Onliner gamer stabbed over 'stolen' cybersword

Qiu Chengwei, 41, repeatedly stabbed Zhu Caoyuan after discovering that Zhu had sold the "dragon sabre" for 7,200 yuan (£464). Qiu had lent his friend the cybersabre last February, later reporting it as "stolen" when he learned of the transaction. Police, however, told him that - as the disputed weapon was virtual property - he had no recourse to law.

And this wasn't some misguided youth. This is a 41 year old man. Crazy.

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This is awesome. Dr Masaru Emoto believes that labeling water affects the way it crystalizes when frozen. Also, water speaks Japanese!

Momitsu MS-R5 1TB / 1.6TB Media Server

Momitsu steps up to the plate in a big way with its addition of the MS-R5 1TB / 1.6TB media server, capable of RAID 0 / 1 / 5. Previously the company introduced the V800N network DVD player, which can playback just about any digital file format you can throw at it (seriously) including DVD VOB files and DivX. But now Momitsu has married the two products to form a compelling solution for any networked home (see suggested configurations). However, people will most likely use the MS-R5 as a central file server, and possibly a media server, for streaming media files to PCs, wireless handhelds, and media adapters.

Momitsu gave the MS-R5 line all the power of an enterprise-level file server, like FTP access and LAN print serving, and shrunk it down into a shoe box sized device packed with all the storage most people will ever need. Each MS-R5 includes 4 SATA hard drives, 2 USB 2.0 ports (for print serving or daisy chaining more storage), and is wired (100/1000 Ethernet) or wireless (via a wireless 802.11a/b/g bridge adapter) network ready.

So let me see if i got this right. $3350 gets me a DVD player that plays back every audio and video format you can imagine (including raw VOBs) and 1.6TB of data in a shiny aluminum case?

So who do i make the check out to?

Patches by Kelly Vivanco

If you haven't seen "Patches" by Kelly Vivanco you are seriously missing out.

Scientists recover T. rex soft tissue

A 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil dug out of a hunk of sandstone has yielded soft tissue, including blood vessels and perhaps even whole cells, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.

Mr DNA says "let's clone us some dinosaurs!"

Apple de-socializes iTunes

Once again, 'digital' is proving to be a synonym for 'crap'.

Digital has been a marketing term that used to have a certain kind of cachet. Digital society! Digital sound! All kinds of magical things were possible. Now, after the backlash against digital TV (with its infernally more difficult HI, a greater choice of poorer programs, all delivered with an unreliable transmission and flakey image), 'digital' actually means that you're getting less than you had before across the board. This is no way to sell technology, and it's only a matter of time before people find this out, and stop buying.

werd.

XBox 2 to Enable Micro-Transactions

I watched the J Allard segment of GDC today, and i find that the bit about enabling micro-transactions within games to be simultaneously horrifying and exciting. On the one hand i don't dig things like "The Sims" so i am unlikely to get sucked into a money pit where just keeping my player alive requires me to get a second job. On the other hand, i do like RPGs and i am extremely lazy, so if a developer where to give the the opportunity to buy "ultimate sword of extreme ass kicking" for say $10 in a game i already paid $50 for (plus the $12 strategy guide/walkthrough)... i'm probably going to bite. And who is to say that wussing out and basically buying a cheat code is a bad thing?

Take real time strategy games. When ever i get a new RTS, i spend the first week playing "fair". But as day 9 (the second Sunday) starts to wane, i realize that work isn't really going to dig me leaving at 3pm all next week to continue playing this thing and its time to wrap it up. That's when the cheat codes come out and i start making real progress. And what's the harm? I had fun, i got my money's worth, and i got to see the ending. Everybody wins. Not to mention that in replaying my favorite RTS games, i find it a lot of fun to sit down some Saturday afternoon, enable all the cheats, and lay waste to the opposition, but that could be a personal shortcoming.

What i worry about is that game studios are going to abuse this and start making purchasing in game items practically, if not actually, necessary to finish the game. While there is a lot of good, fun, and valuable things that game developers will be able to do (like allow players to order delivery without leaving the game), there are a lot of not-so-cool things that studios will do, not because it makes the game better, but because they see it as a way to nickel and dime users into paying $200 for a $50 game.

At least they wont starve

Evercrack addicts now have access to pizza.

Way back in the early 1990s, the first stories about the commercialization of the internet included the idea of using the web to order pizza. So it struck a chord when Sony introduced the idea of being able to order pizza while you are playing the online multiplayer game, Everquest II.

Players can just type /pizza when they are in the game and are led to the online ordering section of Pizza Hut to place an order. Shortly, you'll be able to pay for these orders via your monthly gaming bill.

Saddly, players will still have to get up off their asses to answer the door.

Sony Ericsson W800i



2MP digital camera, mp3 player, still looks like a phone...

This could be a credible convergence device... but then i thought the MPx220 was going to be a convergence device.
I'm really hoping sony/ericsson gets this right.