Shameless Words from Shameless Geeks

China has accused the U.S. of conspiring to reject China’s WAPI encryption standard in favor of IEEE’s 802.11i. Accusations include things like “unethical activities, such as allegedly conspiring against WAPI, insulting China, and using intimidation and threats".

So… China actually wants someone to be able to hide data from them? Hehehehe.

Damn. I guess ShamelessGeeks is banned in China again.

Yup. Another wonderful patent. This time someone has patented the cordless jump rope. That’s right… you hold the handles (or… handle. only one has been created so far) while jumping over a pretend rope.

The worst thing here is that this guy really seems to think he has an idea worth a patent, and he’s found people who agree with him. Perfect for the clumsy? NOT. The truly clumsy don’t need a rope to trip them. Just mention that someone would spend actual money for one of these and they’ll fall down laughing… clumsy or not.

I finally went out and bought a copy of Rise of Legends. Well… better late than never. I think my first impression can be summed up in one sentence: Warcraft III meets Rise of Nations.

First of all, RoL takes a good stab at the kind of asymmetric teams found in Blizzard’s classic RTS games like Starcraft and Warcraft III. The asymmetric part falls a little flat compared to the Blizzard versions, with a whole lot of similarities between armies. However, there are certainly enough differences to keep things interesting.

The next concept borrowed from Blizzard is the concept of hero units. These are fairly standard, and end up being the usual powerful units with special abilities. You are always limited to a single copy of each type, and they are capable of leveling up. The heroes are a good addition, though they aren’t a great one.

The graphics are very good, and the opening cinematic stuff is outstanding. Installation was on 4 CD’s, and didn’t take an excessively long time. Everything seemed to run smoothly on my not-quite-state-of-the-art X800Pro, and Shinnite seemed to have no trouble with her 9600Pro.

Game play is a hybrid combo of a Blizzard style RTS where build order was king, and the Rise of Nations balanced micromanagement approach. I found that one wrong move while setting up an infrastructure would easily put me waaay behind, while failing to have enough units early could be fatal. Game play was good, but there wasn’t much that was actually new.

The most annoying part of the game was the nearly indestructible mega units available to each team. It limits the game play to a contest of who can be the first to create a Glass Dragon, or a City of Vengeance, or whatever. In my opinion, this is a severe downfall.

PROS:

• Good graphics balance. Good enough to look pleasant, but not complex enough to kill game speed
• Interesting characters
• Simple resource model
• Good balance of micromanagement and strategy

CONS:

• Not enough asymmetry. too many units are similar to units on another team
• Non-intuitive build tree. You can’t just jump in and expect to be able to play.
• Hero stuff is overdone
• Mega units severely limit the useful strategies

Verdict:
This game could be an interesting diversion if you have nothing to do on a rainy weekend. There is enough interesting stuff to provide some hours of fun, but the obvious strategy will get boring fairly quickly. The game isn’t bad, but it seems to be a $25 game in a $40 box.

I’ve finally stopped twiddling the HTML and PHP code on the site. I’ve fixed a few bugs and added a few features over the past few weeks. For those who haven’t been paying much attention, here’s what’s happened:

• Improved fonts (especially for IE)
• No More Tables! all of the columns are done with CSS trickery
• 3D look for blog posts
• The top pipe now adjusts itself to the width of the browser
• The side pipe now adjusts itself to the height of the page. This one was a tough one to fix
• Better compatibility, resulting in a similar look for IE and Firefox

There are only a few little nits left, like IE and Firefox disagreeing on the minimum height of the page. I think I’ll probably leave them alone and concentrate on content for a little while.

I’ve tested things with IE6, Firefox 1.x and Konqueror 3.5.2. If you can add to this list, please do so.

…but how would you know?

Scientists in the US and UK believe that they can build a type of invisibility shield that would bend light around an object. They compare it to Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak, but it actually sounds more like something from Star Trek.

I bet I know who is the first to use it… Some cop in a podunk town is going to make a fortune on speeding tickets.

So… Somebody please explain to me why a company that is being sued by MPAA is now suing them for hacking? This is one of those cases where you wonder where integrity has gone to.

