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Playstation, Dreamcast And The 3rd World
NaturePhotog writes: "CNN has an intriguing article on using Playstations running Linux to give people in developing nations access to information on health issues such as AIDS, clean water, etc. Playstations are cheap compared with PCs, hook up to a TV set, they're rugged, and could be hooked up via satellites using Globalstar phones.
Ship along some of those low-cost solar panels discussed earlier on /., and you'd have a pretty sweet setup you can use almost anywhere. For serious research, of course..." And as neema points out, Sony isn't the only choice here: "Using the modem port, students from Nagoya University hooked up a homemade IDE board and installed a hard drive. The Dreamcast is running NetBSD for the Dreamcast." Here are the instructions (with schematics) on how to add a hard drive to your Dreamcast.
What, me worry?
While I understand that these systems may help to educate the citizens of Third World Countries, does anyone else feel that perhaps there are more important things to focus on before addressing the "digital divide?" Things like clean water, stricter environmental regulations and general health and sanitation? A Playstion running Linux is a great toy, but it won't do you much good if you have no food because your farmland has extremely high levels of toxic chemicals in the soil, or if easily curable diseases (in First World countries, anyway) are killing off most of the population.
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"To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking: Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!"
I guess they were trying to stop from anyone suing them for using the acronym AIDS.
The ICT and the WEF could also develop a portable version - like a Gameboy running Linux - that gives information about AIDS (and also herpes syphillis, ...) on the spot. The device could come in a handy pouch that doubles as a condom.
I would think something like this could be useful in many developed countries as well.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
As an added benefit, the birth rate will be reduced in areas using the cheap boxes. Anthropogists noticed that when pirated satellite feeds became available to villages (one person would be the dish, and run cable to the whole neighborhood for a small fee), the birth rate dropped dramatically. The reason? Men were up late watching porn instead of keeping the wife "busy". The men turned to self gratification instead.
That's the dumbest thing I've heard. The cite the fact that these machines are easier to use than PC's (designed for 12 year olds blah blah blah)...but unix is unix (you'll still have to learn it)....$300 console plus TV/monitor isn't much cheaper than a PC....not to mention the fact there will be a number of apps you can't run....all so you can educate them about AIDS? Give me a break... These are the kind of articles that are insulting 'solutions' to real 3rd world problems....what they really are are free advertising for companies like Sun.... I'm sorry IT is important, but no one has shown it being a factor in reducing AIDS transmission...nor do think it makes sense to talk about it right now....
And why is this exactly? It's because the PS2 hardware device is a loss-leader, or at least a very-thin-profit-margin leader. They are basically sold only so that people will go out and buy Sony Playstation games, which, at $50+ for a DVDROM, are certainly sold at quite a profit.
So, I'm certainly not saying it's morally wrong to take PS2s, install linux, and ship 'em to the big bad "third world" (which is also getting a lot of solar cells, what's with that place these days?). What I'm saying is, the parade can't go on forever. If sony sells 10M of these things and only 2M people are using them for gaming, the price could increase significantly. Then, at the very least, the low-cost benefit would be gone. Worst case, Sony would discontinue the platform altogether.
What I'd rather see is some stripped-down hardware (like P2's with 64M and 4G) shipped over for this kind of use. This kind of thing could probably be gotten as donations from corporations that are surplussing it (ie, throwing it away), and they could even claim it as a tax write-off. Everyone wins.
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I'm not sure if this is a troll or not, but in regards to the "flies off their eyes" comment, I believe that the reason you see many children in certain Third World countries with flies on them is that it is considered bad luck to remove them. This is why many children grow up either visually impaired, or completely blind. There have been efforts to educate people about this as well, but I haven't the faintest clue how well it has worked.
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"To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking: Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!"
This story is wildly out of whack with reality. The primary tenet is that playstation II's are cheaper than computers. A complete PSX2 'computer' would come out to something like $700 US after you add all the rickty hacks like hard drive and globalstar modem connectivity, plus a TV set... This is not cheaper than a refurbished P90 with a 13" monitor!
No, rather I'd say that this is a contrived wet dream of a story, packaged by the Sony Entertainment US marketing department, bundled up and handed off to AOL/Time Warner's news division glorifying certain corporate interests that run contrary to certain looming threats from other quarters. Besides, there's not a lot of money in refurbished P90's sold to developing nations, but there sure is a lot of money in convincing armchair philanthropists to buy a playstation 2 that they may sooth their aching conscience in this land of plenty. Don't believe the hype!
Anyone think these three CEOs might do better to spend their time fixing their companies than working on this interesting but not very important project? For the same reason that if I lived in a village without clean water, I would prefer clean water to a PS2, I would prefer my CEOs focus on shareholder value!
sulli
RTFJ.
of a Dreamcast running NetBSD...here.
How Jaded Are You?
So it brings a smile to my face when I see someone actually doing it. Right on, guys!
This sounds like a worthy cause. I will gladly donate my PS when the gamecube comes out. :)
Now they can learn about all the things they don't have like water and food. They can also learn about things they have like AIDS. It sounds great, but when are they going to get the things they know more than me about?
Look a monkey!
Why not PSX? I mean, the hard drive and broadband isn't out yet, so either they're going to wait or they're going to do more modifications to the PS2 hardware, and so long as you're doing that you might as well go PSX. They're cheaper anyway.
I hope Sony isn't lame enough to count however many thousand PS2's they sell out of this deal as part of their installed base.
Schnapple
Schnapple
Of course, the PS would need electricity, whereas if you give them, say, a hand powered computer...
Sure, you say, solar electricity. But hand-cranking (discreet cough) builds character.
Well, if you follow the thinking of these companies, then apparently a Playstation with Linux will solve all of those problems. C'mon, folks... I enjoy Playstation and Linux as much as the next guy, but even I know that it can't cure my bleeding bowels... :)
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"To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking: Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!"
You have heard that one, right? This could be a cool way to distribute information, if it works. I'd like to see a little more detail on the proposal, but in theory it sounds like a Good Idea.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to send a whole slew of TV/VCR combo units (what are they, like maybe $50 in quantity?) with some video tapes?
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
This article is poking fun at the geek community, in a trollish sort of way. I thought it was obvious but maybe not.
"I can plug in a 80 gigabyte disk and store 16 hours of video on it or up to 500 hours of audio. Now we attach it to a free satellite, slow, trickle charge. We can put anything on the disk you want to know about clean water, latrines and do it in whatever language," Gage said.
The clues are right there. Where in the world are they gonna find 100,000 playstations? What will be used to power them?
I give a short quote:
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It seems to me that the initiators of the projects are overly optimistic regarding the availability of electricity. I've heard of some of the troubles of running computers in developping countries: electrical power is only available in the evenings, if at all, and it's not very reliable.
A few additional problems: You have got a hard time to get any supplies (for example, laser printer toner; some university is asking visiting professors to bring some toner with them for their one and only laser printer) and replacements for broken parts, high-tech devices are usually not designed to be repaired, and it's unlikely that they can be repaired in the same country. Furthermore, a lot of developping countries have quite an extreme climate, which doesn't increase the lifetime of electronic equipment either.
No, I don't think game consoles are a silver bullet in the struggle of educating people in the developping countries.
Good thing all the poor people of the world can read English or this idea might not work.
More use for linux...good thing. However, it may cut down on AIDS, but they would just be infected with (GPL) cancer. (sorry...I should really leave the MS thing alone now. ;)
Damnit, people! Can't journalists and policymakers consult with a geek before they spout of ignorantly on technical matters?
to explain how the Playstation is going to clean the water, run electricity to the village, teach the people to read, and put food on the table. I have seen the third world devistation first hand....and let me tell you one thing --- setting up terminal's for these people has got to be the most stupid thing I have ever heard. At least if you sent them pamphlets --- they could use them to wipe their arses....
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
It seemed to me that these people aren't too well informed. First off, to refer to the PS2 as just the "Playstation" is a little misleading because the original Playstation is still being sold. If they can't even refer to the system properly, I think there's going to be some major problems up ahead for this project. Secondly, it doesn't matter quite so much what the machines cost to build, as what they can get them for. An XBOX may cost $400+ to build, but if you can get it for $300, that's the figure you need to worry about. Then they talk about using GlobalStar for service without even having contacted them yet. It seems that these people just have some sort of half-baked idea they want to propagate to make themselves look good.
