Shameless Words from Shameless Geeks

IGN has posted a top 100 games of all time list. Unlike the Gamespy top list this one is fairly legit with 85% of the top 100 not in print anymore and only four very recent titles (Burnout: Takedown, Resident Evil 4, God of War and Rome: Total War) on the list. Still the list is open to debate and some like Mafia making list but not Legend of Zelda for the Nintendo or Dance Dance Revolution not making the list. Also where was all the Atari love? None of the Atari 2600 games made the list, come on Adventure is still played to this day.

Alright this week is a first there is only one new games this week and an expansion for Ghost Recon 2, that is it. Here is the listing for the two games:

Shaman King: Master of Spirits 2 for the Gameboy Advance: Kiddie anime scroller.

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon 2 Summit Strike for the XBox: Expansion for Ghost Recon 2 that adds eleven new single-player missions and expanded multiplayer content set in Kazakh and Pakistani as the UN and Ghosts hunt a Pakistani warlord.

No picks for this week.

Since we never get any mail from our loyal readers, the only way way we can answer your questions is to answer the search strings. Hence our monthly column “Answering the Search Strings". It is that time of the month so onto the questions.

rockstar games: san andreas lawsuit?
I believe some Grandma in New York is suing over the damage the game did to her 14 year old grandson. A better question would be: why is Grandma buying a game rated for 17 and older for a 14 year old?

star wars question who is the baddest villain in star wars knig?
Jar-Jar Binks, think about it… he was there at every key moment that lead to Anakin turning into Darth Vader.

ddr in ebgames stores in Montreal:
I wish we could answer your question but have you ever seen a fat guy play DDR? It is not a pretty sight.

crack protection scheme knights of honor?
Why do you guys keep asking us for hacks for games that stink?

an error occurred downloading the attachment forza motorsport?
Finally a question about a good game, I just wish I could help you but I have no clue why the error occurred.

All online yugioh card gaming tournaments for kids 9-13?
Excuse me as I call the FBI.

abit fatality sli overheating issues?
The easiest way to cure overheating issue with Fatality is to get some duct tape for his mouth, that should take care of all the hot air.

jack thompson gamefaqs.com pwned by 14 year old?
I did not know Jack Thompson owned Gamefaqs. I thought he owned a fictional Gamefaqs that have the magic codes that show full nudity in Sims 2.

bittorrent spamalot?
Spamalot is a live musical, good luck on downloading that. If you figure how I suggest you patent it.

Attack of the Show is looking for a few good Male geeks to guest host and possible Host the show. Auditions start this Sunday in LA, with more auditions to follow in San Fransisco and New York in August. Looks like it is time for a road trip.

Game cable channel G4-Tech TV has announced the winners to this year’s G-Phoria, with Halo and God of War winning most of the awards. G-Phoria this year was promoted by having all the hosts on G4-Tech TV race each other, with the winner declared at G-Phoria. Since the winners have been announced I guess the race is over and I am sad to see it end. It was one of the few funny bits on G4-Tech TV (btw if G4-Tech TV is looking for a geek humor writer I am available - email me at leakenova at yahoo.com ) I am also annoyed with G4-Tech TV announcing the winners a week and 1/2 before the special and ruining G-Phoria for me. Now the only thing I have to look forward to is how much humiliation the special will lap on Adam Sesseler. After the bit with the bush and bathroom during the race, I can only imagine what “they” are going to do to Adam.

Though the media is calling todays news from NASA mixed, I consider it a bad day for the space program. The news is that Discovery successfully docked with the International Space Station, but NASA has halted further shuttle launches indefinitely. Lets hope they can fix the falling insulation problem quickly.

Stumbled on this one while surfing the web. Apparently, Brice Mellen is quite a video game wizard despite being blind since birth. It almost seems like the 21st century version of the movie Tommy. Does anyone else hear The Who singing in the background while they read the article? Oh well.. there go all of my excuses for being a bad video game player.

I have noticed a recent trend in Comic book blogs like absorbascon of the Gay comic book bloggers who are pointing out just how gay comics are. Granted some are obvious like Black Condor. Others are not like this one where blog sososilverage’s points to a video of Spiderman dancing around that make you wonder about Spidey. The scariest one pointed out had to be that Superman’s pal Jimmy Olsen may just like to wear womens clothes. This little fact ruined every boy hood dream I had of growing up and becoming a journalist so I could work with Superman like Jimmy does. Thanks guys.

In what seems like a risky move, NASA appears to be down-playing shuttle damage that was found during an inspection. Wow… I really hope they know what they are doing with this. Another accident could easily kill the space program, which isn’t nearly as bad as what would happen to the poor astronauts.

Two of the of the light sabers used in the filming of Star Wars: New Hope and Empire Strikes Back are up for auction this Friday at a Beverly Hills movie memorabilia auction. The lightsabers come from the personal collection of producer Gary Kurtz, who worked closely with Lucas in the 70s and 80s. Also up for auction is Indiana Jones’s leather jacket from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Tom Hanks’ costume from “Saving Private Ryan", John Travolta’s leather chaps from “Urban Cowboy” and the suit worn by The Riddler in the first episode of the 1960s TV series version of “Batman". For the few readers that have the cash, you can place bids on the items at Ebay’s Live Auction site or via phone or fax. For the rest of us we can stare at the pictures and drool.

Microsoft Windows Vista is scheduled for official release to beta testers today. This is the long awaited “longhorn” release that you have probably heard endlessly about.

