The Richter Scale^®

While Microsoft’s apparent goal with their gaming hardware - first the Xbox and then the Xbox 360 - is to have it be ubiquitous, and in conjunction with that, sell lots of Xbox Live memberships, their implementation and support of multiple Xbox households sucks, to put it bluntly. At one point I had several Xbox in my house, and yet another in my office in Texas. Because of the lack of portability of Xbox Live accounts, I had set up three Xbox Live accounts on those various systems.

When the Xbox 360 came out, I got two separate Xbox Live Gold accounts for similar reasons (and thanks to Xploder’s Xbox 360 Cheat Saves I can actually use the same Xbox Live Gold Gamertag on two different Xbox 360s, so my third Xbox 360 shares with one of my other ones).  After a few months of parallel uses, I bundled up the original Xbox systems in my house and put them away, seeing as many of the Xbox games I liked to play worked on the Xbox 360 (or at least there was indication they would be supported sooner or later).

So now, a year later, I start getting these “Automatic Renewal Notification for Yearly subscription to Xbox Live” e-mails from Microsoft telling me I will be automatically billed for a renewal of my old Xbox Live accounts. The e-mail says:

Dear Jake Richter,

Your subscription to Yearly subscription to Xbox Live is scheduled to be automatically renewed on Monday, April 16, 2007. Here is a description of the service:

We’re glad that you’ve chosen to challenge your friends in the ultimate high-speed gaming arena, with access to downloads, tournaments, and exclusive features like your unique gamertag and friends list across every game. Your subscription to Xbox LiveTM covers 12 months of Xbox LiveTM service. For this subscription you will be charged $49.99 per year, plus applicable taxes. Unless you cancel your subscription before it ends, you will automatically renew to the currently selected renewal subscription type at the then current price, which is viewable in the Account Management section of the Xbox Dashboard. For information about cancelling your subscription and the refund policy for your subscription, please see http://www.xbox.com/live/accounts.

Please confirm that your account and payment information is up to date.

To update your credit card information, go to the Xbox Dashboard, select Xbox Live, and then select Account Management and update your billing information. If you have any questions, please go to http://www.xbox.com/support or call Xbox Customer Support at 1 (800) 4MY-XBOX.

Thank you for using Microsoft Online Services.

The Xbox Live team.

Note: Please do not respond to this message.
To receive notifications at a different e-mail address, go to the Xbox Dashboard, select Xbox Live, and then select Account Management and update your billing information.

It was very nice of them to notify me about this pending renewal, so I figured I would go and cancel the account since I no longer needed it. But I could not do so.

Notice something missing in Microsoft’s message? First, there’s no account ID information in the e-mail. So, I have no idea what account this refers to, and being an aging 42 years old, I no longer remember my exact account names.

Second, the only way to access my account is through the Xbox Live interface on the Xbox consoles. But the three consoles, which each have separate Xbox Live accounts (and I have no idea which one this renewal notice refers to), are either somewhere in my vast storage unit, or in my office in Texas a couple thousand miles away from here on Bonaire, and I’m not about to buy a plane ticket just to cancel the account. Note that I did try the support link shown in Microsoft’s e-mail, but that was useless, as there’s no account management option for Xbox Live accounts on the web site - you have to use the Xbox to get in. And even if there were, I have no idea what the Gamertags to use would be because Microsoft chose to not include them in the renewal notice to me.

So, I do the next thing Microsoft suggests. Twice. I call Xbox Customer Support at 1-800-4MY-XBOX. You may remember the outsourcing outcry during the last presidential elections. Well, people should not have been complaining about jobs being lost to Indian telecomm workers but instead to the absolutely horrific level of support those Indian telecomm people provide.

Both my lengthy calls went something like this - and I should note that there was huge amounts of background noise, so I could not hear the support guy very well (and that was on top of interpreting his accented English):

Me: Hi, I just got a renewal notice for one of my Xbox Live accounts, but I need to cancel it.

Jeem Bahb the Indian Support Dude (not his real name): What is your gamer tag?

Me: I don’t know. I have five of them, but don’t know exactly what three of them are. This is one of those three.

Jeem Bahb: Five? (he sounds puzzled)

Me: Yes. I have lots of different systems and accounts.

Jeem Bahb: Why?

Me: Because I do. Some of my systems are in different locations too.

Jeem Bahb: But I need your gamer tag to help you.

Me: I don’t know the one the notice refers to. Would be nice if your notice mentioned the gamer tag so I could tell you. Can you find it some other way?

Jeem Bahb: No. Well, maybe. Let me put you on hold. (Goes away for several minutes)

Jeem Bahb: Ok. What’s your address?

Me: Well, I’m on the Caribbean island of Bonaire, but how does that help you?

Jeem Bahb: I need an address.

Me: What kind of address?

(This exchange goes on for a bit and I finally get him to explain he needs my billing address for the account so he can attempt to use that to look things up.)

Me: I don’t know which credit card I used on the account in question, and the credit card would determine the billing address. How about I give you one of my billing addresses and you see what you can find?

Jeem Bahb: Ok.

Me: (I give the address over about a three minute span, because Jeem Bahb either can’t spell, is dyslexic, or something - I keep having to repeat myself)

Jeem Bahb: Be right back (goes away for five minutes)

Jeem Bahb: I’m sorry, but I can’t find it.

Me: Well, could you look it up by my e-mail address?

Jeem Bahb: Maybe. What is the e-mail address?

Me: (same agonizing effort to get him to copy my e-mail address down properly)

Jeem Bahb: Be right back (goes away for several more minutes)

Jeem Bahb: Oh, and I need your gamer tag too.

Me: Can I speak with your supervisor?

Jeem Bahb: I don’t know. Let me see. (goes away for several more minutes, comes back to ask me to hold some more, and then goes away again. I hang up during this last wait)

The second attempt at resolving this by phone did not go much better (actually I think it was worse, as I had guesses on the gamertags in question, but still could not get them to assist - they suggested I get on my Xbox to manage my account). All this left me with a rather sour taste in my mouth when it comes to both Microsoft Xbox support as well as the outsourcing of support to India.

But I did not feel entirely defeated. I figured I had one last option - I tried using e-mail support as suggested on an obscure page of the Xbox web site.

Here’s what I sent them:

Service:
Xbox Live

What type of problem do you have?
xbox live - other

Full Name:
Jake Richter

What e-mail address would you like a response sent to?
jake@xxxxx.yyy

Be specific when describing your problem. The details that you include enable us to promptly send you the most likely solution to your issue.
According to an e-mail from Microsoft I was billed yesterday for an Xbox Live Renewal. However neither of my two Xbox Live Xbox 360 accounts were due for renewal, so the e-mail must refer to one of my old and abandoned *or so I had hoped* regular Xbox Xbox Live accounts. I no longer have access to any of those 3 Xbox systems, and as your e-mail made no reference to the gamer tag it was renewing, I have no idea what’s up. The renewal e-mail was sent to jake@xxxxx.yyy, and had a date of 03/21 - hopefully that will help you locate it. Please reverse the charge and cancel the related Xbox Live account’s automatic renewal - it’s probably one of these gamer tags: [redacted1], [redacted2], or [redacted3].

Oh, and please, in future renewal e-mails, list the Gamer Tag and provide a Web-based method of being able to access the account. Requiring someone who might have multiple accounts to guess/remember what the e-mail refers to is stupid. And requiring people to have to use their console to manage the billing on the account is equally inane, especially in a world moving to the next gen consoles from the previous generation, where even more confusion arises.

Which operating system are you using?Windows XP: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070309 Firefox/2.0.0.3

Which browser are you using: Firefox2.0.0.3

Location: en-us - English (United States)

Type of Support: E-mail Support

The eminently useful reply I got back was one I should have figured on, but nonetheless it was still a rude shock:

Hello Jake!

Thank you for writing Xbox Customer Support!

We deeply apologize for the inconvenience. I understand that you have problem with regards to billing and cancellation of your Xbox Live account.

But all cancellations, billing questions, inquiries, and account or subscription problems are being address through our phone support line. We at email support lines do not have the capabilities to process your request. Proper troubleshooting and immediate action will be given to your inquiries or request. It is best that you call the Xbox Customer Support number for better assistance; United States and Canada: 1-800-4MY-XBOX (1-800-469-9269) International direct dial to US: 1- 425-635-7180.

For further assistance, please don’t hesitate to write back or call Xbox Phone Support at your earliest convenience, and we will be happy to help you.

Xbox Customer Support Hotline: 1-800-4MY-XBOX (1-800-469-9269)

International (direct dial to U.S.): 425-635-7180

Sincerely,

Jay

Xbox Customer Care Team

So, basically, they suggested I go back to phone hell. I tried to point this out to them:

I have attempted to do this with your phone support group and they are, sad to say, completely useless. First, the Indian gentleman I spoke with was very difficult to hear because of an incredible amount of background noise in his call center. Second, he could not fathom why someone might have five different Xbox Live accounts. Third, he was unable to look up which gamer tage/Live ID it was that the e-mail from Microsoft referenced.

