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Nate writes to mention the news that Jack Thompson has issued a cease and desist for the new Mortal Kombat:Armageddon title. Says Mr. Thompson: "It has today come to my attention that the newly recently Mortal Kombat: Armageddon contains an unauthorized commercial exploitation of my name, photograph, image, and likeness within the game." Thompson's likeness has appeared on websites in the game over the last few days as a result of his construction in the 'build-a-fighter' mode. His image is not actually a selectable character in the game, a fact he's chosen to skirt in his demands to Midway. If that's not enough Jack Thompson news for today, Game|Life has the video and commentary on Thompson's dressing down by the judge in the Bully case. Video courtesy of the Destructoid site.

Wired's games blog Game|Life alerted me to a great feature on the main Wired site. Called Very Short Stories, the piece features the work of 33 well-known writers practicing their craft in six word chunks. Their work is combined with several talented graphic designers to generate some very creative works of art. Some of my favorites: "The baby's blood type? Human, mostly'. - Orson Scott Card
'Lie detector eyeglasses perfected: Civilization collapses.' - Richard Powers
'Kirby had never eaten toes before.' - Kevin Smith" The games blog makes a point to highlight the works of game writers Mark Laidlaw and Steve Meretzky. Laidlaw's contribution: ">Help! Trapped in a text adventure!" Alrighty, folks ... let's hear yours.

Wired's games blog Game|Life alerted me to a great feature on the main Wired site. Called Very Short Stories, the piece features the work of 33 well-known writers practicing their craft in six word chunks. Their work is combined with several talented graphic designers to generate some very creative works of art. Some of my favorites: "The baby's blood type? Human, mostly'. - Orson Scott Card
'Lie detector eyeglasses perfected: Civilization collapses.' - Richard Powers
'Kirby had never eaten toes before.' - Kevin Smith" The games blog makes a point to highlight the works of game writers Mark Laidlaw and Steve Meretzky. Laidlaw's contribution: ">Help! Trapped in a text adventure!" Alrighty, folks ... let's hear yours.

Slashback tonight brings some clarifications and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including: The facts about Debian Iceweasel; A closer look at Folding@home's GPU client; David Brin's lament; Online gambling ban may violate international law; Human species may do whatnow?; and Another RIAA lawsuit dropped. Read on for details.

The facts about Debian Iceweasel. john-da-luthrun writes, "Debian Firefox/XULrunner maintainer Mike Hommey reports on the Firefox/Iceweasel wrangle, correcting various assertions that have been made in the assorted trollfests/flamewars currently raging over the proposed Firefox rename. Hommey confirms that Firefox in Etch will be renamed 'Iceweasel,' but this will only be a renamed version of the vanilla Firefox, not the GNU Iceweasel fork — though the Debian and GNU Iceweasel teams may work together in future."

A closer look at Folding@home's GPU client. TheRaindog writes, "Slashdot recently covered some impressive client statistics for Stanford's Folding@home project, but they don't tell the whole story. The Tech Report has taken a closer look at the GPU client, running it on a Radeon X1900 XTX against the CPU client on a dual-core Opteron. The results are enlightening, especially considering how Stanford has chosen to award points GPU client work units. Power consumption is more interesting, with the GPU client apparently far more power-efficient than folding with a CPU."

David Brin need not lament — KidBasic. sproketboy writes, "I was thinking about the recent slashdot story David Brin Laments Absence of Programming For Kids, and after looking around I found KidBasic. KidBasic is quite good and teaches all the basics of programming. My 4 year old nephew and I have been able to get a few simple games programmed with it."

Online gambling ban may violate international law. An anonymous reader writes, "As Slashdot noted earlier, Congress has passed an effective ban on online gambling in the U.S. This may not be the end of the story, however. The law may be struck down by the World Trade Organization on the grounds that it violates the United States' international obligation not to discriminate in favor of domestic casinos. If the WTO strikes down this U.S. gambling ban, it would not be the first time. In November of 2004, the WTO struck down a U.S. anti-gambling law as illegally discriminating against the nation of Antigua."

Human species may do whatnow?. jamie writes, "'I might have believed this nonsense could come from some late 19th century eugenicist, but now? Is there any evidence...?' That's biologist PZ Myers's comment on the BBC story that claims the human species may split in two. It was posted on Slashdot as humor, but Myers's comments are a much-needed sober appraisal of this kind of pseudoscientific claim."