In the eWeek announcement, you will find a link to the PC Mag review of Vista. It’s rather long winded, so I’ll give you a brief synopsis: Vista is the prettiest and best Windows version so far, but it won’t have all of the features that were originally announced for Longhorn. They have re-done the driver model to cut down on crashes (usually a self-defeating move, IMHO), and are forcing driver writers out of kernel space. They have a beautiful new style with translucent windows that will only work on higher-end hardware. There are serious compatibility problems with some current applications, but those are expected to be fixed by the release date. They have new search facilities, new ways to organize data, icons now display meta-data such as thumbnails and the first page of documents. I’d describe these functions in more detail, but I’ll just direct you to a copy of KDE 3.3 if you would like to see what they actually look like.

In short… the Windows GUI is catching up to the OSS guys, and may pass them by release date. The underlying OS is adopting *NIX-like security features, but it remains to be seen whether they will make the final cut. It’s still a wait-and-see thing.

In case you’ve been under a rock for the past few weeks, the Discovery made it’s triumphant return to space today. It was a beautiful launch (IMHO). You can keep up with the Shuttle’s doings by visiting the STS-114 Shuttle mission’s Wikipedia page.

Once again, Microsoft is tightening restrictions on the use of it’s software in yet another “anti-piracy” drive. I still have a problem with Microsoft’s requirement that I buy a new copy of Windows every time I upgrade my machine beyond a certain point. It’s about like telling me that I have to get a new monitor every time I upgrade my motherboard, or additional copies of a CD if I want to play it in my car.

I don’t practice or condone piracy, but someone has gotta stop these people. The root cause of piracy is Microsoft’s inability to find a reasonable way to regulate the distribution of their software. I don’t have an answer for their problem, but I know that accusing people of theft because they upgrade their equipment often is a really bad option.

Unlike many OSS advocates, I don’t have a big problem with Microsoft’s software products. I don’t even have a problem with them making a profit on it. What I have a BIG problem with is the arrogance that they display with their licensing arrangements and predatory business practices. With Windows XP, they convinced us that it was OK for them to keep an enormous database that tracked every machine that runs Windows. Now we see that they will be using it against us.

Every time Microsoft shows a slowdown in growth, they tighten the stranglehold on their own customers. This time it’s only free upgrades that are denied to those who are “unclean". It’s only a small step beyond the Big Brother inspired database that came out with XP, but I shudder to think what’s next.

According to a Reuters article, Intel plans to build a new 3 billion dollar plant in Chandler, Arizona. The plant is scheduled to start churning out 45 nanometer parts in 2007. Intel’s willingness to invest such a a large amount of money in new facilities is a good omen for the MPU business.

Another week and another list of games coming out for the week. On to the list:

Advent Rising for the PC: Delayed Sc-Fi epic for the PC that flopped on the XBox. Hopefully in the PC version they improved the frame rate.

Animaniacs: The Great Edgar Hunt for the Gamecube and XBox: The lovable WB mascots: Wakko, Yakko and Dot in the puzzle game with Pinky and the Brain mini games. At a budget price, what is there not to love about this game.

Codename: Panzers Phase Two for the PC: World War II RTS.

Delta Force: Black Hawk Down for the XBox and Playstation 2: Played the XBox and Playstation 2 versions at E3 and loved them both. when the price hits $30 I am buying the XBox version. The best part, which I am not that big into, is the multiplayer part which allows up to 50 players in one game on XBox Live.

Graffiti Kingdom for the Playstation 2: Graffiti Kingdom is the sequel to Magic Pengel- the weirdest RPG ever. The game has already been nominated for game of the year in Japan and looks like it could be the next Katmari Darcy (which sequel is due out soon too). According to EB Games: “Players will take on the role of Prince Pixel, who is on a quest to save his parents and restore Canvas Kingdom back to its normal form after an ancient evil transformed it into a labyrinth full of danger.” Another game I am going to be buying soon.

Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life for the Gamecube: F…A…R…M…I…N…G now with the ability to play as a female.

Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town for the Gameboy Advance: Same game as the previous GBA version of Harvest Moon except you can play as a female.

Makai Kingdom: Chronicles of the Sacred Tome for the Playstation 2: Another Tactical RPG from the other Tactical RPG master NIS.

Outlaw Tennis for the XBox and Playstation 2: Bad boy Tennis at a budget price. If you loved the other Outlaw games you will love Outlaw Tennis for all the same reasons.

A lot more games and a lot of really good ones too. My pick for the week is: Delta Force: Black Hawk Down, Graffiti Kingdom and Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life. A know I should pick one, but I like all three equally and will be buying all three soon.

Before you think that GTA’s publisher Take Two got off lightly from the ESRB for the whole Hot Coffee issue, think again. Take Two may not have been fined or forced to recall GTA: San Andreas, but retailers response to the rating change has been to pull the game off the shelves. A lot retailers have also said they will not sell the copies of GTA: San Andreas without Hot Coffee. Then add in the fact that Take Two’s stock is taking a beating over the rating change and you can not say that Take Two got off lightly. Hopefully what happened to Take Two is lesson to the rest of the industry to not mess with the ESRB.
Update
Gamespot has posted the cost for Hot Coffee will be around $50 million or greater for retailers, Take Two and Rockstar.