On one side we have a company that is showing people how to obtain illegal merchandise… an Internet fence, if you will. They are now claiming that an operative who was sent to spy on them had a change of heart and is making amends by turning in his co-conspirator.

On the other side, you have a group of promoters and lawyers who (laughably) describe themselves as advocates for artists. This group routinely attacks children and un-knowing grandma’s in the quest for an easy buck, yet claims that they would never stoop to hacking.

Sorry. I see nothing but offenders in this fight. These kinds of things actually lend credibility to those wackos who want to bring back sterilization as a criminal punishment. I find myself hoping that none of these people produce offspring.

This one gave me a laugh. According to Reuters, Chinese scientists hope to clean up their tarnished image now that a new U.S. National Science Foundation office has opened in Beijing. Rotsa Ruck.

Opening of the office is probably a good thing, but won’t serve that kind of purpose. No matter how much they try, scientists are no less corrupt than the rest of the world. I’ve worked among them and heard the things they will say when their budget is on the line. In fact, there are only two differences between a scientist up for budget review and the stereotypical used car salesman. 1: The salesman actually knows he is doing something wrong and 2: The salesman knows that he is doing it for himself, not some lofty and problematic cause.

If you add in all of the “studies for sale” statistics that roll out of the so-called “scientific” community, the term “scientific integrity” starts to take on a new meaning. As long as the scientific community continues to provide “qualified experts” that can show “absolute proof” of both sides of every issue, I’ll remain a skeptic about everything.

So… Chinese scientists don’t need anyone else to help them end all of their scandals. After all, they are only proving that they are just as human as the rest of us. Welcome to the real world.

Microsoft asked contract workers to defer 7 days of this fiscal year to next fiscal year. It’s obviously an attempt to cut costs for this quarter and allow them to get closer to their projections. Meanwhile, contractors end up with an unexpected, unpaid vacation.

It happens all of the time… but not in the healthiest companies. It doesn’t necessarily mean that Microsoft is in bad shape, but it is an omen that all may not be perfect in the land of MS. Could this be the first chink in Mr. Softy’s armor?

Recently a British politician has admitted to having an affair with a male prostitute. The main reason he gave for the affair was because he was going bald. This has to be the best excuse I have ever heard from a politician why they had an affair.

Today was the anticlimactic release of the AMD Socket AM2 processors. It’s not that the chips are bad. In fact, they look quite impressive, sporting an increase in speed, drop in power consumption, and new DDR2 memory interface. It’s just that Intel has made such grandiose claims about the upcoming Conroe processors that a simple 1%-3% increase in CPU power is a big snore.

Intel is promising a huge bump in performance when the Conroe is released in a few weeks. Their claims of 40% improvement seem a little risky to me, but I hope they can make good on them. It will be interesting to see what AMD will answer with in the next few months.

In an announcement sure to be controversial, an Oregon public commission has declared that legislators shouldn’t work drunk. I’m guessing that the group was run by Capt. Obvious and the Cliches.

Many people may argue that everything done by legislators is the result of alcohol. I personally believe that they are all indulging in something much stronger.

The Scientologists announced they are about to open up a center that will allow people to enhance the traditional five senses and 57 other senses that Scietologists call perceptions. Some perceptions are things like: gravity control, balance, relative sizes, personal size, moisture, reality, compass direction, pain and perception of computation. Using high tech machines, the Scientologists plan to make it possible for people to train these 57 percedptions so that they appear to have super powers. All I got say to all this is: HAIL XENON!!!!

Christie’s Auction House and Paramount have team up to bring the biggest Star Trek auction ever this October. Items up for auction include over 1000+ items from the Original Star Trek, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise and the movies. Some of the cooler items up for sale include: phasers from the shows, bottles of Chateau Picard, various Capitan’s’ chairs, Dr. McCoy’s uniform, Seven of Nine’s uniform, various ship models including the runabout from Deep Space Nine, the Starship Enterprise and Picard’s jumpsuit. The items I want most from the auction are goblets from Quark’s bar, the replica of Captain’s Kirk chair or the Star Fleet Command Building.
If you really want to see everything Christies is also offer a $500 limited edition box set with the two volume catalog or you could just order the catalog for the low price of 90 dollars. There will also be limited showings of the items at Star Trek conventions (and once comic book convention) in New York City, Las Vegas, Seattle, San Diego and LA. For more information and pictures Christies has setup a web site.

