Slashdot Mirror

Anonymous Coward writes "Akzo Nobel has developed a unique temporary paint system which can peeled off after use. Known as Maskin, the product can be applied to any non-porous surface, such as a vehicle body or windows, without risk of damage to the original finish. Maskin (a combination of the words mask and skin) is available in eight basic colors, plus one transparent film, and can be mixed to create a wide spectrum of shades. When no longer required, the film can be peeled and disposed of using standard paint waste removal methods."

dazza101 writes "The Cassini spacecraft passed within 72,000 kms of the Saturn moon Iapetus yesterday, taking a series of spectacular images of this intriguing moons rugged surface. An excellent prelude to what promises to be one of the major stories of the new year, the plunge of the Huygens probe into Titan's atmosphere on January 24."

Arcadi writes "Amazon set a new record of items sold on a single day. More than 2.8 million units or 32 items per second. That's a big store."

CryptoJoe writes "Space.com and CNN report a successful docking between the Russian-built cargo ship Progress 16 and the International Space Station (ISS). NASA had indicated that a failure of Progress 16 would lead to the evacuation of the ISS because food supplies are critically low."

Torrey Clark writes "NitroOnline is a project that is currently being developed that will allow Nintendo DS owners to play Wireless enabled games via the internet. It will require a wireless router, and a wireless card in your PC or laptop to communicate with your Nintendo DS."

linuxizer writes "Since my last Slashdot entry, I've been discussing various copyright issues with the ever-interesting Peter Fader. Out of those conversations came sniu.info, an attempt to document the various forms of substantial, non-infringing use over peer-to-peer networks before MGM v Grokster goes to the Supreme Court. So far I have about 50 entries, but more suggestions would be much appreciated. Some fellow /. readers might also be interested in my fairly regular posts on copyright/IP issues, which are mostly links to interesting articles with occasional commentary."

sammykrupa writes "Google suggest Javascript code dissected and rewritten for all of you web developers out there. Cool piece of web reverse-engineering!" Joel Spolsky astutely notes that this will raise the bar in terms of how people expect the "internets" to work.

The best thing about the SpikeTV Video Game Awards show was that it was "only" two hours long. And that's really sad. Now that the business side of gaming has gained some attention, the next hurdle the gaming industry should be attempting to clear is an artistic one: games will never be seen as equals to movies or television if they and the culture that surrounds them are represented the way they were last night. The industry can do better. Read on for my reaction to last night's train wreck of an awards show. The concept of an awards show for video games probably strikes some people as counterintuitive. While movies and television are investments of a handful of hours on the viewer's part, even the shortest story-based games take ten hours or more to complete. The personal nature of the video gaming experience means that gaming is a highly subjective genre of entertainment. Even more so than for movies and television, people have very specific gaming preferences. Attempting to quantify that experience across the board may seem like a bad idea at the outset.

That said, I think that an awards show is a good idea for the industry. At the very least, having an awards show with some gravitas would be a great way to put a public stamp of approval on the hard work that development houses put into their games. Games and movies can both take years to make, with certain games having development cycles longer than the lifespan of the average household pet. That kind of commitment by the artists, developers, designers, and producers should be rewarded in some way. If a game is good, I'm sure the big fat checks they get are plenty of reward. There's still something at work in an awards show, though. I bet if you asked a big name actor who's has been in a financially successful film and also won an award which he remembered more you're going to get "the awards ceremony" as an answer every time.

If an awards show in general is a good idea, I believe the debacle that SpikeTV broadcast last night was actually counter-productive for the gaming industry. As far as I could tell, the show had little to do with games, and everything to do with advertising. "Most Addictive Game Fueled by Mountain Dew"? Come on! If the Oscars had categories like "Best Comedy driven by Ford" or "Best Female in a Leading Role with makeup by Revlon" would you take them seriously? The night was a never-ending cascade of scantily clad women, rap, "extreme" stuff, rap, people who had nothing to do with games, and rap.

It's very interesting to me that, at least in my time zone, just after the awards show ended an episode of X-Play that I really wanted to see came on. Aside from the fact that the X-Play folks are (refreshingly) actual gamers, this particular episode had a piece with Morgan Webb covering the Child's Play charity auction from last week. Seeing Gabe and Tycho in tuxedos was excellent in and of itself. Above and beyond that, the disparity between the crass tenor of the awards show and the tone of the charity auction was striking. From what little I saw of the auction, it didn't seem somber at all. Jokes were cracked and everyone seemed to be having a good time. The difference is that the audience and organizers were there to celebrate games and children in a respectful manner.

And that, for me, is the biggest complaint I have about the awards last night. The show showed absolutely no respect to the games themselves. From the Video Game Ombudsman's commentary: "A selection of graphics adjectives used on the show - "slammin'," "great," "amazing," "hot visually," "so sick." That kind of shallow analysis is why games aren't art in the minds of a lot of people. Katamari Damacy is a very worthwhile game, but graphics and the "slammin-ness" of the game have nothing to do with that. Katamari is a good game because of a great (and simple) design, a development team that purposely looked for a unique style of gameplay, and a quirky and original soundtrack. I want an awards show that actually says things like that.

It could be great, too! The Oscars have a board that votes on the movies, and the Academy members are made of folks from the movie industry. I say the same style would be a useful format for games with some slight changes. The Oscars send around DVDs of all the nominee films to the Academy. Forcing a large group of people to play the number of games that would be required would be just cruel. That would mean hundreds of hours of gameplay just to be qualified to vote. It would be a much better idea to split up the field into bodies of relevant people. Have thirty or so folks involved in the RTS genre, say, from developers to producers to fan site owners review a set of five or six games and then vote accordingly. Have a Media Choice Award where game review organs like Gamespot, Game Informer, and X-Play, who have presumably played most of the field, can have their say. Have voting for the Game of the Year award be an industry-wide event, with everyone from an EA developer to a Sony Online Customer Service Rep to an IGDA member having a chance to say their piece. Voting via website is fine if you're taking a Slashdot poll -- making a representative, evaluative statement about a field of entertainment for an entire year should be slightly more involved.

I have enough problems in my day without having to explain to my family why a show honoring the entertainment I love is populated mostly by underdressed women in angel costumes. Once a year, wouldn't it be nice to put the scruffy, anti-social gamer stereotype behind us? To sit down and watch some very intelligent people in tuxedos and gowns get their due for providing us so much entertainment? Seriously, wouldn't it be great to see John Carmack present an award? Or get to listen to a Wil Wright acceptance speech? A gaming awards show taken seriously would be a sight to see. Even if that never happens, please -- enough with the Spike-style awards shows.

A not-so anonymous Anonymous Coward puts this tough issue up for discussion: "There seem some more determined efforts underway currently in some corners of the KDE project to port substantial parts of the software stack to the MS Windows platform. These efforts are now met by fierce resistance on the part of some of their core developers. Aaron J. Seigo summarizes his reasoning in his blog: 'If the applications people want are available on Windows, they will tend to stick with Windows...by porting software to Windows, we eliminate the majority of the competitive advantage of Free Software desktops in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of consumers while Microsoft has all the rope they need to shut the door once again on us ... Free Software desktop applications on Windows represent a no-win situation for Open Source, but Open Source desktops on Free Software operating systems do.'" (Read more below.) "Does it hurt the 'Linux to the Desktops!' battle fanfare, if Linux apps and other OSS are ported on a large-scale to MS Windows, or will it rather have a 'pave the way' effect? Does it help to migrate enterprises and public sector units if users to Linux if users are already familiar with Firefox and OpenOffice.org from Windows, or does it take away the motivation to migrate at all? Is porting Unix desktop software counterproductive? Does it even help Microsoft and damage Windows users?"

Last night SpikeTV aired its second annual Video Game Awards. Commentary is available from the Video Game Ombudsman, who did some live blogging during the event. From his post: "Seven Awards in 50 seconds - And that's including the lame intro. and Bloodrayne's 9 second acceptance "speech" for cyber-vixen of the year. Way to stand there, BloodRayne. The categories and winners aren't even vaguely related. And these are major awards, not the largely immaterial technical awards at the Oscars. Oh well, I guess now they can squeeze in another musical number." Grimwell Online is also available for snarky analysis, as is Buttonmashing.com. For non-flash results, Voodoo Extreme has a list of the winners.

Chris Holland writes "On the heels of Juniper Networks' recent release of its TX Matrix Platform, Om Malik is giving an interesting overview of current and upcoming battles between protagonists of the Router Game, armed with their Terabit toys."

ajain writes "Even after using precautions like dummy email address in public forums, I have been plagued by the spam mails for long time now. Accidentally, I hit upon a not-so-elegant but effective solution recently: Ever thought of shutting down the mail server temporarily to stop spam to your inbox permanently? Well, it seems to work. In my case, a two-day shutdown resulted in 97.5% decrease in spam traffic! Here are the details and a step-by-step guide to this desperate-method of spam reduction. I think I'll model, simulate and then optimize the amount of shut-down time required for spam levels to drop to zero!"

ajain writes "Even after using precautions like dummy email address in public forums, I have been plagued by the spam mails for long time now. Accidentally, I hit upon a not-so-elegant but effective solution recently: Ever thought of shutting down the mail server temporarily to stop spam to your inbox permanently? Well, it seems to work. In my case, a two-day shutdown resulted in 97.5% decrease in spam traffic! Here are the details and a step-by-step guide to this desperate-method of spam reduction. I think I'll model, simulate and then optimize the amount of shut-down time required for spam levels to drop to zero!"

Chris Holland writes "On the heels of the recent launch of the preview release of Downhill Battle's Blog Torrent, Nicholas Reville further articulates his vision of a "TiVo for the Internet" in an interview by James Enck for The Broadband Daily. Nicholas touches on the P2P promise, various players, revenue models, and the healthy challenges coming Big Media's way."

pamri writes "The Times of India profiles Jay Patel, of Abika, a firm that specializes in background checks, personality profiles, satellite or aerial Photos of any location besides other services in the US. It is now venturing into other countries including Canada and India. Abika is already facing protests from Canadian Privacy groups for breaching the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act"

adityapandey writes "It's happened again. Yahoo News has another story on exploding cellphones. Most of these mishaps are blamed on counterfeit batteries and chargers. Recently, Kyocera recalled about 40,000 cellphones for free replacement, because of batteries overheating and venting superheated gases. Yet, cellphone makers claim that such incidents are too rare to care about. Shouldn't cellphone companies be making people aware of the hazards of usage?"

Chris Holland writes "Right on the heels of a positive FCC regulation preventing individual U.S. States from levying taxes on VoIP communications, SBC, according to Om Malik, appears to have brought to a quick end the 'lets not pay any termination fees' party that had VoIP upstarts drunk. Jeff Pulver is also sharing his take."

aacool writes "The MPAA has filed a first wave of lawsuits against individuals they say are offering pirated copies of films using Internet-based peer-to-peer file sharing programs." From the article: "The MPAA said it would also make available a computer program that sniffs out movie and music files on a user's computer as well as any installed file sharing programs. The MPAA said the information detected by the free program would not be shared with it or any other body, but could be used to remove any 'infringing movies or music files' and remove file sharing programs."

narzy writes "I have written a limited research paper outlining the challenges of bringing Open Source software in to the educational environment. I also look briefly at the differing development views and security principals of the closed and open source communities, how we can overcome some of the challenges of implementation as well as what it would take to create a vibrant learning environment using an open source architecture."

KaiEl writes "An avalanche of glowing reviews has already made Halo 2 the second-highest ranked game of all time on GameRankings.com. Looking for an alternative viewpoint? The Video Game Ombudsman has gathered the bad points from nine separate Halo 2 reviews into the only negative review of Halo 2 you're ever likely to read. Useful as a cautionary tale about out-of-context quoting and as a reference manual for rampant Microsoft haters who might want to make the Halo 2 argument a little less one-sided."

KaiEl writes "An avalanche of glowing reviews has already made Halo 2 the second-highest ranked game of all time on GameRankings.com. Looking for an alternative viewpoint? The Video Game Ombudsman has gathered the bad points from nine separate Halo 2 reviews into the only negative review of Halo 2 you're ever likely to read. Useful as a cautionary tale about out-of-context quoting and as a reference manual for rampant Microsoft haters who might want to make the Halo 2 argument a little less one-sided."

