Some numbers are being thrown out showing a decrease in sales of video games. First off let me point out this a month over month matrix, which is pretty ridicules way to measure sales, but we are going to assume there is still a decrease. Best summed up by alphadog:

The recession appears to have finally caught up with the video game market. Sales of video game hardware and software were down by around one-third in June compared to the same month last year. After initially showing positive growth as the US slid into recession, the latest figures mark the fourth month of declines and the largest year-on-year decline in almost 9 years. ‘The first half of the year has been tough largely due to comparisons against a stellar first half performance last year, but still, this level of decline is certainly going to cause some pain and reflection in the industry,’ said Anita Frazier, a games analyst with NPD Group. She added, ‘The size of the decline could also point to consumers deferring limited discretionary spending until a big event (must-have new title, hardware price cut) compels them to spend.’ The entire video game market in the US was worth $1.2 billion in June, down 31 percent from the same period last year, according to NPD Group.

The problem here is not with the economy in my opinion. Sure things have been tight, but most research has shown that people are not really dropping hobby spending. What is hurting them is the horrible $59.99 price that they all seem to think is appropriate. I honestly can’t believe they are not blaming piracy in this article. I can’t remember the last couple of games I have bought, but it has to do more with quality of titles. When I was younger there seemed to be a new game every week that was a “must have,” but now it is maybe one a year.

(Via Slashdot and NetworkWorld)

When airlines started charging for the first bag it drove me crazy. They just nickel and dime you to death. Some are even charging for drinks and water! So how much money could you even make charging for bags? Well I guess the jokes on me, cause it turns out to be over a billion dollars.

When airlines said that baggage fees were successful, they weren’t kidding. Collectively, they pocketed an extra $1.1 billion in luggage fees in 2008. American and US Airways led the pack — collecting $278 million and $187.1 million in bag fees respectively.

United Airlines kicked off the fun back in February of 2008 when it announced a $25 fee for the second checked bag. In May, while fuel prices soared and airlines started to hurt, American announced that it would add a $15 fee for the first bag, and the flood gates opened.

Now that consumers are used to the fees, there’s really no getting rid of them, though Southwest recently claimed that its lack of fees was helping it gain market share.

Of course all this was started back when the fuel prices were incredibly high, and they were looking at a way to counteract it. But you have noticed they are still charging . . . and prices are no where near what they were.

(Via Consumerist)

We all know that malicious activity comes in many flavors. From the mostly simple DDOS, to DNS records, to a combo web hack. I have to give the guys that took down the Virginia PMP some credit, they are either really smart or really dumb. Here is what the Virginia PMP staff found on their website this morning:

ATTENTION VIRGINIA

I have your shit! In *my* possession, right now, are 8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions. Also, I made an encrypted backup and deleted the original. Unfortunately for Virginia, their backups seem to have gone missing, too. Uhoh

For $10 million, I will gladly send along the password.

(Mirror of the full page)

Goes on to tell how to get a hold of them and all that good stuff. I know how I would do it, but I have the benefit of hoping on a plane when I want. Never underestimate the difference geographical location changes make. The best botnet in the world only protects you so much. So it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

The reason I find so much interest in this is because I feel it is the future growth of the hacking industry. Be it good or bad, people are greedy, and it doesn’t matter the industry. We have seen that with the home market, the financial market, and let’s not even bring Enron and likes into this. So how do you make money hacking?

You steal, manipulate, and sell informatian. Getting the data can be the easy part. Brokering an illegal trade can be the biggest challenge you will face. The problem is for this company, or organization, the easiest way is not to pay. You mail your customers a form letter with a line like, “Your personal information MAY have been comprimised.” Give them a number to call, and offer them free 6 months of credit monitoring. So how do you get them to pay in my opinion?

Media attention has really put hacking into the forefront. With the leaked plans of the JSF, Marine 1, then the power grid, there is a lot to talk about. I would think the most helpful thing to do, for the hackers at least, is to get some public out cry. Drive a media blitz. If you don’t drive the media to this, and have potential patients demand the PMP to pay it out to protect their data, then you will never get a payout.

What are your ideas? How do you manage to launder millions without getting caught?

Q: New thoughts on the Netbook at this point?

A: For us it’s about doing great products. When I’m looking at what’s sold in the Netbook market, I see cramped keyboards, junky hardware, very small screen, bad software. Not a consumer experience that we would put the Mac brand on. As it exists today, we’re not interested in nor would it be something customers would be interested in the long term. We are looking at the space. For those who want a small computer that does browsing/email, they might want an iPhone or iPod Touch. If we find a way to deliver an innovative product that really makes a contribution, we’ll do that. We have some interesting ideas. The product pipeline is fantastic for the Mac. We’ve historically exceeded the market rate of growth, especially given this economy is an extraordinary achievement. These netbook sales are propping up the unit numbers for the industry. We are very pleased with our performance.

I have been looking for a netbook, after I decided that I needed one this week. I want something that will sync up well with my MacBook, and has the same standby mode, allowing it to be ready to go 3 seconds after I open the screen. I am afraid it won’t work out, mostly because when I think netbook, I think sub $300 range. And we all know that product + Apple Tax will not be under $300. Maybe linux is the best way to go, I haven’t installed Gentoo on a netbook yet, and a nice metasploit machine would be handy!

(Via MacRumors.)

Here is a story from Giz that doesn’t surprise me much at all. Turns out the same people that pirate music, also buy more of it. I can relate to this, i am not going to go out and buy a CD for $12-$15 to find out that there is only one decent song on the whole thing. Giz:

A study from the BI Norwegian School of Management has found that those who download free music from services like BitTorrent are also the biggest legitimate consumers of downloadable music.

In fact, among all 1,901 Norway-based study participants (all of whom were over the age of 15), it was found that those who downloaded ‘free’ music were 10x more likely to download pay music. In other words, music pirates are the music industry’s largest online consumers.

Note: ‘Free’ music obviously implies pirated music, but it also encompasses legitimate free music download services.

The findings also included that, in the 15-20 age range, 50% of participants had bought a CD in the last six months. So that trusty format isn’t dead quite yet.

(Via Gizmodo.)

More on the story over at Pulse2