Another week and another list of games coming out this week. Not much to report, however because of technical difficulties I did miss last weeks. The big game last week was the New Super Mario Bros for the Nintendo DS. I bought it this weekend, and it is fairly easy to call it the best Mario game for the Nintendo DS. Onto this week list:

Backyard Baseball 2007 for the Gameboy Advance
Field Commander for the PSP
2006 FIFA World Cup for the PSP
Heroes of Might and Magic V for the PC
Jaws Unleashed for the Playstation 2 and XBox
Lemmings for the PSP
Miss Spider: Harvest Time Hop and Fly for the Nintendo DS
Monster Hunter Freedom for the PSP
Puzzle Challenge: Crosswords & More! for the Playstation 2 and PSP
Rouge Trooper for the PC, XBox, and Playstation 2
Steamboat Chronicles for the Playstation 2
Table Tennis for the XBox 360
Teen Titans for the Playstation 2 and Gamecube

A semi decant list of games coming out this week, here are the highlights:

Heroes of Might and Magic V: I thought we where never again going to see another Heroes of Might and Magic at least as a RPG. I figure some crazed game exec would deiced to turn it into a MMORPG, but nope thankfully we get a classic turn based RPG. Too bad turn based RPGs died on the PC about 5 years ago when the MMORPG surfaced.

Jaws Unleashed : I don’t know why I have been looking forward to this game, but I am. I guess it is like Snakes on a Plane. Hey are they coming come out with a game based on Snakes on a Plane where you get to play the Snakes, that are the plane.

Lemmings: Another franchise I thought was dead, but if done right this could be the puzzle game that saves the PSP. Well maybe in an alternative universe.

Rouge Trooper: This game must have been made for the British market, because right now 99.9% of the American gamers are scratching their heads going who the heck is Rouge Trooper. For some odd reason I am that .1% of American gamer who knows who Rouge Trooper is. Short end of the story he was a back feature in 2000AD, the British comic magazine that was home to Judge Dread. You know the one that was played by Sly.

Steamboat Chronicles : Japanese RPG alert, Japanese RPG alert. Why do I have bad feeling this one is going to be a huge collectors item in a few years.

Ping Pong: Alright someone please explain to me why this game is getting a huge amount of hype?

Teen Titians: Explain to me why there is a Gamecube version of this game but not an XBox version?

My pick for this week is: Jaws Unleashed, Hey any game where I get to play as Jaws gets my vote.

For those who have been waiting for me to fix those pesky little bugs: I think I’m just about there. Thanks for all of your patience while I’ve been kinda halfway finished. The trouble started when I decided to replace a bunch of iframes (very bad) with equivalent floating blocks using CSS (very good). I made a procedural error that caused a bug to be applied to both the current copy and the backup (very very evil nasty bad). What you have been seeing lately is the result of that stupidity. The site now has about the same number of bugs that it usually does, so I’ve removed the Programmer At Work notice.

The silver lining to the cloud is that I finally got off of my considerable duff and got rid of all of those evil frames. As a consequence, you will notice that there is no horizontal slider. It is unlikely that most people will notice, but I’ve also made the page a lot more browser agnostic, meaning that it’s appearance in IE is closer to it’s appearance in Firefox. Not exactly alike, but much closer than they were.

Still to come: additional fixes like a re sizable pipe on the left and some major menu changes. When that’s done… maybe I’ll just start over.

Update:
I also noticed that the page now seems to work with Konqueror, for both of you who still use it. Standards are a good thing!

Submitted for your approval: How to turn you friends room into a hamster cage. I have to say that I have nothing but admiration for the perpetrators of this prank. Especially since they spent 2 years and a considerable amount of money to accomplish it. Hats off to them!

In his latest column, Henry Northmore of Sequart.com was discussing the similarities of comics and video games. He made some very valid points, particularly the point about how comics went through the same censorship that video games are currently going through. However, when he says comics are not in the mainstream, he is dead wrong. Comics are very popular in modern society and very much a part of the mainstream. Walk around town and ask people who Mario/Zelda/Master Chief are and who Superman/Batman/Spiderman are, and I bet donuts to dollars that more people can identify the superheroes than the video game characters. Even my mom, the most clueless person on this earth about pop culture, knows who Superman, Batman, and Spiderman are. If that is not sign that comics are mainstream I don’t now what is.

I think the author’s perspective is skewed because he lives in Britain where the Superhero comics never took off and he doesn’t known much about comic book history. If he did, he would know that comics were a billion dollar industry in the 40’s before their decline and reinvention into a kid media in the 60’s. A decline that may soon happen to video games.

After years of strenuously denying rumors of their hidden affair, have Dell and AMD finally decided to enter a meaningful partnership? Its true that the announcement is very, very small. However, it destroys the monogamous relationship that Dell once had with the formerly omnipotent Chipzilla. Rumors of this relationship seem to pop up every time Dell wants to re-negotiate with Intel. This time, however, is the first time that anyone has made an official public statement.

Will Dell declare it’s undying love for AMD? Will Intel find a way to sabotage the relationship, or seek solace in the arms of Apple? Tune in to the next installment of All My Silicon.

Wonderland has posted some pictures of the E3 booth babes, or at least what Wonderland thinks is a booth babe.

I got a press release today from Microsoft stating that, during last week’s E3 “Bring it Home” XBox Live promotion, people downloaded over 600 Terabytes of data divided over 5 million files from XBox Live. To put that in perspecyive, the entire Library of Congress only has an estimated 20 Terabytes of data. What were some of the top downloads? The Halo 3 trailer, Fable 2 Tailer and UNO. I guess a lot people really wanted to play UNO while watching the Halo 3 trailer.

Here’s one that caught me by surprise: Internet giant AOL purchased Lightningcast Inc. today. That may seem like a small thing to most people, but I was once employee number 28 there. It’s good to hear that all of that hard work paid off for someone, even if it wasn’t me.

A comparison of the human genome with that of the chimpanzee reveals that humans and chimps may have diverged more recently than previously thought, and that there may have been incidents of inter-breeding.

I suspect that several people I know haven’t yet made the split, preferring to spend their time in a room with an infinite number of their friends trying to fix Windows. Also.. the incidents of inter-breeding would explain the persistence of middle management and political parties.

Remember my early prediction about needing to pre-order the Playstation 3 if you want for Christmas? After the results of E3 you better pre-order the Wii if you want one for Christmas. Sadly no one has yet has started to take pre-orders yet but Amazon is advertising it on their site. On the other hand you can pre-order Wii games from EB Games. Pre-orders for the Wii will most likely start when Nintendo announces the pricing information for the Wii, which will hopefully be soon. Also it looks like the Wii launch date will be November 1, 2006.

CNN has posted a wrap up of E3 with their losers, winners and just plain funny moments. I would give Wii biggest winner at E3 not just biggest surprise. Why? according to my sources it was a 6+ hour wait to play the Wii. If that is not a sign of how popular the Wii is, I don’t know what is.

Spore, the most ingenious game, is shaping up to be the next big breakout mainstream PC hit like the Sims. It has already got a lot of people talking and by next E3 it should be on every hardcore gamers’ lips.

I fully agree with CNN that Sony Playstation 3 was a big disappointment. Still it is funny to see people defending it. Reminds me of all the people that defended the Nintendo 64 against the Playstation.

The funniest moment for me had to be the idiot in the robot head getting attacked viciously by the established gaming media. Granted Paris Hilton’s gaff was funny, but it just proved how vapid Paris is. The robot head guy proved just how vapid and non-inclusive the gaming industry is. I think the guy wearing the robot head response sums it up best why I find it so funny. I agree it is time that the people in the gaming media need to stop taking themselves so serious and start including us in there fun and games instead of slamming the door on us.

It almost sounds like something from a really old sitcom. The BBC accidentally “interviewed” the wrong man on camera last week. The Congolese man was there for a job interview, when he was suddenly put on a seat on stage and “interviewed” about about the recent Apple Computer vs. Apple Corps decision.

