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      The Slashdot Firehose is a collaborative system designed to allow users to assist our editors in the story selection process. The hose contains submissions, RSS Feeds, journals and Slashdot stories, each color-coded along the color spectrum to indicate popularity. Red is hot, violet is not. Try tagging and voting on the entries below, and by using the 'feedback' menus. Please send comments to hose at cmdrtaco dot net but be forgiving of beta code!

        EA/Bioware Drop Mass Effect PC DRM[->] 2008-05-12 05:22 mrneutron2003

      Submitted by mrneutron2003 on Monday May 12, @05:22AM
      mrneutron2003 writes "In a shocking display of clarity and reason, EA and Bioware have made an official announcement that they have decided to drop the draconian every ten day activation fiasco they were intending for PC titles Mass Effect and Spore. Whether this is a reaction to the out of control firestorm this issue became last week , or EA/Bioware growing a collective brain within the last week we cannot say for certain. It is however, a welcome return to sanity and customer centric thinking within EA/Bioware, and one we applaud them for. An excerpt from Bioware's official statement...

      There has been a lot of discussion in the past few days on how the security requirements for Mass Effect for PC will work. BioWare, a division of EA, wants to let fans know that Mass Effect will not require 10- day periodic re-authentication.

      http://www.fastsilicon.com/opinions-editorials/ea-bioware-drop-mass-effect-pc-drm.html      "
      http://www.fastsilicon.com/opinions-editorials/ea-bioware-drop-mass-effect-pc-drm.html
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       [+] submission, games, announcement

        Full Gencon Bankruptcy Filing[->] 2008-05-10 16:45 vicpylon

      Submitted by vicpylon on Saturday May 10, @04:45PM
      vicpylon writes "Trask at LivingDice.com has the complete bankruptcy filing for Gencon LLC for download. Fascinating reading, as it shows the amounts Gencon owes and to whom. Strangely, Lucasfilm is actually owed less money than Hasbro. I am curious if the debt to Hasbro is impacting "Wizards of the Coast's" activities at Gencon this year. Here is the link to the post: Gencon Bankruptcy Filing"
      http://www.livingdice.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Gencon-Bankruptcy-Filing---Guess-Who-They-Owe-Money-to-.html&Itemid=117
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       [+] submission, games, rpg

        Games: BioShock Movie To Be Made By Universal 2008-05-10 07:28

      Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Saturday May 10, @07:28AM
      from the all-that-matters-is-it's-not-uwe-boll dept.
      azuredrake writes "Gamasutra reports that Universal Pictures has just announced a completion of licensing negotiations to bring the game BioShock to the silver screen. For those unfamiliar with the property, it was the much lauded Game of the Year contender praised for its storyline which emerged through gameplay, not just cutscenes. The director for the project is to be Gore Verbinski, who proved himself on the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, and the current writer for the screenplay is John Logan, who is recently known for the also-creepy Sweeny Todd."
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       [+] story, games, movies, bioshock, goreverbinski, !uweboll

        Games: EA Loosens Spore, Mass Effect DRM 2008-05-09 23:26

      Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday May 09, @11:26PM
      from the actually-listening-to-your-constituency dept.
      An anonymous reader writes "In response to recent criticism, EA has decided to eliminate the periodic validation of Mass Effect and Spore. 'Specifically, EA's plan to dial in to game owner's computers every ten days to check whether they were running a legitimate version of their software has been scrapped, ShackNews reports. EA had planned to use the validation method for upcoming titles Mass Effect and Spore. EA now says that validation will now only occur when a user attempts to download new content for either game. Chief among the voices in opposition to this measure were members of the armed forces, who pointed out that they could not rely on having an internet connection every ten days.'"
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       [+] story, games, pcgames, suddenoutbreakofcommonsense, pictured, loose

        Interview with Odyssey Inventor Ralph Baer[->] 2008-05-09 12:20 Chris Bowen

      Submitted by Chris Bowen on Friday May 09, @12:20PM
      Chris Bowen writes "Diehard Gamefan has an interview up with Ralph Baer, the Father of Videogames. In the article, he talks about his inventing the original Odyssey, his relationship with Nolan Bushnell, his positive thoughts on what the Wii is accomplishing, and the media's coverage of video games and how it has been blamed for multiple crimes:

      Of course, I did not. The general press is all over both sides of all questions of morality, war and peace, blood and guts and is no gauge by which to measure the effect of anything, least of all videogames. Of course, there might be a relationship between pushing unbalanced kids into doing something murderous after years of fighting bloody wars in a virtual world; but then, reading books of similar genre can do the same thing to a youngster; regrettably, that's just how it is.
      "
      http://diehardgamefan.insidepulse.com/2008/05/09/the-odyssey-of-ralph-baer-interview-w-the-father-of-videogames/
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       [+] submission, games, classicgames