Jack Thompson fresh on his victories against GTA: San Andreas is setting his sights on Sims 2. According to Jack Thompson using a simple code a player can unblur the box covering Sims when they are naked, to reveal full frontal nudity that EA hid in the game.
Jeff Brown, vice president of corporate communications at EA, in response to the accusations, told GameSpot, “This is nonsense. We’ve reviewed 100 percent of the content. There is no content inappropriate for a teen audience. Players never see a nude sim. If someone with an extreme amount of expertise and time were to remove the pixels, they would see that the sims have no genitals. They appear like Ken and Barbie.”
Either Jack Thompson is blowing smoke or EA is lying. In this case I side with EA. I am also shocked that Jack Thompson did not go after the fact that you can two male or two female sims become lovers.

Last month there were no TV shows exploring the inner workings of the tattoo industry, now there are two to choose from. Luckily, for all of you who can only watch one, Slate has posted a side by side comparison of Inked on A&E and Miami Ink on TLC. This comparison should help make your tattoo watching decisions easier. Personally I liked Miami Ink more because the owners are just big geeks like us.

By a margin of 383-15, The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly endorsed NASA’s trips to Mars and the Moon. You’ll always find sympathy for the space program here at ShamelessGeeks. Despite it’s costs, the space program stretches the limits of technology in ways that terrestrial sciences can’t. Many technological advances can be credited to the program often called “folly” by those who oppose it.

Here’s one for all of the web-addicted geeks out there (like me). If you are looking for something a little different, check out Google Moon, Googles new out-of-this-world map service. It comes complete with all of the Apollo lunar landing sites marked.

Here’s a tip: if you zoom all of the way in, you’ll find out what the moon is really made of.

UPDATE:
If you follow the links on all of the pages, you will eventually end up reading about job opportunities with Google on the moon, how they generate oxygen for their facilities, and other really useful knowledge. I won’t spoil it with details, but I heartily suggest that you browse around the pages. Somebody spent a good deal of time creating some really unique geek humor.

Many thanks to Drog for the heads-up.

It looks like the MS PR machine has finally decided on a name for the next Windows. Today, Microsoft announced that the OS code-named Longhorn will be released as “Windows Vista”. The beta version will be released by August 3rd.

As previously announced, the final version of “Vista” should be released sometime in the second half of 2006. It is the longest gap between Windows versions in the company’s history.

Get ‘em while they’re hot! Mozilla.org has released Firefox 1.0.6 and Thunderbird 1.0.6. The new versions were released to fix compatibility problems with the 1.0.5 releases, which were themselves released to fix security issues. It’s nice of Mozilla to do the mea culpa thing again, but it’s getting a little old. I’m guessing that there are a few red faces out at Mozilla.org these days.

NASA will make another attempt to launch the Space Shuttle on Tuesday, according to this AP feed. The interesting part is that they may go with the launch even if the fuel gauge problem re-appears. It will be nice to see the space program fly again, but one has to wonder if they are taking too big of a risk with their return to space. An accident every 15 years is tragic, but unlikely to cause an outcry. Two accidents in a row would be quite a different story.

It looks like the fight against spam is heating up. The Blue Frog initiative attempts to give spammer websites a dose of their own medicine.

I can understand the logic behind this, and I sympathize with the sentiment that brought it on. Unfortunately, this type of thing will only be effective for the few weeks it takes for the spammers to find a way around it. The really big downside to this is that there doesn’t seem to be an effective way of distinguishing real spammers from innocent victims of hackers. In the end, it will only be used as a tool by unscrupulous people to perform mischief.

We really need an effective way to fight spam. This just isn’t it.

… maybe not. According to this Reuters Article, A group of teachers want to ban the word fail from British classrooms and replace it with the phrase deferred success. Of course that is ludicrous. It sounds like a case of deferred intelligence to me.

I have a better idea. Instead of replacing the word fail with something that it doesn’t mean, lets replace replace the word Teacher with the word apologist. That might actually do some good.

In response to the Hot Coffee mod, the ESRB has changed the rating of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas from Mature to Adult Only. The rating change has forced Rockstar and Take Two to offer retailers two unpalatable choices. The first choice is to exchange all unsold copies of GTA: San Anderas for a copy without Hot Coffee that will maintain the Mature rating. The second choice is a sticker that will change existing inventory from M to AO (Adults Only 18+) by covering over the M sticker. Major retailers like Wal Mart have already started recalling GTA: San Anderas and I expect most will do so since most stores do not sell AO games. While I do not like to see censorship, I salute the ESRB for taking a stand on this and removing the fire pin from the Holy Hand Grenade before the anti-game lobby was able to pull it.

It is with a sad heart that Shamelessgeeks reports the passing of James Doohan. Doohan was best know as Scotty, chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise. He passed away at 5:30 this morning at his home in Redmond, Washington with his wife at his side. The cause of death was listed as pneumonia and Alzheimer’s disease. He was 85.

Now that Jeff Smith has finished “Bone” he started work on the video game version of “Bone” with Telltale Games. “Bone” is a high fantasy comic book adventures of three cartoon characters set in a mythical world with dragons and rat creatures. Smith and Telltale games plans to release each chapter of the series as a stand alone point and click game, like the old Lucasart’s games. They plan to make each chapter downloadable starting in September and the game will stick strictly to the plot of the book. The only major difference between the story in the game and the comic book is that more dialog will be added.
Smith is also working hard on a colorized version of the comic book series that will be released by Scholastic Books’ Graphix imprint. You can also get the complete Bone collection in one giant soft back book at stores right now.