You really have to give the guy credit for getting through the whole thing. I wonder if he got the job?

I think so. For over a year, we at ShamelessGeeks have been complaining about the gaming industry’s obsession with technology. Along comes Shigeru Miyamoto to agree with us. It’s good that someone is finally talking about what these games should really be stressing: FUN. I’ve never been much for console gaming (I’m all thumbs ), so I’m not an expert on them, but I have noticed the same trends in PC gaming.

Who knows… With a new controller that seems to stress thumbs less, and a product guru who is trying to bring fun back to games, I may just buy myself a Wii. That is… if I can get past the moronic name.

Kotaku has been running around E3 asking various game developers to justify their games. Most are mean and cruel like what they did to the developer on Saint Row and the brand manger for Magic: The Gathering Online. However the funniest had to be when they ask Miyamoto to justify why Nintendo named the next Nintendo console after a bathroom function.

Devil Due’s Publishing has announced a promotion where they are giving away a free comic to anyone. All you have do is send two covers from a Marvel or DC comic book from that last two months. Devil’s Due does not guarantee what comic you will get but expect it to be either a GIJoe, Family Guy, Dungeon and Dragons, or horror comic.

Leading up the final trifecta of pre-e3 press conferences is the Microsoft press conference. Since Microsoft did not have to present a new console, this press conference focus on future games and products for the XBox 360 and the Windows Vista platform. While I was hoping for more info on how Microsoft planned to merge gaming and Vista together, all I got was that they plan to make XBox Live work with Vista. On high note they did show a preview of Halo 3 (again thanks Kotaku), again very cool looking but again it was cut scene of course it is going to be pretty. Some other things announced include Gear of Wars, which is going be the must buy XBox 360 this Christmas, Shadowrun and the HD-DVD drive for the XBox 360. Overall this is the only conference that lived up to what I thought it was going be, pure fluff.

Kotaku has posted to YouTube the Nintendo Wii footage (in two parts) shown at the E3 press conference. After watching it, I am not impressed with the graphics. Most of the games looked no better then Gamecube games. However after watching both videos I now really want a Wii.

20-year-old botmaster Jeanson James Ancheta was sentenced to 5 years in prison for taking over a bunch of computers. Seems to me that punishment is fair enough, but we need to prosecute a whole lot more of these annoying script kiddies before spam volumes will drop significantly.

Speaking of spam… has anyone else noticed that it is mostly sent in Engrish lately? I’m not talking about those that disguise words so that they don’t trigger filters, I’m talking about those that are filled with strange Engrish words and structure. Some of them are actually entertaining, though I don’t think that a lot of people are going to trust an email from someone who doesn’t bother to have his sentence structure proofread by a native English speaker. Oh well. Nobody ever accused spammers of excess intelligence.

Due to a work conflict I missed the Nintendo E3 press conference this morning. Luckily Gamespot has posted the minutes from the press conference. Some of the highlights include:
Two different version of Zelda, one for the Wii and one for the Gamecube.
Zelda will be a launch title for the Wii.
ExicteBike is now ExicteTruck.
Wii controller will have a microphone and rumble.
There is already 27 playable Wii games, which are on display at E3.
No information on the launch date or price point.
Lots and lots of hype about the Wii, the controller and the games.
Over a 100 Nintendo DS games scheduled to be released this year.

Here is the list of game announced so far for the Wii. Plan on this list getting bigger as the week unravels:

• Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
• New Fire Emblem
• Super Mario Bros. Galaxy
• Tony Hawk 4 Downhill
• Red Steel
• Raymand
• Sonic Wildfire
• New Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles
• Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. (thanks Kotaku for the list)

Sony has posted a pdf with the update launch information from last nights press conference. The pdf also lines up the differences between the two price versions of Playstation 3. In addition to a smaller hard drive the cheaper model will lack Memory Stick/SD/Compact Flash support, no WiFi and HDMI support. All three items where big bullet points in Sony speech and make you wonder just how truly committed they are to supporting those three items. Why is the more I hear about the Playstation 3 the less impressed I get?