Another RIAA lawsuit dropped. skelator2821 writes, "Another RIAA lawsuit has been dropped against a defendant who had been accused of illegally sharing songs online, according to Ars Technica. Looks like the Mob tactics are not paying off for our good friends at the RIAA anymore."

edmicman writes "Wired News has an interesting article about what would make the perfect voting machine: 'With election season upon us, Wired News spoke with two of the top computer scientists in the field, UC Berkeley's David Wagner and Princeton's Ed Felten, and came up with a wish list of features we would include in a voting machine, if we were asked to create one. These recommendations can't guarantee clean results on their own. Voting machines, no matter how secure, are no remedy for poor election procedures and ill-conceived election laws. So our system would include thorough auditing and verification capabilities and require faithful adherence to good election practices, as wells as topnotch usability and security features.'"

With the announcement that Wired and other news organizations will now be reporting from Second Life, they've put up an article on the Wired property and have created a Guide to the larger Second Life world. From the guide: "Today, Second Life is second home to half a million people, and everyone from Duran Duran and Wells Fargo Bank to the Department of Homeland Security has funded real estate here. The national currency of Linden dollars is freely convertible to US dollars (and the exchange rate is quite favorable at the moment!), and an increasing number of residents are ditching their jobs back on Earth to make their living entirely within Second Life's economy. But this exotic realm can seem bewildering and strange to first-time visitors (affectionately known as "noobs" in the native parlance). Let Wired be your guide."

With the announcement that Wired and other news organizations will now be reporting from Second Life, they've put up an article on the Wired property and have created a Guide to the larger Second Life world. From the guide: "Today, Second Life is second home to half a million people, and everyone from Duran Duran and Wells Fargo Bank to the Department of Homeland Security has funded real estate here. The national currency of Linden dollars is freely convertible to US dollars (and the exchange rate is quite favorable at the moment!), and an increasing number of residents are ditching their jobs back on Earth to make their living entirely within Second Life's economy. But this exotic realm can seem bewildering and strange to first-time visitors (affectionately known as "noobs" in the native parlance). Let Wired be your guide."

While it's not something we normally link to, some anticipated product-related news is making the rounds today. As 360 owners are likely already aware, Lumines Live! is available on the Xbox Live Marketplace. It's not entirely all it's cracked up to be, though, with some of the content yet to be rolled out and requiring a separate purchase. Neverwinter Nights 2 has gone gold, happily, with an October 31st release date placing it on the same day as Final Fantasy XII and making me very sad. Finally, November 21st will see the release of Knights of the Nine, new content for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The content will come with the PS3 version of the game, will be released to the 360 and PC via normal channels, and will also appear in stores via a box loaded will all additional Oblivion content to date.

Gamasutra reports on the unveiling of the 'GameTap Originals' publishing label, a brand led by the anticipated episodic revival of Sam and Max. The game is now available both via the GameTap service, and at the TellTale site. From the article: "Sam & Max: Episode 1, which launches today exclusively on GameTap, as well as the upcoming Myst Online: Uru Live, are two examples of franchises that GameTap has co-published and helped bring back to life. While nothing specific was announced regarding upcoming franchises set to debut as part of the new GameTap Original label, representatives did note that it will be used to identify soon to be announced episodic games based on renowned TV and film franchises. Finally, supporting its new GameTap Original label, GameTap will be the premiere sponsor of the 9th Annual Independent Games Festival, held in conjunction with the 2007 Game Developers Conference to celebrate the innovation and creativity of independent game developers." Chris Kohler, over at Game|Life, has a short review of the first three hours of content.

Despite the high hopes of Xbox 360 fans Gamespot pegs it as unlikely that Lumines Live will drop this week, or that there will be a Gears of War Demo on the Xbox Live service. In news that does seem to be legit, though, you can see screenshots of the first downloadable games for the PS3 service over at Game|Life. Titles include the previously mentioned fl0w, Lemmings 2, Blast Factor, and Go Sudoku. Commentary on the games available at GameSetWatch.

An anonymous reader writes, "Wired News editor and former hacker Kevin Poulsen wrote a 1,000-line Perl script that checked MySpace for registered sex offenders. Sifting through the results, he manually confirmed over 700 offenders, including a serial child molester in New York actively trying to hook up with underage boys on the site, and who has now been arrested as a result. MySpace told Congress last June that it didn't have this capability." Wired News says they will publish Poulsen's code under an open-source license later this week.

