Slashdot Mirror

adpowers writes "It is official. Google will have its IPO debut at $85 per share. To quote the article, 'At that price, the low end of its recently revised range, Google raised $1.67 billion, with $1.2 billion to go to the No. 1 Internet search engine and $473 million to Google executives and investors selling their shares.' Trading begins Thursday, August 19th." Got Google?

Thanks to Yahoo for reprinting a Majesco press release announcing a videogame version of Universal Pictures' and Steven Spielberg's Jaws, apparently "scheduled for release in 2005 for the PlayStation 2... Xbox [and PC]." The title, in which "players assume the role of a... shark driven to a predacious frenzy by the sonic emanations of underwater oil drilling equipment", is being "developed by Appaloosa", the developers of the Ecco The Dolphin series for Genesis and, latterly, for Dreamcast/PS2. Elsewhere, QT3 messageboard readers point out Sole Predator, likely the pre-Jaws licensed version of the game, in which "players assume the role of the most feared predator on earth, the Great White Shark."

Brainsur writes "Oracle on Monday debuted a release of its customer relationship management software that offers sales reps tools for developing proposals and quotes, improving channel management, and aligning a company's sales and marketing staff. The 11i.10 applications also provide built-in analysis capabilities that sales reps use to analyze sales opportunities and report sales-pipeline status."

hpulley writes "With the X-Prize January 1, 2005 deadline looming closer, these announcements are becoming more common. The SpaceX Eagle-1 spacecraft is being readied for a possible November launch, after some static engine testing. There are plans for a larger Falcon-5 with 5 engines instead of one to be launched in 2005. At costs of around $6 and $12 million, respectively, for the launch vehicles it appears that the dream of affordable launch vehicles may finally come true. If you check the manifest you'll see they actually have three contracted and two tentative launch contracts through next year." Well, not quite affordable for everyone just yet, but not a bad pricetag for a millionaire.

hpulley writes "The Canadian press is reporting that X-Prize entrant the Canadian Arrow made its first successful crew compartment drop test on Saturday. It is essentially a modern version of the German V2 rocket. This test was just a drop of the crew compartment to test the parachutes. Next comes a launch abort test to see if the crew can be safely sent away from the vehicle. No word yet on when they might launch the consecutive flights in two-week turnaround for the prize. Fellow Canadian entrant the da Vinci Project will try to launch October 2nd. In the fall, venerable model company Estes Rockets will have a new model of the Canadian Arrow along with models of other entrants like the Rubicon." Oddly enough, I saw the crew compartment being driven around in Toronto on Saturday morning (towed behind a white pickup truck), but I didn't know what they were up to.

An anonymous reader writes "In February at the O'Reilly Digital Democracy Teach-In, technologists from the Dean, Kucinich, Clark and Kerry campaigns laid down arms to share tech plans while their respective camps were still battling it out in the primaries. A (private) list and requirements for fall campaign organizing ensued. Just six weeks ago, a few of the developers converged in San Francisco for a show and tell of their emerging free software tools. Today, the AdvoKit project was the first to tag beta, hoping to kick-start the campaign software revolution in time for November 2nd."

Predicta Lover writes "It's widely believed that the late-50s Predicta series was the swansong for Philco. After its introduction, RCA's president David Sarnoff is quoted as having said "Philco has reinvented the industry and made TV more exciting again." Somehow, I can't imagine Bill reacting that way to an Apple product launch, at least not publicly. Years later, Philco's phenomenally-designed but questionably-engineered and over-priced TV sets are an icon of modern television design, and are even made in a stunning reproduction form. Maybe Philco would still be in business if they'd thought to shoehorn a contemporary computer into the box and put a high-resolution LCD up top (ahh, I guess that would've been tough...oh, the cruelties of history). At any rate, the researchers and designers at Onomy Labs did just that, 45 years later, and the result is an absolutely lust-worthy piece of computing hardware. Built to eventually house an experimental computer being produced by Sun Labs, the supercharged piece made its debut at their recent Open House held at the Computer History Museum.The Pedestal model that's used here was originally penned by Philco's Catherine Winkler, and is variously described as being inspired by the ideal female form and looking like a gas pump (I am not even going to touch that one). The perpetrators of this project have been mildly vilified by classic TV collectors (fearing imitators) and highly praised by most everyone else...some are calling it the 'best casemod ever'. I don't know about that, but it's definitely a beautiful object."

