I've got... like, the best idea ever.

If you don't have a Nintendo Wii, and you really want one, but just can't find one anywhere? Just take a stroll around the Gaming section of Digg.com, find someone who's whining about the lack of games and how they haven't touched their Wii since the first week they had it, and ask them if they'd like you to take it off their hands! It'll be a win-win scenario! They'll get their $250 back, and you'll have an impossible to find Wii!

Why ARE they keeping the thing if they're so upset about how worthless it is? Hmm... Here's my take! They know, too, that the games are coming, and that when they do, there's a good chance the Wii is STILL going to be too hard to find. So they're not willing to actually get rid of it, only to fight to find one later, but humanity enjoys complaining, so they're going to try to hide the fact that they don't dare sell the thing because they know it's only a matter of time before they love it again.

The bottom line: Everyone loves the Wii, even the people who say they haven't played it in months. I know I haven't played mine for a while, but I still wouldn't trade it for anything.

Nintendo's favorite crowd, the dreaded analyists, are at it once again. They questioned Nintendo's ability to make the Wii a success... And they were wong. They praised the efforts of Sony and declared them the winner before the battle even started... And they were wrong.

Last time they took pot shots at Nintendo, they kept bringing up the Gamecube and how it failed to conquer the majority market share and how much of a failure it was in the console industry. Perhaps it was a failure to conquer the majority market share (PS2 was clearly the leader in market share), but Nintendo never lost money on any console sale. The Gamecube was NOT a failure, and the nay-sayers who wanted to think that Nintendo was down and out forever kept conveniently forgetting the whole profit thing. When the Wii Remote was introduced to the world... Everyone in the world collectively went WHAT THE HECK?!! But let's check the numbers shall we?

The Wii was first released in the United States on November 19, 2006. A day to remember! Now, six months later, you still cannot find any Wii on any shelf anywhere. Once a shipment arrives, they're gone once people not already in the story get wind of it. At least, that's what I keep hearing from people who are still looking for one. (And, consequently, blaming Nintendo for holding back production in an effort to drive up demand.) In 6 months, the Wii has SOLD, not shipped, 7.66 million consoles. This in spite of everyone ranting their faces off about how the Wii has no games and is just a gimmicky console. (Remember when Sony said the Wii Remote was gimmicky? And then they tacked on a crappy interpretation of motion sensitivity on their controller? And then said that the reason there was no rumble feature was because it would interfere with the motion sensing? Only then to find out that Sony just flat out lied? Yeah, that's the gimmick we're talking about here. That one gimmick that the company who ruled the console industry with the Playstation 2 is trying to copy.)

The Xbox 360 was released on November 22, 2005. Since then, 18 months after release, there have been 9.82 million consoles sold. (And let's not forget the Playstation 3, released on November 11, 2006, and has only sold 3.31 million units in the same time the Wii has sold 7.66 million. And I've personally seen PS3s in Walmart, and a stack of 16 in Best Buy.)

You're going to tell me that even though the Wii has sold 75% of the units in about 1/6th the time that it took the Xbox 360 to sell 9.82 million consoles, that the Wii "isn't here to stay".

Okay, so even though there's a mad rush for Wii's the likes of which were seen on release day, that doesn't mean that the Wii is going to sell this heavy forever? Well, of course not. But people are carrying on like the Wii is going to sell like hot cakes and then, all of a sudden, drop to zero sales and fail? Yes... Yes, of course. Just like how after the mad rush for Xbox and Playstation 2, the sales just... Stopped! After everyone who wanted one already had one. No, the industry doesn't work like that. There's a mad record-setting rush, and then the sales drop off, yes, but they always remain steady. There's always a moderate amount of sales. The Wii, the PS3, the Xbox 360... They're not just going STOP selling units one day. They might taper off, but they'll probably never stop until the NEXT consoles come out.

Now there's the arguement of the lack of games is killing the Wii. Pfft. I've talked about this already, too. You've got the small amount of third-party developers who sit back and wait to see how the consoles are going to do, and then pick after there's an established user base. That's probably not the wisest course of action, because lack of games means no purchasing, but if nobody buys the console, then nobody makes games for it. A vicious cycle, but that's how it works. Remember when the Wii was touted as the largest console release in history with over 30 games to pick from at release? Where did all that buzz go? Maybe the games were half-baked. I can accept that, I mean, there's a lot of games I really don't want, too.

But what people have to accept is that there is ALWAYS a lull of games after the release of a console! You've got the people who are just always on board with the Nintendo or Microsoft who will just naturally make games for that console no matter how bad it does. Those are the games you'll most likely get at release. After a console sells well (like, oh, say the Wii?), THAT'S when everyone else goes, "Hmm, maybe that console IS where we'd get the most money."

Any publisher who isn't locked to a single console by contract would be out of their minds to NOT develop for the Wii. It's the single fastest selling console out there right now, if not the fastest selling console in history. Games aren't developed overnight! You'll be seeing a LOT more games designed specifically for the Wii come Christmas, you can bet your bottom dollar. And in the years to come? When people get the hang of just exactly what the Wii can do? You'll see better and more well-designed games that take full advantage of the Wii Remote, the WiiConnect24 service... Everything! That's just how the industry works!

But humans are an impatient race, and they can't wait for anything. They have to have everything right this very second, and if they can't get what they want WHEN they want it, then they're going to get angry and blame someone, and there's a good chance that the lesser humans will start to attack what they wanted and start spreading a lot of baseless crap about it. Just watch. Once the Wii gets a steady trickle of awesome games, everyone will suddenly flip sides once again, because they're happy NOW and not later.

In closing, let me point out to you that this is EXACTLY what the Nintendo DS went through when it was first released, and we all know that failed, right? I mean, look at these numbers! 43 million DSes sold versus 22 million Sony PSPs sold. Yeah! The DS was a complete failure. Nintendo was responsible for the DS, just imagine how they're going to screw up the Wii!

Analyists are useless.

It's really sad that Bungie has to keep beating people over the head with the fact that the Halo 3 Beta is... uhm... a Beta. [next-gen.biz]

For those of you who have forgotten, Alpha is usually an in-company test version. The game actually builds and executes and runs a program. Not very well, but it runs, and they can see what to fix. A Beta is when the program runs well enough to pretty much use on a regular basis, but bugs still crop up. A Beta is usually released to a select few outside people to use and play with so there's more of a variety of people using the program a different way to bring up their own unique bugs. Unless, of course, a Beta is public, in which case anyone can download and use and report bugs!

Right now, Halo 3 multiplayer is in a more or less public beta on Xbox Live. It's INTENDED for people to abuse to their hearts content for the sole purpose of crashing the program. Bungie has had a lot of time to work the bugs out of Halo 3, balance the weapons, tweak the maps. As Nintendo's own Shigeru Miyamoto says, "A delayed game is eventually good; a bad game is bad forever." The more time you spend working on a game, the more perfect it gets.

But that's not the point! In a way, it is... Bungie is going the extra mile to make Halo 3 the best game they can make. However, it's not done. It's far from done. It's supposed to be released in September, not June. It's not done yet, Bungie keeps saying it's not done yet, but people keep insisting on pointing out all the flaws in the game. No, they're not reporting bugs, they're telling the world how terrible Halo 3 is, as if it's a finished product. This is what happened to Uru, and this is what happens to many, many games. A Beta isn't supposed to be judged. It's not for you, the player, to sign up and see how the game is, it's for you, the player, to CAUSE CRASHES. If you base your judgment on how good a game is... On what you see in the Beta? You're a moron.

The majority of Halo 3 users are just that! They're morons. The biggest complaint is that Halo 3 looks almost graphically identical to Halo 2, and, for some reason, forgetting that Halo 3 has always been about gameplay and story (Yes, Halo has an awesome story, with three games and four novels, and if you're too high on your anti-Halo soapbox to see it, then it's your own problem.), they whine about how "last generation" the graphics look. Forgetting that Bungie has constantly said, over and over and over that the graphics are not what you will see in the final release. Forgetting that the Beta they're playing is specifically for multiplayer stress testing.

Are humans always this dim-witted and stupid? Ugh.

Honestly, people, how hard is it to remember your own GMail address?

Did you accidentally make an account called "germanshepard" or "germanshephard" and then you actually learned how to spell "shepherd" and then forgot that you mispelled your own account? I have "germanshepherd" and "germanshepherd0". It's not YOURS. I have already told you this! Stop signing me up for stuff.

Use your own addresses, please.

(Oh, and really, At World's End music is cool.)

Okay, people. I ask that you leave any and all Microsoft preconceptions you may have at the door and take what you see here at it's true face value. Microsoft announced a new technology lastnight. Well, it's not entirely new, but let's not split hairs like everyone wants to do.

Microsoft announced the Surface, a retail multi-touch graphical user interface. Click that link, and watch the videos. Seriously. And before anyone makes some snide comment about how this is a typical Microsoft move to copy Apple's iPhone touchscreen, please... Go whine to someone who cares. Microsoft started research and development on the Surface in October 2001, so it's been almost 6 years in development. Yeah, that's really some quick slap-together to compete against Apple, folks.

This... Is the true future of computing. TW's been saying for a long time, and I agree completely, so much so that I've done college papers on it. Of all the utopian Star Trek technology, the LCARS menu system is going to be the first one we see. Actually, we're already seeing it. Multitouch technology has been around for a while, and we've seen small scale demonstrations on what it can do. But now that large scale manufacturers like Apple and Microsoft are actively developing devices that use it, I think LCARS is rapidly approaching. (At least faster than it was.)

Here's an older video demonstrating the Surface table. If you think the Surface website videos were staged in any way, here's a glimpse of some Microsoft employees showing off exactly what it can do:

If that's not enough to convince you, here's a similar demonstration by Bill Gates of Surface's features on the Today Show. Unfortunately, it's a Gizmodo video that I can't stream here. And pay no heed to Gizmodo's lame comment about dropping $10,000 to buy the thing. While I don't doubt it's going to be expensive, no price point has been announced, yet. Of course it's going to be expensive. Late-breaking technology like this is always expensive. Give it some time and we'll have these things all over the place. You have to admit that having Microsoft's aggressive marketing pushing something like this is really a very good thing.

I know it sounds rather... hyperbolic... But this is the future of computers. You realize we've had keyboards since the invention of the typewriter? Around 100 years ago? And you realize we'd have the mouse for nearly 25 years? The two devices on computers that have never been upgraded. That really needs to change. Interacting directly with a touchscreen is so much more natural and quicker. I think gaming will still use a keyboard and mouse, but, then again, there might be far, far better control interfaces with a massive touchscreen like the Surface.

I guess we'll have to wait and see!

(Oh, by the way, At World's End music is rocking awesome.)

Look what I'm going to have to put all my purchases on hold for until I can buy!

This, my friends, is television series perfection. Clocking in at 98 total episodes in the series, nothing touches the pure awesomeness of Gilligan's Island. Not a single thing.

Did I mention that the music from the latest Pirates of the Carribean movie is some of the best music I've heard in my life?