Posts by Interrobang

A "holiday present" for who?

So it's a feature which can only be used once a day, you say? How long until a paid-for option appears for extra "replays"? Yeah, Spiegel's just a fun, cool hipster dude, not looking to do a Zuckerberg at all, nosiree...

Because we said so?

"... the tech sector needs to get much, much better at recycling the metals it uses ..."

Why? Because scientists said so? The world runs on money; it will only happen if there is a financial imperative for these companies to do so.

Worst case I can see would be that accessible ores of one more metals dwindle, resulting in higher mining and production costs being passed on to manufacturers. At that point, the damage is already done and the known reserves are nearly exhausted (but that never happens, I mean we've still got plenty of forests and fish stocks left, right?)

If there really is a shortage problem to be addressed, it'll take governmental involvement at an international level to financially penalise misusue of (or incentivise frugal use of) the "endagered" metal. The worldwide distribution of these resources then becomes politically concerning:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tungsten_OR_wolfram_%28mined%292.PNG

Scientific research alone is not a sufficient driver for change...

History repeating?

Seems to me this is the way of things to come. The market drives games console manufacturers to produce hardware as cheaply and quickly as possible in order to meet demand, and as the hardware itself becomes more powerful and complex, it's inevitable that the failure rate will increase.

Microsoft and Sony seem equally plagued by this when releasing any new system, with Nintendo only slightly less affected (apparently less media attention, but from personal experience I've had to self-repair a seldom-used 1st generation Wii twice now for the same fault; failed optical drive). Unless we're willing accept lower volumes of hardware available at launch, and/or higher prices, I don't see the trend changing anytime soon.

I do think it's worth keeping this in perspective, insofar as the relatively small 0.4% of affected units Sony is claiming. Although I'm sure if I were one of the unlucky 4000, I'd take to the internet to voice my frustration. I wonder how many similar complaints went unreported during the www-free 8-bit gaming era, and earlier?