The rootkit fiasco was about Sony BMG music discs installing rootkits when you tried to play them on a computer and had nothing to do with games.

I say music discs because said discs lost the right to be called CDs and have the CD Audio logo due to intervention by Philips.

Microsoft Security Essentials actually flags SourceForge's installer as malicious. I forget what exactly it calls it, but I ran into it when I had to install something from there recently (likely Filezilla on a new machine).

The post I was replying to concludes that the Xbox One was a better system because of things Sony had done.

My post was just refuting that by pointing out that MS is just as bad.

And by the same token, Microsoft's Microsoft Devices and Studios Group and Microsoft Operating Systems Engineering Group are owned by the same company.

The point I was trying to make is that you can either include all the divisions owned by each company or just the console divisions. However, pointing out something bad done by a different division of one company while at the same time dismissing things done by different divisions done at the other company because it "has nothing to do with their console" (yes, GGP said that to me in his latest reply) is intentionally misrepresenting things. Either way, both companies have done some pretty heinous things over the years.

Personally, I have no intention of buying any consoles this generation, which is a change from owning all 3 from last generation. At this point, I'd just rather use my PC.

Did you seriously say those back to back with a straight face?

One of the reasons you listed was from a different division of Sony... and yet you call foul when I include things done by a different division of Microsoft. Make up your mind whether different divisions of the same company count or not.

The list of standards Sony helped create was there specifically to address Blu-Ray, because some people include that under "proprietary" and I couldn't tell if you were one of those people.

Speaking of proprietary, which "proprietary standards" are you referring to? You never actually said and it's impossible for me to respond to the vague assertions you've actually made.

Oh, and it should go without saying that mentioning things that both consoles do is off topic, as per the conclusion to your original post:

It feels weird to say it, but XBOX is clearly the better platform here.

OK, I'll address these points one by one.

I'll give you this one. Although I'm surprised IBM didn't push them to not include Linux support in the first place since they sold higher-end Cell systems.

That's still better than Microsoft whose response to Xbox Live hacks is to pretend they're not happening.

Oh, and due to your next argument, you also tacitly gave me permission to bring up that Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Internet Explorer are responsible for some of the largest security holes in computing ever.

Sony is actually a number of different divisions operating under a single name. In this case, the rootkit was from Sony Music Entertainment and Phillips actually make Sony Music Entertainment stop using the CD designation for discs that had said DRM on it.

I can't tell if you're talking about all of Sony or just Sony Computer Entertainment.

If you're talking about all of Sony, I'm going to remind you that they were involved in the creation of:

* The cassette tape
* The 3.5" diskette
* CDs
* Blu-Ray

all of which were standards at one time or another. (Note: DVDs also used the error correcting technology from CDs, but Sony was not involved other than that)

For just the PS3:

The PS3's main processor is proprietary... but so was the Xbox 360 CPU (unless you thought a triple-core Power PC was a standard component...), the Wii CPU..., and the WiiU CPU while we're at it.

Having said that, the PS3 uses the following standards:

1. 802.11b/g built in to all models. The Xbox 360 originally went with wired networking only and required a $100 addon for WiFi support. It wasn't until the "S" models that they included it in the base system.
2. Standard 2.5" (aka laptop) SATA hard drive bay. The Xbox 360 uses hard drives with custom firmware instead.
3. Bluetooth 2.0 for wireless controllers and peripherals. The Xbox 360 uses custom 2.4GHz RF instead.

Note: I'm intentionally not listing technologies that both systems supported such as USB or video outputs.

I'm not sure where 8GB was pulled from, but remember that a full dual-layer BD-ROM is 50GB, not 8GB. And there is at least one PS3 game that took the entire disk: Metal Gear Solid 4. Plus, the system likely only has 1 HDD bay in it. So the default 500GB HDD, ignoring the size of the OS, only has space for 10 dual-layer BD-ROMs.

In other words, there are other reasons to use discs than just download time.

(And yes, I'm aware you can presumably swap the HDD out for any 2.5" HDD(/SDD?) like you could the PS3.)