Please escalate this to a supervisor.

Jake Richter

The response was a bit more helpful, assuming I was willing to subject myself to Indian support phone torture, which I was not after having wasted an hour on this matter already:

Hello Jake,

Thank you for writing Xbox Customer Support!

Thank you for writing to Xbox Live. I am sorry to hear that you had problems trying to cancel your Xbox Live Account when you called the Xbox Customer Support. It seems that there was a problem trying to pull up information for the gamertag that you wish to cancel.

We are more than eager to assist you with your concern, however, this support line is only limited to technical troubleshooting and Xbox setup only. Cancellation of Xbox Live accounts could not be done via email support line due to the inaccessibility of your secured customer account via this support option.

We are requesting for your patience to call the Xbox Customer Support again for the cancellation of your Xbox Live account be given immediate and proper action. Access to a customer’s account information requires high level of verification and or personal information could not be divulged over email. This is for the confidentiality and security of your account.

Again, we apologize for any inconvenience. Thank you for visiting Xbox.com.  If you need to reply to this e-mail, please reply ‘with history’ (include any previous e-mail) so we can expedite our service to you. If you should have future questions on Xbox products or services, please be sure to revisit our Web site as we are continually adding information to enhance our service.

Please call the Xbox Customer Support in the United States or Canada at 1-800-4MYXBOX (1-800-469-9269), at your earliest convenience, and we will be happy to help you. We are open everyday from 9am to 1am EST/ 6am to 10pm PST.

To expedite service, please provide Service Request Number 1032019023 when you call.

For more information about Xbox Live, please visit our website at http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live.

Sincerely,

Taynz
Xbox Customer Care Team

My reply was succinct:

So where do I go when e-mail support tells me to contact Phone support, and phone support has no clue what they are doing and tells me that in not so many words?

Jake

Microsoft Xbox Support’s reply was non-existant.

This saga ends with Microsoft somehow managing to charge me for a one year subscription on a credit card that had been cancelled months earlier, and my disputing the charge with American Express, who indicated they would be happy to work this all out with Microsoft on my behalf. Bless them.

But now I have a new saga to embark on - my inability to pay for a second installation of the Blastacular map pack for Halo 2 on the same gamertag. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I cannot download a second installation that I wish to pay for. I may have actually already been charged, but the system won’t let me download. The background is that I succeeded in installing the map pack last night on two of my Xbox 360s (each having a unique gamer tag), but this morning after I acknowledged my desire to purchase the map pack again, it failed to install on my third Xbox 360, which uses the same gamer tag for Xbox Live as one of the other systems. And the error message says I need to contact Xbox Support.

I don’t think I have enough alcohol in the house to dull the pain another call to Xbox Support would cause.

Update - May 25, 2007: I just found that American Express was not successful (in this pass) in having the charge reversed for the membership I could not get Microsoft to acknowledge nor cancel. Microsoft told AMEX that I apparently renewed the subscription. Not sure how that’s possible as they can’t even tell me what membership it is, and the Xbox it is attached to has not been used in many many months (and I’m not sure which Xbox it even is). I will note, however, that in the interim, the two other old Xbox Live accounts were not renewed and Microsoft was nice enough to send me e-mails to indicate my credit card for those accounts was invalid, which is as it should be, since I had cancelled it back in January. I have resubmitted my charge dispute to AMEX, with a link to this blog entry for further support. Let’s see what happens next.

My daughter is only a couple months shy of her 12th birthday, but already exhibits the sleeping habits of many teenagers. She ignores her normal alarm clock, cannot wake up easily, and sleeps through most anything, including her parents’ cajoling. Until now.

The folks at Hammacher Schlemmer are selling something they call the Flying Alarm Clock (pictured above). This $39.95 clock offers a rather unique feature - a rotor which is launched into the air when the alarm goes off, and which needs to be retrieved and reinserted into the clock to shut off the police siren-like klaxon sound emitted by the alarm clock.

And boy does it work. Our resident sleepyhead pops right out of bed when this baby is set off, alert and awake (and you’d know why if you heard the alarm - it’s loud and nasty, but oh so effective). She’s not happy at being awake or alert, but her adrenaline levels are high enough from hunting for the missing rotor while the alarm is blaring to prevent her from going back to sleep easily. Mission accomplished.