Thanks to the Internet even though I am not at E3, I am able to watch the Sony Pre-E3 conference. The upcoming PSP lineup looks weak; however there were some highlights with Loco Roco looking to be the most promising. Sony also announced that they are starting the greatest hits for the PSP, too bad only two of the games on the list are worth buying. I was hoping that Sony would announce a bigger storage medium and battery life for the PSP, but instead they announced a GSP tool, a VoIp program, a camera and the ability to do RSS videos feeds to the PSP. I wonder how soon Sony will announce the ability to use PSP as a cell phone?

Sony announced that the PS3 will be Internet ready, run Blue ray disk, and have a hard drive. It will play Playstation 2,PSOne game, PS3 games in HD and work with the PSP. Sony played up how great the Blue-Disk is. I guess Sony believes if you say it enough times it must be true. I am sorry but the impact of blue disk is still uncertain and I doubt most game companies are going to be releasing games in Blue-Disk. At least they won’t be for the first 2 or 3 years, no matter what Sony says, or that is until when HD finally becomes widely available in most homes. Sony however thinks most of its user will be HD users also. Again if you say it enough times it must be true.

Sony announced a world wide November launch, get ready for lots of shortages for the PS3 this Christmas.

It looks Sony finally has some games ready for the PS3. Well at least Gran Turismo HD. I don’t know if it is the feed or the just game but the PS3 version of Gran Turismo HD looks no better then Gran Turismo 4 on the Playstation 2. So far I am fairly under whelmed by the Playstation 3 graphics. At least Gran Turismo HD will be online ready. Strike what I said about it being done, Gran Turismo HD will not be a launch title.

Okay if you are going to sell me on the wonders of the Eye toy do not demo a fantasy card game. Even though it was cool that I could slap a card down and it pops up on the Playstation 2, it still no better then playing card games at my kitchen table. At least when I play at my kitchen table all I have to do is shuffle up my cards and go. Still the fire breathing rubber duckie was cool.

I love Sony’s Internet plans, why do they sound striking similar to what Microsoft currently is doing with the XBox 360? Lets see MySpace like interface; check, download content; check, a marketplace that forces you spend another $20 to play the already over priced games; check. How many are you going to actual bother download songs, excuse me buy $20 songs, which can only be played on the PS3?

Wow the controller looks just like the Dual Shock controller. So not only do PS3 games look no better then an XBox games (not XBox 360 games) but the controller looks the same. Explain to me again why I really want a PS3 again? Oh that’s right it is new and in HD. Too bad I do not have an HD ready TV.
I thought I never say this but Genji 2 looks worse then Genji. F1 looks bad but at least it can show the rear view mirror on the PSP’s screen. To bad I don’t have a third hand to hold the PSP, while I hold the controller in the other two.

Finally half way through the press conference they show a game that looks half decent. Heavenly Sword looks great but to bad the gameplay looks like it as much fun as watching paint dry. My cleaning guy agrees with me all the PS3 games looks are not that impressive. At least the previews of most of the upcoming games that are in way future look good. Only question I have is how many of them are cut scenes versus generated in real time?

The Naughty Dog’s game and Insomniac’s games looks good. To bad Naughty Dog game looks like it will be Tomb Raiders for boys. However please explain to me why both Naughty Dog and Insomniac are moving away from cartoony platformers? I loved both companies because they made kick ass cartoony platformers. Seriously when did Insomniac become Bungie Jr?

Here some random comments about the upcoming third party PS3 games. Gee here is a shock ,there is going to be a Gundam Wing game for the Playstation 3. Another shock, there is going be a Ridge Racer and Tekken at launch time. When is Sega going to give up on Sonic the Hedgehog? Why does Virtua Tennis 3 look just the Dreamcast version of Virtua Tennis? Cool a new Virtual Fighter. I wonder if this version of Bother in Arms will be set some else other then D-Day?

Half way through I lost my feed and missed a bunch of EA stuff. I really wanted to see the Army of Two stuff. Luckily my feed started back up with Final Fantasy XIII. Wow I am impressed at the graphics. Finally we have a PS3 game with great graphics.

