SONY Boss Speaks up for PS3

Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios president Phil Harrison has claimed that Microsoft's Xbox 360 "doesn't have true HD functionality," saying that consumers seeking a HD experience will have to wait for the PS3 to arrive.

Speaking exclusively to GamesIndustry.biz this week, in an interview to be published tomorrow, Harrison described the Xbox 360 as "a lot better than their [Microsoft's] first introduction to the console business," but questioned the console's claim to being a High Definition device.

"The true definition of HD is the three elements of the HD value chain - the display, the content and the hardware to play back that content," he explained, "and PlayStation and Sony is the only organisation that has all three bits of the value chain together."

"As you well know," he continued, "the Xbox 360 doesn't play high definition movies and doesn't have true HD functionality - PlayStation 3 is the only format that has 1080-progressive, which is the true definition of HD, so it's really premature to be talking about the HD era."

"The HD era really only starts when we are on the market," he concluded.

The Key To My Heart

This is what www.blogthings.com generated for me.

• You are attracted to those who are unbridled, untrammeled, and free.
• In love, you feel the most alive when things are straight-forward, and you're told that you're loved.
• You'd like to your lover to think you are optimistic and happy.
• You would be forced to break up with someone who was emotional, moody, and difficult to please.
• Your ideal relationship is open. Both of you can talk about everything... no secrets.
• Your risk of cheating is zero. You care about society and morality. You would never break a commitment.
• You think of marriage as something that will confine you. You are afraid of marriage.
• In this moment, you think of love as something you don't need. You just feel like flirting around and playing right now.

You can give it a try at -

The Key to Your Heart

BUZZ...a short story

The morning sun has just bathed the small and dark room of Ravi with bright light. His mother has just pushed the window curtains apart and shook him awake with a grin on her face. Ravi liked to be woken up with the dazzling sunlight washing his dreams away and her mothers smiling face opening the doors to the new beginning. In just half an hour he got ready for his college with ironed blue jeans and full sleeve shirt whose sleeves are folded up to the elbow covering his wheat colored skin and his hair perfectly combed with the help of a little hair gel. He checks himself out in the mirror to find a young, average looking guy in his twenties with a prominent nose.

Before his mom would lay the dining table with the freshly cooked brunch – roti and sabji – Ravi as always decided to check his mails. As he booted the machine and tried to connect to his ISP, he was facing problem which he soon rectified to be the broadband cable unplugged from its socket in the back of the cabinet. “Mom, how many times did I ask you to tell the maid to clean my room and especially the back of the computer table more carefully than anything else. She managed to clean it so hard to disconnect the internet cable again.” His mother is so preoccupied with her chores that she easily manages to ignore Ravi’s complain. Expecting no response from his mother, Ravi has already plugged in the cable and started with the surfing. After checking his mails, Ravi clicks his favorite icon whose name says “Yahoo! Messenger”. When he sees that none of his friends are online he tries to fish somebody out by sending a group message, ‘You can talk to me, if you are trying to be invisible’. A weird message but young people like Ravi have weird friends who set their stealth settings as ‘Invisible’ to avoid interaction but when somebody sends a message as Ravi then they tend to show up as if the other person can actually see him and has found out that he is trying to hide. Nothing of this sort happened today. Instead an unexpected event occurred.

A window popped open on Ravi’s monitor followed by an irritating ding vibrating in his speakers. The message in the window said -

“Niz: BUZZ “

“Niz: Hi! How did you find out that I am trying to hide.:)”

Niz! Ravi thought. His friends list did not contain any such contact. He typed

“Ravi: I don’t recognize you.”

“Niz: You don’t know me. I have found out your id from a website. I felt like talking to you. Therefore, I pinged you”

Ravi thought that this might be someone or some Bot marketing there website or product. People have adapted to such kind of marketing strategies now-a-days. However, for reasons unknown to him he kept the conversation on and had started inquiring into the person. Soon, he found out that the girl on the other keyboard was Nisha better known as Niz in web communities. She was a student of first year arts at KWM college. They both belonged to the same city. She found out about Ravi on a friend finder website when she searched people from her city. After having a 30 minute long chat when they talked about college and studies and weather and everything unnecessary, Ravi was quite convinced that she is a normal and interesting girl and no marketing Bot or sales girl. But, his food was laid and he had to leave for the college after the breakfast. He told her that he will be online in the night and they can chat at that time. She agreed and Ravi left for the college.

Ravi was thinking about Nisha the entire day and desperately wanted to talk more. He returned earlier in the evening canceling all his important appointments with friends at hang outs full of gorgeous girls. He told his mother that he doesn’t want to be disturbed and went to confines of his room and booted his machine. He quickly searched for Niz in his friends list and found that she is offline as the icon showed her. He still pinged her and when no reply came for 5 minutes and 7 Buzz’s he thought that she is genuinely not there or she is not interested. In the very next moment a window popped open.

“Niz: BUZZ”

“Niz: Hi! U there? I just came, saw ur message”

They chatted for 4 continuous hours. They yakked about the university exams, Hrithik’s career, Rani’s acting in Black, Sania’s tennis strokes, Kartikeyan’s strategy and his chances of winning Formula-1 in next 5 years. They spoke about their friends, teachers, subjects and hangouts of their city. They wondered how they both were present at a place at the same time. They found that they had many similar interests and yet they both had different opinions on certain topics. They spoke about crushes, ‘girlfriends’, ‘boyfriends’ and love. Ravi displayed her many different snaps of his in the chat window using ‘display image’ property of the IM. When he asked for her snap she said she doesn’t have any in digital format. Ravi shifted her id from normal list of friends to a newly created category – very special friend.

In the next few days Ravi was spending more and more time in front of the machine than doing anything else. He used to talk to Nisha in the beginning of the day to the end of it. His speakers played all romantic classic songs of 80’s and 90’s by Elton John, Chris de Burges, Anand Millind, Jatin-Lalit all the time. And he was not checking his mails too. All he did apart from eating and attending college was tapping the keys of his keyboard interrupted constantly by a thumping noise of hitting the ‘return’ key. Ravi was surely in love. It seemed like Nisha was feeling the same thing since even she used to be always there or would show up in few minutes whenever he wanted to talk to her, i.e., all the time. It appeared like they both were following a very well synchronized life. After such long chat relationship, Ravi wanted to take it a little further and wanted to meet Nisha.

It was a Tuesday night. It was thunderously raining and the moon was hiding under the thick cover of clouds. Ravichecked the weather to find a moon since he wanted to get a little inspired before he typed his feelings to Nisha. Just when he sat in front of the machine after closing the curtains, a chime filled the speakers indicating a new message in the IM window. He closed the browser window where his e-mail site was not opening up. In fact no website was opening for last 2 days except the messenger where he only spoke to Niz. He switched to the IM window.

“Niz: BUZZ”

“Ravi: Nisha, I wanted to say this for long…I think…no…I know…I love you…I want to meet you…what say?”

After typing and sending it in, Ravi was nervously staring the monitor. The chime came after a minute.

“Niz: Ravi…Even I think you are more than just a friend for me…where can we meet?”

Ravi was dancing like a small kindergarten kid who just finished his school and is running towards the way to his home. It was during this waltz of jubilation that he saw something dangling off his computer table. When he further examined it more closely he realized that it the broadband cable. He immediately called his mother to ask if the maid had cleaned the room again.

”It’s not the maid. The broadband cable guy visited again. He wanted to check whether the fault with the connection is fixed or not. He may have left it unplugged.” said his mother.

“Fault, what fault?” Ravi enquired.

“The fault they are trying to recover from last 2 days. Our complex is not receiving the broadband services.”

“What are you talking about? I am using the net now and I used it yesterday also.” Ravi retorted.

“I don’t know then. Maybe the fault is finally fixed. I don’t care Ravi. I have got other works to do. Anyway, I never understood these computers and internets of yours.”

Ravi was in a shock. He cannot believe what he just heard. At that very moment the chime came again.

“Niz: BUZZ”

“Niz: Tell me the venue…smarty…and tell me what u want me to wear.”

Ravi was horrified. He just stared at the message and then back again at his hand holding the broadband cable. His hand was shaking and he started sweating. An earsplitting thunder struck outside his window and the speakers chimed again.

“Niz: I love you Ravi…I really do…oh!...u don’t know how I am feeling”

“Niz: :)”

From Hari to Shyam…Chetan has evolved highly as a writer

Do these names used in the title ring a bell? Well it certainly did when I was reading (analyzing) the books by the hottest thing around...Chetan Bhagat. Even the Bajrang Dal people would have distilled this out and I have done nothing great in doing so. All the names refer to Lord Vishnu and to be more specific are synonymous names of Lord Krishna. Anyways, this post is not about “the name link” that has been dug out. May be I will do it later since there is surely something about using names which have synonymous meanings to the name of the author as the names of the lead characters in his novels.

And now for those of you who are not aware of what I am speaking since last one paragraph, this post is about the hot shot writer of Indian subcontinent (feels so proud to say this), Chetan Bhagat and his latest book, One Night @ the Call Center. First, Five Point Someone and now One Night @ the Call Center. The back of the cover talks about a writer meeting a girl on a train and then the girl offers to tell the writer a story to pass the time only on the condition that he would turn it into a complete book. When the writer hesitates and asks to tell something about the story then the girl says that the story is about six people working in a call center and about the night when they got a call from GOD. Now since that was already there on the back of the cover, leaving that I will try not to give away anything of the story. But it sure sounds interesting. Isn’t it?

All those who read the first one are aware of the quality of humor and intricacy of relationships depicted by the author. I have just finished reading his new one and did I like it? You bet I loved it. It is one of the best I ever read. The story is a TATA Salt free flow. It has got 10 times better humor and much darker side at the same time (now Americans have finally got a perfect judge in the eyes or should I say in the words of Chetan Bhagat and his characters). Events are happening in a continuous manner in the span of the entire night and we get to know all the characters, their stories and how messed up their lives are. All the characters are painted in various colors and you can visit all aspects of human temperament while you get to know the six lead characters. The Prologue and epilogue both need a special mention owing to there very unique charm. Over here Chetan has spun a very interesting and short track. The only place I felt a little let down was the end sequence between the love couple of the story (I really don’t want to give away any of the story plots, therefore I am avoiding anything from the story). It seemed a little more dramatized as if we suddenely switched from Star One (airing a crossover movie like Everybody Says I’m Fine) to Star Plus (airing Sawaan Kumar Tak’s new so called movie). Now I don’t hate bollywood or something but I hate melodrama in any form and that is what Chetan does in the end sequence I’m talking about. I think that is there mainly for the help of the film director if even this book is decided to be turned into a movie like the first one. But, still if we leave that part then the book is a complete enchantment to read.

The beauty of Chetan Bhagat’s writing is that one can easily relate to the characters and find that the events being narrated are picked from their own lives. The characters are so very alive and real. They are all around you and inside you. The timing of the humor in the entire novel is flawless but apart from being comical the novel has much darker shade than the previous one with precise blend of rage and pain endured by the characters and the way they choose to let it out. As I named this post, the author has truly evolved as a writer with such a different and better story and a flawless narrative and a deep message. It is actually Chetan’s interpretation of the importance of dreams and desires of our heart and can be easily said to be a totally different way of telling what is told in the “The Alchemist”(by Paulo Coelho). What else guys? I am comparing it to an all time classic and take my word for it this book will become one such classic to have changed the ways of people’s lives forever. For those of you who can relate to Shyam and his friends, it will be a trip down memory lane and may be an eye opener of what you would have done in such a situation and for those who couldn’t relate, reading the book will be an experience to know more of the world and the difficulties faced by mortals belonging to different circles of the world. A perfect 10 on 10 since any Indian can easily digest the small portion of filmi drama inserted in the end or may be they even need it. To conclude I would just repeat the words from the back of the cover…Are you ready to take the call?

The Proposal...a short story

“Stop laughing like maniacs, the teachers are looking at us”, said Manish to the junta. We were standing in the corridor and a group of lady teachers just passed by when they saw in our direction quite suspiciously. The reason being our cacophonic howls that we called human hilarity. Sam has cracked some non-vegetarian joke, which obviously the junta found outrageously amusing to resist laughing. I wondered how stupid can boys get but they can’t be blamed for this kind of behavior. One complete year of tedious studies landed us up in the science batch of one of the most reputed senior schools of the Nagpur city. Being 11^th class students of Modern School raised the expectations of both the folks and the teachers from us. However, we decided to dump it and “enjoy the year” became our mantra before we begin the toiling for 12^th class results. In such a doggedly determined circle of adolescents, one hardly cares for the ambiance.

It was only when Manish, the class representative, scolded the junta I noticed that I missed a really great joke. I hardly gave a damn about jokes these days now that adolescence has taken its toll at me. I was suddenly very interested in beautiful girls. And from last one month since the oral quiz competition we contested and won for our Sapphire house I was more attracted towards Smruti. She was a total Miss Universe material with her little overweight figure and prominent features of an adolescent lady. But the one thing that truly bounced me off was her shoulder length hair, which I imagine she only opened when I was looking at her. She knew that open hair of a female is my greatest turn on. This has become my daily routine to spend the entire lunch break strolling in and out of our classroom and standing in the corridor staring Smruti who used to stay inside the classroom with her friends. I never could understand why girls spent the entire breaks inside the classrooms. May be they were avoiding the wild creatures called boys who were always socializing in the corridors or on the playgrounds. I was fixedly staring Smruti and the spiral locks of her black brown hair, when she suddenly caught me looking at her. I quickly managed to come to my senses and then when I was trying to distract myself I heard Manish telling the others to stay calm. After a split second when I felt that she might not be looking in my direction anymore I raised my head and tried to find her. This time when I separated her amidst the other beautiful faces I found her looking at me. At first I thought I should look away but my muscles refused to do so as my heart controlled all my muscles and even though my brain thought differently I was looking at her more intently. We were in this trance for 2-3 minutes when she smiled and finally decided to look away. I too removed my eyes off her only to find Sam looking at me menacingly. He is surely a bastard and he might have accurately guessed what was going on moments ago. I can be sure of this after what happened 3 days later.

It was a Tuesday. The local newspaper predicted a clear winter sky. I was quite unsure whether I should go to the school or not since our half-yearly exams were to commence the very next day. I decided to catch the school bus since I was moderately prepared for the exams and I was not interested in outperforming others. The strength of the class was very low the reason being obvious. Those who attended the school among boys were the ones who were adhering to the plan of enjoying the year. Our class teacher thought it is wastage of time to teach such a less number and decided to give us a free period. Later the free period turned out to be a free day when other teachers decided the same. Since we were not having any classes and none of the crowd present was interested in studying for the next day’s exam, we zeroed down to playing the game of truth and dare. The game is fairly simple. The players sit around and have to choose whether they will answer a question truthfully or do a daring act as their turn comes. The rest of the players decide the question to be answered or the act to be performed. We were 6 people in the room, although the strength was more but others decided not to have fun in the classroom when there were playgrounds in the school. The group consisted of me, Manish, Sam, PK, Soni and Smruti. We started playing and were having a great time when my turn came. I chose to perform a daring act since I knew the question to be answered will be a twisted version asking you to name your latest love interest. Sam decided the act for me and explained that I have to stand on the dais of the room and announce the name of the girl I loved. I simply refused to do that since she was one of the players. I did not want to embarrass her. But Sam was a bastard and he was aware of the truth. Then he said that he could exempt me of the embarrassment of telling the truth in front of the girls and instead just share it with the boys, to which both the girls refused. Even I was not ready for that. I told him it could be anything but this. However he seemed to be determined of hearing the name from me so that he finally said, “OK daa, Tell her name in my ears and I wont tell it to anyone”. All the others refused to it but I gave up and agreed to this not so dangerous request. I went close to his ears and whispered, “Her name is Smruti.”

Just in the next moment the bastard shouted on top of his voice, “What are you saying daa, its Smruti?”

I was so embarrassed but could still manage to catch a glimpse of Smruti who was surely not very happy of what happened. Others took it in turns to look at Smruti and then me. I looked at Sam who was apparently so pleased of making a proposal on my behalf that he never really understood why I paid him back in mild bruises and body pain.

Global Warming - the silicon effect

India is one of the biggest producers of quality programmers in the world scenario. Most of the big names in the field of I.T., such as IBM, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and others look forward to the Indian educated and trained I.T. professionals for Software Solutions. You should notice when I say that they look towards India for the Solutions and not the Products. Most of the Indian software companies are involved in providing solutions to the global market but there are none (or may be negligible) who provide software products to the industry. Have you ever heard of an OS, or an Office utility tool (for example, MS – OFFICE) or maybe an Internet tool existing in the market, which is actually developed by a company of Indian origin? I don’t reckon there is any. For those of you who believe that Maya is developed by Indians, it would be quite informative that it is actually developed by Alias-Wavefront, which is not an Indian company.

The actual problem with Indians is that they don’t want to risk their money, time and career and in this way they restrict their absolutely outstanding creative brains. Software Product manufacturing involves considerable risk factor in it but can help you achieve more in many respects. Mr. Yashavant Kanetkar tells us that the international software industry looks at Indian contribution as mediocre since we never do more than providing solutions to them. They believe that Indians are good at grasping, learning and putting together things, but miserably fail at creating something original. So, what I feel is that now it’s the time to put a stop to this belief of the international industry people and prove it to them we can do everything and anything that they can. The next question arises is: Where to start? Now the market contains more than one product in each category, be it Operating System, Office utilities, Multimedia tools, Graphics utilities, Compilers, or any other imaginable software product. The key to success for developing a software product belonging to the above category is that your product should truly revolutionize the picture by overcoming the shortcomings of the previous products in the same category. To achieve this would require a lot of RND and infrastructure. The other alternative is to develop Games - the most sold software product by any company after OS, of course.

Games are more in demand than any other software products in the market. Computer and console games are not restricted to any particular age group of the people and this is what, which makes them so very popular with consumers. Gaming industry has grown to be one of the biggies in the entertainment business in a very short span of time. Continuous progression of the technology improving the speed of the processor chips, availability of faster and cheaper memory chips, and innovative and faster interfacing between hardware accelerator graphics cards (for example, NVIDIA, ATI RADEON) and motherboards / mainboards i.e. Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) with much higher data transferability (8x) are some of the reasons for this enormous boon in gaming industry. Nowadays, the budget of a 3D game is more than that of a Hollywood movie. Billions and billions of dollars are invested for developing a complete story driven 3D game for consoles and PC’s. The industry will exceed the Hollywood and music industry in next few years and will be the biggest in entertainment world. The major contribution to this is by companies like NVIDIA and ATI Radeon who have transfigured the entire gaming scenario with there high end graphics cards consisting of GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) as NVIDIA calls it or VPU (Virtual Processing Unit) as ATI calls it which are there for heavy mathematical computations carried out to render graphics (detailed explanation in Part III – DirectX) and thus freed the CPU from this task and enhanced the speed and performance of both the machine and the game. As a result, this allowed the developers to concentrate on the look of the game rather than memory, execution time and speed. These cards have made it possible to render the most unique and interesting special effects, which add to the marketability of the gaming software products. Games are always associated with the latest and the best of the technology offered by the electronics industry. The best games in the market today are the best tools to put your PC to an ultimate benchmarking test to experience the unknown abilities of your hardware and installed software. Multiple job opportunities are generated. All the people right from story/script writers to artists/cartoonists/painters to musicians/vocalists to 3D animators/modelers to programmers find their place in the industry. Games find their use at defense and other training camps in the form of simulations. There is no cease to this hysteria and it would grow to fascinate more and more people. What we feel about this entire vogue generated by computer games is due to their unique feature of letting you play the hero, king, captain depending on the genre of the game being action, strategy, sports, etc. You get to do things that you would never do in real life and may be that’s why, all of us are so very excited and thrilled about playing Max Payne, Unreal Tournament, Half Life, Fifa, Cricket, Age of Empire than watching Lord of the Rings trilogy. But this is not the same everywhere. Almost entire world has been engulfed by the gaming fever except India. Gaming still needs a long way to go before reaching the top of the entertainment industry here in India. It has gained little stature in the recent years with the westernization of the market and growing awareness of the computers but there is no marked accomplishment towards gaming frenzy in Indian scenario. One of the major reasons for this can be attributed to the common belief of the Indian mentality that an expensive machine such as the computer is not meant for such trivial applications of playing games. They are not going to digest any bit of it if you are telling them that computer games would strengthen the mental ability of player apart from improving the ability to take decisions quickly before being gunned down by the terrorist and would further help in improving concentration, determination and reasoning power apart from providing the best form of entertainment. Also, the original versions of the games are priced very high thus reducing the affordability of the games and promoting the pirated versions in India, but that is something altogether different.

That was all about PLAYING computer games but DEVELOPING computer games is equally fascinating. The worlds leading name of the Software industry – Bill Gates wrote the tic tac toe game as first ever program of his life at a very minor age. Writing computer games is not everybody’s cup of tea. It requires quite a lot of logic and vision to write a game that can react perfectly to every kind of user it encounters. Not all programmers are accustomed to think about every single kind of user input in advance. Computer games come under the category of Dynamic Simulation in the common architectural frameworks of the System Design, i.e., they model or track the real world objects (for further details, refer to Object Oriented Methodologies by John Rumbaugh and others). Game Programmers are paid high in western countries. However here at India, game programmers are still considered to be a bunch of worthless crap. The most widespread belief of Indian I.T. gurus is that game programming is not actually serious programming. One of the major reasons for this is the approach of desi I.T. companies to provide solutions rather than products. Except for a very rare instance of Mitashi Entertainment (produced – Bhagat Singh Action game) and Padmini Telemedia (produced – Al Quaeda), none other has ever tried their hands at programming / producing games. There have been other decent trials as YODDHA and CHAKRAVYUH that bombed badly. I strongly consider game programming as the ultimate experience for any real adventurous software developer. Game programmers are far more superior (atleast logically) and sane than a gang of frustrated and fatigued database / network programmers. Writing games involves mind-boggling thought process along with industrious creativity and imagination beyond anything. You have to plan everything that’s going to take place in your game, calculate every user move, take care of the silliest of user inputs in the most sarcastic way and give him the feeling that your game is not just a perplexing sequence of ones and zeroes in the memory but something living and breathing like all other beings on earth. Your game should be highly interactive and dynamic to create a lasting impact on the gamer.

This article was written with a purpose to remove wrong perceptions and misnomers about playing and developing computer games and create a general awareness to the growing latest trends in the market. Information Technology is not just restricted to software companies and databases and networks but provides far more opportunities than any other field in engineering right from multimedia, animation and films to games, A.I. and Robotics. Being a student of I.T., you would always have an edge over any other person who belongs to some other field and knows a tool or technology of I.T. but doesn’t understand the true base of computer software.

...time has come to unleash the truth to the world

Hi Junta

I have just started blogging and this is my first ever attempt. I have been reading Blogs for quite some time now, but a blog by aravind krishna where he publishes his short stories has truly inspired me to go for it. I plan to share any creative stuff from my side with you guys through this blog. You can basically find Articles, Stories, Poems, Reviews, Previews and my Views, on this blog. I will start soon.