If we fail, it is because we positioned PS3 as the Mercedes of the video game field

An interview with Howard Stringer, CEO and President of Sony Corporation of America. Most of the info there is well known: How Sony's departments and engineering efforts were too fragmented for years, how politics made or broke products, how it lost the digital music media war before it even started. What really caught my attention is the fact that they still don't seem to know what's wrong with them. Take the PS3 quote from Stringer, for example. My response to it would be: I don't think so. If you fail, it'll be because you were arrogant enough to promise the world and didn't deliver, too late to respond and frighteningly incompetent with your marketing. Technically the PS3 is the Mercedes of the video game field. And if you are really keen on automobile metaphors, part of the problem is that it's too expensive and has a rev limiter at 2500 RPM despite its 700 horsepower, bi-turbo engine.

Google SoC 2007 and the projects that I care about.

It’s the third year that Google sponsors students to work on Open Source projects during their summer vacation. The programme is called ‘Google Summer of Code‘ or GSoC and attracts the attention of many of the most prominent open source projects around; projects that are typically non-commercial and that would otherwise have little chance of […]

We have the opportunity for an all-new automotive DNA based on electric motors and fuel cells

A short interview with GM's vice president for R&D, Larry Burns, on the reinvention of the motor and by extension the car. GM sees 2010-2015 as the window for low-volume commercialisation of cars powered by electric motors and fuel cells. I find it interesting to see how the 'ethanol craze' is going to compete with fuel cells in the US, Europe and --- most importantly --- China, where emissions are skyrocketing.

Has Satch lost it?

I first listened to Joe Satriani when I was in high-school, in 1995. At first I found his music pleasantly different from either the hair-metal 80s kitsch (even though some of his early stuff are clearly influenced by the æsthetics of the time) or, the fashionable genre of the time, grunge. Much of Satriani’s music can […]

SciGen: Automated CS Paper Generation

Getting a research paper accepted at a conference or journal can be a very funny process, if you don't take it seriously. Politics, abused-postgraduates forced to review papers they don't understand, senior academics who don't care and who are obliged to review papers they don't understand and so on, make modern academia the surreal experience it is. Some of us at Imperial, have been joking about having an automated paper generator for many years. Well, it seems some guys at MIT did it and one of their 'generated' papers was accepted as a 'non-reviewed paper' at a conference. :)

e-Passports and the RFID Chaos.

Ever since I first travelled abroad on an airplane as a young boy, I found it interesting to observe the screening and security procedures at airports, train stations and borders. Customs/Immigration officers typically peruse a travel document, be it a passport or visa for less than 20 seconds before handing it back to its owner. […]