prostoalex asks: "A recent Ask Yahoo! article talks about the worst movies ever made and points out this IMDB list of the bottom rankings. The Ask Yahoo! article names Manos The Hands of Fate the worst one, but apparently the IMDB table changed since then to include The Wild World of Batwoman at the top of the list. What would you consider the worst movie ever made? Perhaps anything listed here would also make the list?"

prostoalex asks: "A recent Ask Yahoo! article talks about the worst movies ever made and points out this IMDB list of the bottom rankings. The Ask Yahoo! article names Manos The Hands of Fate the worst one, but apparently the IMDB table changed since then to include The Wild World of Batwoman at the top of the list. What would you consider the worst movie ever made? Perhaps anything listed here would also make the list?"

hondo77 writes "How do you deal with an invasive, non-native plant? With a non-native beetle. This AP article talks about the non-native purple loosestrife weed, which arrived in North America in the late 1800s, and how it has been choking out indigenous native plans. After a study at Cornell, the Galerucella beetle was introduced in 2000 as part of a pilot program in Massachusetts to keep the weed under control. 'From what we know, there's no downside.'"

bus_stopper copies and pastes: "The BBC is quietly preparing a challenge to Microsoft and other companies jostling to reap revenues from video streams. It is developing code-decode (codec) software called Dirac in an open-source project aimed at providing a royalty-free way to distribute video. The sums at stake are potentially huge because the software industry insists on payment per viewer, per hour of encoded content. This contrasts with TV technology, for which viewers and broadcasters alike make a one-off royalties payment when they buy their equipment." We've mentioned this project before but this story goes into a bit more depth about the goals and motivations of the developers.

cyngus writes "IBM has announced they will add 18,800 jobs worldwide in 2004. They say about a third will be in North America. I don't know how many they have added this year so far. After the new hires IBM will employ about 330,000 people worldwide." More good news for the unemployed techie. Although things are far from the halcyon days of dot-com yesteryear, it's good to see companies doing better.

eibhear writes "Over on Groklaw, PJ has a theory that SCO is about to embark on an astroturfing campaign, based somewhat on Darl McBride's repeated comparison of the Slashdot and Groklaw styles of blogging at the recent SCOForum conference. PJ reckons: 'an astroturf campaign depends upon a non-moderated site, which explains McBride's sudden fondness for Slashdot.' '" The whole thing is really fishy, but the story is really worth reading just to see the weird battle occurring between SCO and Groklaw now.

Andrew Murphy writes " The Register's security guru Thomas Greene has written a book for the average computer user, though it contains a great deal of information that professionals need to know. It's insightful, instructive, and calls for open source software even on Windows for enhanced security. The single most interesting feature is the author's emphasis on open source software as a security feature per se. He rightly notes that there are no secrets in OSs, and teaches users to leverage this transparency regardless of their platform. As early as the introduction, Mozilla is urged as a secure replacement for IE and OE, and this came before the Scob outbreak." Read on for the rest of Murphy's review. Computer Security for the Home and Small Office author Thomas C. Greene pages 405 publisher Apress rating 9 reviewer Andrew Murphy ISBN 1590593162 summary No secrets means that open source software, when it survives, tends toward robustness -- so it can help even if you run a closed-source operating system.

The book covers popular OSs replacements for Windows applications and utilities; it explains vulnerabilities; it offers practical setup information for both Windows and Linux to harden a system and make it extremely difficult to attack.

The Preface describes the book in general terms. The Introduction explains firewalls and their limitations, and explains how to install Mozilla to limit email and http exploits and spam.

Chapter One debunks the malicious-hacker mythology and shows that most so-called hackers are only script kiddies who are easily thwarted with commonsense tactics.

Chapter Two explains malware, spyware, bad system configurations, and the scores of other routes to system exploitation and privacy invasion that firewalls and antivirus software don't address. It includes a step-by-step guide to simplifying and hardening a system. Most importantly, it offers a useful guide to turning off unnecessary services and networking components for both Windows and Linux, and setting sensible user permissions, and is liberally illustrated with screen shots.