Clover Studios, makers of such titles as Okami, God Hand, and Viewtiful Joe, has been closed by Capcom Japan for financial reasons. Gamespot reports on the exact wording of the sad announcement: "Clover Studio Co., Ltd. has met the goal of developing unique and creative original home video game software, however, in view of promoting a business strategy that concentrates management resources on a selected business to enhance the efficiency of the development power of the entire Capcom group, the dissolution of Clover Studios Co., Ltd. has been raised and passed at a Board of Directors' meeting."

Warlock7 writes "Well, it's official. The pre-orders have begun ... and mostly ended. I just got mine ordered and four hours later there are already units on eBay. Some acutions have already gone north of $1000 USD. The guys at EBGames told me that the most units going to any one store was 36 and that there were an average of 8 units being distributed to each store. The one I went to reported that they were going to be getting a total of 16 units. They waited this long to take pre-orders because they wanted to be sure that they weren't going to get burned like they did for the XBox 360 launch." The reports from across the internets are varied, with long lines netting nothing for some, and others reaping the sweet rewards.

Iphtashu Fitz writes "In order to provide the U.S. Military with water in places like Iraq, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency gave millions of dollars in research funding to companies like LexCarb and Sciperio to try to extract water from the air. Amazingly, a company that DARPA didn't fund, Aqua Sciences, beat them all to the punch by developing a machine that can extract up to 600 gallons of water a day from thin air even in locations like arid deserts. The 20 foot machine does this without using or producing toxic materials or byproducts. The CEO of Aqua Sciences declined to elaborate on how the machine works, but said it is based on the natural process by which salt absorbs water."

jizziknight writes "Wired has an article up detailing the many types of in-game advertisements and product placements on the way to future games. Advertisers and developers might actually be starting to think it through, rather than just slapping the company's name on everything. Adidas Basketball will be sponsoring some unlockable 'features' in Electronic Arts' NBA Live 07 on the Xbox 360 and the PS3 that showcase its new 'It Takes 5IVE' slogan. The features include 5 players with special uniforms and an exclusive arena. In Fight Night Round 3, Burger King is sponsoring an unlockable boxer as well as an avatar of The King that joins your entourage when you win a Burger King-sponsored event. There are also a few details about an ad-supported MMOG by Acclaim, in which sponsors offer to buy items for you when you go shopping in the game. Another interesting tid-bit from the article: A comScore survey showed that 'Thirty-seven percent of heavy gamers (those who play games at least 16 hours a week) agreed that featuring actual products or companies in games make the games feel more realistic. About one-third (27 percent) of medium gamers (those who played less than 11 hours per week) agreed that in-game ads can add to a game's realism.' Of course, we've all seen instances where ads make the game less realistic."

prostoalex writes "The October issue of Wired magazine takes a look at Ray Ozzie's work with Microsoft. To hear the article describe it, he's rebuilding the company from the ground up. A 70,000-employee company is quietly changing its ways by thinking of software as deliverable services that perhaps could be rented on a monthly subscription basis." From the article: "There are, of course, two major reasons for Ozzie's ascendancy at Microsoft: Gates and Ballmer. Ozzie is one of the few technologists anywhere whom they respect; they'd been trying for years to get him to join the company. Now he's carrying their hopes for the future, and it's a heavy load. Ozzie needs to move Microsoft from selling software in a box to selling lightning-fast, powerful online applications ranging from gaming to spreadsheets. The risks are enormous. The mission is to radically alter the way the company sells its most profitable software and to pursue the great unknown of so-called Web services - trading an old cash cow for an as-yet-to-be-determined cash cow. No, Microsoft doesn't think its customers will stop using PCs with hard drives and work entirely online, but the desktop era is drawing to a close, and that promises to force some painful trade-offs."

Over at Wired, Randall Sullivan writes about the spectacular breakup of Gizmondo. The discussion of the short-lived portable console's reign begins, of course, with the well-known car accident: a perfect metaphor for an imploding company. The article goes on to discuss the sordid past of Bo Stefan Eriksson, and how his role with Gizmondo never stopped his collusion with some of society's more sordid elements. From the article: "It wasn't long before Eriksson imported his wingmen from the Uppsala Mafia. Johan Enander, who had served more than two years for crimes including grand theft and extortion, handled security for Gizmondo functions. Peter Uf, who had spent more than five years in prison for fraud, was named a Gizmondo director. The company opened a glass-fronted corporate headquarters next to Farnborough Airport, and expensive Ferraris and McLarens dotted the parking lot. To add to the glitter, in 2004 Gizmondo purchased a 75 percent interest in a London modeling agency called Isis, ensuring that there would be plenty of beautiful young women at its parties and events."

