Filed under: Interviews

SCEE’s managing director Ray Maguire has stayed out of the spotlight compared to his cohorts Kaz Hirai, Peter Dille, Phil Harrison, and probably some other names we don’t remember. He sat down for an in-depth interview with Edge, but we’re here to shorten it up for you, though we strongly encourage you to read the whole thing. A bulleted list of the main points follows!

• Some babble on backwards compatibility being removed, which we’ve all heard and the matter’s been beaten to death with a blunt cudgel. A new item appears in the rationale for the move — the Cell chip. Ray says: “… how do we allocate things within the Cell chip? And there is a big cost involved with doing the software emulation. So it’s a cost issue, and - as we always do - we want to bring the price of the hardware down.”
• The decision to drop the 20GB PS3 from the European launch was a smart move, Maguire said, since they still had the biggest launch ever with just the 60GB. The reasoning? Europe is one of the “most successful territories in the world in terms of people’s propensity to [play videogames]” and so early adopters got what is still believed to be the best package — the 60GB PS3.
• The console library has come under scrutiny ever since launch and Maguire concedes this fact. However, he says, “it’s an area that’s starting to change.” He goes on to say how games are starting to run different on the PS3 in a good way, thanks to the standard hard drive (we’ll go into this idea more when we review Bladestorm early next week).

There’s plenty more discussion about Remote Play and third-party support in the coming months, but we don’t want to spoil everything for you! It’s a great read and showcases how the PS3 might try to change things around in 2008 with an ambitious library of titles lined up (some will probably get pushed back to 2009, in which case we’ll feign surprise and counter with “well, it’s still fiscal 2008″ and snub our noses like proud fanboys). Still, if we don’t buy the stuff, it won’t matter what Sony does.

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Filed under: Audio/Video, Computers, iPod

The Zune 2.0 update is officially upon us. And not just in the form of new players, but in software updates for old Zunes as well. The new Zune 2.0 hardware will be on store shelves tomorrow, but those of you with Zune 1.0’s can get a peak at the updates to the software now, by heading to Zune.net and downloading the firmware update.

The update will update your old 30-gigabyte Zune player with all the new Zune 2.0 features, including wireless sync-ing, Media Center compatibility and a redesigned interface.

Microsoft has also unveiled its Zune Originals page, where you can decorate your new Zune with laser-etched graphics and text. There will be 27 designs in the “Artist series” and 20 in the Tattoo series, all of which can be added to the Zune of your choice free of charge.

To be honest, this new Zune stuff makes Apple’s laser engraving of the iPod look a little lame.

From Engadget

Related Links:

• Microsoft to Launch Zune 2 Next Month
• Price Cut for Zune. Phone in the Works.
• Microsoft Sells One Million Zunes

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Filed under: Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Apple Inc (AAPL), Cisco Systems (CSCO), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Coca-Cola (KO), PepsiCo (PEP), Intel (INTC), Caterpillar (CAT), Corning Inc (GLW), Eaton Corp (ETN), Cramer on BloggingStocks, Technology

TheStreet.com’s Jim Cramer says a comment by the Cisco CEO about systems spending caused more damage than it should have.

Everyone thinks we lost tech. That’s because everyone was hiding in tech. They thought it was “safe.”

Perhaps we confused tech with Coke (NYSE: KO) (Cramer’s Take) and Pepsi (NYSE: PEP) (Cramer’s Take).

First, the root cause of all of this is the somewhat off-handed comment about how the financial services industry has cut back on spending for systems.

We never want to hear any company say anything about spending cuts by customers. It is intriguing that the only place where spending was hit was by these customers. It was enough to kill all tech, though.

Is it right? If tech hadn’t been so hyped and if tech wasn’t so linked to financial services, I don’t know how much we would be down.

I do know this. These stocks are all being taken out and shot on Chambers’ comments.

Oh, and it doesn’t help that the best ad-serving technology out there, Quigo, just got bought by AOL in a very smart move, thereby hampering the Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) (Cramer’s Take) case, which had been one of the best in tech.

