Slashdot Mirror

The European Union appears ready to shrug and say "OK" to the AOL / Time-Warner merger, while a reader brings us sad and totally unrelated news for game fans. A (plausible, but complete?) explanation of the upcoming PS/2 Crisis, if you view it as such. Also, didja ever wonder how big a trophy it takes to fit 15 syllables? Read on, read on -- it's Slashback.

"Heck, gentleman, what right have we got to approve anyhow?" WPL510 writes: "Just saw this article on Yahoo! about the AOL-TW merger. Apparently all the begging and pleading did something because the EU is about to approve their mega-merger. One concession they didn't mention was opening up AIM, of course. Great -- all we need is a bigger monopoly."

This too shall pass. Lord_Macblaster writes "The GameFan Network is no longer hosting sites. Many sites, including VoodooExtreme and my own site, Monolithic Illusions are nothing but dead links now. It's a real shame. Plenty of top notch sites were shut down. Not major news yet, but info is available here on PlanetCrap, and here on Lum The Mad."

This is the kind of thing that could get me into gaming. nomadic writes: " Electronic News reports that the PS2 shortage (mentioned before on Slashdot) may actually be DVD-related. Some analysts point to a shortage in DVD drive parts that has been affecting the notebook industry as well, but others suggest that it might be their lax CSS security.

Guess the MPAA leaning on them wouldn't be too implausible, but it's interesting if you consider that Sony's a member of that august body. Wonder how much flak they got from their brethren over the DVD copy protection workaround that Japanese gamers found earlier this year."

Another thing that could get me into gaming -- TheMyth writes: "It appears the Vivid Entertainment Group, is trying to release interactive adult movies for the Playstation 2. Read the article here that tells it all. -- I can't wait to see the field day that our government reps are gonna have with this one. Is this another "targeting adult content to kids case" or is it "targeting adult content to adults that play video games"? Censorship here we come ..."

Giving competition a good name again. An unnamed correspondent points to the results of the century's last ICFP programming contest. ICFP stands for a real mouthful: "International Conference on Functional Programming." "This year, functional languages take all the prizes; OCAML gets 1st and 2nd place, Haskell 3rd, Mercury 4th, and the judges' prize (for best image) goes to a SML/NJ team."

Battling giants has its rewards. GoldSkin writes: "The Digital Divas have reached an out-of-court settlement against Microsoft and their Digital Diva site. You may recall this article from way back in May." From their site: "In the simplest terms, Microsoft's Stacy Elliot will no longer be known as the 'Digital Diva' and Microsoft will no longer use digitaldiva.com in connection with content like that formerly available at that site. Also, in accordance with our settlement agreement, Microsoft has posted a notice at digitaldiva.com. Please visit and see for yourself."

An anonymous reader pointed out one of the greatest concerns about UCITA ^[?] :it allows software publishers to ban negative reviews of their products. Apogee(r) has now done this. It does give right to mention them or their trademarks on BBSs or chat rooms (gee thanks!) but not in any 'Negative Context', or in a way that is negative for Apogee. So by criticizing Apogee's license, am I defaming their trademark and violating this license agreement? Isn't there (oh I don't know) a bill of rights or something that just might have precedence over this? Here is the questionable document. I also must express my distaste that Apogee has a trademark on 'Pinball Wizards'(r) since I suspect Townshend's late 60s composition probably came before, oh I don't know PAC-MAN much less Commander Keen(r). Is that saying something negative about Apogee(r) again?