Slashback tonight brings some clarifications and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including: iTunes 7.0, Wal-Mart threatens studios over iTunes sales, debate over a proposal to fund Debian, and Googling for ATM master passwords. Read on for details.

Apple Announces iTunes 7, Movies, Set-Top Box. This evening Apple released iTunes 7.0.1, which "addresses stability and performance issues with Cover Flow, CD importing, iPod syncing, and more." iTunes users, especially those on Windows, have been complaining loudly about iTunes 7.0 since its release.

Wal-Mart threatens studios over iTunes sales. camperslo writes, "Playlist reported that Walt Disney President and CEO Robert Iger said that 125,000 downloadable movies had been purchased in the week since Apple's debut of movies on the iTunes Store. That sales level generated $1 million in revenue for Disney, which works out to $8 per movie. They also state that 'Iger told attendees of an investment conference in New York on Tuesday that Disney anticipates seeing about $50 million in revenue from the venture during its first year.'"

Proposal to fund Debian sparks debate. lisah writes, "Debian Project Leader Anthony Towns is now facing a recall vote over his involvement with Dunc-Tank, something Towns himself is willing to explore. Not everyone agrees that such a move is necessary, or even acceptable, and fur is beginning to fly as one community member asks, 'So, just to be clear, you want to punish a Debian developer for their activities outside of Debian? Now that we're in crazy-as-batshit land, who do you want to bring up on charges next?'"

Googling for ATM master passwords. bagsc writes, "Kevin Poulsen of Wired.com strikes fear into another ATM manufacturer. This time, Triton ATMs had their super-secret master codes revealed by simple Google searches. Tranax was the most recent company with this problem, but probably not the last."

Slashback tonight brings some clarifications and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including: iTunes 7.0, Wal-Mart threatens studios over iTunes sales, debate over a proposal to fund Debian, and Googling for ATM master passwords. Read on for details.

Apple Announces iTunes 7, Movies, Set-Top Box. This evening Apple released iTunes 7.0.1, which "addresses stability and performance issues with Cover Flow, CD importing, iPod syncing, and more." iTunes users, especially those on Windows, have been complaining loudly about iTunes 7.0 since its release.

Wal-Mart threatens studios over iTunes sales. camperslo writes, "Playlist reported that Walt Disney President and CEO Robert Iger said that 125,000 downloadable movies had been purchased in the week since Apple's debut of movies on the iTunes Store. That sales level generated $1 million in revenue for Disney, which works out to $8 per movie. They also state that 'Iger told attendees of an investment conference in New York on Tuesday that Disney anticipates seeing about $50 million in revenue from the venture during its first year.'"

Proposal to fund Debian sparks debate. lisah writes, "Debian Project Leader Anthony Towns is now facing a recall vote over his involvement with Dunc-Tank, something Towns himself is willing to explore. Not everyone agrees that such a move is necessary, or even acceptable, and fur is beginning to fly as one community member asks, 'So, just to be clear, you want to punish a Debian developer for their activities outside of Debian? Now that we're in crazy-as-batshit land, who do you want to bring up on charges next?'"

Googling for ATM master passwords. bagsc writes, "Kevin Poulsen of Wired.com strikes fear into another ATM manufacturer. This time, Triton ATMs had their super-secret master codes revealed by simple Google searches. Tranax was the most recent company with this problem, but probably not the last."

Over at Wired, Clive Thompson talks about the myth of the 40 hour game, the typical length of time listed on the side of a game box nowadays. Mr. Thompsons discusses the ways in which that estimate fails to jive with reality. From the article: "This game offers about 40 hours of play. This is precisely what I was told by Eidos — and countless game reviewers — when I picked up Tomb Raider: Legend earlier this year. As I gushed at the time, Legend was the first genuinely superb Lara Croft game in years... I was hooked — and eager to finish the game and solve the mystery. So I shoved it into my PS2, dual-wielded the pistols and began playing... until about four weeks later, when I finally threw in the towel. Why? Because I couldn't get anywhere near the end. I plugged away at the game whenever I could squeeze an hour away from my day job and my family. All told, I spent far more than 40 hours — but still only got two-thirds through."