On a side note, the BSD Dreamcast looked pretty friggin' cool.
If it's supposed to move and doesn't, use WD-40. If it moves and it shouldn't, use duct tape.
This is absurd. How is a PS2 teach citizens of third world countries how to stop AIDS, clean water, and harvest crops? These people have never seen a computer in their life before, it's hard enough for people in America to use a computer. Someone must have to teach these people how to use these 'computers.' Why don't these people just tell them all the information instead of setting them infront of some box. Rather than wasting billions of dollars to 'educate,' why don't we put the money to helping them. Genetic seeds can be made to withstand harsher climates, while providing much better nutrients than regular food. These people don't need a PS2, they need to survive. The money could be used to help educate and feed children who have been orphaned by AIDS. There are many African tribes where they belive that in order to cure AIDS, you must sleep with a virgin. I encourage people to support a third world country, either through your money, or through your help. America is the richest nation, also the greediest nation. What was that one book where they took everything out of houses from people living in different parts of the world? That was a good book, showed how much richer than we are than everyone.
Why don't they just get some super cheap PCs, or even buy up USED PCs and ship them off to these people who are in desperate need of computers? I would think that an actual PC would be more useful, and easier to maintain/set up than a hacked PS2.
Hacking the PS2 is very neat, don't get me wrong. It just doesn't seem to be the obvious choice in this case for cheap and easy computing power.
Interested in weather forecasting?
Everytime slashdot posts an article about computers and Africa there always has to be some +4 or +5 insightful post that restates this misguided opinion. Here's my response (some of it a repost from a Geekcorps article).
Disclaimer: I'm African and the last time I was back home was 2 months ago.
It is true that most African's live in the kind of abject poverty that most Westerners can't even imagine let alone endure. It is also true that basic infrastructure like regular power supply, potable water, health care services, etc. but this doesn't mean that this should somehow preclude African's from the fruits of the 21st century. Instead of being like most Westerners whose only thoughts of Africa occur when they guiltily switch the channel whenever one of those commercials asking for money to feed starving children who can be fed for less than $1 a day shows up, thesre are people who are trying to help out in some way or the other. It is in extremely poor taste for you to bash them for donating their time and resources to a society desperately in need.
Frankly I'm glad they're doing this, with the advent of the Net I've kept in touch with friends I left behind via ICQ and email whom I thought I'd never talk to again due to the prohibitive costs of calling or locating them after they moved. Anyone who is helping with the proliferation of technology and the Net in Africa has my thanks and undying appreciation. Oh by the way, for all the other people who are bashing them for sending "toys" to Africa. What the fuck are you doing for the poor and starving of the Earth?
PS: The last time I went home I asked my friends what they wanted and one of them asked for Java programming books. I am constantly in touch with another friend who just switched jobs and does ADO and Access database programming who used to write VBA applications in the past. My mom just bought a PC and complains about how she always ends up browsing for hours when all she wanted to do was spend 5 minutes checking her email. Hope that makes some you guys think before you rate this kind of jingoistic claptrap up.
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The problem with the one solution for all mankind bs that was being spewed out in the article was from a gov't organization of some type that will effectivily and quickly spend money, thats it. I'm not being cynacial here, but Take 2 fully loaded, wireless, self-powered computers into Mexico to a local farm and then based on research decided the stragey for to deleiver important/relevent information. My guess is that most research on farming methods and the like can be delivered via CD. I mean come on just try on a small scale to see what works, instead of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" method helping mankind.
"Get them before they get....
Where exactly did you hear about all these African tribes that believe that sleeping with virgins will cure AIDS? Get out of your country once in a while, you'll find there's actually a world out there. And yes, they can learn how to use computers. God, you people are offensive.
If anyone has the Apex AD800 DVD player, take it apart, you will notice it uses a standard ide dvdrom. Pretty cool eh.
Right from pricewatch, Mobo & Cpu - $109 810LMR, 64 MB VIDEO - AND - 4x AGP - upto1.2GHz cpu, SOUND - ATA100, 2 PCI, LAN & 56K Mdm Case + PSU - $15 Cheapo HDD - $40 Stick o RAM - $20 There you go a $185 Duron 800 PC , used monitors are dirt cheap so say for about 75 bucks less than a PS2 you could give people in third world countries a usable x86 PC. Not that giving electronic equipment to people with no food or clothes let alone electricity is a good idea.
Just think, if we could get each box sold to come with Folding@Home pre-loaded. This would have a huge benefit to the scientific community, and make the manufactors look pretty good as well.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
First, let me say this is a terrific idea, but:
...and in a never-seen-before move every tech company in the world would forget about its difference and unity to help the poor people in far away places without looking for profits.
"The people that make above a dollar a day, under three dollars a day, generally have some electricity. They've got television sets that run on car batteries, or they will have a little generator."
Where did he get this info from?
* Some one making $30 to $90 a month barelly can survive. So this guy has money to buy batteries (or take somewhere to recharge), or even worse, in the middle of a Petroleum crisis which the whole world is (gas price here in Brazil is going to the stars) this guy with $30~$90 still have enougth to buy gas to his genarator in order to wathc TV!
"Each part of the community has to do some different part of it. You would not come to Sun for good taste in designing attractive programs. We can make sure the networking works. All of our partners, meaning all of the high-tech companies in the world, ought to contribute their engineering knowledge,"
Gage said he has discussed the plan with the chairman of Sony and the president of the World Bank and decided that at least 100,000 modified consoles should be installed in schools and people's homes in poor country's
At what cost???
The only kind of money the World bank "borrows" to poor countries is charged in an interest rate that can never be paid back.
Sorry if I sound down. But it sounds too nice to be true.
Of course, if something like that ever happen I would feel really good knowing it. And Linux would grow with it.
Now on the other side, this is already happening in some places.
For example, The Linux distibution company Conectiva already gives parts of its profits selling the Conectiva Linux Box to CDI.
CDI is a non profit organization to help the democratization of tecnology among poor people/schools.
Good to see that some one at least is doing something.
Absoulutly, but when saving the world the world from starvation why not get the latest and greatest. Each day that you buy the same computer the price will go down. It will take more than a few years to distribute a couple billion laptops and build a supporting infastructure. Why not use the best you can get today.
"Get them before they get....
While having Linux work on the Dreamcast and PS2 is nice, having a port of it to the Gamecube would be much more beneficial, since it will be released about the same time as the Xbox. Because the Gamecube uses PowerPC technology this shouldn't be much of a problem, although I don't know how graphics accel. support could be implemented.
Of course they were wrong. If Stallman had to wait until the advent of commodity sub-$1000 PC's to develop any GNU project, then where would we be today? More hopelessly dependant upon IBM, Sun and Microsoft no doubt.
Forcing a "Third World" country develop their infrastructure to depend expensive proprietary software is hurtful, especially since they can start with no legacy depandancies to break.
No one claims the Free software will solve all of societies problems- but when they are ready to start solving those, Free software can certainly help them to do it.
I guess the CNN artcile highlights a good point - of using existing technology to improve mankind's lot (thats the aim of information and technology, which doesnt seem to be obvious to most posters heres - they wonder how can information help in generating food - pretty dumb) But in consideration and in reference to a previous post on Slashdot it reminds me of the Simputer - (http://www.simputer.org) a project taking shape in India and based on a Linux boxen - in fact a PDA and Computer cross. It (the Simputer) is a cheaper product - around $200) and has a smart card facility which is very topical to third world / developing countries in that it allows users to share a single Simputer device and keep their own information / preferences in the smart card. So each user buys a smart card ($50) and shares the community Simputer. This is good for nations where a 1:1 ration between a computer (or Simputer) and an individual is not feasable. Sharing (an open source concept again) is the best solution and this also really spreads information to the lowest common denominator - the common man. I think the simputer is a better device than a playing game station with internet capabilities in this regard. But thanks to CNN and Slashdot for highlighting technologies which come to good use.
Where did I say things aren't as bad as people make them out to be? I said which in my opinion clearly states that things are bad but doesn't mean that we shouldn't be allowed to use the Internet and computers until we are as advanced as the Western world was in the 20th century.
You then say that it's in "poor taste" because the society is desparately in need.
I said meaning that it is in poor taste to bash the people who are trying to find cheaper alternatives to getting Africans access to PCs.
Since when does having access to the Web count as "desparately in need"?
Lacking access to information does count as desperately in need. For instance, ignorance has caused AIDS in Africa to reach epidemic proportions. If a lot of these people had access to information just a few years earlier the devastation would not be as widespread as it is today. The same goes for a large number of diseases as well.
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Just a suggestion.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
My first reaction was "Why don't we just send books?" Then I read it again. They want to educate illiterate people with video and animations.
Note also that there was a quote saying any of the modern consoles would be good, it's just that the others cost more than the PSX2. (Is $225 really a good estimate for how much it costs to make a PSX2? I had heard that the $300 price was under Sony's cost of goods, but maybe they have cut costs by now.)
Even the dirt-poor need information. They need to know how to set up the latrines so they don't contaminate the water supply. They need to know basic public health so they won't give themselves food poisoning all the time. And it might be cool if they could learn how to read; that's one more thing you actually could do on a PSX2.
In a perfect world, you would make a special Africa Computer. It would be mil-spec rugged, have the graphics capability for video and animations, etc. etc. In reality, you would spend a lot developing this, and the game consoles are probably good enough and very inexpensive.
Note that not everyone is illiterate. They will probably also want simple cheap web terminals like the NIC.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
It's AIDS not AIDs Yep...a typo. I thought all Slashdot posts had to have at least one misspelling :-)
In contrast to which, PS2s are all alike, you only have to design the system once, and you can support them all in a consistent way. Far easier to train volunteers, and there'd be simple and consistent cookbook support.
What you're suggesting sounds economical until you factor in the phenomenal quantities of sweat.
what's wrong with using old PC hardware? seems like a text based console with lynx for browsing the web would allow all that great information witout having to spend a few hundred dollars, take any old x86 and add a tv out card and a read only filesystem so it won't get fouled up by user error and poof, information age for about 50$. I'm a rich american (relitively speaking I make MORE than 3$ a day) and I don't have an 80Gig hard drive, are these people going to be using Napster or something?
besides all that, if I lived in a third world country and someone gave me a PS2 without and games, I'd be pissed off!!!
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
The idea is for the PS2 to help educate about clean water -- they probably don't even know the water is unsafe.
They probably don't realize its unsafe because the corrupt kleptocrat-for-life that runs their country has been dumping tech company hazardous waste in the river while lining his Swiss bank account on the profits.
Meanwhile those PS/2s that got "donated" for this worthy education project that worked and weren't diverted to the families of the kleptocrat's supporters were sold to the duty free store at the airport so that the government could generate even more hard currency.
Wake up and smell the coffee. You need to give these people something their government can't steal from them and that they won't immediately turn around and sell for cash, like clean water, innoculation from Polio and other things that materially improve their life. Justifying the technojackoff fantasy of running Linux on the PS/2 by thinking it helps people living in the stone age would be funny if it wasn't pathetic.
Shut up, you know you just one of those spoiled white brats living South Africa where your wealthy family originaly moved to exploit the natives.
It is interesting that ignorant. ACs always make posts like this that insinuate that the only way an African can be a geek is if he is a White South African.
Sorry to dissappoint you but I'm a Black Nigerian. Thanks for playing.
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Gee, wouldn't it be nice if it was clear where to get the NetBSD/dreamcast port?
Here and there. Oh, looks like there are no dreamcast-specific snapshots just yet, but you can use an hpcsh snap, as it is binary-compatible with the dreamcast (becuse the dreamcast runs off a Hitachi Super-H chip).
(I believe this port will be included in the 1.5.1 release when it becomes available, but don't quote me on that.)
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Do you have a
Lots of places don't have clean water. Screw that though, let's give them playstations.
The PS2's are not for "surfing the web" in the way we necessarily understand it. They are for downloading and displaying multimedia content. The idea is to get information to the people about how to prevent AIDS, TB, and malaria, how to build better sanitation systems, how to prevent malnutrition, etc. For that, a PS2 showing videos and images may work a lot better than written materials (illiteracy is high). You may even be able to provide language and literacy courses with it. Unlike other IT projects, it should require little maintenance or instruction: just put in the right disk and turn it on. And unlike a DVD player, it has the ability to get and store content from satellites and radio transmissions, at nearly the same price.
Furthermore, unlike other kinds of IT projects, if it doesn't work, there is little harm done: people aren't arranging their life around this device; it's just an optional, potentially useful source of information. It promises to give people what Marshall says empowers them: skills.
"What I'd rather see is some stripped-down hardware (like P2's with 64M and 4G) shipped over for this kind of use."
Just for the record, there are people in the developing world both interested in low-cost computing and open source. They understand the hardware limitations and the realities of the cost infrastructure.
And as far as I can tell, they're not in it for the money.
Tell me sending a ps2 doesn't seem ridiculously inappropriate compared to this.
And what if our "garbage" is faster than what they currently have?
Sure, recycle all the XTs, 286s, 386s, and the low end 486s... Anything better than that can be used for SOMETHING.
A 486DX2-66 w/16Megs of RAM can be a whole hell of a lot more useful than a PS2 "workstation". How many NICs can you stick on a PS2? Can it be used as a router, or a firewall? How much memory can you stick in a PS2? How about SCSI peripherals?
It makes no sense for anyone to quickly dismiss our "garbage" as viable computing hardware.
Interested in weather forecasting?
Now, why did that get modded down? It's actually quite logical!
Come on, people...
Interested in weather forecasting?
And maybe we could get MAME on Linux on playstation going for them too.
Wouldn't that be cool?
Given that the proposal is from the WEF, which is involved in the slave-labour "export processing zones" used to manufacture goods cheaply, chances are these doovy new Linux PlayStations are more likely to be used to set up data-entry maquiladoras where 12-year-olds will be chained to their desks for 18 hours a day and paid $1 per day than they are to be used to actually empower the people there.
Or am I just paranoid?
Is there a reason i get modded down for correcting a typo? I just wanted to make sure there was no confusion in the meaning.
You all seem to have missed this article in Wired in april about the Iraqis "supposedly" hooking a shitload of these bad-boys together to make a cheap-man's supercomputer. Check it out!
*pst*
I hear they play games, too. But that's between you and me.
- colin
Mod Parent Up.
It was the only worthwhile comment in this
whole discussion.
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Fr. Engels.
All the geeks know that video games = no sex. No sex = no AIDS. Brilliant!
However, I would say that most people here are raising the importance of the technology over that of the info is is supposed to convey. Who gives a shit whether info flows through Xboxes, PSs or Dreamcast... or radio?
In this country (and many other 'highly indebted nations') personal, private access to information technology is not feasible- but personal, private access to information is. If we had a system of information centres staffed with knowledgeable helpful folks, the poor could travel a couple of hours to get access to important info and carry it home on the most revolutionary technology ever introduced: paper. In many cases, even this wouldn't work as many people can't read or write- but the staff could help search for the requested info and read it to the user, even translating into a local language. Info tech is important but we need to be creative and realistic in its application. I've lived in areas where people steal handmade stools from each other- there is often little or no personal security. How can someone hold onto their nifty Dreamcast? Furthermore many posters underestimate the quality of their education. Most people in rural areas have little in the way of analytical skills. This is not a chauvanism- they are not stupid people, but they have not been trained to deconstruct ideas or apply logical processes. There are many tools which you need before you can shape the clay of raw information into a knowledge sculpture. Many of these tools are not yet in the hands of John Gage and the WEF's target audience. One more thing, there are a lot of "we"s and "us"es peppered though the posts in this thread which I take to mean "we Americans" or "us Westerners" as opposed to "us geeks". There are many people that don't fall into the former categories reading these posts! "We" are a global community and should act like it. Switch from talk about what the West (or North) can do for the 3rd world (or South) - that doesn't work. It's been a losing battle for 50 years. Let's talk more about what we as a group of tech savvy people can do for disadvanteged people everywhere.
2001-07-06 18:02:46 Linux+PlayStation for developing Countries (articles,linux) (rejected)
"$300 console plus TV/monitor isn't much cheaper than a PC"
Oops there. This is about the $100 Playstation and Dreamcast as far as I can see - no mention of the $300 PS2 anywhere in the blurb, anyway. Given that there is no internet solution available currently for the PS2 (although I don't know one for the Playstation either to be fair) this makes sense. Certainly, my cheap little Dreamcast makes a rather sweet internet solution for the price.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"