Don't worry about it. I'm just a bit cranky because it's the the high 30s here and I don't have AC. And in some ways I'm seeing less poverty here in the various parts of China than I've seen back home.

OTOH, people here have less stuff and seem less likely to replace something that isn't broken, so your comment wasn't entirely off base either. I just don't see much of that sort of consumerism back home, well except for the Apple people.

Well, there still are many people who buy new things only because there are advertised, but it doesn't refer to any country. It's more like state of mind "Gosh, I have so much money I don't know where to spend", that occurs all over the world.

I don't know much about China, but I think it's the work ethics , which are much different than here, more respect to their time and money earned, this is why they are less likely to buy new Iphone just because it's new.

But I'm just assuming, maybe you could tell me (us?) more about that :-)

It's hard to say, but the government seems to be more focused on getting people jobs. Productivity seems to be crap as every grocery store I've been to will have at least one employee for ever 4 aisles in addition to the usual staff one would expect.

Things also end up being quite bureaucratic with papers traveling across multiple people's desks each having to stamp it. I'm guessing that there's a fair amount of idle time as back in the US we would have each person processing the entire form rather than four people processing a quarter each.

There's also no expectation here of ever retiring without living with ones children and ones own savings. And I think that probably is the biggest difference, at least as far as I can tell. People don't expect to have the government or a pension step in and pay the bills when they get old here. What they have for emergencies and for retirement is the cash they have in the bank.

I suspect that if Americans and probably Europeans as well, didn't just expect to have a retirement income or money if they got seriously injured that you'd see changes in the spending patterns as well.

It's going to be really interesting to see how things go in the US as we get closer and closer to proper universal health care. By 2014, we'll have gotten nearly there and I expect before too long that the last steps will be made, but even just with the system as it will be in 2014 we should star to see differences.

If this is true and it does fully support PS2&1, then it is a very dissrespectful to anyone having a PS3 without PS2 support. I still have my PS2, but many don't and would love to have a PS3 with PS2 support and were pretty upset not having it in their PS3s. I am sure they will be "excited" they have an option of buying another PS3.

Considering that they included support for PS1&2 initially to expand the library available on launch and that they subsequently cut the support so that they were making a profit on the units, I wouldn't expect them to be adding support back into the system.

I'm not likely to be buying any more Sony consoles because of the way they handled that. IMHO it's dishonest to release a console in the same family that doesn't handle all the same games.

Oh lol

But that's $38!!! It costs money!

I'm teasing too but I'm continually surprised that people don't want to do an analysis about these kinds of things. Sometimes you have to spend money to save or make money. It must seem counter-intuitive but so does the idea that taking breaks from work actually makes you more productive in the long run.

Same thing with CFLs, in fact, sending you a PM on that issue, I need to buy a bunch.

First supposed "images" of the new model arise on the net

http://www.shacknews.com/article/74812/super-slim-ps3-photos

Looks very nice, reminds me a lot of the Slim PS2

On the topic of Playstations and fat, no-one's linked this yet?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dldnddwerco

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrbzsRSxkVA