The font came before the PS3, so I think it's clear that someone at Sony likes the font so they stuck with it.

Remember Spider Man 2 was originally the pack-in UMD for the PSP. I guess Sony really likes Spider Man.

I think the Spidey font works well for the movies, but it's a little goofy that they're using the same exact font for the official PS3 logo. Of course, on the long list of problems that I have with the PS3, the choice of font is way at the bottom.

It just seems like a really amateur design move.

--they couldnt think of a better font?
--the clueless guys in suits saw the spidey poster and said "hmm use that!"
--too cheap to make up a whole new font?
--too many people calling the shots and the guy who approved it had no clue its the same font

But I agree, how well the damn thing works is much more important than whats on the outside.

Out of boredom at work I got to thinking about the "Entitlements." Not only is it a piss poor ripoff of the Achievement system on the 360, but it is just a bad term in general.

en‧ti‧tle‧ment
1. the act of entitling.
2. the state of being entitled.
3. the right to guaranteed benefits under a government program, as Social Security or unemployment compensation.

Entitlement sounds like something that is automatically guaranteed to you, not something that is "achieved" through hard work and determination.

But maybe that's just me.

Sounds like a social issue. Ascribed vs Achieved status.

Look ma! I remember something from Sociology!

Can we blame it on 'Engrish'?

Or they jumped at seeing the '-title-' in the middle of the word?

Sadly much of this launch doesnt look well thought out. Im hoping though, that if their online service is free, it will pressure xbox to do the same.

No, I agree. Best alternative would be 'Accomplishments' but I suppose that starting with an 'a' would be even more obvious that it's a stolen idea.

Actually, I'm not so sure that I support a free service the more I think about it. Since most online stats are tied to a gamertag, with a free service, what's to stop a player who achieves a certain level of skill from just deleting thier online account and starting a new one? Take Battlefield for the 360 for example, or Halo for that matter, goods players would be able to "de-rank" almost immediately and would ruin the expierence for new players that are just getting the feel for a particular game. I know that they drop thier stats to do this today, but at least they have to put some effort in losing their stats in order to do it. With a free system, what stops them from "hitting reset" at any particular time?

Exactly. I also like the thought that if some asshat actually does get his account shutdown it was hopefully a paid account and not a free 2 month card.

Could simply tie it to the hardware, thats what Nintendo does and it prevents this. I suppose someone could go buy another console if they really wanted to, but its likely easier to just use another credit card for the 360 for alternate profiles.

Only works if they don't allow multiple accounts per console. However, I doubt they would do this because, unlike a handheld such as the DS, many consoles are shared with different family members. I'm not criticizing Sony, but a free online system, in my opinion, would be a disaster just like PS2 online. Who's going to buy another console? Nobody, but if all you have to do is delete an account and get a new "gamertag", that will happen quite a bit. I see this as a possible "Yahoo" situation. I must have a dozen Yahoo email accounts, not to mention Gmail and Hotmail. When I need to sign up on a site with a different email address, I just go to Yahoo and set up another BS account. Simple as that.

The difference on the 360 is that they have to invest another $50 to "start over". I would love for online to be free on all consoles, but if the PS2 is any indication of Sony's commitment to online gaming, then I am very skeptical about their implementation of a "real" service.

Besides, the reason we're paying for Xbox live is for network upkeep and so on. Sure, paying for marketplace purchases also goes towards this, but the way I see it, the only way for Sony to make money from a free live service is to have all of the downloads be for purchase, and at higher prices than on the Xbox. Not only that, since Sony HAS to have that revenue for upkeep, it could get to the point where they require developers to purposely leave items out that must be bought online.

Edit: Of course that's just my speculation and it may not come to pass, but Sony has to get that money from somewhere.

I know its a cliche but, you get what you pay for.

Boy, I'm glad I'm really not interested much in online gaming.

You know, I had another thought on the free online gaming. Another thing that is better about a pay service is that you don't have every little punk with a console ruining the game for you. The difference with a pay service is that you have to want to play online in order to shell out for the service. I'm not a "hardcore" gamer by any means, but if I'm playing Battlefield or Team Slayer on Halo I don't want to have my expierence ruined by people killing me on my own team. Sure there are plenty of punks with mommy and daddy footing the $50 bill for service and not everyone has broadband, but could you imagine if everyone that had a console and broadband jumped online? It would be a nightmare that would probably kill the service.

I just read that this thing dosen't have a IR receiver, is that right? Even though I have reservations about it I'm thinking of picking one up at launch, but if that is correct how are we supposed to watch BD on it, with the controller?

That would make sense for the time being. In the future they might release a bluetooth one or something.

Some of the rejected logo ideas:

Virtua Tennis 3 runs at 1080p.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3153716

So, what is the release date? Has it been announced? Just curious

(CNN) -- Kids aiming to persuade their parents to buy the PlayStation 3 have some new ammunition -- donating their PS3's down time to researchers could help cure Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or mad cow disease.