Next up is Metal Gear Solid 4. Again another game that looks awesome. Too bad the preview is a cut scene. Sony I want to see in play game graphics not cut scenes. Metal Gear Solid has a long track record of impressive cut scene and alright in play game graphics.

Wow, Nintendo really sent Sony for a loop with their new controller. The big secret, as presented by Ken Kutaragi, about the new PS3 controller is that it will have six degrees of freedom. In other words it will have a motion controller inside like those pinball games for the Gameboy Advance. Oh and it will be wireless. Otherwise it looks and most likely will play just like the dual shock controller for the Playstation 2. Just don’t plan on any Wii like games on the Playstation 3. However the controller will fix one big weakness on the Playstation 2. Flight and space game will be now playable.

I am shocked but Sony announced the pricing for the Playstation 3. It will come in two models, why does this sound very familiar (*cough*XBox 360*cough*). One model will come with a 20GB hard drive and sell for $499. The other model will come with 60GB hard drive and sell for $599. The only difference between the two models appears to be the hard drive. Sony also promises to have lots and lots of PS3 in stores but plan for shortages this Christmas. So you better pre-order or plan on buying one off EBay.

Overall I have to say that I am not that impressed with the Playstation 3. There is hope however some of the future PS3 games do look promising particularly Final Fantasy XIII. Still I love how Sony keeps saying over and over again how great their games are. It must be true if they keep saying over and over again.

I was just browsing a poll that indicated that 4 in 10 American adults play video games. What I found intriguing was that the most popular games were the “small-time” things like board and card games. It seems like the big ticket FPS games that are always in the news find themselves on the short end of this poll. Unfortunately, there is nothing specifying the exact numbers of who plays what.

It’s funny how things like that happen. ShamelessGeeks posters have speculated about just such a change in demographics, while most gaming sites have been hyping the big blockbuster games. I guess it’s a case of who has to bow to their advertisers and who doesn’t.

Square Enix plans to release, hold it, Final Fantasy XII. Why does the game media make this into big news when in reality Square Enix has been saying that for last three E3 years. Okay enough messing with you the big announcement is that Square Enix is also working on Final Fantasy XIII for the Playstation 3 and it looks cooler then any previous Final Fantasy. Why am I not shocked.

–Update—
Gamespot has posted some screenshot of Final Fantasy XIII and XIII VS. If those screenshot are not cut scenes, Final Fantasy XIII is going be one pretty game. Never mind, I forgot that Final Fantasy is just one giant cut scene.

I guess you’ve all heard about New Jersey’s trouble coming up with a state slogan. I was born and raised there, so I guess I have earned the right to add my own suggestions for a slogan. Feel free to add your own to the list.

“What happens in New York gets buried in New Jersey”
“The medical waste scares away the sharks”
“Come dump on us”
“Visit the worlds largest mosquito sanctuary”
“Half of the state has the fresh scent of pine”
“Where organized crime goes to retire”
“Experience the challenge of toxic waste”
“Where you can gamble your house away without all of those distracting shows”

With E3 around the bend literally this week list is going to be very small list since most press people and publicist are converging on LA as we speak. However a few brave souls do blaze on and release a few new games this week. IN honor of those brave fools, excuse me souls, Onto the list.

Garfield and His Nine Lives for the Gameboy Advance
NBA Ballers: Rebound for the PSP
Over the Hedge for the Playstation 2, XBox, Gamecube and PC
Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends for the PC
Tringo for the Gameboy Advance

A small list but still a lot more then 3 that came out last year at E3. The big surprise is that Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends is coming out this week. Rise of the Nations was a fairly cool RTS and hopefully Rise of Legends will also. It is also my pick of the week.

The recent re-rating of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion from T (Teen) to M (Mature) is already causing a lot of fallout. So far, it looks like the story is something like this:

Take Two (familiar name?) submitted a disclosure about the game that they considered complete. The ESRB took their input and gave the game a T rating. Later, a mod started to circulate that would unlock a feature that allowed for topless female characters. This, of course, is almost a replay of Take Two’s “hot coffee” scandal from last year.

Once again, Take Two is claiming that they have no control over the mods that people create. Also one again, the artwork for the topless mod can be found on the media as distributed. It looks like they did exactly what they did last year, only this time they should have known better.