KaiEl writes "An avalanche of glowing reviews has already made Halo 2 the second-highest ranked game of all time on GameRankings.com. Looking for an alternative viewpoint? The Video Game Ombudsman has gathered the bad points from nine separate Halo 2 reviews into the only negative review of Halo 2 you're ever likely to read. Useful as a cautionary tale about out-of-context quoting and as a reference manual for rampant Microsoft haters who might want to make the Halo 2 argument a little less one-sided."

jdray writes "This story covers research into increasing cognitive function by passing small currents through the frontal cortex. It won't be long before everyone is wearing little battery-operated headbands to work every day. Maybe the'll be the next great fashion statement in singles bars, where increased cognition would be a welcome change."

aacool writes "Blackboxvoting.org has raised the largest Freedom of Information request in history. At 8:30 p.m. Election Night, Black Box Voting blanketed the U.S. with the first in a series of public records requests, to obtain internal computer logs and other documents from 3,000 individual counties and townships. Networks called the election before anyone bothered to perform even the most rudimentary audit. Among the first requests sent to counties (with all kinds of voting systems -- optical scan, touch-screen, and punch card) is a formal records request for internal audit logs, polling place results slips, modem transmission logs, and computer trouble slips."

flackrum writes "NY Attorney General Spitzer has served subpoenas to four major record labels (UMG, BMG, EMI, WMG) in a continued house-cleaning of corporations employing dirty-tricks. In this particular group of cases, investigations are focusing on the circumvention of the Federal Payola Law, which forbids bribing radio broadcasters in return for airing specific songs. Mmm sweet karma."

According to the Everquest 2 Player Site, the NDA has been lifted on the upcoming Massively Multiplayer Game. If you've been looking forward to detailed information on the game, EQ2 Vault has a special feature on available in-game information. Tobold, of Grimwell Online, has commentary both on game mechanics and on his personal opinion.

brahn at actblue writes "From ABC News: Jeff Seemann, running for one of Ohio's seats in the House of Representatives, '...has an unusual approach in deciding how to spend his campaign. He asks Web surfers: Should he sleep in? Prepare for his debate? Campaign door to door?' (More coverage here and here.) Best of all: Jeff is fighting back against Diebold and their paperless voting machines -- and they're based in his district!"

jdray writes "The cube farm is all a twitter right now, as Mt. St. Helens is spewing out a steam plume, and you can see if from our building. The cam for the volcano seems to be down, but we just saw a news helicopter from KATU, one of our local news stations, headed that direction. They should have some content up shortly." Other readers suggest: KOIN, KOIN webcams, Kiro TV, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, or CNN.

X43B asks: "I'm building a 'luggable' computer for numerical simulation work (very niche, I know). My goal is to have the best single precision floating point performance for under $1000. I have decided on a Shuttle XPC layout. I can build a AMD 3500+ for ~$80 less than a Prescott 3.4Ghz. I know the AMD is supposed to be a better 'general purpose' CPU however I found this comparison which says the Intels are better for floating point. Additionally, even though the AMD is somewhat cheaper, I have found the free Intel Linux FORTRAN compiler quicker than gfortran. So even if the AMD had similar performance for cross compiling, the Intel would be ~10% faster with the free compiler. Does anyone have any recommendations on AMD vs Intel for single precision floating point operations? If you recommend the AMD, what (cheap or free) compiler can be used that is comparable to the Intel?"

Megaphoneman writes "Apparently the new Star Wars Trilogy DVD set will automatically change your dashboard appearance if played on an XBox...without asking the user first!"

Chris Holland writes "Daniel Berninger wrote the most informative article about Voice over IP I've ever read, over at Om Malik's blog. It outlines in great details the history behind the evolution of traditional communication technologies framed within the convergence of various Internet-related technological advances, and the challenges PSTN telcos are facing to hold-on to their shares of this lucrative pie. Beyond mere technological issues, Berninger offers great parallels and insights on past, current, and future governmental regulatory policies. A must read for anyone who's ever talked on the phone."

bettiwettiwoo writes "Last week Kofi Annan claimed, in a BBC interview, that: 'You cannot have credible elections [in Iraq] if the security conditions continue as they are now.' Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi disagreed ('pointedly disagreed', according to the International Herald Tribune):'We definitely are going to stick to the timetable of elections in January ... Democracy is going to prevail and is going to win in Iraq.' According to Tony Blair: 'The people who are trying to stop that Iraq coming about, who are engaged in killing, maiming and acts of terrorism, are people who are opposed... to every single one of the values that we in countries like this hold dear.' Iraq the Model points to an IRI poll which states: 'In a stunning display of support for democracy and a strong rebuttal to critics of efforts to bring democratic reform to Iraq, 87% of Iraqis indicated that they plan to vote in January elections. Expanding on the theme, 77% said that "regular, fair elections" were the most important political right for the Iraqi people and 58% felt that Iraqi-style democracy was likely to succeed.' It would appear that the poll was undertaken sometime in July/August this year, but if such a large majority of the Iraqi population continues to favour elections, would it really be fair to the Iraqis to postpone the January elections whatever the security situation and whomever might be against them?"