Udo Schmitz writes "Earlier this year, Apple went up against companies using the word 'pod' in their product names. Now, Apple is going after the term 'podcasting'. Wired has the complete text of Apple's cease-and-desist letter to Podcast Ready." From the article: "Robert Scoble -- whose own company, PodTech, may be at risk in this witch hunt -- has weighed in on the issue by suggesting that the tech community as a whole adopt other terms like "audiocast" and 'videocast' (or alternately, 'audcast' and 'vidcast') to describe this type of content, while other folks feel that fighting Apple and generating a ton of negative press for Cupertino is the best solution. Our take? Apple should be happy that its golden goose is getting so much free publicity, and if it isn't, we know of several companies that probably wouldn't mind if zencast, zunecast, or sansacast became the preferred terminology."

bagsc writes "Kevin Poulsen of Wired.com strikes fear into another ATM manufacturer. This time, Triton ATMs had their super-secret master codes revealed by simple Google searches. Tranax was the most recent company with this problem, but probably not the last."

fragmentate writes "Wired News is reporting: 'In response to the hundreds of soldiers coming home from war with missing arms or legs, Darpa is spending millions of dollars to help scientists learn how people might one day regenerate their own limbs. Prosthetics are getting better all the time, but they will never be as good as the limbs we were born with. So two teams of scientists at 10 institutions across the country are competing to regrow the first mammalian limb ... The researchers' first milestone is to generate a blastema — a mass of cells able to develop into various organs or body parts — in a mammal.' Apparently this is a relatively new area of research, even Wikipedia's stub on blastemas is very terse."

theodp writes "In the wake of Patricia Dunn's resignation, Wired's Fred Vogelstein walked away less than impressed with HP CEO's Mark Hurd's spying mea culpa. He says it smacked more of standard corporate ass covering than leadership, especially coming 3 weeks after the scandal broke. His sentiments are echoed in Computerworld's Culture of Evasion, which was written before Hurd mounted an I-knew-nothing-defense. Hurd claims that he bailed out on a meeting that approved the spying, neglected to read the spying report directed to him, and was clueless about the tracer technology employed in the reporter-baiting false e-mail he personally gave thumbs-up to."

D H NG writes "Wired News has a story about the non-profit Open Prosthetics Project. The organization was founded last year by Jonathan Kuniholm, a graduate student in biomedical engineering at Duke University who lost his arm below the elbow in Iraq. Open Prosthetics Project applies the ethical and intellectual property foundation of open-source software to the task of building better artificial limbs. So far, the project has produced a 'handful' of useful homebrew prosthetic hacks, and is closing in on a solution that would dramatically improve the functionality of the common hook device."

Game|Life had the chance to sit down with Ken Kutaragi, Phil Harrison, and Kaz Hirai; Chris Kohler has some details on things left unsaid at the PS3 conference. From the article: "Q: You're the head of Sony's worldwide development studios. What the hell is up with that Africa game? A: Video games have a function in life, and that is: wish fulfillment. You can become a mercenary, a fighter pilot. On PS3, we can expand the realm of that experience. Africa allows you to experience a very interesting part of the world, a safari in the plains of Africa. The gameplay is entirely non-violent. You don't kill the animals. It emphasizes the positives rather than the negatives. It's about collecting experiences and keeping them for posterity."

Anonymous Pingu writes "The latest edition of New Scientist has a series of features on social networking. These include an analysis of the impact on our social attitudes by Sherry Turkle, a feature on the possible privacy implications of using sites like MySpace and Friendster, and a short science fiction piece by Bruce Sterling. It's certainly interesting that so many people post very revealing stuff about themselves on these sites."

Billosaur writes "Apparently the 'scurvy dawgs' are still in control. Results from Sunday's Swedish national election were not favorable for the Pirate Party, according to Wired News. According to the article, 'The Pirate Party not only failed to score the 4 percent required for a seat in Sweden's Parliament, but appears to have missed the 1 percent that would have afforded the party state assistance with printing ballots and funding staff in the next election.' However, the party sees this as a learning experience and morale is still good."

Chris Kohler is making it a point to single out the fact that, like its cousin the DS, the Wii is to be Region-free. They also discuss how Virtual Console titles will associated with a console owner, and some details on the Opera browser. From the article: "Like the Nintendo DS, the Wii will be able to play games from other regions, such as Japan, without any restriction. Kaplan implied there might be a region lock that publishers would be able to flip on, but it doesn't sound like the first-party titles from Nintendo will be restricted."

