Prince finds pirates in his kingdom
Better known for wearing ladies’ pumps and rockin’ out with insanely intricate solos, Prince has now turned his hand to curbing music piracy. His target of choice seems a tad odd, though: eBay. He says the auction service is willingly cranking out bootlegs and unauthorized merch thanks to the number of nefarious eBay sellers that are willing to peddle the stuff. It seems YouTube is also a target – and seeing as YouTube is a lightning rod for pretty much everything bad online these days, that makes a little more sense.
I’ve nothing against Prince. I like some of his music, but he seems a little late to the party when it comes to fighting music piracy. Though maybe this will bring Metallica back out of the woodwork. Almost nothing’s funnier than listening to Lars Ulrich complain how Napster stiffed him for millions.
Scary flower leaches onto symbiotic PC
In this era of green technology, it’s gratifying to see a PC that makes your garden grow. Or in this case, makes a flower hooked up to a USB port grow. It looks like something out of a David Cronenberg movie, but maybe that’s the point. A purple plant, cocooned in a plastic shell, receives warmth from a USB-powered grow-light and the associated software reminds you of when it’s time to water the little sucker. It all seems innocent enough, but as others have pointed out (thank you, Engadget) your computer must on on 24×7 for this thing to work at all.
Aside from that, it looks cool. Expect early adopters to be pot growers. Those guys are always looking for innovative things to do with weed, plus the plastic shell could possible double as a bong.
Crappy enviro-PC underwhelms
Speaking of green technology, the cause is not helped particularly by the appearance of this object. More reminiscent of a hi-fi speaker from 1979 than an actual PC box, it claims to be “green” by cutting down on power consumption, as the deliriously long review explains.
Underpowered at 512MB of RAM and expensive at more than $600, expect this hunk of crap to moulder on store shelves for the foreseeable future, only to become decidedly un-green landfill when retailers are finally forced to ditch their inventory. This thing got a decent review on the site in question, but I fail to see why.
Perhaps because in the U.K. – where a pint of beer will run you in the $10-range, and a moderate drinking habit is a good enough reason to sell off one of your kids to Madonna – $600 for a crappy PC is considered a deal.
Hey, I’m all about environmentalism, but it’s time someone tackled the underlying cause of the PC problem (massively hot components that require constant cooling) rather than finding shortcuts.