'Is it us or it that's messed up?'

The key to producing a successful product advert is to promote the brand and make people *want* what you're selling. Under no circumstances should an advert make people go 'oh, god, no!' and actually people regret their purchases.

So behold, the brand new PlayStation 3 advert, an advert so terrible it's been classified NSFW. And rightly so - no-one should see this advert, but you *will* look, oh yes, you will. This is more horrific than the original Xbox advert, more worrying than a Benetton advert, very much less terrible than a shock site.

But to make this a choice you've made yourself, I leave you with a simple link to it.

The most horrifying PS3 advert ever (via Gizmodo)

...and don't say I didn't warn you.

'Wooahahahhh.. love hurrrrtss..' - Nazareth, Love Hurts

Whilst I really should be revising, I took a little time out to catch up on what Yahtzee Crosshaw of Zero Punctuation had to say about... well, games mostly. But during a piece where he responds to all the people who said that he was wrong about SSBB and cite things he didn't actually say, he summed up the 'console war' quite beautifully.

The section in question is from 3:47 onwards - I *would* cut it out like a paper-man chain but apparently the people at The Escapist would prefer people to embed them like good little copyright-abiding people:



(Click here if you are Planeting or RSS leeching feeding).

WARNING regarding Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3)

Quick heads up to anybody using an AMD (or other non-Intel brand) processor. If you have used a University or self-made XP-SP2 CD then you may have a horrific constant blue-screen-of-death approach to starting your computer which prevents you from even booting into safe mode.

The Microsoft-given response is 'don't install it' which is all well and good but you blatently already *have* installed it else you wouldn't be looking for the solution to the problem, would you?

UPDATE: Well, the stop error (the one I had was a 0x0000007e STOP error with no real description of what was wrong) is caused by one of three things:

1) You've got a sysprep'd disc, which is actually unlikely thinking about it, as sysprep is more of a 'disc image' than a 'installation'.
2) The installer has made a mess of your GDI32 driver.
3) You've got a slightly dodgy driver somewhere.
4) You have some slightly dodgy hardware somewhere.
5) You've got a RAID driver installed.
6) You're trying to install it on a computer with some kind of Christian Magic in it.
7) You just happen to be passing the computer at the time.

The main solutions are here:
Aumha.net
or by simply typing '0x000007e xp sp3 bsod' or words akin to that into Google.

However, personally after trying several of those, I took the coward's way out: I found the XP+SP2 install disc, clicked repair, gave it half an hour to revert back to the previous version and vowed not to install SP3. Problem solved.

UPDATE 2: Finally, somebody has produced a nice little script that fixes the problem. Get it here(ish), follow the instructions and be a happy AMD-loving bunny.