Gamespot is reporting that this year's Tokyo Game Show will feature a record number of titles on display, some 573 games. The huge numbers reflects the console launch cycle, but surprisingly a full half of the games on offer are either PC or mobile games. The official TGS site has the full list of games, with Square Enix having some particularly interesting titles on offer. Sony has released the list of playable PS3 and PSP games that will be at the event, with heavy hitters like Heavenly Sword, Lair, Resistance, and Warhawk rounding out the list nicely. Game|Life has some commentary on the games selection for the curious. "Also on Sakaguchi's plate are two Xbox 360 RPGs to be published by Microsoft. Blue Dragon was reconfirmed to be shipping this year, and Lost Odyssey will be at Tokyo Game Show but ship in 2007. Microsoft's dreams of publishing the next big Japanese RPG don't stop there, however. The company's partnership with Star Ocean creators Tri-Ace will come to fruition next year with an RPG called Infinite Undiscovery."

LividBlivet writes, "The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill that not only authorizes, but extends, US warrentless wiretapping. No accountability. No oversight. No definition of 'terrorist.' No record of who voted for what. Great way to devolve a democratic republic into a fascist theocracy. Me worried? Yea." Here is the text of SB2453, the National Security Surveillance Act (PDF). Confusingly, the committee also voted out two other bills, one of which "all but declares the warrantless wiretapping illegal," according to Wired.

LividBlivet writes, "The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill that not only authorizes, but extends, US warrentless wiretapping. No accountability. No oversight. No definition of 'terrorist.' No record of who voted for what. Great way to devolve a democratic republic into a fascist theocracy. Me worried? Yea." Here is the text of SB2453, the National Security Surveillance Act (PDF). Confusingly, the committee also voted out two other bills, one of which "all but declares the warrantless wiretapping illegal," according to Wired.

An anonymous reader writes to mention something of an ongoing controversy over a recent Craigslist prank. Waxy.org has the full details: "On Monday, a Seattle web developer named Jason Fortuny started his own Craigslist experiment. The goal: 'Posing as a submissive woman looking for an aggressive dom, how many responses can we get in 24 hours?' He took the text and photo from a sexually explicit ad in another area, reposted it to Craigslist Seattle, and waited for the responses to roll in ... '178 responses, with 145 photos of men in various states of undress. Responses include full e-mail addresses (both personal and business addresses), names, and in some cases IM screen names and telephone numbers.' In a staggering move, he then published every single response, unedited and uncensored, with all photos and personal information to Encyclopedia Dramatica." The Wired blog 27B Stroke 6 has analysis of the prank, which author Ryan Singel views as 'sociopathic'. He then follows that up with responses to comments from his analysis, with further exploration of the weighty issues this juvenile prank has brought up.

An anonymous reader writes to mention something of an ongoing controversy over a recent Craigslist prank. Waxy.org has the full details: "On Monday, a Seattle web developer named Jason Fortuny started his own Craigslist experiment. The goal: 'Posing as a submissive woman looking for an aggressive dom, how many responses can we get in 24 hours?' He took the text and photo from a sexually explicit ad in another area, reposted it to Craigslist Seattle, and waited for the responses to roll in ... '178 responses, with 145 photos of men in various states of undress. Responses include full e-mail addresses (both personal and business addresses), names, and in some cases IM screen names and telephone numbers.' In a staggering move, he then published every single response, unedited and uncensored, with all photos and personal information to Encyclopedia Dramatica." The Wired blog 27B Stroke 6 has analysis of the prank, which author Ryan Singel views as 'sociopathic'. He then follows that up with responses to comments from his analysis, with further exploration of the weighty issues this juvenile prank has brought up.

An anonymous reader writes to mention Lore Sjöberg's 'Ultimate Blog Post'. He goes over the history of the blog (dating back over 2000 years), and conveniently condenses out the perfect blog posts for a few notable sites. From the article: "Boing Boing: Crocheted replica of subway map cracks DRM on collection of old video games. FARK: Drunk frat boy in Florida has sex with underage donkey, sues Strong Bad for negligence. Still no cure for overused in-jokes. Slashdot: AMD, SCO patent MP3 over TCP/IP, sue ATI, EA. Microsoft probably responsible somehow. Engadget: Samsung releases new cell phone/mp3 player/camera/web browser/GPS/game player/wireless hub. Now in gray! Joystiq: Will Wright to design first-person Warcraft shooter for the Wii. Jack Thompson responds with aneurysm."

puppetman writes "Wired columnist Bruce Schneier has an article up called 'Quickest Patch Ever', about a patch that was issued within three days to fix a vulnerability in Windows Digital Rights Management (DRM)." From the article: "Now, this isn't a 'vulnerability' in the normal sense of the word: digital rights management is not a feature that users want. Being able to remove copy protection is a good thing for some users, and completely irrelevant for everyone else. No user is ever going to say: 'Oh no. I can now play the music I bought for my PC on my Mac. I must install a patch so I can't do that anymore.' But to Microsoft, this vulnerability is a big deal. It affects the company's relationship with major record labels. It affects the company's product offerings. It affects the company's bottom line. Fixing this 'vulnerability' is in the company's best interest; never mind the customer."