Slate has posted an article explaining how NASA figures out the launch window. The current launch window is set to the time that the shuttle can meet up with the International Space Station when it passes over Florida during the daytime. That window currently ends July 31, so the launch will have to take place before the end of July or it will have to wait until September.

According to Gamesindustry.biz Hitman: Blood Money and the next Tomb Raider will be delayed until 2006. The delay of Hitman: Blood Money has surprised some since it was listed as one of the most violent video games of 2004 by the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. I guess Hitman: Blood Money had some really violent screenshots.

NASA has delayed the Space Shuttle’s return to flight again. This time, they are saying the the launch will be no earlier than next Tuesday. It’s beginning to sound like their PR is caught in an endless loop. Oh well, after 2.5 years off, whats another few days?

Slate has posted an article describing a new periodic table of the elements that is starting to take hold. The new table was created by Oxford ecologist Philip Stewart to solve the grouping issues with the current periodic table. Stewart’s table still groups elements by size and type but joins the related ones together without all the confusion the old periodic table creates.

Say it ain’t so! According to AP, being a nerd, Geek, or dork has become cool. It isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened. For a brief time in the 80’s, the success of Microsoft made Bill Gates (arguably a geek) the coolest guy in the world. Once people got tired of him, Geeks went back to being geeks.

Even when it is no longer cool to be a Geek, we’ll still be around to give Geeks a place to speak out. I’ve been a Geek for all of my 43 years, and I don’t intend to change anytime soon.

According to this AP feed, TiVo is taking steps to encourage it’s users to watch commercials. That’s about as laughable as Google encouraging it’s users to “click through” on text ads. Everyone knows that the only time anyone clicks through is if they get an attack of spastic finger. The only reason that TiVo users would intentionally view an ad is if they suffer from temporary brain damage. Lets thank the TiVo marketing department for giving us our laugh for the day.

Another summer week and another week of games:

Asheron’s Call: Throne of Destiny for a PC: Why do they bother with new MMORPG’s when old MMORPG’s never go away? Yet another expansion for the ancient Asheron Call.

Colosseum: Road to Freedom for the Playstation 2: Another game set in the Roman Empire. When are we going to start complaining about yet another one of these games?

Nanostray for the DS: Hidden away in the Majesco booth at E3 was this little gem of a shooter. I am glad I made a wrong turn in the Majesco booth looking for Jaws and found Nanostray instead. Never did find Jaws, I was too busy playing Nanostray.

Thats it only 3 games this week. Pick for the week is: Nanostray.

OK.. I’m an admitted Open Source lover. This site runs on Linux, and I promote Firefox via the big Icon at the top of the page. I only use Windows when I’m playing games, or when my job dictates that I must. Having said all of that, I’m beginning to wonder if we aren’t seeing a little bit of unfairness in the way the online press treats the Open Source debate.

Last night I got an email from SpreadFirefox.com indicating that they had been hacked, and that any information I had given them may have been accessed. I hadn’t used any of my normal passwords on the site, so I wasn’t worried. Just for the record: I’d like to thank them for the warning. I can’t remember the last time I saw a Mea Culpa from someone who was hacked.

Here’s where I thought that things were getting strange: I looked through the RSS feeds for all of my tech-oriented sites, and found only a brief mention of the incident at TheRegister.com. If this had been a break-in at one of Microsoft’s sites, it would have been front page news! People would have jumped up on their soapboxes declaring that this was just another example of Microsoft’s inept security, and that Microsoft can’t keep their own servers secure, how can they keep yours secure, and blah blah blah. When the same thing happens with the (arguably) largest Open Source browser distributor, there is mostly silence.

I think that the Open Source community should hold itself to the same standard that they hold Microsoft to. I’m not saying that they should start screaming and waving their hands at the SpreadFirefox break-in, they should be a lot kinder when the same thing happens to Microsoft. We should all tone down the shouting and try to come up with a way for both sides to contribute. Shouting and waving your arms doesn’t accomplish anything except to increase the tension in the debate.

Update:
While I was writing this, someone apparently posted something to /. It seems to me that there should have been something at least 12 hours earlier.

Last night during Attack of the Show, host Kevin P. revealed that there was a way to unlock the hidden sex mini games on the Playstation 2 using hacking tools like Codemaster 2. After doing some research I found the codes. Instructins for how to enter them in a Playstation 2 have popped up in a variety of game forums like the ones on Gamefaqs.com. It appears the sex mini-games were discovered when people started scanning GTA: San Andreas’s configuration files and noticed a suspicious looking tag. Once the PC version came out hackers were able to alter the configuration files and were then able to unlock the sex mini-games. According to Kotaku earlier today (the article has been taken down), Rockstar has now done a full 180 and will soon confirm that they indeed created the sex mini games and accidentally left them in. If Kotaku is correct, Rockstar games is a lot of trouble with the ESRB for lying to them. Unlike the Motion Picture Ratings board, the ESRB is not a toothless tiger and can level fines, force Rockstar to pull all advertising, recall the game and other various nasty things. I hope the ESRB stands up to Rockstar for doing this to show the American public that the ESRB works and takes rating violations seriously.

The launch of the space shuttle has been postponed until no earlier than late next week. This is a disappointing, but not unexpected, extension of the delay announced on Wednesday afternoon.

Well, somebody has destroyed everything that it means to be a geek. According to this Reuters story, The White Collar Slacker’s Handbook is full of high-tech secrets for fooling your boss into thinking that you are working. Now that the secrets are out, everyone will know how to spot the signs of a slacking Geek! It seems as though a lot of Geeks are going to have to learn how to work for a living all over again. Then again… Is the average boss smart enough to understand any of these tactics? Maybe not.