The only problem we have encountered so far is that a necessary part of the rotor separated from the rotor this morning (we had not snapped it in tight enough during assembly, apparently), and was temporarily lost, preventing us from shutting off the klaxon sound. We managed to use a pen to shut off the alarm in the interim (the only other option being unscrewing the bottom to remove the batteries). The missing piece was later discovered in a nearby laundry hamper.

In any case, I give the Hammacher Schlemmer Flying Alarm Clock a 9.0 out of a possible 10.0 on The Richter Scale. It is a perfect present to torture the sleepyhead in your family.

Time to dust off this blog. My wife’s knee replacement surgery went well a couple of weeks ago, and I’m back on Bonaire with the kids. While I was in New Hampshire during Linda’s surgery, I decided to buy a new Hewlett-Packard IQ-770 PC to put in my kitchen back home. The IQ-770, which features a touch screen and family-friendly organization software is also designed specifically for Windows Vista, and seemed like a good fit for family use in a central location.

Using Vista itself was a bit different, obviously, than using Windows XP, which we have all gotten comfortable with. Vista is flashier and prettier - that’s for sure. But on the whole, I still much prefer Windows XP. Here’s why:

- Vista’s prompts asking if I’m sure I want to run some software or do something it deems insecure drive me nuts. I thought the recent bought of Apple commercials with the Windows “guy” dressed in a suit and the Mac “guy” in casual duds to be overblowing the whole “are you sure” prompt thing, but jeez, it’s real. And annoying. I’m sure there’s a way to turn this off (have to go read my friend Ed Bott’s Vista book for this), but out of the box it’s a real turn-off.

- For all these protections, Vista still seems less stable. I had at least three blue screens of death during my set-up of the system when installing both new software as well as Microsoft-supplied updates. And the mouse stopped working after the system came back from being in sleep mode (a reboot fixed that and the touch screen got me to where I could reboot). Things seem to finally be working now, but getting to a working system with the software I wanted running was a hassle. For those wondering, I installed the Student edition of Office 2007, Adobe Premiere Elements 3, Adobe Photoshop Elements 5, Dragon Naturally Speaking (for Vista), and NaturalReader. Oh, and gobs of Windows and driver updates from Microsoft.

- The IQ770 has a 1.6GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core (not a slow CPU by any means) and 2GB of fast memory. So why the heck does it take nearly four (4) !!!! minutes to go from power-on to being fully operational? I haven’t seen horrific boot times like that since Windows 98 on an underpowered machine with zillions of drivers and start-up utilities. Perhaps regular folks can get away with not having to regularly reboot their PCs, but with all the blue screens and problems I found coming out of sleep mode, reboots seemed to be essential. At four minutes, I could probably hunt down a chicken, pry an egg or two out of it and have an omelet ready before the bloody system was done booting. Ridiculous and unnecessary. Note that this boot time didn’t seem to vary much between a clean system and one with software installed.

The one thing I have found in Vista that I like are the widgets you can put on the side of the screen, but that’s pretty minor. The IQ770 is presently in transit from the U.S., and when it gets here I will upgrade to Vista Ultimate when I have a chance to see if it adds any must-have features (from my perspective). One thing I would love Vista to have would be the ability to stream content FROM another Media Center PC, but for some reason Microsoft has determined that all PCs must be servers, and that only Xbox 360s can be Media Center clients. I already have three Xbox 360s and don’t need (or have space) for another one.

And speaking of the HP IQ770 - it’s a very interesting design, and the HP SmartTouch software seems pretty handy, although my use of it was limited in the few days I had with the system before packing it up. One thing that just floors me though is that the machine does not have an input jack for microphone. One of the things I want to use the IQ770 for is voice recognition. While the system does have a built in array microphone, that does not provide enough noise cancellation for my needs, and the handy headset that Nuance provides with Dragon Naturally Speaking is useless without a microphone or line-in jack on the PC. I’m hoping that a USB adapter for a headset I have here will work to overcome that issue.

In any event, so far Windows Vista has left me completely underwhelmed. I don’t know if that’s because I had higher expectations based on all the media fluff Microsoft has been spewing in my direction, or because I am an experienced PC user and have higher standards than an average newbie PC user. Either way, I’m disappointed. Vista is not the WOW that Microsoft advertises. It’s more like WOE - Waste Of Energy.

Over the prior few years I have spent more than half of my time on the road - at trade shows, business meetings, and vacation travel. And being the gadget geek that I am, I always carry around lots of tech toys, including a cell phone or two, a Nintendo DS Lite, a notebook computer, a camera or two, my Sony Reader, and my iPod.

