The UpStream

People let's be honest here. Anyone who has been on the web more than a few times is familiar with Hentai and other forms of animated crazy Japanese sexual acts which I can't really describe in this article. This stuff has been around for a long time and has been one of those things that everyone knows about and has probably seen at some point but no one likes to admit it or talk about it. There is a U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women who are bringing this into the light by stating. "The sale of video games or cartoons involving rape and sexual violence against women which normalize and promote sexual violence against women and girls" must be legislated against at once. Their reasoning is that violence and sex in games, which is fake by the way, will promote real violence against women.

The Green Lantern was set to get going in Australia, lured there by a lot of tax incentives from the Australian government. Martin Campbell (director) had already scouted out locations in Sydney and Melbourne. Then, the unexpected happened. Australia's economy got stronger and their dollar rose in value. This means that filming in the exact same locations is going to cost the studio between $15 and 25 million more. Eek. According to InsideFilm:

It's official. This week, Microsoft confirmed rumors that the 360 would be getting a price cut, just hours before it happened. And, just as I predicted, the 360 Pro is no more. Xbox 360 Elite will be replacing the Pro in the $299 price point, and the Pro will be at $249 until the console is sold out, at which time it is done.

I do understand that Microsoft has seen the need for more internal storage and therefore the Elite is much better suited for today's gaming needs, but it seems odd to me that the Pro is the model leaving us, not the Arcade, and it is for the very same reason. The Arcade has very little internal storage, whereas the Pro at least has 60GB (which is better than the Premium that only had 20GB and was replaced by the Pro). If it had been my decision, I would have replaced the Arcade with the Pro, and the Pro with the Elite and nixed the Arcade.

What do you think about all this? Good move for Microsoft, or should the days of the Arcade be over?

The FCC believes that there might be a problem in the wireless industry. There are 4 wireless companies (Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile) that own over 90% of the market. Handset manufacturers setup exclusive deals with those carriers (such as the Palm Pre with Sprint or the iPhone with AT&T). The FCC feels that these setups might be inhibiting both innovation and consumer choice.

There are two sides to every story. The Media Access Project believes,

This investigation is long overdue... The country's four major wireless providers have enjoyed the fruits of market power for too many years, at the expense of the public's ability to gain widespread access to low-cost mobile broadband services.

On the other hand, the wireless trade group, CTIA, believes,

Our good friends over at Engadget just can't leave anything alone. They love numbers more than we do, so they test things. Lot of things. This week ,they tested the difference between the Blu-ray drive on the original PS3 and the PS3Slim. Guess what they found - the Slim's Blu-ray drive is slower than the original. Yucks.

We're actually a bit surprised by the results here, so we checked over these a few times. It seems that the PS3 Slim's Blu-ray player is actually a tiny bit slower than our 60GB PS3 classic from 2006, albeit not by much. The time between inserting the disc (listening for that last little 'click' sound) and having it register in the menu was pretty much the same ten seconds each time, but once you click on the disc and actually launch into the movie, the time it takes to get to a non-loading screen was seconds quicker on the classic. Not a drastic difference, but after so many years to improve theBD technology, you think they'd bother to add something with a little more pep here, and certainly not deliver something with less.

There is something happening in France that is causing their iPhones to explode. Let me give you a minute to let that sink in. Now that you have the image of a guy in a beret whose iPhone just exploded, let me continue. The problem is so big, apparently, that the French government has met with Apple about the problem. iLounge reported: