One of our interns found a sweet deal for a new 120GB HDD for the Xbox 360: $60. Sure, the website seemed a bit shady, and it shipped from Hong Kong, but $60 was a damn good price. So I ordered one.

A few weeks later, I get what appears to be a legit Microsoft Xbox 360 HDD. It comes in a distinctly non-legit box, but everything else looks OK. The problem? It's just the HDD, meaning I can't transfer anything over.

So, of course, I order a transfer cable from eBay. Only $10 this time, yet again from Hong Kong. This time, it doesn't come with the necessary disc to make the transfer.

So now I have a choice: either download an ISO of the transfer disc from any number of shady torrent sites, risking my computer and my Xbox in the process, or eat the $70 I've spent and just buy a legit HDD. At this point, I'm not even sure I trust the HDD I bought to work.

Is this a huge problem? No. Am I whining about something that I should have avoided by doing even a little bit of research first? Yes. Am I still annoyed and frustrated with this? Yes. So let this be a lesson to you: if you think you can outsmart Microsoft into paying less than their obscene HDD prices, you may be wrong.

First, the AP decided that fair use wasn't real and said it would start going after people for even using their headlines with links to their content. Now? The Associated Press has gone after one of its own affiliates for posting an AP video. An AP video embedded from the official AP YouTube page. Are you fucking serious, AP?

The executive who called the station accused them of "stealing our licensed content." Here's a quote from an interview from the obviously frustrated station manager:

And we're an A.P. affiliate for crying out loud! I stumped him on that one... What is really shocking is that they were shocked that they've got a YouTube channel that people are embedding on their Websites. He seemed shocked by that. "Oh, I am going to have to look into that" is what he told me.

Wow. Just, wow. [TechCrunch]

Yes, this OptiPix SP3200 32-inch HD "Digital Photo Frame" will set you back $840, which is more than many 32-inch HDTVs from brands such as Sony, Samsung, Sharp and Toshiba. And you can even watch video on it, albeit only when its loaded on from an SD card, making it the most tedious and annoying TV ever. But guys, it has a frame around it! A frame!

But hey, your grandparents like these things, right? Isn't that how you justify their existence? This is just the logical extreme of the complete ludicrousness of this entire genre of products. If you buy one of these things, you deserve to have your credit cards taken away from you for your own good. [Product Page via TFTS]