Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

The upcoming videogame LittleBigPlanet (LBP) for the Sony Playstation 3 (PS3) console has received an unexpected blow to its release schedule. During the final review process, Sony Entertainment discovered that two verses from the Qu’ran were included in Little Big Planet’s background track. The verses are found in the early portions of this song, and to Western ears are utterly innocuous:

1- In the 18th second: “كل نفس ذائقة الموت” (“kollo nafsin tha’iqatol mawt”, literally: ‘Every soul shall have the taste of death’).

2- Almost immediately after, in the 27th second: “كل من عليها فان” (“kollo man alaiha fan”, literally: ‘All that is on earth will perish’).

I was curious as to why “we Muslims consider the mixing of music and words from our Holy Quran deeply offending” and I came across this Yahoo Answers thread which tries to explain that “music is haram for believers of Islam.” I don’t find any of the answers convincing. Putting aside–for a moment–the question of whether music itself is acceptable to a Muslim, there merely remains the issue of why Sony Entertainment, a global company, would harm its own videogame release by giving into the demands of religious socio-terrorists.

It’s clear to me that merely offending a subset of people is not a good reason to give up creative direction, freedom of speech, or any of the other Western ideals. It’s also not a particularly good business decision. A product which satiates the myriad desires of every interest group, which pleases everyone, that offends no one is a product which has thus had every innovation stripped from it.

Little Big Planet is a family-oriented game where players control a Sackboy to play and explore the game environments, create their own content, and share creations with others around the world. It hardly merits a religious challenge over the inclusion of text into its soundtrack.

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Today Apple refreshed its Macbook Pro line with twin nVidia 9400M / 9600M GT GPUs, a glossy LED-backlit glass screen, the new multi-touch glass trackpad, and a slimmer .95″ thickness. The aluminum Macbook Pro body has been enhanced using Apple’s “precision aluminum unibody enclosure” design.

The regular consumer Macbook line has also been upgraded almost enough that even Apple’s own comparison charts show few differences between the inexpensive Macbooks ($999-$1599) and the Macbook Pros ($1999-$2799). For example, comparing the best 15″ Macbook Pro with the 13″ Macbook, I find little to distinguish it:

2.53GHz MacBook Pro (MB134LL/A) – $2,499
2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 6MB L2 cache, 1066MHz System Bus
4GB 1066 MHz DDR3 memory
320GB 5400 rpm HDD
NVIDIA GeForce 9600M graphics processor, 512MB GDDR3 memory

2.4GHz Macbook (MB467LL/A) – $1,599.00
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 3MB L2 cache, 1066MHz System Bus
2GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM
250GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor, 256MB GDDR3 memory

When would you buy a Macbook Pro now? The $1,000 premium gets you a slightly bigger screen, another $50 worth of memory, a slightly bigger hard drive, and a much faster graphics card. For most people, the Macbook is the new Macbook Pro.

I just received an interesting email, which “offers” to help me secure my .com domain name in the Chinese varieties .cn and .hk. It’s more of a threatening piece of spam, because it carries the fear that if I do not avail myself of their services, them or another company will steal my brand!

Subject: YOUR DOMAIN NAME (elliottback)’S CURRENT SITUATION

Dear ELLIOTT C.Back

We are the domain name registration organization in Hong Kong, ,which mainly deal with the domain names’ conflicts of the company in China and Asia regions.We have received an formal application online from one company named “TianHaiYuanTong (China) Investment Co.Ltd” who is trying to apply for the domain names(www. elliottback.cn www. elliottback.hk etc.) and the Internet keyword(elliottback) as their domain name and internet brand on Oct 6,2008.After our initial examination, we found that the keywords and domain names being applied are the same as your company’s name and trademark. These days we are dealing with it. If you don’t know this company, we doubt that they buy these domain names with other aims. We have not started the registration for TianHaiYuanTong company until now. In order to deal with this issue better, please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible.

Best Regards,
Boyce Meng

Tel: +852-31757931 (ext8048)
Fax: +852- 31757932
Email: boyce.meng@hk-nsc.org.cn

Hong Kong Network Service Company Limited
website: www.hknsc.hk

However, as far as I can tell, there is no such “Tian Hai Yuan Tong” company, and I am not replying. I advise you to do the same, and post any more samples of this spam in the comments!