PetManimal writes "Wired has an excellent analysis of Sony as it struggles to overcome the failures of the 1990s and make the PS3 live up to its promise. Sony is counting on the PS3 turning around the company's fortunes, but it may have been too ambitious. Besides being hamstrung with an unusual company culture that emphasizes small hardware teams and proprietary formats, Sony's efforts to make the PS3 kill several birds with one stone and appeal to a wider customer base is turning off the PS3's core support network: gamers. From the article: 'Then there was the decision to build Blu-ray into the PlayStation 3. Sony's logic seemed ironclad: Not only would the hi-def drive's huge storage capacity allow for far-more-realistic and complex games, the PS3 would carry Blu-ray into millions of households and drive sales of HDTVs as well. As it turned out, however, Blu-ray has done nothing good for the PS3. Blu-ray was the main reason gamers weren't able to get the new machine last spring: The launch had to be postponed because the new format's digital rights management system did not yet satisfy every Hollywood studio.'"

BINC writes "Wired has an article up today entitled 'Selective Breeding Gets Modern.'" From the article: "Genetically modified food has gotten a chilly reception from consumers, especially in Europe and Asia. Just last week, Japan suspended imports of American long-grain rice after authorities discovered that a genetically modified variety had accidentally mixed with conventional rice. To skirt such problems altogether, biotech companies are creating superior plants using genetics technology that is advanced but which falls short of grafting genes from one organism into another."

Game|Life reports on the upcoming release of Lumines for the Xbox 360's Live Arcade. Despite the high interest in the unique game (previously only on the PSP), gamers may be frustrated to learn that playing through the whole game will require additional purchases. From the article: "But then, once you hit a certain point in the 'Mission' or 'Vs. CPU' modes of the game, you'll be asked to pay up again for the ability to keep on progressing. All in all, you'll have to spend another 700 points ($8.75) to get the rest of the levels, bringing the real cost of Lumines Live to nearly $24. What lesson can we take from this? Clearly, Microsoft understands that there's a major disconnect here between what they'd like to make off direct-download game sales and what customers are willing to pay based on their perceived value. That's why, rather than go with straight dollar amounts, everything is priced in 'points.' 1200 points seems somehow cheaper than $15."

The Wired Game|Life Column points out that something momentous happened yesterday: The Wizard was released on DVD. From the post: "And I do not understand how any sane person couldn't be happy about this. Generally recognized even by the small children who saw it in 1989 as being a ninety-minute ad for Nintendo, The Wizard is quite frankly a masterpiece of our time. It starred Super Mario Bros. 3." From 1up's post on the release: "Appropriate celebrations include sending Wizard cards (depicting Fred Savage in all his pre-teen glory, natch), the decorating of the Wizard tree (ornaments should resemble characters from Super Mario 3), and wearing the Wizard celebratory garments (also known as the Nintendo Power Glove). I'm sure the lack of Blu-Ray release was simply an oversight, and not a monstrous snub by the higher-ups at Sony."

Zelbinian writes "Wired News reports there are a number of artists, ranging from The Beatles to Radiohead, that are still holding out on iTunes. Some feel that per-track downloads hurt the artistic integrity of albums as a whole; for others it's simply a matter of negotiation troubles. From the article: 'Since record companies have realized the popularity of iTunes and other sites, many reworked contracts to give artists less money per download. Andrews said while record companies once offered artists about 30 cents for each song sold, now musicians are earning less than a dime.'"

Chris Kohler, over at Wired's Game|Life, had the chance to see an in-production PS3 game in action. He said that, for the most part everything looked great. The one thing that concerned him was the motion-sensing controller that Sony is pushing on developers. From the article: "The developers told us that although we'd be using real PS3 controllers, they didn't yet have the motion-sensing functionality built in. And not only that, although they referred to the build as 'feature-complete,' they did admit that the one feature that was not yet included was (wait for it) motion-sensing, although they did 'have some cool ideas.' There was plenty of speculation after Sony's E3 conference that the motion-sensing functionality was jammed into the controller at the last minute as a reaction to Nintendo's strategy. This was backed up by the Warhawk developers' offhand remarks that they'd implemented motion sensing 'in just a couple weeks'."

siriuskase writes "Volunteers are building a low-cost wireless mesh network to provide cheap, reliable data and telephony to community. I would love to see a free wireless mesh that's not dependent on any government or corporation take over the world."