Even though its parent company Hip Canada has filed for bankruptcy this week, Hip Europe has announced that it will stay in business. It looks like I will get to see what a Deep One looks like. Also, “City of the Dead", the only game I had a small hand in designing, will hit store shelves after all.

Kotaku has posted Jack Thompson’s response to Hillary Clinton’s press conference about the Hot Coffee mod for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and the failure of the ESA to give GTA an AO rating because of the mod. Thompson response is more of rant in which he spent most of his time insulting ESA head Doug Lowenstein and calling for his resignation over this whole sordid affair with Hot Coffee and GTA. I think the best part was where he compared Lowenstein tactics to Hilter tactics. I also like how he talked glowingly about Hillary Clinton. I wonder if he would have done that while Bill Clinton was in the White House?

Update:
Kotaku has posted Doug Lowenstein’s response to Jack and Hillary.

Rally sent me this mini-review of Falcon 4 and gave me permission to post it. For future reference, it will find a permanent home at http://www.shamelessgeeks.com/submissions/rally/falcon4_mini_review.shtml

I have gotten a little time to try out the newest version of the Falcon 4 game. It is very well done, with a high degree of polish. The printed manual is actually fun to read. It has just the right amount of detail to make it useful, while covering everything you need to get started. The online manual is much more detailed, being 700 pages, and I haven’t gotten through much of it. The approach is to describe how the systems work in a simple manner, so that you learn about the real plane at the same time learning what you need to play the game. There are 20+ training missions, an instant action and the campaign. I’ve tried some instant action, and was able to do OK with little prior knowledge. There is co-operative multiplayer, which I think will be the strong point of the game as far as we are concerned. The campaign also supports this, so I’m excited about the possibilities. The game only requires the CD for installation. A refreshing change from C&C Generals and Empire Earth 2! The difficulty (realism) is settable from easy to realistic, so you can jump in with a little reading and enjoy the game. For $30, I think it was money well spent.

– Rally

New York Times has posted an article about the Junxion Box (registration required) which allows people to create WiFi hotspots using cellular modem cards. The Junxion Box is fairly popular amongst the Hollywood and Rock and Roll sets since it allows the users to maintain a constant WiFi Internet connections on the road and in their touring vehicles for all their devices instead of one. The highlight of the article was where Willie Nelson confesses he is a computer geek at heart.

Here’s a bank that provides a drive-thru holdup service. No doubt that we’ll be hearing about the teller and the thief on the Darwin Awards someday.

Alternate post title: When Morons Collide.

Oh yeah… Researchers at the University of Minnesota have found that there may be a way to reverse the effects of Alzheimers. I just wish I remembered what it was. I’ll be here for 2 shows a night for the rest of the month. Don’t forget to tip your waitress.

Rockstar games has gone on the record to dispute the claims that Hot Coffee (a mod that unlocks sex mini games in Grand Theft Auto: San Andres) is not a mod. They claim that it is not an extension that simply unlocks a hidden section of code, but is a modification created by “disassembling and then combining, recompiling and altering the game’s source code.”

I only see one issue with Rockstar’s statement. When did they start shipping source code along with the game?

I ran into a post on /. that pointed out the upcoming NerdTV on PBS. All I can say is “It’s about time!". According to the info page at that pointer, the show will be available for download on a weekly basis, and can be redistributed using a CCL (Creative Commons License). You better believe that I’ll be looking at this as soon as it debuts on Sept. 6th.

Mozilla, Firefox, and Thunderbird have all been patched to remove some previously undisclosed bugs. Though the vulnerabilities are listed as non-critical, users are still advised to update to the new versions to fix stability issues. Currently, the Firefox update is available. All of the updates (when released) should be posted on www.mozilla.org.

The launch of Space Shuttle Discovery has been postponed until at least Saturday, according to this Reuters article. The problem this time was a fuel sensor, that could have caused the engines to shut off prematurely. If there had been no problem with the sensor, there still may have been a problem with the weather. There was a 60% chance of thunderstorms in the area.

It’s a little disappointing to see the launch delayed, but I doubt that anyone will second guess the decision to postpone. The space program cannot afford another mishap.

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No. Thats not a headline from 2003. Space Shuttle Discovery’s thermal tiles were damaged today when a window cover fell off and struck a bulge in the ship. Even though NASA says that they can fix it before the launch, you gotta feel sorry for the Astronauts. If I were one of those guys, I’d be cleaning the yellow stains off of my space suit about now.

In a move that is sure to multiply the pressure on chipzilla’s legal department, EU competition officials raided several of Intel’s European facilities. Even though there have been rumors of dirty dealing, and a few investigations have been kicked off, the latest round of legal trouble was started by AMD’s recent anti-trust lawsuits against Intel.

I’m a little unsure what I think about this legal wrangling. AMD’s technology caught up to Intel around the time that the 1GHz Athlon was released. In recent years, AMD has pummeled Intel when it comes to performance, efficiency, and price, yet AMD has made no traction at all with large vendors. The whole situation smells really bad.

On the other hand, it all may be a case of social inertia. Big vendors may be stuck with Intel because joe everybody has no idea that AMD processors are that good. There is no sense in offering a product to the public if the public won’t buy it.

I guess I’ll just have to wait for the evidence like everyone else does.