Chapter Three offers a good breakdown of social engineering and phishing scams, and how to defend against them.

Chapter Four is about using common tools, like Ethereal, Netstat, PGP, etc. It explains how to monitor an Internet connection to spot software secretly reaching out or phoning home to remote servers; how to monitor your system for signs of malicious processes; and how to use PGP and GnuPG to encrypt sensitive files and Internet correspondence. This is one of the best introductions to using encryption available anywhere.

Chapter Five explains how to eliminate all traces of Web activity from your computer and defeat forensic recovery of stored data; how to surf the Web anonymously using an encrypted connection and defeat remote monitoring; how to set up and use SSH (SecureShell) to conceal both your identity, and the data content of your Internet sessions from all third parties, including your ISP. The many hiding places of sensitive or incriminating data are revealed for both Windows and Linux users.

Chapter Six explains the advantages and disadvantages of migrating from Windows to Linux; why Linux is easier to configure for security, and why it's better suited to less technically-inclined users; how to judge whether Linux is right for you, and the issues you should consider before migrating. The author is clearly biased towards Linux, but he understands that most users will stick with Windows. Hence the emphasis on tools that run on Windows.

Chapter Seven is a catchall essay explaining security from an anecdotal point of view. There were places where it got a bit tedious, but the idea is to look at security as a process or a frame of mind, not a specific series of computer settings. The material in this section is informative in only a general sense. The real configuration information comes in chapters Two, Four, and Five.

There are several indexes with useful information on firewalls, ports, Trojan activity, sources of information, and more. Most of this information is conveniently located and linked at the author's website, BasicSec.org

Overall, the book is exceptionally well written for a tech manual. The author is a good writer and his prose flows nicely. The book is highly readable, and even witty in parts. I found myself laughing aloud on several occasions. The author has the art of The Register's irreverent presentation. I enjoyed reading it. But it is not perfect, so I give it a 9 out of 10.

My biggest criticism is that the book shifts back and forth from practice to theory and back again. It's good that readers learn the reasons for the (very sensible) procedures and settings listed; but I felt that the book was organized wrong. This is a minor issue, and the book remains exceptionally useful; but instead of interlacing the various parts, theory and practice might better have been separated in two distinct sections. It's difficult simply to flip to a section of this book and learn what needs to be done: there is a lot of theoretical talk between each practical item. It's very good talk, and very instructive talk, all right, but I would have preferred that it be located in a particular place. I would rather not have to read the entire book through in order to tweak my system for good security. Unfortunately, the author has structured the book so that a read-through is necessary.

Overall, this book will tell professionals what they need to do, and novices everything that professionals ought to know, but probably don't. It's in plain English, so no one should worry that they can't grasp it. You can make your computer, or your network, very hard to attack, whether you use Windows or Linux. This book will show you how in excellent detail. You've got to read the whole thing, unfortunately -- but it will work nicely for you, casual user and sysadmin alike.

You can purchase Computer Security for the Home and Small Office from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

neol'schmoe writes "There's a new solution to the age old problem of physical movement within a virtual world. Researchers in Japan have come up with tiles that move in concert with a user's pace and motion to allow free range of motion while literally walking in a virtual environment and never leaving a very small area in the real world."

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."

Doc Ruby writes "The Congressional chatter about 'canning spam', in the CAN-SPAM law since January, has turned out to really mean 'they can still spam'. TechWeb News reports that 'In July, compliance fell for the first time under one percent to a measly 0.54 percent', from its 3% max. The researchers claim the ball has been dropped by 'law enforcement'. Those police are probably too busy deleting the 80% spam from their email, like everyone else."

Phoe6 writes "Wired is carrying an Open Letter of Benoît Mandelbrot, the father of the fractal, to the wizards of Wall Street, calling on them to recognize a pattern in the finantial and economic trends in the world. Mandelbrot says, If we can map the human genome, why can't we map how a man loses his livelihood? If millions can contribute a few cycles of their PCs to the search for a signal from outer space, why can't they join a coordinated search for patterns in financial markets?" I'd like to see a debate between Mandelbrot and Friedrich Hayek.

perl_camel_jockey writes "Sun is developing a new technology that promises to increase computing power by eliminating the need for physical, soldered chip-to-chip connections on the motherboard. Called 'proximity communications', it portends the ability for chips to talk to one another wirelessly just by being next to each other. Potential applications in computer design abound. Apparently this is part of Sun's Hero program, recipient of a $50 million grant from DARPA's High Productivity Computing Systems program to rejuvenate supercomputing in the US and regain the lead lost to Japan, in particular to NEC's Earth Simulator, ranked as the most powerful supercomputer in the world."