kkrista writes "What would you do if you found someone's digital media card from their camera in your taxi? One such individual has decided to provide the world with 227 days of entertainment. I Found Some Of Your Life will post a photo a day and accompanying fictional narrative for the next 227 days using the photos found on a digital media card left in a cab. Is it pure genius or pure evil? Who cares? Just be thankful they're not your photos."

Tee Emm writes "VeriSign's DNS Rapid Update notice period (as announced on NANOG mailing list) expires today. Beginning September 9, 2004 the SOA records of the .com and .net zones will be updated every 5 minutes instead of twice a day. The format of the serial number is also changing from the current YYYYMMDDNN to a new one that depicts the UTC time." We first mentioned this back in July, but it's finally launching now.

Tonetheman writes "The details are not really there yet, but it looks like Tivo and Netflix are going to team up! This is great for those who watch a lot of DVD's. You will be able to order a DVD and have it appear sometime later on the Tivo. Blockbuster will not be far behind with your favorite cable company."

Jean-Luc R. writes "Via mediaTIC blog. Gallina is a GMail blog tool created by Jonathan Hernandez that uses GMail messages as "entries" (so 1000 MB of entries!!), replies to conversations are the "entry comments", uses Libgmailer (gmail-lite project) to connect to GMail. It uses XML/XSLT and by the way it's a GPL software. You can download it there. See the Gallina Demo Blog as for an example."

Krafty Koder writes "Groklaw have posted an English translation of this Munich job post. As part of project LiMux the mayor of Munich is looking for English speaking 'Linux Experts'. It's not clear if German is also a requirement, but considering that these are government posts, it probably is."

Peter writes "The Human-powered helicopter didn't even get off the ground. A team of University of British Columbia engineering students tried to win the $20,000 US prize offered by the American Helicopter Society. Three metres off the ground and hover for a minute was the challenge. But before the rotors were able to produce enough buoyant force they hit each other. More details: Vancouver Sun."

Jon_Aquino asks: "I'd like to share this Google Groups thread of free online replacements for desktop apps. Some of the gems are: an online UML diagrammer, an online Paintbrush app, online Post-It notes, an incredibly realistic text-to-speech converter, and an online spreadsheet. What are other cool online desktop-app replacements?"

thrashor writes "A major upcoming exhibit of the Asia Society in New York City explores the Asian origins of games - including many of the favorite board games in the English speaking world. The exhibition looks at how games have been as important as trade and religion in transmitting cultural ideas. Backgammon, dice games, chess, and of course (my favorite), Go/Weiqi/Baduk are explored, among many others." The exhibition preview mentions: "Illustrating the importance of games in early societies, mastery of weiqi was considered by Chinese people to be one of four essential cultural accomplishments along with music, calligraphy and painting."

juan_buhler writes "SIGGRAPH 2004 started Sunday in the Los Angeles Convention Center. I am chairing the Sketches program for 2005, and along with Nishant Kothary, who is chairing the Web program in 2005, Danah Boyd and others, we are running a pilot with a blog and a wiki. Check them out. The blog has almost real time posting of what's going on at SIGGRAPH, so it's a great way to see it if you couldn't make it this year" Read on for a few more notes from Siggraph.

First, steveha writes "As noted on LWN, SGI has announced the OpenGL 2.0 specification, which includes support for programmable shaders. How long will it be before we get native Linux applications using this?"

protohiro1 writes "I just saw this HDR display and it blew me away, it was like looking at a slide on a light table. Is this the future of display tech?"

abacsalmasi wrote about a "nifty little thing called Echo. I, along with two other chaps, have started a company called Stable Research Inc. and we'll be showing our Echo prototype at the Siggraph show. It is essentially live DVD recordings at concert venues where we can have burned DVDs of the concert they just saw, ready minutes after the show for people to pick up on their way out. The cool thing about it is the ability to switch camera angles on the fly, without any lag or stuttering, plus we include another composite ganged feed so you can watch all the cameras simultaneously. A demo will be showing at The Canadian Film Centre's Habitat New Media booth so stop by and check it out. Web Demo coming soon."