Wired has an article looking at a game designer working in a fairly unique space: reality television. Clive Thompson discusses the game design of the show Survivor , done mostly by the show's creator Mark Burnett. From the article: "While tweaking Survivor, he closely studied John Nash's game theory in order to better engineer the hysteria and emotional blowouts of each season's finale. 'What Nash's theory predicts is that whenever you have a group of people competing, they collude to squeeze one guy out, again and again, until there's only two guys left,' Burnett notes. 'Yet when there are only two of us left, we're surprised when one of us [screws] each other over. That's the fun part. It surprised John Nash himself, but it happens every time.'"

Bain writes "According to Wired News, the UK fear of terrorists using liquid explosives could be dramatically reduced by the use of some very old tech. Recent events have seen passengers forced to pack only the barest of essentials into clear plastic bags and the restriction on all liquids force even mothers with young children to have to test bottled milk to prove that it isn't a dangerous liquid." From the article: "For a machine to detect explosives in liquid or solid form, it bombards an object with energy -- such as radio waves or neutrons -- and in seconds measures the reaction, a response that differs depending on the material's chemical properties. Software in the machine is programmed to alert screeners if it detects chemical signatures known to match those of dangerous materials. A key question, though, is whether this kind of detection system can realistically block terrorists from bringing seemingly innocuous liquids past security and combining them later to deadly effect."

markwalling writes "Wired News is running a story about Hoboken, New Jersey's battles with robotic parking. A legal battle over the license had shut down the garage, essentially trapping hundreds of cars inside. Bill Coats has recommended that the parking garage be run off open source software: 'Vendees are going to become more sophisticated in the deals they enter into.' Coats even sees this as a driver of open source software. 'If you can get (open source software) you can't be shut down.' But that's harder to do in highly custom applications."

TimAbdulla writes to mention a Wired article wondering if Steve Jobs has lost his magic? The keynote yesterday, author Leander Kahney says, was the most uninspiring he's yet seen out of the usually charismatic man. Accompanied by other folks from within the company, Kahney wonders what lackluster showings like this will mean for the company after Jobs steps down. From the article: "Looking very thin, almost gaunt, Jobs used the 90-minute presentation to introduce a new desktop Mac and preview the next version of Apple's operating system, code-named Leopard. The sneak preview of Leopard was underwhelming. For what seemed an interminable time, Jobs and Co. showed off one yawn after another. There's no way I can get excited about virtual desktops or a new service that turns highlighted text into a 'to do' item. Oooo."

Good news for Sony fans looking forward to the PS3. Eurogamer reports that the system will feature backwards compatibility with memory cards as well as games. From the article: "An update to Sony's PlayStation 3 website has revealed that you will be able to use older PlayStation memory cards with PlayStation 3 - providing you buy an adapter. An entry in the official PS3 FAQ states: 'To use saved data on a PlayStation 2 memory card, you must copy the data onto a virtual memory card within the hard disk.'" Microsoft could have really used something like that for the Xbox/360 switchover. Relatedly, Sony is looking ahead ... way ahead, even to their next console. Wired has a piece looking at the future of downloads in the games industry. From that article: "Microsoft is releasing an HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360. Both companies are even touting the ability of these new discs to play movies in even higher hi-def. That struggle, however, is ultimately meaningless. 'I'd be amazed if the PlayStation 4 has a physical disc drive,' [Sony's Phil] Harrison says."

RobotRunAmok writes "Before there was Outlook, or Evolution, or The Brain, there was Lotus Agenda, a DOS-based Personal Information Manager created by Mitch Kapor. Wired is reporting that Kapor is throwing 5 Million USD at the Open Source Applications Foundation to create an open-source resurrection of this PIM-Of-The-Gods in the form of Chandler, available now as an alpha for Windows, Linux, and Mac. For the Agenda hardcore among us, it's as though Atlantis is rising..."

mrops writes "I guess the skeptical Slashdot community always knew that e-passports are a big waste of time and money; now German security consultants have been able to successfully clone e-passports, even onto building access cards. FTA: 'The whole passport design is totally brain damaged,' Grunwald says. 'From my point of view all of these RFID passports are a huge waste of money. They're not increasing security at all.'"