Yardboy writes "Yahoo! News has a story concerning one Stephen Galton who has filed a class-action lawsuit against Yahoo claiming the company 'unfairly protected people who post negative messages on its bulletin boards and falsely advertised that it prevents such abusive messages.' Seems he was subjected to name-calling (such as shyster) when he signed up under the username 'stephengalton' in order to respond to a negative post about an unidentified client. As other users chimed in with negative remarks, Galton filed suit against them (it's not clear from the story for what) and sought their personal information from Yahoo via a subpoena. The lawsuit seeks restitution, a permanent injunction and other forms of relief. What's really interesting is all the message board posts relating to the story have been deleted."

Yardboy writes "Yahoo! News has a story concerning one Stephen Galton who has filed a class-action lawsuit against Yahoo claiming the company 'unfairly protected people who post negative messages on its bulletin boards and falsely advertised that it prevents such abusive messages.' Seems he was subjected to name-calling (such as shyster) when he signed up under the username 'stephengalton' in order to respond to a negative post about an unidentified client. As other users chimed in with negative remarks, Galton filed suit against them (it's not clear from the story for what) and sought their personal information from Yahoo via a subpoena. The lawsuit seeks restitution, a permanent injunction and other forms of relief. What's really interesting is all the message board posts relating to the story have been deleted."

Yardboy writes "Yahoo! News has a story concerning one Stephen Galton who has filed a class-action lawsuit against Yahoo claiming the company 'unfairly protected people who post negative messages on its bulletin boards and falsely advertised that it prevents such abusive messages.' Seems he was subjected to name-calling (such as shyster) when he signed up under the username 'stephengalton' in order to respond to a negative post about an unidentified client. As other users chimed in with negative remarks, Galton filed suit against them (it's not clear from the story for what) and sought their personal information from Yahoo via a subpoena. The lawsuit seeks restitution, a permanent injunction and other forms of relief. What's really interesting is all the message board posts relating to the story have been deleted."

yeremein writes "SCO says it has found a new smoking gun in its battle with IBM. This 'bombshell' was not found in a court document; instead it came from a reporter's interview at SCOforum. The scoop? 'SCO alleges that since 2001, AIX has contained code for which IBM does not have a license. Moreover SCO claims to have found internal IBM e-mails in which IBMers acknowledge this shortcoming.' With the announcement comes a hefty boost in SCO's stock price." SCO is also going to bundle its worthless linux licenses with its Unix operating systems.

yeremein writes "SCO says it has found a new smoking gun in its battle with IBM. This 'bombshell' was not found in a court document; instead it came from a reporter's interview at SCOforum. The scoop? 'SCO alleges that since 2001, AIX has contained code for which IBM does not have a license. Moreover SCO claims to have found internal IBM e-mails in which IBMers acknowledge this shortcoming.' With the announcement comes a hefty boost in SCO's stock price." SCO is also going to bundle its worthless linux licenses with its Unix operating systems.

Ec|ipse writes "Last week TiVo received alot of heat from MPAA and NFL for a proposal regarding sharing of recorded shows with users, see previous story. Today it looks like TiVo has received approval." From the Reuters story as carried by Yahoo!: "TiVo, maker of popular digital television recording devices, on Wednesday received approval for technology that would permit users to send copies of digital broadcast shows over the Internet to a few friends."

An anonymous reader writes "Looks like Atari has just announced Neverwinter Nights 2, to be developed by Obsidian Entertainment, the same ex-Black Isle folks who are making Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic 2 in conjunction with BioWare. However, it's 'scheduled for release in 2006', so we've got a while to wait." A post on the Obsidian forums has a single piece of concept art, and it's confirmed that "[Original developers] BioWare will provide tools, technology, and game assets from the original Neverwinter Nights as well as lend creative input and oversight to the development process."

