mike

Playstation 3. Can't wait to get my hands on one.

Except for the black design on the front, this phone looks extremely similar to LG's vx5300 from Verizon.

I'm a Sprint Ambassador, but I'm not a blogger (in fact, I'd never heard that bloggers were being given these phones). I work at a Best Buy in the cell phone department. I was never told I had to provide any kind of critiques to Sprint at all. It was given to me under the impression that I am to use it as freely as I want, the point being that since I know more about how exactly Sprint and the phone works, I can better recommend it to customers, though they have never said or even implied that they would take it away if I didn't (which is good because I wouldn't accept it if they did). If Sprint wanted to buy me off, there's a ton of better ways they could do it (giving me a PS3 is a good start, *wink*) so I highly doubt that's what they're trying to do. And to be fair, Verizon kinda/sorta does the same thing. Except Verizon's program is actually just a Manager/Supervisor/Wireless Expert-only discount. They give me a free phone with a particular service plan for free. So Sprint gives me a free phone with service, and Verizon gives me a free phone with service, so I suppose it all evens out. And neither carrier has ever said or implied that they will take the phones away if I don't recommend their service, it's been more like just a job benefit.

I have learned a ton about the capabilities of both, and that has helped immensely in my job- I know just how powerful either network is (or isn't) in their particular features and offerings, and most importantly, where exactly in my area either phone gets coverage and if there are any dead zones (which I get asked by customers the most). And of course, it's just fun to have free phones and service to two different carriers.

But damn if it pisses my friends off.

Only 1 of my friends has a 360... well... not really a friend.. more like a guy I know at work. and I think he sold it for about $800 on ebay when it came out. actually, he sold a couple of them. He made a ton of money and now I hate him. :)

Most my friends have PS2's. They'll probably get PS3's once they come down a bit in price.

No cablecard here.

Satellite (Dish Network... please don't lose that patent suit, I love my DVR).

Slingbox would be awesome. My depths of my laziness would know no bounds!!

Call of Duty 2.

This is not a simple issue, it seems. There is no clear cause why people have no compunction against stealing music. I'm still trying to find one that makes sense.

Some people do it because they have a romanticized image of the evil record companies screwing their favorite artists. Yet, during the Napster controversy, it was bands like Metallica and others that led the charge against illegal file sharing. It's real easy to have a negative image of a record label, and maybe it's well deserved. But it's also an immature and insufficient excuse for stealing music. For example, that kind of logic would justify the theft of my neighbor's new 60" plasma simply because I think he's a bastard. Even if he is, that doesn't mean it's ok for me to steal his TV.

Some people have made the argument that because music sold online is locked up so tightly with DRM that they simply refuse to play that game and find unlocked (and free) songs elsewhere. This makes more sense, but it begs the question: if music sold online had no DRM, would people start buying it? It makes sense that many of them would, but DRM is only part of the problem. Besides, there's no way record companies are going to sell their music unprotected. They would have no way of knowing that people wouldn't just start copying their music on an unprecidented scale; they simply don't trust the population, not after the Napster controversy.

Perhaps another reason people steal music is because they believe that it has a cost so low that they feel it's a victimless crime. Backing this up further is the belief that artists and record companies make so much money, nobody is going to care about me stealing 1 or 2 songs here and there. Even when it escalates to dozens of albums being stolen, the subconscious thought is that nobody will miss them. The money I would have had to spend on these albums is too much for me to part with, but insignificant to the company I'd have bought them from. There's an error in our thinking here, and it's important we figure out an amicable solution to this problem because as it stands, people who steal music are standing on the backs of those who choose to purchase it, and perhaps that's the greatest injustice here, after all.

And as for the PS3 price lowering, Kutaragi also mentioned that the 20GB will cost 50,000 yen (~$429 USD). It's important to keep in mind that direct currency conversion is NOT an accurate estimation of how much the 20GB may cost in the US; the 20GB may be worth about $429 USD in Japan, but it will most likely cost much higher in the US. Prices will vary throughout different markets.