As anyone who travels with lots of gadgets know, you generally need a separate charger for each device, which makes for a lot of extra bulk in one’s carry-on luggage (I don’t know about you, but I would never check vital chargers in my checked luggage).

About four years ago in a Brookstone’s at the Philadelphia airport I came across something called the iGo Juice70 - a universal power supply which came with a variety of laptop charger “tips” and the ability to also charge a second smaller piece of electronics at the same time as powering the notebook computer. I bought it and was immensely pleased with my purchase. I later found that they offered a three-way splitter for powering the smaller gadgets and got that too, allowing me to charge my notebook, cell phone, iPod, and DS Lite all at the same time. Wow. Plus I can use my Juice on airplanes where there’s seat outlet power in the form of a 12VDC car charger plug.

My first Juice adapter burned out about 18 months ago, which was a disappointment, but I bought a new one immediately at the Radio Shack near my Texas office and it has worked great, all over the world.

My only frustration would be (and still is) that I frequently get newer gadgets than they have power tips for, and thus have to wait a few months for them to have compatible tips for my gadgets. And I still have to carry separate chargers for the diverse camera batteries I use as I can’t usually schedule myself to use the in-camera charge for this. But that is not a problem iGo can easily solve themselves.

The biggest overall drawback I have found so far has been the price of the tips ($9.99 for each new one) and the power adapters (the Juice70 is $129.99), and I wish I could get a short 3-inch cord to connect the gadgets to the power adapter plug instead of the bulky “cord savers” iGo presently sells, as with all my gadgets, having three sets of cord savers takes up a lot of space. A tip organizer would be nice too.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in January, I met with iGo’s marketing folks who showed me a smaller, sleeker version of the Juice power adapter (can’t wait for that to be readily available), and something called the iGo powerXtender (see photo above) - a dual AA battery powered charger which uses all the same iGo power tips I already use for my gadgets.

iGo sent me an evaluation unit of the powerXtender, and I have managed to put it to use a number of times when I had forgotten to recharge certain devices overnight. Most recently it was my Blackberry on Bonaire, as well as my kids Nintendo DS Lites during a long trip from New Mexico to San Juan (while the whole family was playing Uno wirelessly on four DS Lites). The powerXtender lasted for about a half-dozen charges. It doesn’t fully charge the device it’s working with (at least not in my tests), but does provide emergency power, which is what iGo promotes the powerXtender for.

For $15.99 the iGo powerXtender is a great deal for existing iGo product users, because you will likely already have all the power tips you need. For people new to the iGo product line you need to be aware that new tips are $9.99 each, so if you have several gadgets this can get costly quickly, which might be an argument to just jump in with both feet and also get the Juice70 or similar portable power adapter too.

I give the iGo Juice70 a 7.5 and the iGo powerXtender an 8.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale based on my prolonged use of these devices and the drawbacks mentioned above.

In catching up on some blog reading via my favorite blog aggregrator, Bloglines I stumbled across a new feature the talented folks at Bloglines have developed. They call it the Bloglines Image Wall.

The Bloglines Image Wall is a 6x4 grid of images, generated dynamically, showing the latest images from blogs that Bloglines has indexed into their databases. And it changes while you watch. And if you want to see what blog a particular image comes from, just click on it to go to that blog. It’s a fascinating way to discover blogs you never knew existed (but it requires them to post pictures).

Apparently after they launched the Image Wall a few weeks ago, Bloglines discovered that it was being viewed in family and school environments - a problem since some blogs post images which might not be appropriate for some audiences, so the Image Wall has been moved to its own domain and features an 18+ warning on the home page.

The timing is interesting. A few weeks ago I got a notice from the U.S. Consulate on the neighboring island of Curaçao requesting that I register on a U.S. State Department web site:

If you are an American citizen living or traveling in Aruba or the Netherlands Antilles, the U.S. State Department and the Consulate General in Curaçao strongly encourage you to register your trip on the State Department’s travel registration website at https://travelregistration.state.gov/. 

Since then I have seen a number of blogs run by military strategists discuss the possible invasion of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao by Venezuelan dictator and madman President Hugo Chavez.

The various blogs are:

- Strategy Page - The Dutch Defend Their World Empire
- The Dignified Rant - Dutch Treat
- Strategy Page - Might Venezuela Looks for Justice
- Pito’s Blog - What Would Happen If Venezuela Invaded Curacao

In reviewing the above blogs, it appears the primary source for this topic of Venezuela invading the ABC islands stems from the Strategy Page web site. But I find this particular quote chilling:

But for the last two years, Venezuelan officials, including the country’s demagogic president, Hugo Chavez, have made numerous public statements about the “reunification” of the islands of the Dutch West Indies (Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaτao) with Venezuela.