I think that is an overreaction, of course. But we are no longer in earnings season, so the defenses won’t come easy. You can’t expect other tech firms to come out and say, “Chambers is wrong,” because he isn’t.

To me, what you have to do is decide whether every other tech company is as beholden to this particular part of the business.

Or, to get less emotional about it, is Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) (Cramer’s Take) Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT) (Cramer’s Take), which is uniquely levered to housing, and are we selling Emerson (NYSE: EMR) (Cramer’s Take), Eaton (NYSE: ETN) (Cramer’s Take) and Parker Hannifin (NYSE: PH) (Cramer’s Take) (52-week high) because of it? Are we selling Ingersoll (NYSE: IR) (Cramer’s Take), which has gone out of its way to say it isn’t CAT, because of it?

I would try to find the stocks in tech that have less exposure: Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) (Cramer’s Take), Corning (NYSE: GLW) (Cramer’s Take), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) (Cramer’s Take), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) (Cramer’s Take) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) (Cramer’s Take) say, and watch them as test cases to see when we bottom.

Only after we catch a bottom in those can we safely wade in the water.

Watch and wait. Because right now the innocent are all guilty. We need to be sure who isn’t, before we can pull the trigger.

Jim Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com’s sites and serves as an adviser to the company’s CEO. At the time of publication, Cramer was long Caterpillar and Hewlett-Packard.

RELATED LINKS

Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street

Jim Cramer’s Portfolios of the Week

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Filed under: Dinner, Poultry, On the Blogs, How To, Roasting

Two nights ago, I found myself on the phone with my mother, trying to describe how one cooks duck breast. I had been telling her about a dinner I had with friends on Saturday night and the amazingly scrumptious duck I had eaten. She admitted that the only time in her life she remembers eating duck was once, as a Chinese restaurant, about 25 years ago. She hadn’t been impressed then and just stayed away. I talked her through the whole process, but I could just tell that she wasn’t sold.

However, thanks to Brys over at Cookthink, there now exists a perfect picture tutorial to show you how to go about pan roasting a duck breast. It is concise, complete and totally hunger-inducing. So go forth and cook duck breast without fear!

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It is really interesting that there is not a clear choice in the mid-range ($150-$200) when it comes to noise-cancelling headphones. The Bose are said to be the best, but most people don’t want to pay for them. At $330, The Sennheiser PXC 350 is priced comparatively to the Bose QuietComfort 3 and I can only trust Sennheiser to have made it at least as good or better, but I really don’t know. The Sennheiser PXC 350 comes in black or silver. Compare prices 

Frequent travelers: which noise cancelling headphones do you prefer?

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Recently I’ve been working on a SitePoint project: The Ultimate CSS Reference (Coming soon! If you’re into CSS it’s going to rock your world). While researching the shadowy corners of the web for traces of arcane CSS lore, I’ve realized that a lot of information about CSS on the web is in dire need of an update.

Between 2001 and the present we’ve had an explosion in knowledge and general understanding of CSS, the web is full of tutorials, articles and blog posts written during this era of enlightenment. But, time moves on and browsers improve. The level of CSS support in modern browsers is pretty darn good and just as an intimate knowledge of CSS hacks is fast becoming redundant so is a lot of that material. In fact, some of it is down right misleading and your search results are bound to be chock full of well intentioned, but out-of-date information.

Among the pages of arcane CSS lore you’ll find something called the CSS cascade; the thing that ultimately decides what each element’s style will eventually be. It has a reputation for being difficult to understand and is often the cause of those frustrating, obscure CSS problems when what happens in the browser is nothing like what you were expecting to happen. The amount of misinformation on the web certainly doesn’t help, so this is my small effort to correct the situation: putting to rest two of the biggest myths about the CSS Cascade.

Myth: Embedded styles take priority over external styles and inline styles take priority over embedded styles.

As far as browsers are concerned it makes no different how CSS is linked to a document; all three of these methods are considered to have the same origin: the author style sheet. What causes one to overwrite the other has nothing to do with how they are linked to the document.

If importance and specificity are equal the only thing that matters is source order; when a style sheet link element appears after the style element (the embedded style), in the document’s head, the external styles overwrite the embedded styles. I think this myth developed because generally people put their link elements before their style elements.

Inline styles overwrite identical style declarations in other style sheets only because they have a higher specificity (see below), but important declarations (see below as well) overwrite inline styles no matter where the declarations come from—even external style sheets.

Myth: Specificity can be represented by a total score.

You’ve probably seen this formula before:

specificity = number of IDs * 100 + number of classes * 10 + number of elements * 1

So a selector like p.introduction would have a selector score of 11 (10 + 1). While certainly easy to understand it can be very misleading; you may begin to think that if you have 10 element names in your selector then it’s equivalent to 1 class name and that’s just plain wrong. This myth is probably the legacy of the badly worded explanations in the older CSS1 and 2 specs.

1 ID selector will always have a higher specificity than any number of class selectors, even a million class selectors! Once the cascade reaches the point of having to sort two or more property declarations by specificity, it does so like this:

1. Is one an inline style? It wins! If none are inline proceed to b.
2. Count the number if IDs in the selectors. The highest score wins! Same score? Proceed to c.
3. Count the number of attributes, class names and pseudo-classes. The highest score wins! Same score? Proceed to d.
4. Count the number of element names or pseudo-elements. The highest score wins!

If they have the same score in the last step then they have the same specificity and source order dictates which one wins (the one that comes last in the source).

The CSS2.1 specification would have expressed the result of the counting above in the form a,b,c,d (a = 1 if true, 0 otherwise). So an inline style has a specificity of 1,0,0,0 while a selector like p.introduction has a specificity of 0,0,1,1 (one class and one element name). You can’t just remove the commas.

This also puts to rest a few other minor misconceptions:

• Wrong: A child selector like div>p has a higher specificity than a descendant selector: div p. From the process above you can see that combinators are not even included; they make no difference. Those two selectors have the same specificity 0,0,0,2 (2 element names). The universal selector: *, is also ignored.
• Wrong: A selector like #someid has a higher specificity than p#someid because the ID selector comes first. The order makes no difference, just count the number of components in the selector. #someid has a specificity of 0,1,0,0 and p#someid has a higher specificity of 0,1,0,1.
• Wrong: an !important declaration has a higher specificity than a normal one. As you’ll see below, specificity has nothing to do with it.
• Wrong: an inherited property has a lower specificity than a declared one. Again, as you’ll see below, specificity has nothing to do with it. In fact inheritance has nothing to do with the cascade at all!

Gettin’ Cozy With The Cascade

The CSS cascade is easier to understand than you think, and once you get it, your understanding of CSS takes a huge leap.

Here’s the cascade in 4 simple steps; this is the process that occurs for each CSS property for each web page element:

1. Gather all the declarations for the property from all sources. This includes default browser styles and custom user styles, as well as author style sheets. If there is more than one, proceed to 2.
2. Sort the declarations by importance and origin in the following order (from lowest to highest priority):
   1. user agent style sheets (default browser styles)
   2. normal declarations in a user style sheet (a user’s custom style sheet)
   3. normal declarations in an author style sheet (web page style sheets; external, embedded, and inline styles)
   4. !important declarations in an author style sheet
   5. !important declarations in a user style sheet

   The one with the highest priority wins. If more than one have the same priority then proceed to 3.

3. Sort by selector specificity (see the process above). The one with the most specific selector wins. If no clear winner, proceed to 4.
4. The one that comes last in the source wins!

If the cascade does not set a CSS property on an element, then the browser will fall back to using an inherited property from the element’s parent (this only happens for some properties), otherwise the property is set to the CSS default value.

That’s it! Not too difficult eh? Now you understand something about CSS that once only the gurus knew! Now, if you’re game, get up and dance a jig to celebrate. I certainly did!

*runs around with t-shirt over head, hands in the air, screaming WOOOOHOOOOO!*

OK, try not to picture that in your head…

If you want to really get to know CSS in a way that won’t melt your brain try the SitePoint video: The CSS Video Crash Course.

This article provided by sitepoint.com.

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Filed under: Action, Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Casting, Paramount, RumorMonger, Fandom, Newsstand, Remakes and Sequels, Images

Perhaps the oddest bit of Star Trek XI casting has been unveiled today, courtesy of Variety, and it has to do with Winona Ryder (of all people) landing the role of Spock’s (Zachary Quinto) mom, Amanda Grayson. Freaky. I wonder if they’ll be at least one “Dude, Spock, your mom is, like, totally hot!” The way the story goes is Grayson was a schoolteacher on Earth when she married a Vulcan diplomat named Sarek, and then later gave birth to Spock. So yeah, Ryder will just be playing some chick from earth — how much fun is that? Still, it’s a very odd role for her — one I’m sure isn’t very large — considering the gal hasn’t starred in a major commercial flick since … 2002’s S1m0ne? Or how about 2002’s Mr. Deeds? But she did throw on the duds for Alien: Resurrection, so we know the sci-fi is in her blood, somewhere.

In related Star Trek XI news, the first spy photos from the set have leaked online. Ah, I always love it when the first spy photos for a major film hit the net — especially when it’s a Paramount film, because Paramount goes to such great lengths to hide stuff from everyone. Case in point: IESB managed to get a hold of these photos of extras shooting out of some sort of warehouse. But since the studio knows spies are everywhere, they’re making all of the actors and extras dress in long black trenchcoats … with hoods. So when you see them, all packed together, they look like some bizarre cult heading off to sacrifice a virgin or … William Shatner. One of the actresses on set looks just like House’s Jennifer Morrison, and IESB claims she might be playing Janice Rand (a role that was rumored to be going to Rachel Nichols). Personally, all this makes my head spin — I’m still trying to get over Ryder’s casting. Winona Friggin’ Ryder. As Spock’s mom! Do you dig it?

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Filed under: Cellphones

HTC just went live with their Touch Cruise. “Touch” as in that TouchFLO interface, “Cruise” as in GPS-enabled. The third addition to HTC’s Touch lineup packs HSDPA, WiFi, Bluetooth, a 3 megapixel camera, microSD expansion, and a 2.8-inch touch-screen lying on top of a Windows Mobile 6 foundation. Oh, and it’s loaded with TomTom Navigator 6 software to make the most of that GPS receiver. Yup, everything mostly what we thought it would be. Available this month from European retailers or SIM-free direct from HTC.

Update: We’re still digging but HTC was a bit unkind by not providing specific country launch information or supported radio bands. At the moment, this looks like Europe-only.

Update 2: Good news, specs are now posted and it’s quad-band GSM like we originally heard with HSDPA/UMTS riding 2100MHz for Europe and 850/1900MHz for the ol’ US. Hoozah!
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[Via Pocket-lint]

Read — Press Release [warning: PDF]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: Interviews

Another interview took place where Mark Rein, the man behind Epic Games’ Unreal Tournament 3, chatted about the PlayStation 3 version of the game as well as some other bits. A lot of the information is redundant, such as keyboard and mouse support and the lack of cross-platform play (unless you own the PC and PS3 versions, you can use your PC as a dedicated server and move all the mods and such from the PC to the PS3).

What Mark hadn’t talked about before was the Sixaxis. It will be used, but only to steer the hoverboard and Redeemer. He didn’t say if there was an option to turn the controls off, but we’d imagine so. Another thing he mentioned was the reason for the PS3 version’s delay. The PS3 version has to go through a lot of certification processes, and those are taking longer than anticipated. Nothing wrong with the code or any difficulties working with the PS3.

There’s a lot more information in the interview, especially if you’re predominantly a PC gamer. Talks of PhysX ensue and the jargon started to go over our heads. Still, we know our readership isn’t solely Sony supporters, thus our heads up to you guys to check out the interview if you’re curious about that.

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