IBM or Toshiba for Cell me think.

That said, MS's 360 CPU is also from IBM, their GPU from ATi, while Sony's GPU is from nVidia.

Everyone outsources - from their company that is.

The "rules" of the game is pretty much common sense, it's defined as "rules" which must be followed if the model is to sustain itself.

While Sony can't put a gun to your head to make you follow the rules - separate issue from Geohot's hacking, which is a case of DMCA violation.
They are betting on enough people doing so to make it profitable.

It's a risky model, but it has worked well enough.

Most people don't have a problem with it, it's appreciated that the few of you that do have an issue with it just avoid the product, instead of gumming up the works for the rest of us.

Nothing wrong with that, if those conditions have been stated at the start, and if you have the choice to not buy that car.

I'm aware of that.

But getting everyone to hire a lawyer when buying a PS3 to look over a contact is not going to work.

It's more of a implicit agreement.

I think it should stay, it works pretty well, except for a stubborn few - the few who also have a choice to buy an alternate product that satisfy the same needs.

Sony outsources too, it's all made in China.

Their CPUs are made by Toshiba, they don't have any fabs now.

It's not dumping, they sell it at break even or a little below break even, MS does the same thing.

Both got billions of dollars in R&D to recoup, except one is filthy rich from 2 monopolies, the other has been struggling for the past decade or so and had to get a bailout from the Japanese government recently.

Citation needed.

Components for the PS3 and 360 are about in the same league, the differences in cost can't be much, an efficient process can only save you so much.

Throughout the PS3 life span Sony has been desperatly trying to get the price down. They would sell it cheaper, and increase their install base, if they could.

And also note, it's not just manufacturing and component cost they have to recoup, there is setup and R&D cost running into the billions as well.

The model at it's essence is Sony sells the console cheap to you, you buy games where they take a cut so they can recover their expenses.

They enforce the model by copyright protection, and mind you Sony isn't the only one demanding copy protection, publishers want it very much as well.

If you don't like their enforcement, you are free to not buy the product. There are "free" alternatives like PC that come unemcumbled.

Yes, it does not gel with your specific concept of ownership, but it's a decent enough trade model.
Sony provides a service/product under certain conditions, you pay them.
Goods and services gets produced, producers get paid.

Oh yes, if you don't want to take part in the model, don't buy the darn thing.

Buy a PC.

No one is putting a gun to your head forcing you to buy a PS3.

There is nothing wrong with the model, it works fine if everyone plays by the rules.

Sony can't play by any other model, the console has to be cheap to sell, it was the way the industry evolved.
Have you seen the amount of bitching over the PS3 original starting price.

If Sony uses the PC model next round, and MS plays by the razor model, Sony just wasted their money.

This is assuming Sony doesn't just quit, which I sure is what MS wants and promotes via astrosurfers, convincing consumers to hand them another monopoly.

Nope, don't really care either way.

Just stating some of the things that went through my head when I read the post.

Nope.

What will happen is Sony will drop out of the race as it's no longer profitable, and all you would have left is MS who has gotten the heck of locking their consoles down.

Nintendo won't have the money to do the required R&D (risk and all) and will once again release a weak console.

Yupe. MS monopoly 3.0.
Enjoy.

Karma be damned.

Then they rather you not buy one. Their PS3 works via the razorblade model where they sink billions into R&D and sell the console at slightly below or at break even prices, recouping their cost via game sales.

Hopefully Sony will survive this gen to make the PS4, else enjoy your new Microsoft monopoly where they control gaming in the PC and on consoles.

How quick people forget the sins of that MS. I suppose this short memory is why politicians can manipulate people with such ease. I feel like the donkey in Animal Farm.

If web video is going to get DRM, the "client" will have to be implemented by a trusted party.

Google can play the role, but I don't think Mozilla can.
So if DRM is going to be implement it will need support from the OS - where the OS plays gatekeeper, and browsers relying on it for decoding.**

I don't see a problem to be honest with DRM for web video, it would be up to the content creators whether they want their video protected by DRM.
Those who don't want DRM can just post without it.

**Ya, I know, problem for Linux. Some day they will probably move it into hardware like on the video card itself.

Interesting.

It's quite a lot more jerky in Safari and Chrome.

Looks like this is something the Webkit guys need to work on.

With the proliferation of mobile tech like the iPhone, monitoring is going to get harder.

No opinion on the issue, I don't have kids of my own ... No idea how I would go about it if someday I do.

Well, Chrome 11 is still in alpha though.

And from what I noticed, while Chrome seems to "lag" other browsers when you compare versions, but due to it's ridiculously fast development cycle it almost always catches up if not surpass it's competition.

People have been saying, IE9 has this, FF4 has that, since ... Chrome 7, and they both still aren't out yet.