The reality is that Venezuela is only 50 miles from Bonaire, and they could invade and take over the island in mere hours. The other reality is that such hostilities would probably give the West a great excuse to remove Chavez from power. But Chavez, at least from where I sit, is a cowboy - a socialist cowboy with far too much oil money in his hands - and thus capable of most anything the rest of us would consider crazy.

Bonaire’s change of status from being part of the Netherlands Antilles to being a remote municipality of The Netherlands, scheduled for December 15, 2008, can’t come soon enough for my taste, assuming that at the very least it serves as a further deterrent to Chavez’s purported desire to reunify the islands with Venezuela. However, the blogs I list above stress Holland’s inability to respond militarily to any incursion, so as an American living abroad, I can only hope that my registering with the State Department as requested will make sure the U.S. military knows where to find me should Chavez decide he wants to claim the ABCs for his own.

Registering your trip allows Embassies and Consulates abroad to send you newsletters and time-sensitive travel warnings and public announcements specific to the areas in which you will be traveling or living.  The information you provide also makes it easier for them to contact you in case of emergency, or to contact your family or friends in the United States in the event of an emergency abroad.  Registration will also allow residents of Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles to receive notification when the vice consul will be on your island.

But still, the timing of the registration request is curious. Maybe the U.S. Consulate over in Curaçao knows something we don’t?

I attended an interesting conference a few weeks ago at which a number of people whom I respect shared their advice for presidential candidates in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. The conference ended with a drop in visit by New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (himself a candidate for President, running on the Democratic ticket.

Other discussions at that conference included ones dealing with the impact of electronic communications on print media, and my aging brain slowly put together all sorts of disparate pieces. The result of my ruminations was a question: “Can the people of the U.S. elect a President with the same tools and principles used in the new Internet?” These tools include things like wikis, blogs, YouTube, Flickr, MySpace, and more.

The more I have thought about this idea, the more I have come to the realization that just as there has been a shift from physical media to electronic media, there will ultimately be a similar shift in campaigning. And thus was born the concept that I call the Wiki Presidency.

I’ve started a new blog at http://wikipresidency.blogspot.com/ to discuss and explore the Wiki Presidency, and hope that you’ll join me there and become involved in getting campaign financing abuse and partisanship out of the presidential campaign process, while bringing the ideas and energy of real people into the process.

The Blu-ray Disc camp has been crowing in recent weeks about how it has already won the next generation movie disc format battle, touting the fact that in early January, there were twice as many Blu-ray movies sold as HD-DVD. The Blu-ray folks are right, based on numbers I’ve seen, that they are outselling HD-DVD movies, but the differences are slim, and the numbers are very low.

Sony, in particular, has been posturing about the “large” numbers of PS3 systems sold since that platform was released in mid-November 2006. Every PS3 system incorporates a Blu-ray player. By my estimates, according to data from Sony and NPD Group, as of the end of January, there were 1.25 million PS3 sold (one million through end of 2006 per Sony, 244,000 sold in January per NPD). Combine that with the standalone players sold, and you add maybe another few hundred thousand.

That compares with just a few hundred thousand HD-DVD players in the same time frame - about 262,000 in 2006 (170,000 standalone units per the HD-DVD group, and 92,000 HD-DVD add-on Xbox 360 drives), and some relatively equally smaller number in January 2007. For argument’s sake, let’s say that by the end of January 2007, there were 1.5 million Blu-ray capable players vs. 300,000 HD-DVD capable players in consumer’s hands. The actual exact numbers don’t really matter, but what is striking is that this means there are roughly five (that’ 5!) times as many Blu-ray players out there as HD-DVD players.

But most of those Blu-ray players are PS3 game consoles. Sony’s posturing about Blu-ray player sales in the form of PS3 game consoles is just that - posturing. That’s because only a fraction of the PS3 users out there are buying Blu-ray movies. Look at these numbers from an article in Next Generation less than a month ago, where Sony Computer Entertainment America is quoted as quoting NPD Group as saying that cumulative Blu-ray movie sales at the time stood at 439,000 units vs. a cumulative 438,000 HD-DVD movies. In my book, that’s a dead even race. But more importantly, it shows clearly that people are not buying Sony PS3s to watch Blu-ray movies. If they were, the Blu-ray movie numbers would be three times what NPD Group says (according to Sony).