Krafty Koder writes "The Register is reporting that a consortium of Taiwanese firms are to launch a 2 Terabyte memory card at the Taipei International Electronics Show (Taitronics) on the 8th of October, with mass production expected to start next year. The card will measure 3.2 x 2.4 x 0.1cm according to this DigiTimes.com report" The reports say that this is supposed to be a "new type" of card, so the details are still quite sketchy. Offical unveiling will happen in early October.

Krafty Koder writes "The Register reports that British school children will be indoctrinated in copyright law , in a scheme backed by the music industry, as part of the government sponsored Music Manifesto initiative. In response, kuro5hin have posted an open letter on this issue." The U.S. has its own version.

scubacuda writes "Greplaw has interviewed Katie Jones (of the real Katie.com). In addition to the details of the dispute regarding Penguin's 'branding' of the book Katie.com (which many /.ers 'reviewed'), she shares the details of her conversation with cyberlawyer Parry Aftab, how she believes Penguin's title change suggests that it thought it could steamroll her without recourse, and the tremendous amount of support the geek community has shown her." Ms. Aftab has several blogs. Ms. Aftab, if you contact us with a response to these allegations, Slashdot will publish your response (we've also written to your email address). Another reader notes: "Yesterday /. ran an article about the book Katie.com. Out of curiosity I just visited the Amazon.com website to see how many more reviews were on the website. Yesterday when I first checked there were over 300 reviews, most of them negative and the book scored only 2 stars total. Today, the book has 81 reviews with an average rating of 3 1/2 stars."

scubacuda writes "Greplaw has interviewed Katie Jones (of the real Katie.com). In addition to the details of the dispute regarding Penguin's 'branding' of the book Katie.com (which many /.ers 'reviewed'), she shares the details of her conversation with cyberlawyer Parry Aftab, how she believes Penguin's title change suggests that it thought it could steamroll her without recourse, and the tremendous amount of support the geek community has shown her." Ms. Aftab has several blogs. Ms. Aftab, if you contact us with a response to these allegations, Slashdot will publish your response (we've also written to your email address). Another reader notes: "Yesterday /. ran an article about the book Katie.com. Out of curiosity I just visited the Amazon.com website to see how many more reviews were on the website. Yesterday when I first checked there were over 300 reviews, most of them negative and the book scored only 2 stars total. Today, the book has 81 reviews with an average rating of 3 1/2 stars."

Krafty Koder writes "Over at Newsforge (Part of OSTG, Slashdot's Parent) there's an interesting article that attempts to dispells the myth that Linux isn't ready for the desktop or that Windows still beats Linux. Three myths are explored - that Linux is harder to use, difficult to install and that there's not enough apps ."

Krafty Koder writes "ZDNet are reporting that Sun are considering purchasing Novell and thus gain SUSE Linux. 'With our balance sheet, we're considering all our options,' Sun chief operating officer Jonathan Schwartz said in an interview on Sunday regarding the possibility of acquiring Novell. 'What would owning the operating system on which IBM is dependent be worth? History would suggest we look to Microsoft for comparisons,' he said."

ArbiterOne writes "Tonight a rare spectacle can be seen: the second full moon in a month, which is sometimes called the "blue moon", according to CNN. Don't be disappointed if it isn't actually blue, though; the blueness is caused by increased density of smoke or ash in the air, such as after a volcanic eruption."

The Importance of writes "Internet multimedia producers JibJab have been getting a lot of attention recently for their version of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" that pokes fun at Bush, Kerry and America in general. Now, JibJab is being threatened with a copyright lawsuit by the rights holders. They've already contacted EFF and there is an ongoing debate about whether the flash animation is protected parody or infringing satire."

redune45 writes "The Halo 2 Theatrical trailer ends with the normal Xbox logo, but it also briefly replaces xbox.com with ilovebees.com. Going to ilovebees.com it appears that the site has been 'hacked', adding to the mystery. The 'owner' of the site set up a separate blog with a post talking about the error. There is a huge thread on the Bungie.net forums on the same issue. The WHOIS information for this site shows that it was first registered on June 14, 2004. But no obvious clues other than that are available. What is going on here?" There's at least one Wiki set up to gather clues. We also mentioned this in an earlier Halo story.