This November, Sony's PS3, with a price tag from $499 to $599, will challenge Microsoft's XBox 360 and Nintendo's Wii in a battle royale for holiday dollars when it hits stores in the United States and Japan.

The PS3 uses a powerful new processor called the Cell Broadband Engine to run highly realistic games like "Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07," "Metal Gear Solid 4" and "Full Auto 2." It also has a 20GB or 60GB hard drive (depending on the model) and can connect to the Internet either wirelessly, or with an Ethernet hookup so gamers can download new programs and take each other on.

The PS3's chip is the same one IBM is using in a supercomputer it's building for the Department of Energy. That computer is expected to reach speeds of one pentaflop, or 1,000 trillion calculations per second. (Full story)

"It has so much horsepower and, of course, when you're playing a game all that horsepower will be used for the game. But there are a lot of times during the day when somebody's not playing the game," said Sony's Richard Marks. "It seemed like a good idea to be able to use that horsepower for something else that is, in this case, good for mankind."

Sony worked with Stanford University's Folding@home project to harness the PS3's technology to help study how proteins are formed in the human body and how they sometimes form incorrectly.

Improperly formed proteins are linked to a number of diseases, including Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gherig's disease, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, better known as mad-cow disease.

"What you can imagine is that if a machine was assembled incorrectly, it can do damaging things," said Vijay Pande, who runs the Stanford project. "You can imagine a car that's screwed up and someone tries to drive it, then maybe it crashes into things and causing problems."

Proteins start out in the body as long strings of amino acids and have to assemble themselves into complex shapes -- a process scientists call folding -- before they can do anything. The challenge for scientists is that folding is difficult to observe because proteins are so small and the process is so fast -- about 10 one-millionths of a second.

Scientists are using computer simulations instead, but that has its own limitations. It takes about a day for a computer to simulate a nanosecond (one-billionth of a second) so it would take about 30 years for that computer to complete one simulation.

Folding@home uses a network of about 200,000 personal computers to simulate how proteins assemble themselves. Dividing the complicated calculations into smaller packets enables the computers to do jobs that would strain the most powerful supercomputers.

"These calculations that we have to do are very challenging. Even if we were given all of the supercomputer resources in the country we still would not be able to do the types of things that we can do with folding@home," said Vijay Pande, who runs the Stanford project.

A network of PS3s would run even faster. Pande said that a network of 10,000 PlayStations would increase speeds by a factor of five, and 100,000 would be 50 times faster than what they can do today.

"It turns two years into one month, and that's a huge thing for us," he said. "It's more than us just being impatient, there are calculations that we don't run right now because any calculation that would take more than two or three years, we don't even start it."

To participate, users will just download a program into the PS3's hard drive. Then they just need to leave the machine on when they're not playing. The Folding@home team will divide their complex calculations into manageable chunks and then send it to the participating machines. The program and data will take up 10 to 20 megabytes - or about the size of a handful of MP3 files, Pande said.

When the PS3 is done processing its chunk it will send the data back.

Makers say the program won't run when someone is using the PS3, because it might bog down the game.

Sony says it plans to sell about 2 million PS3s in the United States and Japan before the end of the year, and 6 million worldwide by next March.

Since all of those units are pretty much the same, developers did not have to make compromises that would slow the Folding@home program down.

"You don't really know what you're getting on any given PC, so you have to write the program in a general way so that it will run on weaker machines and stronger systems, Marks said. "They have to write programs sort of to the lowest common denominator, whereas on our system it can be finely tuned to completely leverage what we have."

The PS3 also has a graphic chip that lets users watch the protein as it folds and from different angles, said Klaus Hofrichter, another Sony developer.

"These interfaces are very nice looking, very scientific in a certain way. ... You can use the controller and navigate around," Hofrichter said.

That might make people more likely to download and run the program, Pande said.

All PS3s connect to the Internet, and Sony plans to make it easy for gamers to get the program when they go online, Marks said.

"What we want is for people just to have to make the decision to contribute electricity and benefit mankind," Marks said.

Sounds cool but I'm staring at a $600 console. You want to use my console to cut your workload by 2000%.* Put some money where your mouth is. They put a positive spin on it, "we could cure a disease!" but the likelyhood of that happening is still nil.

I pay the electric bill for having that PS3 on 24 hours a day as well as the $600 for a console. Give me $10-$20 off a game or something.

*random number

Nov 17th, I think.

I thought it was an Onion article at first until I double checked and it came from CNN...huh.

I see this as no different than the "We can't export these because the chip is so powerful that Saddam could gain nuclear technology with it." It seems pretty weak to me. And if it could really help cure those things, drug companies would gladly buy all 2 million that are suppose to be out by the end of the year at full price.

It's like people thinking that pop can tops can cure breast cancer.