.

Pretty much everyone who reads this has used a paper clip to either push a reset button or open a compartment in or on and electronic device. However, you may have noticed – especially if you have done this lately – that paper clips are starting to get rare in offices, and really rare in the home. This hasn’t escaped the notice of the folks at Apple, who just happen to make a vaguely popular product called the iPhone – a product that needs a paper clip to pop open the slot for the SIM card.

Therefore, when the iPhone is officially released in Canada (ie: when Rogers Communications stops being a complete bunch of assholes) it will ship with an official iPhone paper clip.

I’m not kidding.

The intrepid crew at the MacBU checked in this morning to confirm that Office 2008 for OS X will not see the light of day in this calendar year. They are now looking at launching at Macworld 2008 in January. The email said that the delay was ” a quality-driven decision” which translates into english as “it’s not even close to done”.

This is not a huge surprise – it was less than 3 months ago that they decided that maybe a universal binary was the way to go and (finally) gave up on CodeWarrior and (finally) started using Xcode as their development platform. This is a good thing for a number of reasons, but since this is also the first project of any kind that MacBU has done under Xcode there is understandably going to be a bit of fumbling around.

If all goes well, manufacturing should get masters in early December and the thing should be in stores the same day it is announced in January. And best of all, the name will actually make sense.

A few items that people wanted to make points on and/or complain about:

Awesome Yet Underrated Song Of The Week: Someone who was not brave enough to use their real name wanted to know when I was going to stop being “a complete loser” and remember to link to the iTunes preview of any songs I happen to mention. Good point, you craven and cowardly worm. From now on I will include an iTunes link if it exists. But I will never stop being a complete loser!

Wii Picross: Lou wanted to point out that there is a really awesome version of Picross for the DS – it just hit the stores on Tuesday. Sadly, I have not played this yet, but I am told by impeccable sources that it is All That And A Bag Of Chips, and if you have a DS and love games you must get this title.

Sony’s Awesome New PS3 Strategy: Sorry, Ryan … I know you are a bona fide fanboy, but those numbers – as much as it may pain you to read them – are 100% true. Your console is getting it’s ass kicked, and kicked badly. Microsoft and Nintendo aren’t even bothering with the formality of taking names any more. If it makes you feel any better, more and more developers are deciding to give the PS3 a miss and are going back to developing for the PS2, so it isn’t all gloom and doom on the Sony gaming front. But I bet you still feel pretty stupid for spending that 800 bucks …

Soon you will all know about “Faceball” – it is the diversion of choice at a growing number of Silicon Valley offices – and you can bet that if you work in any sort of tech industry at all the Pink Balls Of Death will show up in your workplace sooner rather than later.

I was introduced to Faceball at WWDC, and I can report the following:

1 – This is exactly the same as “Headies”, a dodgeball variant that was popular in my neighbourhood when i was about 7. Except that Headies used a volleyball or soccer ball and it hurt like hell.

2 – You need to remember to take your glasses off. Just saying.