To be honest, I didn't see this one coming. Certainly not in the opening month of the year and after the holiday rush. But here it is anyway, courtesy of the NPD, whose numbers are some of the most reliable in the industry. So I'll just cut to the chase and give you those January 2008 numbers:
274k - Wii
269k - PlayStation 3
251k - Nintendo DS
230k - PlayStation Portable
230k - Xbox 360
Can you believe it? I wonder if Sony CEO Jack Tretton can, or if there's not at least a little eye-rubbing and arm-pinching going on. Whatever the case, here's his ebullient reaction to the news:
Coming off a great holiday sales season we see strong momentum behind PS3 in 2008, and feel confident about the year ahead. We have an exceptionally diverse lineup of exclusive games, from Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Resistance 2 to more mainstream games such as LittleBigPlanet and SingStar. Beyond that, we have Blu-ray emerging as the de facto high def standard, the developer community is hitting their stride, consumers are recognizing the tremendous value and innovative services such as PlayStation Home are all in the works, so this is definitely shaping up to be a breakthrough year for us.
Yeah, I know, it sounds exactly like what he said a year ago when everything was in the toilet. These things have a way of playing like top 40 songs after awhile, so file it skeptically under "wait and see," and then we certainly will as everyone deploys their next rounds of salvos.
More on the rest of the numbers later, but given the fact that only one piece of PS3 software even charted (Call of Duty 4, which was #8) I'm guessing a substantial portion of the PS3's sales uptick was Blu-ray related.
Feb 15, 2008
PlayStation 3 Outsells Xbox 360 by 16% -- Nearly Passes Wii
Disney, Microsoft, HP, Others Build 'House Of The Future'
Innoventions Dream Home in Disneyland's Tomorrowland will exhibit everything from mobile phones and PCs to digital music and gaming.
The Disneyland Resort this week teamed up with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), HP (NYSE: HP), software provider Lifeware, and home builder Taylor Morrison to create an attraction featuring digital home technologies of the future.
The 5,000-square-foot Innoventions Dream Home attraction will reside in Disneyland's Tomorrowland for the purpose of introducing resort visitors to technologies that will enhance their everyday lives, according to the companies. The visitors will be able to learn about the technologies and interact with them.
"This exciting alliance gives each of our partners a forum to inspire our guests' imaginations and motivate them to incorporate and enjoy the new technologies that are available today," said Ed Grier, president of the Disneyland Resort, in a statement.
Innoventions Dream Home will exhibit everything from mobile phones and PCs to digital music and gaming. The technology will be interconnected in the home, providing visitors with a ubiquitous experience. HP is providing the "connected entertainment," Microsoft is supplying its latest home technologies, and Lifeware is adding its automation software to technologies contained in the home. Lifeware's software program works with Windows Media Center to control lighting, security, audio, and entertainment systems.
Taylor Morrison is constructing the futuristic home in Disneyland.
The new attraction builds on Walt Disney's legacy of the "House of Tomorrow," which was built in Disneyland in 1967. Then in 1998, the Innoventions attraction opened with a similar purpose of showcasing future technologies, such as voice-activated computers, high-definition TVs, smart-cars, and satellite broadcasting.
Innoventions Dream Home is expected to open in its doors to the public in May.
'Critical' Linux kernel bugs discovered
The three bugs, which allow unauthorized access to kernel memory, exist in all versions of the Linux kernel up to 2.6.24.1, including Ubuntu, Red Hat, and others
Security researchers have uncovered "critical" security flaws in a version of the Linux kernel used by a large number of popular distributions.
The three bugs allow unauthorized users to read or write to kernel memory locations or to access certain resources in certain servers, according to a SecurityFocus advisory.
They could be exploited by malicious, local users to cause denial of service attacks, disclose potentially sensitive information, or gain "root" privileges, according to security experts.
The bug affects all versions of the Linux kernel up to version 2.6.24.1, which contains a patch. Distributions such as Ubuntu, Turbolinux, SuSE, Red Hat, Mandriva, Debian and others are affected.
The problems are within three functions in the system call fs/splice.c, according to an advisory from Secunia.
"In the 2.6.23 kernel, the system call functionality has been further extended resulting in ... critical vulnerabilities," said iSEC Security Research in an advisory.
Secunia disagreed about the bugs' seriousness, giving them a less critical ranking.
Exploit code for the vulnerabilities has been released publicly on the hacker site milw0rm.com, and Core Security Technologies has also developed a commercial exploit for the bugs, researchers said.
Researchers advised system administrators to update their kernels immediately.
Last month, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security bug-fixing scheme uncovered an average of one security glitch per 1,000 lines of code in 180 widely used open-source software projects.
Secunia also previously discovered that the number of security bugs in open-source Red Hat Linux operating system and Firefox browsers, far outstripped comparable products from Microsoft last year.