According to an AP feed, American workers waste an average of 2 hours of each workday. If you are reading this from work, you are engaged in the most common way of wasting time: personal internet use. Believe me, I won’t tell anyone you were here

The article points to Missouri as the worst state for slacking, with an average of 3 hours and 12 minutes lost. That’s only possible if Washington DC wasn’t eligible.

Canadian publisher HIP Interactive has declared bankruptcy and will be closing its doors shortly. While previous games HIP has released have been bad, its upcoming line of games that I saw at E3 were really solid. Particularly the games Call of Cthulhu: Destiny’s End, and George Romero’s City of the Dead. Hopefully, some other company will pick up HIP’s games so that I can see all the features I helped design for George Romero’s City of the Dead… and I can see what a Deep One looks like.

The mod Hot Coffee for Grand Theft Auto San Andreas that supposedly unlocks hidden sex based mini games, may get GTA developer Rockstar Games and the ESRB in trouble with lawmakers. Rockstar is already in trouble with the ESRB over this mod and the ESRB may change GTA: San Andreas’ rating to AO. The big issue is that the sex mini games were part of the games code base and simply unlocked by a few keystrokes instead of a user created mod like Counterstrike. However, as the mod author puts it best, the hidden games are “not something it is possible to accidentally stumble across in the course of playing the game.” In other words Rockstar games never intended for someone to play or even see the mini games. They are just guilty of sloppy coding for forgetting to compile the mini games out.

Well, maybe that’s what they should call it instead of a Spyware Removal Tool. It looks like anit-spyware groups are annoyed at Microsoft again. This time, it looks like they are playing favorites with a spyware (thats right… I used the S word) company that they have designs on. The current default action for Claria software has been changed from ‘remove’ to ‘ignore’. So if Microsoft really buys Claria, what will that say about their business practices? Didn’t they already end up in court for this type of thing?

Oh well… it looks like the early nineties all over again. Anybody want to start a company that makes IPO’s?

… it could very well be. Earlier today, I stumbled across a theregister.com reference to a message about Dell’s customer support forums shutting down. When I followed the link myself, I saw something that said “The Message you are trying to access has been deleted. Please update your bookmarks". It also appears as though the forums are back up.

Normally, I would have expected to either see an apology by Dell about the confusion, or the original message that theregister.com saw. Instead I saw something that made me suspicious about both sides of the debate.

One thing I can say about Dell’s customer service… It’s about as bad as you can get. My own horror story involves a laptop that was waiting on an “unobtainable part", then was said to be lost, after which Dell questioned whether I had actually sent them a laptop. 3 months later, my laptop arrived… completely unannounced. All of my complaints were either met by the very same form letter (8 times), or an incomprehensible reply in broken English. I haven’t bought anything from them since.

The much anticipated Space Shuttle launch is on schedule for Wednesday. Hurricane… er… Tropical Storm… er Big wind Dennis is out of the picture, but Emily may become a problem. Even so, it looks like the launch is a 70% probability.

It will be nice to see NASA up and flying again. Lets just hope that the safety precautions pay off.

Another week and another game of the week list. The drought continues, on to the games:

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for the Playstation 2, XBox, Gamecube, PC and Game Boy Advance: Game based on the upcoming Tim Burton movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which is a remake of 1960 movie which is based on the classic book. So we have game based on a movie which is based on a movie which is based on a play which is based on a book.

Flatout for the Playstation 2, XBox and PC: Car racing game that has a full damage model including the ability to toss the driver out of the car.

Flipnic for the Playstation 2: Budget pinball game.

Fullmetal Alchemist 2: Curse of the Crimson Elixir for the Playstation 2: Square tries again to bring the hit anime series Fullmetal Alchemist to the consoles. Hopefully this time around they do a better job the last attempt and make a game as enjoyable as the anime series.

NCAA Football 2006 for the XBox and Playstation 2: EA dominance on all games involve football starts with this game.

Realms of Illusion for the PC: Non liner puzzle adventure game with only 20 puzzles but with lots of buttoning pressing.

Sid Meier’s Pirates! for the XBox: Ahoy my maties, time to swash the decks down and loot plunder the Caribbean as a pirate in this remake of Pirates! the classic 80s Sid Meier’s game. No word if the game will solve the classic question who win in a fight Ninja or Pirates.

Well thats it for the week a nice small list of games to select from. My pick for this week: Sid Meier’s Pirates!, if you do not have a XBox the PC version of it is in the budget bin.

It is good to finally see that people are starting to ‘get’ what I have been saying all along. The DS right now is better than the PSP. Joystiq and several other sites have posted the results from the survey conducted by analyst group Wavemetrix, that showed by and large consumers favored the DS over the PSP. The biggest issue raised in the report was the lack of good PSP games, which I have been saying all along is the major issue with the PSP. Other than Lumines, there are no “must” buy games, just a collection of maybe buys, and the selection is even thin there. If you look at the game pipeline for the PSP there is only ONE game (Death Jr.) in the next 3 months worth getting excited over. The DS, on the other hand, may also have a fairly poor selection of games right now, (maybe 2 or 3 must buys) but its game pipeline for the next 3 months is busting at the seams. The updoming DS games that are really worth buying (Nintendogs, Mario Kart DS, The New Super Mario Bros, Elecktroplakton, and Metroid DS). If you add in the price, battery life and the whole dead pixel issue, the DS is just better than the PSP right now. If Sony wakes up and starts pushing a ton more games, increasing the battery life, and lowering the cost of memory sticks for the PSP instead of flooding the market with crappy UMD movies and overpriced memory sticks, games and accessories (yes thats right overpriced accessories. Sony wants $35 bucks for a power cord), the PSP will overtake the DS and hand Nintendo its first defeat in the handheld market. Then again all hope for the PSP may be lost since Ken Kutaragi, Sony’s main visionary for games, may have finally gone over the deep end and looks to be taking the PSP down with him as he slowly sinks further into madness.
Before all you Sony fanboys flame us to death please note, the survey was done via Internet forums and though I agree with it, the report is still just a collection of opinions and shoud be taken with a grain of salt.

According to Reuters, the creator of the Sasser worm got off with a suspended sentence in a German court. I guess the German courts don’t mind encouraging this kind of behavior in their teenagers. The punishment should be much more of a deterrent than a simple “I feel your pain". In my book, being a nerd with poor social skills is no excuse for causing millions of dollars worth of damage, even if you are only 17. Heck… most of the people I know fit that profile, including ME. None of them have ever committed a crime worse than downloading a movie.

So… To recap… A 17 year old kid intentionally created and refined a virus that is credited with more damage than any other. In the view of the court in his mother country, he was too young and too much of an a**hole to be held to the standards of law. Therefore, he is free to go back to his status of hero among his group of twisted anti-social virus-writing fans. No punishment is given, no reparations for any of his victims, and no real guarantee that he won’t do it again. Nice deterrent.

If you are going to sneak around your neighborhood trying to find a WiFi hotspot you may want to rethink that idea. Stealing WiFi has been classified as a class 3 felony. A man in Florida was recently convicted when he connected to neighbors WiFi network from his SUV. The laws are new on stealing WiFi, but this is most likely the first in a long wave of arrests. Also, if you have a WiFi network in your house, please take the ten seconds to set it up fully with Passwords, so people can not access it.

A man lit himself on fire before proposing to his girlfriend in order to show her how devoted he was. Strange as it may seem, the stunt worked, but briefly angered his girlfriend. In my experience, women displaying inappropriate emotions and men wanting to light themselves on fire are things that don’t happen until after they are married

P.S. Just kidding, dearest.

TheRegister.com has this report on the London transit bombings and their effect on transportation and communications systems. I know all of our readers join with me in sending our condolences to the British people.

On another note.. Can someone explain to me how the online letter can talk about compassion and mercy in the first paragraph, then claim to have murdered the innocent in the second? I guess logic is entirely beyond the comprehension of extremists.

1Up has posted an article about the growing trend of people setting up sweatshops in Asia to farm gold for various MMORPG. I have my doubts about how true the article is, it sounds rather out there as far as money making schemes go, but it just may be true. If the article is true, I need to quit my day job and get hacking away. World of Warcraft macros are a breeze to write and pay more in a month then I could ever make in a year.

Verizon has signed a deal with Time Warner to carry it’s Turner Broadcasting stations on it’s new fiber-based FIOS network. To be clear about this: Most of us geeks don’t want the TV service (well, maybe a little), we want the 30Mb download link. So… When are you going to run fiber to my house? A couple of my friends have it, and I’m already Jealous!

So… do you think that the cable companies are sorry that they antagonized the telco’s by offering cable modem service? It looks like the cable guys might just have a little trouble dealing with the competition that they stirred up.

In a move that the US government should follow, The European Parlaiment voted down a proposed patent law that would standardize patents across Europe. It looks like the main sticking point involved the patenting of software.

Now if only we could get Congress to be a little more sane about the issue. The one-click shopping patent is atrocious, along with patents for methods of tying shoes. If we were to restrict patents to applied science and keep them out of the business space, we wouldn’t have people arguing that a background color was a business method, and therefore, deserving of a patent.

Intellectual property laws in this country were originally intended to allow the inventor/artist to take advantage of his own genius and allow him to earn back his development costs. Laws that were intended to encourage the little guy to strike out on his own have been twisted into something that protects big markets for the first big guy to win a lawsuit. The USPTO is long overdue for a major overhaul. Unfortunately, it won’t happen in the near future. As long as big companies are providing our lawmakers with their largest source of income, we’ll be stuck with the current situation. After all, what “honest” politician will tear up his own meal ticket?

Japanese eating superstar Takeru Kobayashi has retained the title hot dog eating world champion, and the mustard belt that goes with it. At the annual July 4th hot dog eating contest at Coney Island, New York, he ate 49 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes. Kobayashi narrowly out-paced American female Sonya Thomas, who managed to down 37 hot dogs to come in second place. I have never met Kobayashi but I lost to Sonya Thomas in the local qualifier for this year’s hot dog eating contest and can verify her eating prowess. She downed 30 hot dogs at the qualifier and was an unstoppable eating monster. Her eating abilities must be enhanced by all the practice she gets testing the cooking at the Burger King she manages in Northern Virginia.

Even though he did so soon after his apprehension, the man who wrote Sasser has officially confessed in a German court. Now would be a good time to start making examples out of these snot-nosed jerks who write computer viruses. Maybe a stretch of jail time will make him think twice before doing it again. Oh… by the way… Nobody is impressed at his programming abilities. Viruses just aren’t that difficult to create.

That’s right… Astrologer, not Astronomer… and neither one wants to be mistaken for the other.

An Astrologer in Moscow is suing NASA for ruining “the natural balance of forces in the universe” when they punched a crater in the Tempel 1 comet. She has no chance of winning. She would have known that if she had read her tea leaves properly. Maybe we should all start a class-action suit charging her with the millions of hours of lost work time we spent laughing at her charges. Da noiv o’ sum peepul.

I was doing my usual browse of the news feeds, trying to find a cute story or two to make a smartass remark about, when I stumbled upon a gem about Internet addiction in China. Go ahead… read the article, and see if you agree with my take on it.

Back so soon? OK… did you notice how there was lots of talk about Internet addiction, but the only actual obsessions mentioned were video games, with a brief nod to chat rooms? Did you also notice the mention of a dubious clear liquid meant to re-balance the brain? C’mon guys, you gotta be able to do better than that. If this clear liquid is such wonderful stuff, why don’t you tell us all about it so that the entire world could benefit from the brain-saving elixir? Why not also mention that the Chinese government is so deathly afraid of the information freedom of the Internet that they will do anything to discredit it? Didn’t the phrase “eroding public morality” tip you off?

I’m certain that there are people obsessed with video games. In fact, I’ve known a few… and I’ve even been there a couple of times myself (Civilization, Starcraft), although not at the level of these kids. You’ve got to remember that obsessions of this magnitude are not themselves diseases, but symptoms of a deeper problem that won’t be cured simply by denying the afflicted of their craving. I’m disappointed that I found something that is such obvious Chinese government propaganda coming out of AP.

It is that time again, time for New Games for the week. Onto the games:

Coded Arms for the PSP: First person shooter set in a virtual world that has gone bad. Another forgettable game for the PSP.

Halo 2 Multiplayer Pack for Halo 2 on the XBox: For those 10 Halo 2 players who do not use XBox Live, comes an expansion pack for Halo 2 with some new maps, weapons, and rule fixes. You can also download all the maps and fixes via XBox Live for those of you that do not want to pick this up in stores.

Killer 7 for the Gamecube and Playstation 2: This is the weirdest game I have ever seen. At E3 I asked the Capcom Representative what the heck Killer 7 was about and all he could say was “I have played through it seven times and I still do not have a clue.” If you figure out please email me, I really would like to know.

That is it for the week, we are officially in the game release drought. My pick for this week is: Killer 7 for the Gamecube. The game may be weird but I really want to figure out what the heck it is about. Have a happy and safe Fourth of July.

Gamespy released this week a list of what they thought where XBox’s top 25 games. Gamespy’s list smacks of commercialization. The vast majority of the games in 25-11 range came out in the last six months and all the games on the list are still for sale in stores. Making it even more suspect is seven of the games on the list (LEGO Star wars - April, Unreal Championship 2 - April, Brother in Arms - March, Jade Empire - April, Forza - May, Psychonauts - April, GTA: San Andres - June, Splinter Cell 3 - March) came out in the last FOUR months and not all of them even got Gamespy’s highest rating of five stars.
Actual going by Gamespy Ratings (26 games got a rating of 5) the top 25 would look totally different with games like Outrun 2, Winning Eleven 8, and Doom 3 making the top 25 instead of games like Fable (4 stars), Crimson Skies (4 stars), and Tony Hawk Underground (4 stars) that did make Gamespy’s top 25. The only thing that would have excluded the vast majority of the games with 5 stars from the top 25 is that they are no longer sold in stores. So either Gamespy’s list top 25 list is suspect or their rating system is suspect since a vast majority of XBox games that received 5 stars are absent ( 10 games in total - Doom 3, Winning Eleven 8, NBA Street V3, Outrun 2, GTA: Double Pack, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, SSX 3, SSX Tricky, Tiger Wood’s PGA 2004, and Tony Hawk 4). Think about it, games that Gamespy said all those games at the time the all the above games where released, they had to be the greatest games on the XBox. Yet after some time later a huge chunk of those games are missing from Gamespy’s top 25 list and where replaced by newer and lesser games. I think Gamespy has some explaining to do.

Anandtech has posted an interesting comparison of dual-core Intel CPU’s vs. dual-core AMD CPU’s. It’s interesting to note that, after a few years of getting hammered by AMD on price/performance, Intel may be catching up. That’s will become important to me when I start building a new system in August. Since my usage of the system is almost evenly split between Windows and Linux, I’m glad that someone finally did one of these head-to-head comparisons.

Just for your enjoyment: here’s am AP article about the upcoming Redneck Games. The recent tendency of rednecks to “come out of the closet” and celebrate their country roots has made me consider starting shamelessrednecks.com (which whois tells me is available). I abandoned the idea when I realized that there aren’t enough of them with ‘puters. Heck, I kin insult dem dang people till da cows come home an dey’d never knowit

Anyone who runs a web site called ShamelessGeeks.com will always have respect for people who make fun of their own stereotype. I tip my propeller beanie to you.

According to a study of gamer versus non-gamer college students, gamers are much quicker to detect target objects than non-gamers. Though it’s always good to hear that gaming has health benefits, there are other logical explainations. For instance… it is just as likely that the advantage is in the triple-thick glasses or tinfoil hats that they wear.

Does this mean that I can tell Mrs. Shameless that I wasn’t up until 3:00 AM playing a video game… I was actually working on my ability to detect impending auto accidents? Can gamers submit their LAN party bills as health insurance claims? Somehow, I don’t think so.

Joystiq has posted a funny article about a guys failed crusade to buy the XBox version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in the UK. According to the clerks he spoke with, he could buy any mature rated game without id except for Grand Theft Auto. So by the British system, I could easily buy the much more violent game like Punisher, but not GTA. I guess the Brits feel murder simulators are alright, but gang banging simulators are not.