        Games: London Lawyers Demand £600 For One Game 2008-05-09 10:21

      Posted by kdawson on Friday May 09, @10:21AM
      from the tip-of-the-iceburg dept.
      Barence writes "A PC Pro reader has received a demand for a £600 out-of-court settlement from lawyers claiming to have forensic evidence that he illegally downloaded a PC game on BitTorrent. The law firm, Davenport Lyons, is acting on the behalf of German games distributor Zuxxez, creator of the game in question, Two Worlds. The PC Pro reader was given no prior warning to stop file sharing, unlike the usual 'three strikes and you're out' approach adopted by the music industry. The reader says, 'To add insult to injury it [Davenport Lyons] didn't pay enough postage on the letter and I had to collect it from the sorting office at a cost of £1.30. This also used up most of the two weeks that it allowed for a response.'"
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       [+] story, games, pcgames, ignorethem, extortion, yro

        Games: Introducing Classical Guitar Hero 2008-05-08 18:15

      Posted by timothy on Thursday May 08, @06:15PM
      from the step-one-remove-your-speakers dept.
      Alex writes "I've just uploaded the video of a piece of classical electronic music I wrote for 2 Guitar Hero controllers and software (which I created). More information about this piece, its software, and the notation involved in playing it is at alexwroten.com/works.asp and alexwroten.com/excuses.html. I just figured people might be interested in finding new ways to use their Guitar Hero mastery ... especially with the hot debate over whether or not it hinders people's musical instruction."
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       [+] story, games, music, humor, painful, awful

        Games: Folding@Home 2.0 - An Online Protein Folding Game 2008-05-08 17:37

      Posted by timothy on Thursday May 08, @05:37PM
      from the folding-@-play dept.
      a boy named woo writes "Tired of justifying your gaming addiction? Now you can really help accomplish something while you play... thanks to Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher David Baker at the University of Washington." In collaboration with others, Baker has designed a game, called "Foldit," with a practical outcome: players manipulate on-screen images of protein chains and attempt to predict their folding patterns. From the article: "'Our main goal was to make sure that anyone could do it, even if they didn't know what biochemistry or protein folding was,' says [co-creator Zoran] Popovic. At the moment, the game only uses proteins whose three-dimensional structures have been solved by researchers. But, says Popovic, 'soon we'll be introducing puzzles for which we don't know the solution.'"
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       [+] story, games, biotech, puzzlegames, science, slashdotted, ender

        CA Violent Game Legislator Answers Your Questions[->] 2008-05-08 15:04 Sean Hollister

      Submitted by Sean Hollister on Thursday May 08, @03:04PM
      Sean Hollister writes "Over at GameCyte, California State Senator Leland Yee (the same gentleman who authored California's unconstitutional violent game bill) has granted an open interview to all members of the gaming community. Want to know if the Senator really saw Grand Theft Auto IV before denouncing it? How Senator Yee feels about current game regulation? What he thinks adults should be able to play? Just ask.

      You are invited to pose questions which the Senator will answer on camera next week, the resulting video to be available at GameCyte and freely distributed to other interested game publications."
      http://www.gamecyte.com/2008/05/05/senator-yee-will-answer-your-questions/1139
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       [+] submission, games, government

        Games: id Software Announces Doom 4 2008-05-08 08:38

      Posted by timothy on Thursday May 08, @08:38AM
      from the this-time-it's-yours dept.
      spoco2 writes "The id Software site has announced that work has begun on the next sequel to their most famous game, Doom. Will they be able to resurrect the series after what many considered to be a serious misstep with Doom 3? Oh... and they're hiring for the team, so maybe you can steer them in the right direction?"
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       [+] story, games, fps, announcement, flashlight, flashlightplease
      Submitted by JoeLinux on Wednesday May 07, @05:47PM
      JoeLinux writes "While Knights of the Old Republic II is an interesting game in and of itself, hardly anyone can state that it left production in any way complete. Poking around the media files yielded sound and gaming files that were simply abandoned in favor of release. The result was incomplet-able quests, missing levels, conversations that made references to levels that didn't exist, etc. After the initial game was released, Team Gizka attempted to recreate those levels that didn't make the final cut and restore the game back to what it was intended to be. Four years after the game was released, Team Gizka has finally made it to 1.0 beta. When the current round of bugs are completed, we should see the full restoration of one of the most enjoyable RPGs ever made."
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       [+] submission, games, rpg

        Games: Gaming Gear Showdown, Simplicity vs. Hype 2008-05-07 16:30

      Posted by timothy on Wednesday May 07, @04:30PM
      from the do-these-ruffles-make-my-avatar-look-fat? dept.
      Slack3r78 writes "Gizmodo is running a feature putting the gaming marketing hype to the test and seeing whether it really makes your playing any more 1337. They match up the latest products from Razer and SteelSeries along with some five-year-old Logitech products and come to the conclusion that ... it doesn't seem to matter that much. It looks like maybe you can't buy your way into finally beating that annoying 13-year-old at your favorite FPS after all."
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       [+] story, games, inputdev, hardware, money, pcgames, upgrades

        Valve's SOURCE Engine coming to linux? 2008-05-07 12:28 Ravalox

      Submitted by Ravalox on Wednesday May 07, @12:28PM
      Ravalox writes "Proprietor of some of today's most popular PC games Valve Software may be adding something more substantive to the turning rumor mill, scuttlebutt at Phoronix, perennial favorite linux publication, is that there is an earnest effort to make the SOURCE Engine run natively in linux. Though the Source engine's predecessor, GoldSrc, which in turn was based on the original Quake engine, was able to render both OpenGL and Direct3D. The Source Engine is designed to be highly modular, and this is hopefully how the OpenGL support will be introduced, which is needed for any Linux or Mac OS X support. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=source_linux&num=1"
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       [+] submission, games, linuxcare

        Games: Spore, Mass Effect DRM Phone Home For Single-Player Gaming 2008-05-07 11:32

      Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday May 07, @11:32AM
      from the incredibly-lame-ideas dept.
      Tridus writes "The PC version of Mass Effect is going to require Internet access to play (despite being a single-player game), as its DRM system requires that it phone home every 10 days. Sadly, Spore will use the same system. This will do nothing to stop piracy of course, but it will do a heck of a good job of stopping EA's new arch-enemy: people playing their single player games offline." Is this better or worse than requiring a CD in the drive to play? Update: 05/07 17:17 GMT by T : According to a message from Technical Producer Derek French (may require a scroll-down) on the Bioware forums, there is indeed an internet connection required, but only for activation, not for all future play. Update: 05/08 04:10 GMT by T : Mea culpa. As reader David Houk points out, the 10-day window is in fact correct as initially described, so don't count on playing this on any machine without at least some Internet connectivity.
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       [+] story, games, rpg, worse, drm, better

        PS3 outselling 360 2008-05-06 18:46 Azaril

      Submitted by Azaril on Tuesday May 06, @06:46PM
      Azaril writes "According to the BBC, PS3 consoles have overtaken Xbox 360 sales in Europe, and has been outselling them for the last 7 months. This is despite an early sales advantage, and a lower price range, with over 5 million consoles being sold since its launch."
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       [+] submission, games, playstation

        Free Online Games and Flash Games[->] 2008-05-06 09:28 Esgana

      Submitted by Esgana on Tuesday May 06, @09:28AM
      Esgana writes "See some of the great games on this site. You can play free games, including action games, arcade games, adventure games, sports games, puzzle games, casino games, simulation games and more. ahuuy.com is updated games daily depend on situation, we also offer you to earn money by playing games on ahuuy.com you can choose to play for fun or you can get paid for games you play all is up to you. please don't forget to visit us to check out all new added games and other fun stuffs. Have fun and enjoy playing online games on ahuuy.com.Click this http://ahuuy.com/"
      http://ahuuy.com/
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       [+] submission, games, perl

        Wii Pole Dancing Game in the works?[->] 2008-05-05 16:16 wattrlz

      Submitted by wattrlz on Monday May 05, @04:16PM
      wattrlz writes "Rumors have been making rounds of many appropriate meta-blogs about a company called, "Peekaboo" that makes home pole dancing kits and is looking to market a Nintendo game. From the article:

      Peekaboo rep Simon Kay told [this] blog that the idea behind bringing what he calls "aerobic pole dancing " to the Wii is "all about fun and fitness." According Kay, Peekaboo wants the game "to do for pole dancing what Guitar Hero did for rock n roll!" We can't help but imagine that the game will finally give gaming couples with an eye for rhythm a means to use their 'star power' for an added — not to mention motion sensitive — relationship spark./quote
      "
      http://www.joystiq.com/2008/05/02/wii-pole-dancing-plans-confirmed-fitness-to-blame/
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       [+] submission, games, wii

        Wii Homebrew Channel [->] 2008-05-05 15:14 Croakyvoice

      Submitted by Croakyvoice on Monday May 05, @03:14PM
      Croakyvoice writes "Today a new video of the Wii Homebrew Channel has been released by Bushing and its of massive interest to any fan of Wii Homebrew, the Channel now has a polished GUI and is easy to scroll between releases and you can see theres the ability to have masses of homebrew listed instead of just loading one at a time. Users still need to use the Twilight Hack on an unmodded Wii at this time."
      http://www.consolevision.net/wii-homebrew-channel-video-110452.html
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       [+] submission, games, wii

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