Those numbers imply a tie ratio - the ratio at which movies are tied to players - as approximately 0.33 for Blu-ray players, and about 1.4 for HD-DVD players. However, in the short run (i.e., the present), all these numbers don’t really matter because they are still pretty small in the grand scheme of things - high-definition movie playback is for all practical purposes still a niche market, and anyone claiming to be king of that market is making a mountain out of a mole hill. It’s not until the installed base of players numbers in the several tens of millions that this market will be a real mass-market.

So what’s Sony to do get people to start using their PS3s to watch movies instead of just playing games on them? I have a short list of suggestions:

1) Include a real DVD remote with each PS3. You can now buy a $25 Sony-branded Bluetooth Blu-ray DVD remote control for the PS3, but it really should be included free with every PS3 if Sony is serious about the PS3 being a real Blu-ray player.

2) Add an infrared (IR) port to the PS3 so that folks can use their universal home theater remote controls to control DVD and Blu-ray DVD playback on a PS3. For older units this can be a USB add-on, and for newer units it should be built it. Blu-ray is supposedly a home theater delight, so why shouldn’t consumers be able to use their home theater remotes to control it? Bluetooth is “cool”, but IR is the standard for remotes.

3) Provide decent DVD upscaling so that older DVDs still look decent when played back on the PS3 on that nice new HD-TV. This would provide people with greater purchase justification for the PS3, as they could then sell their old upscaling DVD player on eBay (not that it would bring in much money, but it’s still a great rationalization point).

4) Offer a breadth of family-friendly games so that moms and non-game playing spouses would feel better about having it in the family (or communal) living room. Nintendo has done this so very right with the Wii, but meanwhile among the sparse assortment of PS3 games, you pretty much have only Mature and Teen ESRB rated titles.

5) Include a way to write to PS2 game cartridges as well as the current optional dongle to read them, so that the living room PS2 can truly be replaced by a PS3, as opposed to only kind of, somewhat, almost replacing the PS2 (and that’s in the U.S. - European PS3 will have far greater PS2 compatibility issues when they ship).

6) Rebrand the PS3 as a Blu-ray disc player which also plays games, instead of a game console which also plays Blu-ray discs.

Without better addressing PS3 owner apathy in using the PS3 for playing Blu-ray movies, the tie ratio for Blu-ray titles to Blu-ray players will continue to embarrass the Blu-ray camp as it becomes more and more obvious that the majority of PS3 owners aren’t watching movies. 

One of the news services I get daily clips from about various intellectual property issues in this electronics age is Doug Isenberg’s Gigalaw. This morning one of the headlines caught my attention: Fair Use Bill would ‘Legalize Hacking.’ RIAA Says. Boo hoo for the RIAA.

”Fair Use” is a long standing doctrine under U.S. copyright law, which permits limited use of copyrighted material without permission from copyright holders for scholarly efforts and review. The fair use doctrine has also been applied to the right of consumers to make backups of software they have purchased. Under the fair use doctrine, we can backup our CDs to our hard disks to preserve our purchase and data. However, fair use does not permit one to wantonly make copies of things and distribute them to others.

But that distinction does not matter to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), an organization which helped bully the Digital Millennium Copyright Act through Congress in 1998. The DMCA made it illegal to reverse engineer and disable most any effort used to protect digital content. The DMCA effectively slammed the door on fair use as provided for in copyright law.

Now, U.S. Representatives Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, and John Doolittle, a California Republican, according to an article in InfoWorld, have introduced a bill called The Freedom and Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship (FAIR USE) Act in order to restore fair use rights to consumers.

This new bill upsets the RIAA greatly, considering that they have worked hard to trample upon the rights of consumers with the DMCA, and then have embarked upon a “reeducation” campaign about file sharing, where the educational part involves suing everyone they think has been illegally sharing music files. Very consumer friendly organization, the RIAA - not!

Under the DMCA, without fair use provisions, we consumers are beholden to the whims and mercies of distributors of electronic media content under the guise (or curse) of something called Digital Rights Management (DRM). DRM is a bane to one’s being able to freely use purchased media for one’s own use. For example, if you buy a movie from Xbox Live Marketplace to view on your Xbox 360, you have a limited number of views and days in which to do the viewing, and then poof, the content is no longer accessible. With Apple iTunes music and video, you can only view the content on a limited number of “authorized” PCs or Apple iPod players. Should Apple decide to stop supporting iTunes platform at some point in the future, you would no longer have access to that content. And the future is even scarier as some companies have suggested that we should pay for every use of content - imaging being charged money for listening to the same song over and over, or having to pay something every time your kid wants to see Shrek on your TV, even if it’s the 17th viewing of the same movie.