Richard Finney writes "The online version of Forbes Magazine says that Bill Gates has expressed an interest in buying Nintendo from Japanese billionaire Hiroshi Yamauchi." Though this news seems to have been part of a theoretical 'what if' question, the story reports: "'If Hiroshi Yamauchi phones me up, i will pick up at once,' Gates told WirtschaftsWoche magazine on the sidelines of an analyst conference."

nerdb0t writes "Reuters is reporting that the Finnish Defense Forces have allowed some men to be excused from military service because of 'Internet Addiction.' The service period is 6 months - but that's too long away from the internet for these guys. Is this a joke? Is this a legitimate illness? Hm..where can I apply for disability..."

Yeti Von Baseball writes "Now that Doom 3 has officially shipped to stores, Computer Gaming World just posted its Doom 3 review - they also posted about 100 or so new screens." Elsewhere, GameSpy has an in-progress weblog and first-look impressions on the "claustrophobic corridors" of the game, Telefragged posted one of the first reviews, praising "a grand slam of action, story, atmosphere, and pure terror", the BBC reports on how "potential sales could be hit by the extent of online piracy of the game", and Time Magazine has a feature on Doom 3 and id.

thephotoman writes "Well, Darl McBride gave an interview to IDG News Services in which he said that SCO is not going to sue any more customers. They do bring up the issue of the SCOsource Linux licensing, and how much of a failure it has been. Instead, they plan to start marketing their flavor of Unix. However, as he's not dropping the current lawsuits, there's no good reason to believe him on this change in strategy."

Thanks to GameSpot for its article discussing G4TechTV's recently filmed 'G-Phoria' videogame awards show, due to be shown on August 6th, in which, according to the reporter, "Carmen Electra... and her rocker-husband Dave Navarro played it up as hosts of the second annual awards show, but in reality, the event was overshadowed by the first appearance of the final version of Doom 3 at the postshow party." IGN PS2 has more information on the winners, including "Ryu Hayabusa of Ninja Gaiden fame (Favorite Character), Tony Hawk's Underground (Alt Sports Award), Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (Best Innovation), and Viewtiful Joe (Best New Franchise). The ultimate award, Game of the Year, went to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic." GameSpot's article also reveals that "sources [at the awards] let on that Majesco had picked up Tim Schafer's Psychonauts and will publish the game in early 2005", and elsewhere, Anna Nicole Smith's cosplay attempts (Ivy from Soul Calibur II, Farah from Prince Of Persia) were another 'highlight'.

nb caffeine asks: "Having recently graduated, and now working as a developer, I've discovered that after 9 hours of programming at work, I have little interest in coming home and working on my personal programming projects. I've become upset with this fact, because while I was in college, I spent quite a bit of time working on personal projects for my own use. I also noticed this trend during my summer internship, and I have a feeling that it isn't going to get any better. It's not to say that I don't get to work with cool technologies at my job, but they aren't anything that I would pick up in my spare time. So, how do my fellow programming geeks balance work related projects and personal projects? Or, if you've already discovered that after 9 hours of programming, the last thing you want to see is a computer, what hobbies does the Slashdot crowd enjoy after they've ruined their hobby by turning it into a job?"

rinkjustice asks: "I'm one of those unlucky souls damned to dial-up internet access. I've been trying to make the best of the situation, however: I use the stripped-down Slashdot homepage, and my kids are slowly acclimatising to dial-up friendly gaming fare ala Games.com, Yahoo! Games instead of bandwidth clotting MMORPG's like RuneScape. What other fun, interesting websites cater to the 56k crowd? Are there any websites specifically 'optimized' for a lo-bandwidth audience?"

Milk Toast writes "According to this article one can start with a simple program consisting of 3998 bytes and reduce it down to a mere 45 bytes. Now if they could only reduce the size of my Office install." It involves digging into assembly, naturally, but it's interesting to see the extra code generated not only by the compiler, but by the other steps along the way.

bl8n8r writes "Citing hardware and software TCO, a source close to Lockheed Martin says the aeronautics giant will be replacing 10,000 of its Solaris seats with Linux. The article mentions AutoZone, IBM, SCO and Daimler Chrysler and what may be in store for Lockheed Martin. 'Every engineer has a Microsoft PC sitting next to their Sun Blade,' said their source. 'That's for business applications, and Linux is no threat there. It's Sun who has to worry.' Wait till they find out how much they can save running OpenOffice."

Thanks to Eurogamer for its transcript of Lorne Lanning's talk on new Oddworld Inhabitants game Stranger, taken from a BitTorrent-ed 95mb video file from an EA press event, and available on the same site. Lanning goes into detail on the previously mentioned Xbox/PS2 game, explaining: "The main thing we wanted to accomplish on this title was the genre merging of first person action with first person shooting [and some third-person play] with a whole new twist, which is live [creatures as] ammo, and the different types of strategy that would offer." He further outlines this odd gameplay concept anchoring this non-Munch related, now EA-published title, explaining: "You get your ammo [which includes chipmunks, skunk, and insects, by] hunting little critters, sometimes they're crawling around."

DeMechman asks: "As many on Slashdot may know, storage is one thing which you can never have enough of. Given the current situation with CD/DVD rot (Personally I can attest to a 10% attrition rate) hard drives in a RAID configuration seem to be a better and more economical solution. If you own more than fifty CD/DVDs, it can be a daunting task to find a file. I am wondering if anyone has found a hardware solution that can inexpensively be set up to handle 10 or more 250GB HDDs in a RAID configuration. Primarily, has any case manufacturer tackled this niche market yet?"

Thanks to Yahoo for reprinting the press release revealing Midway has announced a multi-product agreement with Epic to publish three new Unreal franchise games. The deal is "including Unreal Championship 2 [originally to be published by Microsoft], an Xbox exclusive title scheduled to ship in 2005, and two future installments of Unreal Tournament [previous versions published by Atari] on PC and upcoming next generation consoles." In related news, Midway announced financial results for Q2 2004, with some slightly positive news (the company "expects to have shipped over one million units of NBA Ballers through 2004 Q3"), but disappointment in a "loss [of] $9.0 million", and news that Midway "has moved one of its major releases, Area 51, from 2004 into 2005."

Thanks to Yahoo for reprinting the press release revealing Midway has announced a multi-product agreement with Epic to publish three new Unreal franchise games. The deal is "including Unreal Championship 2 [originally to be published by Microsoft], an Xbox exclusive title scheduled to ship in 2005, and two future installments of Unreal Tournament [previous versions published by Atari] on PC and upcoming next generation consoles." In related news, Midway announced financial results for Q2 2004, with some slightly positive news (the company "expects to have shipped over one million units of NBA Ballers through 2004 Q3"), but disappointment in a "loss [of] $9.0 million", and news that Midway "has moved one of its major releases, Area 51, from 2004 into 2005."

cft_128 writes "Motorola Labs just finished field testing its new ODFM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) wireless broadband technology that prove it can attain 300Mbps. This is only a test, but it is an order of magnitude faster than the fiber to the premises that Verizon is now starting to offer. They do mention that the final network would only see 20Mbps sustained and 100Mbps peak."

Thanks to GameSpy for its article analyzing Banc Of America's in-depth report on videogame prospects for Christmas 2004. The report, previously referenced on Slashdot earlier this month, is now available for download [PDF link], and GameSpy explains the report "[isn't] trying to predict what the best games of the holiday are going to be. They're predicting what the best selling games are going to be, and which ones will meet expectations set by company leaders." The Banc analysts predict that Halo 2 "will be the second-best seller of the holiday season, just behind GTA: San Andreas", and suggest that certain titles, specifically "Bloodrayne 2, Terminator 3: The Redemption, The Red Star, 100 Bullets, Crash n' Burn, Predator: Concrete Jungle, and Shadow Hearts 2", should be moved beyond the holiday season entirely, to "avoid big-name products coming out on the same time-frame."

