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PS3 Network STILL Down!

May 9th, 2011

If you have a Playstation 3 then there’s no doubt you’ll have had trouble accessing the Live system for a while – mainly because it’s been down for what seems like forever! Sony said that it was going to be up over the weekend – which it wasn’t – now they’re saying that it’s going to be delayed even more. I think it’s crazy that such a big system and network has been down for so long. I understand the need for security but there must of been a HUGE fault in the network for it to take so long to fix.

For anyone who hasn’t seen the news, basically the network was hacked and the hackers made off with lots of data – including possibly credit card details – of millions of people. What’s annoyed people even more is that Sony have been so slow in reacting and seemed to deny the scale of the problem to start with, even though they must of known how bad it was.

According to Sony there has been no confirmed credit card data theft, but the fact that it’s “not confirmed” is hardly reassuring to people who have their details on the network. Luckily for me I also have an Xbox which hasn’t had any of these problems, although I think everyone is kidding themselves if they think that it couldn’t happen to Xbox Live too. Hopefully Microsoft will use this as a reason to improve their security if they haven’t already – I certainly won’t be trusting Sony with my details for a long time.

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Praise For House (and its writers)

May 9th, 2011

I’ve been a fan of House M.D. for a long time now and it always amazes me how the show gets better and better. I haven’t actually caught up fully with where the show is at the moment – I think it’s towards the end of series 7 on the TV but I’m only on series 5 – but I think the writers deserve a lot of praise for taking what is essentially the same concept each week and making it interesting, while all the time developing the characters.

At the moment Wilson is trying to get over losing his girlfriend Amber. I was really surprised when she died – I thought she was going to fade into the background as a minor character – but the death of Wilson’s girlfriend does open up a whole load of other possibilities. I’m only at the start of season five so I haven’t got to the point of whether House is going to survive as a friend with Wilson, but I’m looking forward to finding out.

The other thing I love about the series is how strong the characters are. When the three new employees were introduced the first time I thought it was going to be a disaster for the show as the other characters had been developed so much. Luckily this wasn’t the case as the new characters have turned out to be interesting in a completely different way to the others. This definitely isn’t something that’s easy to do! Anyway, I hope I haven’t spoiled part of the show for anyone reading this!

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Are drugs in sport a real problem?

April 12th, 2011

Drugs, bad behaviour and cheating in sport seems to be becoming a bigger problem than in the past, but I am not convinced that’s the case. It seems to me that the media coverage of certain sporting events – and inevitably the issues surrounding the athletes – is much more intense than in the past.

Is It Possible To Eliminate Doping?

The problem is that I don’t think doping is ever going to go away in elite sport. There are certain sports where it is much more prevalent than others – cycling seems to be really struggling at the moment – but there are always new technologies that help the cheats.

There are also more ways of catching them, which is why I think more and more athletes are being caught out, which makes it appear as if the problem is getting worse. Perhaps more athletes are taking drugs, but I think it’s more likely that more are getting caught.

 

There are also a lot of private agendas in the media which sports fans should look out for. For example, recently Wayne Rooney was (probably rightly) vilified in the press for swearing into a camera when scoring. He received a two game ban which was appropriate considering the game was in the middle of the day and being watched by thousands of children. A week later an England rugby player was found guilty of eye gouging – which most would consider a far more serious offence – yet this received barely any news coverage. He did get a 9 week ban for it but I was surprised that more wasn’t made of it in the press, as it’s an action that could have cost another player his sight.

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