Hmm

Hmm. Sony updated their Playstation Network User Agreement and conveniently highlighted the new stuff in red. Most of the new stuff seems fairly innocuous, but this section caught my eye:
Unless otherwise required by applicable law, there is no requirement or expectation that SCEA will monitor or record any online activity on PSN, including communications. However, SCEA reserves the right to monitor and record any online activity and communication throughout PSN and you give SCEA your express consent to monitor and record your activities. SCEA reserves the right to remove any content and communication from PSN at SCEA's sole discretion without further notice to you. Any data collected in this way, including the content of your communications, the time and location of your activities, your Online ID and IP address and other related information may be used by us to enforce this Agreement or protect the interests of SCEA, its users, or licensors. Such information may be disclosed to the appropriate authorities or agencies. Any other use is subject to the terms of the applicable Privacy Policy.
I suspect that many online services have (or should have) such a block of text, but still it's a bit disconcerting to have Sony call it out like this. They sent me an email directing me to this page where they explicitly say "Oh hey, we just decided that we can spy on you and you agree that's cool." Which makes you wonder why this just happened. One theory is that a lawyer just happened by and shat all over us. The other theory would be that Home and/or Little Big Planet have some sort of spying function built in. I have one possible comparative piece of data. I can't speak to the 360 but back when Microsoft launched voice chat for the first Xbox there was a minor kerfluffle. You see, the Xbox Live libraries explicitly encrypted all data sent over the network. Then suddenly they changed the protocol so that voice traffic was sent separately and unencrypted. The word was they did that at the behest of the US government. They never SAID the voice chat was being logged somewhere, but I think that implied it. Or at least that XBL could be "wire-tapped". Say, if the NSA had an illegal tap of all network traffic secretly installed at a trunk in AT&T's office. Hypothetically speaking of course, because the NSA breaking the law? Crazy talk!
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What the hell?

OK, I did something moderately stupid today and found out that Time Machine was screwing up, which made everything worse. Here’s what happened: I messed up a database today on my web server. “No problem,” thought I, “I’ll just fire up Time Machine and restore my MySQL data to a point earlier today.” So I did that. Hours later I noticed that my blog had reset itself to October 8th, eating four comments and three posts. After a lot of messing about I’ve come to this conclusion: although Time Machine claims to have backups of this data between October 8th and today it doesn’t. Luckily, I have all the posts and comments in other data stores about. So I’ve reposted the three posts, and I’m about to restore the comments. Sorry for any confusion! While I can make this almost seamless, there may be some oddities in the RSS feed.
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Lorax is Obsolete?

Say it ain’t so! Ah Lorax, we hardly knew ye! (For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, Apple announced new laptop models.) Well, I announcing Lorax’s demise is an overstatement in any case. Don’t get me wrong, the new machines look pretty sexy and I think they are going to be great value for the money. But the difference between what they are selling now and what’s inside Lorax is pretty minimal. The changes to the Macbooks (as opposed to the Macbook Pros) are more substantial and I think all to to the good. The Pros get a new shell, a bigger hard drive, and some new video chips. (Actually the Pros can get a CPU boost at the high end as well but the default MBP now is the exact same CPU as what Lorax has.) The video chips sound nice, but Spore runs just fine on Lorax and that’s all the laptop game playing I’m likely to do in the near future. The chipset in Lorax is good enough for light development work and that’s what I wanted. (I’ll note that when I bought Lorax a large part of my model selection was hinged on the fact that the Macbooks had the shitty Intel “integrated” chipset. It’s a major win now that all the laptops have real video hardware. And this could become more important next year when Snow Leopard comes out and suddenly you can run “general purpose” code on a GPU.) The new trackpad sounds nice, but I’m not going to buy a laptop for *that*, or even whine too much about it. And Lorax has a multi-touch trackpad anyway. It’s unclear to me whether the new four-finger swipes are only for the new hardware or whether they’ll show up for the older machines, but at the same time I have trouble imagining I want to app switch by using the trackpad anyway. (As opposed to the two-fingers+plus click=right click.I use that all the time on Lorax.) The new case sounds sweet, and it’s ecologically friendly and all, but I don’t have any issue with Lorax’s case. All in all I’m happy with the laptop I have now. I mean I wouldn’t turn down a new MBP if somebody offered me one but I don’t lust after one. The new Macbooks are much more compelling to me than the old ones - it’s down to more a question about 13″ or a 15″ form factor. But I like the 15″ MBP. I think for me it was the right choice. The fact that this new model is a tweak as opposed to a major new version I think is more a confirmation about how much about the “mid 2008″ version of the MBP was solid. Except maybe the graphics chip reliability.
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I don't care for this!

Affected MacBook Pros and symptoms Among the models affected are those that were manufactured between approximately May 2007 and September 2008. They include the MacBook Pro (15-Inch, 2.4/2.2GHz), MacBook Pro (17-Inch, 2.4GHz), and MacBook Pro (Early 2008). Customers who own one of these systems should look for instances of distorted or scrambled video on their screen, or the absence of video on the screen (or external display) when the computer is running.
From AppleInsider I haven’t seen any video problems on Lorax, but it’s definitely affected by this issue. I’ll be keeping an eye on it, and if I need it later, well it’s blogged here. :-) 2 year service, even if it’s out of warranty.
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