An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo's Tech Tuesday is running PC Mag's annual survey of best and worst PC vendors' customer support. At the top of the list: Apple. At the bottom: Sony. Heard any good tech support horror stories lately?"

iter8 writes " The Stargate SG-1 Information Archive is reporting that the Feds filed charges against Adam McGaughey, creator of SG1Archive.com. The website is a fan site for the television show Stargate SG-1. The charges allege that Adam used the website to engage in Criminal Copyright Infringement and Trafficking in Counterfeit Services. Two interesting things about the charges are that they were apparently set in motion by a complaint by our friends at the MPAA and the FBI invoked a provision of the USA Patriot Act to obtain financial records from his ISP. Is copyright infringment now a terrorist act?"

myster0n writes "According to The Register: 'SCO's attempts to rescue its relationship with BayStar, its biggest backer, have come to naught. On Friday morning, Eastern time, SCO announced that the stock buyback deal it agreed with the unhappy investor had closed. Two hours and five minutes later, Baystar issued a statement saying that a) no it hadn't and b) we'll see you in court, matey.'" Thanks to The Reg for the write-up.

It appears that Google has set their IPO price - 108$ - 135$ per share. Yowza. A reminder that this is done through the Dutch Auction ^? process, which makes that pricing even more...uh...interesting.

Mike writes "HP released two new versions of its famed iPAQ line. The iPAQ rz1715 is a smaller unit to replace the 1910, and the iPAQ h6315 is the long awaited phone version that also sports wifi and bluetooth. Full reviews for both the rz1715 and the 6315 can be found at pocketnow.com." There's also a review of of the rz1715 on PDABuyer's as well.

Ngamer writes "Logan West, a member of a fanatical group of gamers known as "The Elite," recently created a Nintendo fan's ultimate dream: his Nintendo Entertainment Console is a composite of the NES, SNES, N64, GC, and Gameboy, all combined into a single system! With no shortage of electrical/carpentry ability, Logan carefully dissected his consoles, wired them to a central unit, then crafted a wooden vessel to host all five systems as one. Logan has already gotten a response from Nintendo after submitting his creation to them--they were quite impressed!"

An anonymous reader writes "The Halo 2 movie trailer hit theaters last week and rabid fans have been passing around 'cam' versions since then. A lower quality streaming version went up on MSN and Xbox.com yesterday, but today GamePro.com premiered a high definition 1920x1080 5.1 surround sound version of the trailer for the home theater purists. More interestingly, a Halo.bungie.org newspost reports on subliminal messages within the ad, when 'the Xbox logo changes, for a frame or two, from www.xbox.com to www.ilovebees.com', an apparently legit website where 'some very, very strange stuff is going on' - there's already speculation and a little evidence this could be from the same Microsoft group who stealthily made the AI web game?" Elsewhere, an anonymous reader writes "Remember Quake Done Quick, the effort to complete Quake as fast as possible? Well, halo.bungie.org recently wrapped up its Going Nowhere Fast contest, which was an effort to do much the same thing for Halo. You can view the results and download the videos, though some are still being posted, at the Going Nowhere Fast contest page."

An anonymous reader writes "The Halo 2 movie trailer hit theaters last week and rabid fans have been passing around 'cam' versions since then. A lower quality streaming version went up on MSN and Xbox.com yesterday, but today GamePro.com premiered a high definition 1920x1080 5.1 surround sound version of the trailer for the home theater purists. More interestingly, a Halo.bungie.org newspost reports on subliminal messages within the ad, when 'the Xbox logo changes, for a frame or two, from www.xbox.com to www.ilovebees.com', an apparently legit website where 'some very, very strange stuff is going on' - there's already speculation and a little evidence this could be from the same Microsoft group who stealthily made the AI web game?" Elsewhere, an anonymous reader writes "Remember Quake Done Quick, the effort to complete Quake as fast as possible? Well, halo.bungie.org recently wrapped up its Going Nowhere Fast contest, which was an effort to do much the same thing for Halo. You can view the results and download the videos, though some are still being posted, at the Going Nowhere Fast contest page."

Uninvited Guest writes "After a rough cut of U2's latest unfinished album was stolen earlier this week, the band has vowed to release the entire album on iTunes if the music appears on P2P networks. Bono told the London Daily Telegraph, 'If it is on the Internet this week, we will release it immediately as a legal download on iTunes, and get hard copies into the shops by the end of the month.' Is this the exact opposite of the Smashing Pumpkins' last album, which the band rushed to release on P2P networks, before it could hit the stores?"