That's exactly what WarCraft 1 was. It used the Dune 2 control scheme and included silly restrictions like forcing you to build roads before you could build buildings next to them just like Dune 2 forced you to build cement slabs. I want to say you had to build units centrally like Dune 2, but that may be wrong. WarCraft 1 also ran tediously slowly and I don't remember it having a game speed control.

WarCraft 2 added a bunch of new controls, like right-click to move instead of right-click to cancel, removed some of the dumber building restrictions, and added the game speed control. Oh, and also upgraded the multiplayer component from 2 players (yes, WC1 only supported 2 players) to 8 players.

StarCraft changed things up by making it so that the various units for different races weren't carbon copies of one another, made it so multiplayer matches started with your command center/nexus/hive and 4 peons instead of a single peon with enough resources to build a town hall.

And then WarCraft 3 came out, which added Hero units. The less said about those the better.

A few problems I can see in your statements:

1. Unlike the DS and Wii, the 3DS and WiiU use system-wide friend codes (or system+account-wide, I'm not sure since my 3DS only has one user), not per-game friend codes. The way the DS worked wouldn't allow for this, but the Wii did... just Nintendo didn't use them that way.

2. As I recall, all the other consoles also require you to have both sides add each other as friends before they can see what you're doing. I may be misremembering since it's been years since I've registered my PSN or Xbox Live accounts, but I doubt it.

The only thing friends codes gain you over usernames is that it's harder to spoof numbers.

I'm going to stop you right there to point out that the SNES sound chip was the Sony SPC-700 and the next generation of that same chip powered the PS1's sound system.

That depends on what market you were in.

In North America, the Dreamcast launched exactly 4 years (to the day) after the PS1, 3 years after the N64, and just a measly year before the significantly more powerful PS2.

It didn't help that Sony was (and still is) good at the hype machine.

OK, lets look at the current generation (well... current because the WiiU is out) and previous 3 generations.

Current:
WiiU: Weaker hardware than its competitors, but only slightly cheaper than the announced launch prices for the other two consoles. Isn't doing so well at the moment. Third-party developers are hesitant to support it.
Xbox One: May flop due to marketing mistakes by Microsoft and their insistence that the Kinect is mandatory.
PS4. Current predicted winner of the next console generation thanks to mistakes MS made with the Xbox One and the tepid reception of the WiiU.

Previous:
Wii: Weaker hardware than its competitors, but a low price to match. Managed to pull third-party developers back in. Outsold everyone else.
Xbox 360: Did pretty decently throughout, but got burned a bit by the Red Ring Of Death issue.
PS3: Flopped at launch due to high prices (cost more than two times the Wii's price) and new unusual programming architecture. Managed to catch up to the Xbox 360 in the last few years of this generation.

2000-2005 gen:
Xbox: New vendor. Didn't do that great. Only killer end-user feature over the PS2 was Xbox Live.
PS2: Harder to program for than the PS1, but still managed to keep massive third-party support. Outsold everyone else.
GameCube: Decent hardware but lacked third party support due to previous generation. The loss of Rare and Silicon Knights during this time frame only exacerbated this problem.
Dreamcast: Didn't do so hot, Sega left the market about halfway through this generation.

1995-2000 gen:
Saturn: Biggest flop of the generation. In part because of Sega's braindead strategy of releasing the 32x, a competing "32-bit" addon for the Genesis. Also cost $100 more than the PS1 and launched with no warning.
PS1: Easiest console to develop for. Launched $100 cheaper than the Saturn. Outsold everyone else.
N64: Sticking with cartridges lost Nintendo the majority of its third-party support.. This came back to bite them in the following generation.

I'm not going to address Nintendo's handhelds simply because they've dominated the market since their introduction in 1989 and have essentially kept the company running even when it was doing poorly.

Pretty much the only good Wii titles are first-party titles.

Actually, living in the real MI (Michigan)... hey Canada, can we join you guys up there? Maybe merge us into Ontario?

I can't find the numbers, but I recall that China exports more goods to the United States than any other country. Which is where they get the money to import goods from Germany in the first place.

You had me up until said you "all developers".

Developers need the Java Developers Kit, which notably doesn't prompt you to install toolbars. Nor does the JRE installer on the Java developer site (which used to be java.sun.com).

Unfortunately, unless you know to grab the installer from there...