On the flip side, if you take care of your CDs and DVDs, you can have them last decades (in theory), and you can also backup the CDs into whatever the most current safe storage form is (and DVDs too, but then arguably you’re breaking the laws created by the DMCA). And you don’t have to pay for repeated use.

Our use of content as consumers and purchasers should not be dictated solely by draconian organizations like the RIAA, nor by corporations looking to squeeze us for more money at every turn.

Boucher and Doolittle are doing a great thing by introducing this bill. One can only hope that their efforts to protect consumers will win against the big dollar lobbying by the music and movie industries. Boucher is no stranger to the fight for Fair Use, incidentally - in 2001, he gave a speech about this very topic.

There’s no question that copyright law needs to be respected. Artists and creators of works - whether they be musicians, writers, actors, software developers, artists, or any one of a near limitless number of professional content creators - need the respect (and revenue) their works generate. Making copies of content and given them to one’s friends is wrong (we call that stealing), and selling illegal copies for a profit is even worse (we call that piracy). But on the other end of the spectrum is the fair use doctrine, and the necessary right of people to protect the investment they have made in their purchases. That right needs to be returned to the people, and protected.

As I have oft documented in these pages, I am (trying to be) on a life long low-carbohydrate, high protein diet. I started the diet almost exactly two years ago, when I weighed in at nearly 250 pounds, and had regular colds and illnesses, suffered regularly from fatigue and other maladies. Never mind being embarrassed about my large belly, my increasing large jowls, and yes, even man-breasts.

Since being on the diet, I’ve dropped a lot of weight (was down around 205 pounds, but am now holding steady around 210), losing the jowls, man breasts, and enough around my midsection to drop from a 38-40 waist to a 32-34 waist (and a whole new wardrode). And my health has improved remarkably too. I’ve not had a serious sick day in almost two years, my energy levels are good, and based on a very thorough physical back in November at Duke University’s Executive Health Center, my blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol are also in great shape. That’s all mostly due to diet - I am definitely a low-carb believer.

The area I found to be below par during my physical was exercise. I really don’t like exercising. I find it mundane, boring, and rather pointless. I’m a type-A person, and I feel like I need to be accomplishing something most of the time, and while I cognitively understand the long term benefits of exercise, the short term achiever in me finds “better” things to do. I get my best ordinary exercise when traveling and staying in cities, because I try to walk most everywhere. Duke gave me a pedometer, and I find that most days in a city on business or vacation, I average 8,000 to 15,000 steps (anything over 10,000 is considered reasonable exercise, and 3,000 or less is being a couch potato).

But that doesn’t help me at home. Enter Nintendo. Yes, Nintendo.

Thanks to the game Age of Empires (a turn-based strategy war game) on my DS Lite, I can do about 10 miles on my recumbent exercise bicycle in half an hour, never realizing how hard a cardio workout I’m getting (but I am getting my pulse into the target range Duke set for me), because the game has me so distracted. My cycling activity is natural, autonomous, and repetitive - perfect for doing while mentally focused elsewhere. However, I have found that I’m not getting any upper body work-out doing this bicycle thing, and this week, upon returned from a trip to Santa Fe (see below) along with a few extra pounds of carb weight, I decided to do something about it. I call it my Wii Workout.

Three times a week (that’s the plan - I’ve only done it twice so far, but the week’s not over), I play Wii Sports on the Nintendo Wii in my living room, playing a combination of both Wii Tennis and Wii Boxing (Golf, Bowling, and Baseball don’t appear to give enough of a workout). I’ve used Wii Sports in the training mode, in the workout mode (too short for my needs), and ordinary game play against “computer” players. The latter seems to be the most intensive.

My very sore and aching muscles yesterday and today after my first Wii Workout on Monday (two days ago) bear witness to the fact that playing tennis and boxing on the Wii have already put various upper body muscles to use which have not seen a workout in months, if not years. A couple of ibuprofen or acetaminophen pills and I’m feeling better.

This morning’s Wii Workout stretched those muscles again (they aren’t as tender now, but let’s see how I feel tomorrow), and I also tried playing tennis left handed (I’m a righty) to balance out the workout on both sides of my torso.

An auxiliary benefit to the Wii Workout is that I might finally get good enough to beat my kids at Wii Tennis and other Wii games.

My actual goal, though, is to be really buff in a few month’s time, thanks mainly to video gaming, combined with my on-going diet of course. Think it’ll work?