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The big wigs at Warner Bros. have decided on a new DVD strategy that honestly will piss more people off in the long run that help but I am sure the WB is just figuring that people will just buy the movies because they are so good. They are delaying all new DVD movie releases from being available on your favorite rental services like Netflix, Blockbuster and Redbox. The companies would have to wait 56 days from release to be able to rent it out. The companies could buy the DVD’s out right and be able to have them for rent day one but that would be too expensive. Now companies like WB are trying to get more people to buy their properties instead of renting them, well let me tell you something moves like this is exactly why there is piracy in this world. The outright greed that greed that WB has to hurt the consumer by making them pay for a DVD that they normally get from their rental services is just ignorant in my mind and is why the media corporations are so screwed up and why they will never win the fight against piracy. They need to stop being greedy and work together to help make things more cost effective to the consumer and not bully consumers into buying their products. I hope this blows up in the face of the WB and they change their strategy. I would love to hear from you readers and if you agree or disagree with my stance and why.

So with the known fact that the Wii U will be on sale this holiday season and Nintendo is reporting some major losses. The full fiscal year of 2011 was a loss for the major video game company. They are looking at about a 65 billion yen loss which equals about an $835 million dollar loss and it also had to change its sales estimates for final part of the period. The 3DS at 16 million between April 2011 and March 2012 but Nintendo will be around 14 million in sales. The Wii sold over 94 million units to date. It looks like the holiday season can’t come soon enough to the people over at Nintendo and hopes that the Wii U will be there for the holiday season and that the sales should be high for a system from Nintendo that will actually have HD.

In my quest to the find the fun and unique tech stuff sometimes I come across stuff that I think might actually be a pretty good idea. A company by the name of Boxee has been getting people to stream TV shows and movies for some time now through the PC. Now you could also get a Boxee box in which you could stream the same stuff from the computer onto your TV. Well this new little piece does require you to have a Boxee box but is pretty cool if you are interested in not paying for cable but still want to get your local channels. With this you just plug it into the back of your Boxee and it will give you the ability to watch Live over the air TV. With Boxee currently you could just watch what was available through the service but now you have the ability to watch local channels as well and that is big. Especially for people trying to save a buck on high end antennas or have been thinking about purchasing cable. This for only $49.99 isn’t so bad and if you have Boxee I would recommend getting this as an addition to your Boxee Box.

For all of you Xbox Live gamers out there, news on the wire is that Microsoft is going to be discontinuing its online currency know as Microsoft points. This is not going to happen until the end of year according to most reports. This move is not only going to affect just the Xbox as it will change what developers do for the Windows Phone and also the Zune. The change will be exactly like how normal transactions would take place, it would be best on the region you are in and set up an account that will use real money instead of the Microsoft points. Obviously if you have Microsoft points on your account when the change is officially made you will have those points converted into your currency. Just for those who don’t know what the points are used for, they are there to make purchase of all kinds which include games, downloadable content for games you already own, clothes and accessories for your online avatar, and many more things. This is a big step for Microsoft but a good one, now if you want something you just buy it, unlike now where depending on what you want you will have to buy a certain number of points to get it. For example the minimum purchase on points is 400 which equals about $5. Most stuff for your avatar is going to be under 400, so will be around say 180 or 200. So if you want to make a single purchase for your avatar you are actually having to spend the $5 on 400 points to get something that is around 180 and yes your points stay with you but sometimes you just want to spend $2 and not $5. Thoughts?

Apple has done a bang up job in introducing the new college books to the iBooks platform. A book from McGraw-Hill sells its text books for normally around $75. If you wanted to get the electronic version from Apple you are looking $15 for the electronic book. The reason they can sell for so less is because there is no production cost and the volume is massive. Also once a student buys the text book it is theirs and it cannot be transferred over to another student which means no more used text book sales which means more for McGraw-Hill. Right now it has been reported that around 350,000 text books have been sold. iBooks seems to be starting off on the right foot here and I can see this saving students tons of money and making tons of money for publishers and Apple. I remember back in the day when I went to college and had a bill over $400 on text books, bring that down to around $100-150 now that is much more manageable. So what are your thoughts on this?

If you want to create a Google account normally you would just sign up with whatever email address you wanted and bam you were all set. Well now Google is making you create not only a gmail account but also a Google+ profile to sign up for a Google account. This looks like Google starting to mold their services together, mainly get as many people as possible to join Google+. Pictured above is what the new site looks like when wanted to start a Google account. It is very interesting that Google is basically forcing you to be part of Google+ and have a gmail account to use their services as an account. Google is really starting to mastermind something here and integrate everyone into Google+. What do you think?

The buzz today seems to be around the government of the US rocking the cyberlocker site megaupload. The reports are saying they not only seized its domain names but also took $50 million in assets, and got the police of New Zealand to arrest four of the sites major employees which also includes the Kim Dotcom. It seems this site megauploads earned $175 million since it was created back in 2005 which it is mainly based on copyright infringement. So with this big attack already in the works why does the government even want to try to make an act that attacks the freedoms of the internet? It looks like they have the ability to go after sites that are infringing on copyrights. Megauploads is a pretty big site and for the government being able to seize the domains and get the New Zealand police to arrest four of its employees makes me believe that SOPA’s true intentions is what we are all currently fighting for, no censorship of the internet and the freedom to speak. I want to keep a close eye on what happens here as this could make a major case for why SOPA doesn’t even need to be passed. If all of the big wigs in the government are looking to make this a act a law then let’s show them that there are already laws in place to protect copyrighted material on the internet and maybe the government needs to just do a better job of just compiling a cases on these sites that profit on infringing on copyrighted material.

In the fight against SOPA there were blackouts yesterday on many websites including Wikipedia and Craigslist although if you waited a minute you could still access Craigslist. Also Google put a black mark over their iconic name when trying to search for something. Well if you clicked on the black mark it would bring you to a site in which you had the ability to sign a petition in protest against the SOPA act. Just around 4.5 million people put their names to this petition in 1 DAY! We can only hope this day shows that we the people will not stand for these acts and bills that the government can’t push us around. This isn’t the first petition out there on SOPA but it seems so far to be the most effective. From what I have read at least 350,000 emails have been sent to representatives of the House and the Senate. Google also posted a graphic that 3 million Americans had signed various petitions against SOPA and PIPA.

As stated in yesterdays blog, Wikipedia is doing a 24 hour blackout of it’s English version of its website. Well even with most of the web not following suit there are a few sites that decided to join the cause, most notably outside of Wikipedia would be Craigslist. Now I have also read that a few tech blogs went black as well, including BoingBoing and Reddit. Google has also joined the fight but not shutting down its website but putting a black mark over the name Google and if you click on it there is a petition you can sign that shows your support against the SOPA. It is crazy to think that the government would actually pass this act seeing as how many are actually opposing this act. The goverment has to get their act together and really figure out a way in which the internet can still be a place for freedom and no censorship and still find a way to try and protect copyrighted material, the problem is, where is the middle ground on this?

So there have been reports that websites will be going dark in protest to the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy ACT) . The cofounder of Wikipedia, has gone and done such a thing. Jimmy Wales is actually defending his decision to blackout the website across the world tomorrow. Unfortunately other companies are still not cool on the idea. The blackout will be for 24 hours, and it is going global. Even though this is an American battle within the government, many are worried that people will not be so happy around the globe as they would fear that a passing of such bill would make other countries think about their online piracy and make a move to make a similar act, in which case would make censorship global. However there was some debate on the Wikipedia side on if should of been just US vs. worldwide. It went to a vote and the globe won. Wikipedia is the sixth most visited site in the world, and as far as the English speaking people the shutdown will affect 100 million users as only the English version of the site will be down across the globe. It does look like the protests could be working as there are reports that the White has stated that it will not approve many key parts of the act. What this will do would just send it back to for another crack at making the act stick. So keep up the protests and maybe we can keep free speech on the internet.