As for the ESRB: maybe they should re-examine their methods. If they don’t watch out, there will be a horribly inefficient and politically motivated replacement for them soon.

As for Take Two: you just can’t teach some people. Sounds like someone needs to be economically spanked.

For all those Star Wars fan who want to see the movies as they where presented in the 1970s and 80s, Lucas has answered your prayers. Come this September you can buy on DVD the orginal 1970’s theater release of Star Wars. For most Star Wars fans this not a big deal, this release is for those two loud fanboys who could not stand the fact that Greedo shot first. The original theatrical versions will only be available from September 12 through December 31 2006.

You know a TV show is huge when CNN post an article on its front page about an important episode. Yes last nights Lost had a huge shocker. However in the context of current events this should not be front page material. Second page at best.

Spammers of the world have finally figured out how to deduce the contents of a do-not-spam list. I can answer the question about why it took so long. Simply put, spammers are as dumb as DRM people, who are only slightly dopier than those who create do-not-spam lists. All three groups are basically the least intelligent of the lawyer-salesman personality type.

There… have I offended all of them yet?

Entropia Universe now has a way to use a real ATM to withdraw virtual cash. That’s kinda a neat idea, but I won’t be impressed until they find a way for me to cash in my StarCraft credits for real vespene gas.

Now that the XBox 360 has been released does anyone know what M$ is going to talk about at their E3 press conference? I am guessing it will be a big pitch for Vista. I guess I will have to wait until May 9th at 11:30AM PST to find out. I also wonder are they going give out an exclusive faceplace for the XBox 360 this year that will fit the XBox 360, unlike last years.

A very nasty bug has been found in the X-Windows code that runs on most Linux and Unix systems. This one is a buffer overflow that can enable Denial Of Service or root logins by machines authorized to use the display.

Though there are fixes available, it looks like there is a much simpler and more general purpose fix for this: don’t authorize other machines to use your display unless you know who they are! Since just about every version of Linux that I have run up against in the past few years has made it pretty difficult to actually enable this kind of authorization, I don’t feel sorry for those who get caught by it. Seems like this is a case where the bug can only be exploited on machines configured by crazy administrators.

Mozilla has released Firefox 1.5.0.3, which fixes a recently revealed bug that may enable a hacker to take over a system. As far as I can tell, the risk was fairly low, and the most likely result was a crash not a takeover.

Even at a low risk, a takeover bug is always worth squashing. I would suggest that everyone take the time to upgrade. I’ve just updated my work machine, and I’ll let you know if I see any problems.

Gartner is predicting that Windows Vista will be delayed until the second quarter of ‘07, instead of it’s current expected delay until Q4′06. This would bet the Nth delay since it’s originally delayed release time in 2005.

Before complaining too much, consider what will happen if they release a product 6 months before it is ready. Take your time guys, just keep us updated about the (honest) release schedule.

For all you fanboys looking for those neat screenshot for the Nintendo Wii games. They are coming soon. According to an E3 email I received they should start popping all over the net Tuesday, May 9th at 6:01 pm PST. In other words right after Nintendo finishes it presentation at E3 about the Wii. If you can not wait that long I am sure someone will leak a few screenshots, just when and where is yet to be decided.

I love this, last year when I went to E3 I could not get an invitation to a party to save my soul. This year now that I am not attending E3, I get this email inviting me to a whole bunch of parties. Isn’t life ironic.

Do you have any parties to add to our E3 Party List? Current list is below:

Karen

Karen Thomas

Thomas PR

(631) 549-7575

kthomas@thomas-pr.com

OFFICIAL KARENNET E3 2006 PARTY LIST v. 1.1

LA, May 10-12, 2006

MON, MAY 8th:

8:00 PM – 2 AM: VGM Watch and IGJA Not an E3 Party – Golden Gopher Bar, 417 W 8th St, Los Angeles

TUES, MAY 9th:

7:00 PM – 12:00 AM: IGDA Members Party – Figueroa Hotel, 939 S Figueroa St, LA, Poolside Terrace (IGDA Members only)

WED, MAY 10th: