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Living In Tokyo's Capsule Hotels 269

afabbro writes "Capsule Hotel Shinjuku 510 once offered a night’s refuge to salarymen who had missed the last train home. Now with Japan enduring its worst recession since World War II, it is becoming an affordable option for people with nowhere else to go. The Hotel 510’s capsules are only 6 1/2 feet long by 5 feet wide. Guests must keep possessions, like shirts and shaving cream, in lockers outside of the capsules. Atsushi Nakanishi, jobless since Christmas says, 'It’s just a place to crawl into and sleep. You get used to it.'”
Games

EVE Online Battle Breaks Records (And Servers) 308

captainktainer writes "In one of the largest tests of EVE Online's new player sovereignty system in the Dominion expansion pack, a fleet of ships attempting to retake a lost star system was effectively annihilated amidst controversy. Defenders IT Alliance, a coalition succeeding the infamous Band of Brothers alliance (whose disbanding was covered in a previous story), effectively annihilated the enemy fleet, destroying thousands of dollars' worth of in-game assets. A representative of the alliance claimed to have destroyed a minimum of four, possibly five or more of the game's most expensive and powerful ship class, known as Titans. Both official and unofficial forums are filled with debate about whether the one-sided battle was due to difference in player skill or the well-known network failures after the release of the expansion. One of the attackers, a member of the GoonSwarm alliance, claims that because of bad coding, 'Only 5% of [the attackers] loaded,' meaning that lag prevented the attackers from using their ships, even as the defenders were able to destroy those ships unopposed. Even members of the victorious IT Alliance expressed disappointment at the outcome of the battle. CCP, EVE Online's publisher, has recently acknowledged poor network performance, especially in the advertised 'large fleet battles' that Dominion was supposed to encourage, and has asked players to help them stress test their code on Tuesday. Despite the admitted network failure, leaders of the attacking force do not expect CCP to replace lost ships, claiming that it was their own fault for not accounting for server failures. The incident raises questions about CCP's ability to cope with the increased network use associated with their rapid growth in subscriptions."

Comment Re:Just Bought (Score 2, Informative) 547

Those numbers aren't even close to correct. The PS3 has only sold 5.5 million units, and only 2.26 million of those are in the United States, where this war is being primarily fought. On the other hand, HD-DVD has sold WAY more than 150,000 standalone players. Just recently, with the $99 sale, they sold over 90,000 Toshiba HD-A2s in a period of three days. The number is more like 500,000 and the numbers for the Xbox 360 add-on are about double what you quoted. Let us also not forget that anyone who is buying a PS3 could be buying it for games, movies, or both. We don't really know. However, there is no reason to buy the add-on for the Xbox 360 unless you intend to watch HD-DVDs, so those are just as powerful as standalone players. If I round up the actual numbers of players by about 200,000 each, the ratio of Blu-Ray to HD-DVD players in the market is 6:1. However, at best Blu-Ray has had a 2:1 sales lead in software, and at worst they have been almost dead even (51:49 the week of the Transformers release, even with a Buy-One Get-One offer on the Blu-Ray side for that week, not to mention that these Nielsen numbers do not include Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the country which has sold a LOT of HD-DVD hardware recently). Sony cannot build a Blu-Ray platform with the PS3 as the flagship piece of hardware. It's too expensive and it's unappealing to people who just want to play movies. Toshiba is offering a solution at 1/2 to 1/4 the price, depending on discounts at retailers.

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