imho, both consoles are good. They both have their pros and cons, but overall you'd be happy with either one rather than nothing, right? I know I would be.

I feel like making a LONG post here. There's a difference between a direct physical/chemical addiction (caffeine, heroin) and an emotional addiction (gambling, gaming). They shouldn't be directly compared, because eg caffeine addiction changes the abundances of certain chemical receptors in the body (a physical change), while an emotional addiction like gaming (or even a grown man who still sucks his thumb, for example) changes thought and behavioural patterns (chnges them from the so called "normal" state - anyone care to define "normal"?). Now I'm not saying that an emotional addiction of any kind can be any less debilitating than a classical chemical addiction, but they are on different pages of the same book, and thus should be treated separately and differently. OK, some whack kid shot his parents and subsequently KILLED HIS VERY OWN MOTHER (now that deserves a mighty WTF!?!?!), but there have been an essentially uncountable number of people who have done equally or more messed up and horrendous things in the past over issues not involving games, but issues all involving the emotional instability of one or more people (themselves and/or the people around them...probably more often themselves). The problem isn't with games, it's with the individuals who play them. Everyone's heard of Michael Jackson (of course you have). There are tests conducted on people's psyches to determine whether they are likely to repeatedly undergo plastic surgery after having one enhancement, as a kind of "addiction to plastic surgery". Whacko Jacko has this tendency, this "emotional instability", and has, over time, butchered his face by throwing cash at some clown with a scalpel, all because of some emotional condition that is most likely a deep seated one. I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that the people in the world who drown themselves in games rather than facing the real world and just trying to do something about their situation/problem (low self esteem, lack of friends, cr@ppy job/boss/house blah blah blah) are in the same class of people who drown themselves in a couch & tv, or a bottle, or a small plastic bag of unidentified white powder, or a poker machine. That person's problem isn't halo3 forcing them to be violent, it's their mind - the inability of their mind to exercise self control and good judgement, and to make decisions which enable them to function properly in their role in society...then again maybe their role in society is to serve as a warning to others...er...let's not go there today...back to the topic at hand. Sure, some "normal" people (there's that word again) may go through a phase in life where they love playing a particular game (CS, GTA, WoW, some RTS), but a normal person is able to recognise when playing this game excessively reduces the quality of other aspects of their socio-emotional life. Not just recognise, but take decisive action to do something about it. In the long run they still work properly, pay their bills etc and function normally in society, and don't end up doing something stupid and retarded. Like AOldDog and many others have said, video games don't kill people, people kill people. People have killed people for tens of thousands of years, and I don't see that changing any time soon. You never know when the scapegoat is gonna change, though. Maybe next it'll be ipods or university degrees that kill people. Maybe WORKING will be labelled the next people-killer of our time. WOAH, are you still reading? I think I better finish up here. Happy gaming to all.

I feel like ranting and rambling: i use red hat enterprise linux, mac (tiger on macbook pro), winXP and winVista all on a regular basis. Mac and linux are my work machines, XP is the old tower at home, and vista is the current tower at home. Different OSes are used for different things, so when i want to reduce radio data to make an image of the galactic plane (or some other worky type stuff), i use linux or mac, and when i want to game or something else chilling-out-related, i'll use windows. And sure, I use mac and vista interchangeably for some chilling-out-related things like photos and music etc (my vista tower has a much better sound card than the mac laptop, but clearly I can't take it to the Caribbean with me). I have to say that I don't think I'm a fanboy for any OS. If I recommend an OS to someone, it will be based on what they tell me they want to do. I am looking forward to windows 7 (but I don't think I'll try the beta just yet) because I like new things, especially if they happen to be shiny. In my own personal world, all this mac vs windows stuff is irrelevant - if I want to watch a movie in bed or do some LaTeXing or data analysis, I turn to my mac laptop; if I want to play gta or crysis or burn lots of back-up multisession dvds I obviously turn to windows. I like both for different reasons and have my own personal complaints of both for different reasons (eg VNC and miriad on vista and multisession dvd burning on mac). To all the fanboys out there that can't handle the fact that other people like a different OS to them, and who say "mac sucks" or "windows sucks", or "vista sucks" or "vista is king" blah blah blah...I have one thing to say. Let it go. Just let it go man. Use what you like, let other people use what they like. There's more fun things to argue about. Isn't there?

Sounds fun, should go well with setups with surround sound. I prefer to wait though, as with all technologies, to see if these take off and become more mainstream (ie cheaper). The arms look a bit chunky for my liking at the moment. Maybe when these are all the rage they'll bring out a model that people can wear with their headphones. Also, I'd like someone with enough time and money to market a comfortable, cost effective pillow that allows a sleeping person to wear headphones. Hey, I like my headphones and I like music, and the way I see it there's no problem with listening to music while you're sleeping. Playing a 3D game while sleeping might be a problem, but not music.

I agree with TImmyDigital on his computer vs console comment below. You don't have to spend stupid amounts of money to get/build an excellent gaming PC, although you can if you want. The main advantage of forking out a big (or medium) wad of cash on a PC is that it does things other than gaming, namely work. While last I checked PS3s can participate in projects such as Folding@home (which is pretty cool actually), a person wanting large amounts of processing in their home/office, eg me, will obviously get a computer (with whatever OS), and will be willing to spend big if it means they can get an awesome CPU that cut's down the time it takes to process 1.5 TB of data from, say, 24 hours to 16. When your work requires an awesome PC, you might as well use it for gaming too :P and pass up on the console versions of games. Of course when you run Linux you have to dual boot with Windows, but hey it's worth it. If my work didn't require a beast of a computer (or if I could get some supercomputer/cluster time), and I just needed a PC to do all the standard PC stuff, I would almost definitely buy a console.

I think this is fairly basic stuff here, but you never know when someone will find it useful. As for me, I sadly use my computer mainly for work these days, and don't really play games much more than about 1 hour a week :( Nonetheless, my job requires massive amounts of processing, so when your salary depends on it, you tend to find that your computer is always running at near maximum efficiency, and all the little annoying things that take up resources have been unceremoniously banished from the hdd, just the way they deserve. Which is good, because when i do play games, they run great.

pc decrapifier? sounds good, but i do try to keep the crap to a min on my own. now all i need is a job decrapifier to get rid of all the $#!7heads in my job and give me more money for GAMES and COFFEE

indeed, F.E.A.R. is best played with the lights off and the volume up. I think F.E.A.R. had an awesome mix of atmospheric creepy, jump-out-of-your-seat scary, and good old mess-with-your-head freaky. I don't know how many of you agree with me, but for me, playing F.E.A.R. and the first expansion was fantastic.

@ihabn0legs read the article again. they mention that the new screen WOULD decrease battery life by ~20 min, however the design tech's working on the psp-3000 managed to reduce power draw in other components of the system, overall keeping battery life the same as the 2000 model. sorry to say, but you should make sure you've properly read and understood the story before commenting on it (i'm expecting many thumbs down for that but ah well) and before jumping to conclusions about bias. one might say that YOU are biased against gamespot, as evidenced by your quick and unjustified accusation of prejudice in gamespot's journalism. what i'm really saying i guess is think before you speak/type, it generally helps regardless of the situation.

this would be fun in a shooter if you could rotate the way you hold the gun, and use rotation and forwards/backwards + sideways motion to point your gun around a corner and blind fire at stuff. And when ur character is crouching you have to lift it up above your head to blind fire over your cover. that would be awesome