Author: Gary

Hard to believe, I know. But according to Engadget, the PlayStation 3 will be region-free. Yeah, you heard us, any game anywhere in the world will play on any PlayStation 3 console purchased in any nation. [Sony floated this idea back in November, but they’ve now confirmed it]

So says Michael Robertson, creator of MP3.com and the man behind desktop linux system Linspire. His latest wheeze? A slew of AJAX applications, the first of which is an online Word-type program called ajaxWrite. According to Mr. R: ajaxWrite is a powerful word processor that can read and write Microsoft Word formatted documents. Anytime you…

Ticketmaster, known around the world as Ticketbastard, isn’t exactly the world’s most popular company – but unfortunately in many cases, it’s impossible to avoid them. So when I booked tickets to see Eels, I had to buy from TM and pay the ridiculous £4.50 handling charge for two tickets, plus £1.60 for postage. Imagine my…

A vivid reminder that UK libel laws still apply online: a college lecturer has been ordered to pay £10,000 in damages and £7,200 in legal costs after libelling a politician. The Guardian reports: The dark side of the blogosphere was revealed by a libel action brought by Michael Keith-Smith, a former Conservative party member who…

Jesus wept (don’t read this if you’re squeamish). From today’s Evening Times: A thug who stamped a 15-week-old pup to death has been jailed for four months. Thomas Kennedy, 23, launched the brutal attack in a fit of rage after an argument with his mother. After the pup died from horrific internal injuries, Kennedy hid…

Let’s play The Microsoft Game, where we take a news story about Apple and replace the word “Apple” with “Microsoft”. Microsoft has denounced France as a sponsor of piracy after the country’s parliament backed a bill that, if enacted, will force the company to open its DRM technology to other hardware vendors and online music…

About a year ago, I wanted to set up a new bank account. I’m a simple wee soul so I didn’t need anything particularly complicated: a cash machine card, internet banking and crucially, no overdraft facility. If I’ve got one I use it, and I’m better off without it. Unfortunately non-overdraft, non-savings accounts are rarer…

I went to see Sugababes last night (my wife’s a fan), and I’ll cheerfully admit I wasn’t looking forward to it. Not just because I’d be the oldest person in the audience, but because pop gigs can be dangerous things: for every slice of perfect pop there’s usually 25 hours of tedious session musician guitar…

That’s what Nick Carr reckons, anyway. His criticism is superb: What I see is a dreary sameness, a vast assembly of interchangeable parts. Everything feels secondhand: the pimps-and-hos poses before the cameraphone, the ham-fisted, cliche-choked blog-prose. It’s sad to see so much effort put into self-expression with so little to express. [Via Charles Arthur’s blog]

Ronnie Tommy from This Place Is Dead quotes South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who have responded to the shelving of the (very funny) Scientology episode: So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping…