Got a new pair of earphones yesterday, as the ones included with my MP3 player were getting temperamental (the right earphone wouldn't produce sound unless the tension on its wire was just right).

Accompanied by the redoubtable Poor Suffering ("I have a name!"), I was befuddled by the number of seemingly similar earphones that the electronics companies had on offer. In the end, I picked one with a lucky sounding price of $29.90, a pair of Sony NDR-E931LP "Stereo Dynamic Earphones", which were advertised as being "Stable & Comfortable", having a "Thin housing & slim bass duct", "Twin Turbo (fontopia)", a "Neck-chain", a "silent cap" and a "Gold plated stereo mini plug". All of this was greek to me, of course.

Not being an audiophile, all I know is that the sound is better and more vivid than that from my old pair. The $60 or $70 sets will probably be wasted on me.


ConsoleClassix.com - Hundreds of Console Games STRAIGHT to your monitor

Aren't you distributing ROM images?
No. The way our service works is simple. Our clients log into our service, they then can browse a list of available games. Once a user has selected a game our server locks that image so that no one else can use it. This ensures that we are never using more copies of a game than we own, that would be copyright infringement. If the connection between the client and server is broken the game no longer functions on the client and the server unlocks the game for other players. We allow you to rent our games, not buy them. We allow you to access our ROMs, but we don't distribute them.

So you're basically an internet video rental place?
Exactly. There is no ideological difference between our service and that of any common video rental store. We have simply taken a classic idea and brought it to the web. This will certainly become commonplace as the internet expands and bandwidth increases. We are merely spearheading a small piece of a huge industry.


This sounds very fishy. I suppose back in the days these games were programmed, no one thought to include a clause forbidding unauthorised broadcasting or renting.


The PowerGoth Girls

Someone took a picture as the last of the credits of Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ" were rolling.

Interesting, most interesting.