None of these activities has made him many friends on Facebook, where there are literally hundreds of groups -- most with just a handful of members -- dedicated to him. The less-offensive sounding ones have names such as I Hate Jack Thompson, Stop Jack Thompson, and Disbar Jack Thompson.

But Thompson says that some of the posts are dangerous and have caused him "great harm and distress."

For example, he cites the group Jack Thompson should be smacked across the face with an Atari 2600 in his lawsuit.

With the release of "2012," the iPhone app tied to the forthcoming Sony Pictures film of the same name, a group of developers may have kicked off the future of games on the hit smartphone.

While the game itself is fairly simple and lasts just minutes, it incorporates features that may never have been tried before, and as such, could be among the small number of titles that are showcasing what will soon be considered par for the course.

In the minds of many industry observers, thanks to its integration of a functional operating system, an accelerometer, GPS and a camera, and the fact that thousands of developers, big and small, have released games for the iPhone, the Apple device has already surpassed Sony's PSP and Nintendo's DS as the most important, or at least most adaptable, portable gaming platform.

In the episode's opening scene, he's in crunch mode, just three months before his game is supposed to ship. His team consists of two dudes playtesting the game, one of whom observes "the code is a little janky". It's akin to "tightening up the graphics on level three".

The episode sports typically implausible footage of the game itself, created for an audience who wouldn't know a videogame from a cutscene. This game is about a monkey, a lizard, and a catman fighting swarms of bats, ideally with a megablaster (pictured). It's played using a VR visor, a rifle peripheral, and some sort of Natal-style body sensor. Dig it.

Two random people can walk in off the street and start playing three months before it ships. The developer is also apparently an animator. At one point, he explains that he dissected (!) birds to get the animation right. During a scene in which he has fevered hallucinations, he imagines the real world is the game world. He wields a 32 ounce soda as a grenade, managing a direct hit on Omar Epps that would have gibbed him.

Australia's long nation nightmare of maybe not being able to play Left 4 Dead 2 may soon be over, as the government's media ratings board has apparently issued the zombie shooter a rating of MA-15+.

That would essentially mean an end to the "ban" on Valve's PC and Xbox 360 sequel and translate into "good news" for our Survivor friends down under. No word yet on whether Valve's appeal was successful and/or if the company had to submit the edited version of the game for the Australian release.

Now that the cat is out of the bag and Disney Epic Mickey has been revealed to the world, we thought it would be a great time to explore the world of Warren Spector. No, not the dark, shadowy world gamers are used to. The world that Spector has been living in his whole life. From birth, he was destined to work in the Magic Kingdom. From wearing mouse ears at just a year old to owning a second house filled with rare memorabilia, it’s safe to say that Disney is in his blood.

With the formation of Junction Point, Spector has been handed the task of reimaging the most recognized cartoon character of all time. While that’s no easy task, it starts to become clear after watching our video interview why the invaluable property is in good hands.

The Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords Restored Content project has entered open beta after years of development.

Instructions and download locations can be found on the Deadly Stream forum (spotted by EG reader Garthy).

The Restored Content project - as the name suggests - aims to reinstate much of the lost content found on the KOTOR2 disc but not in the game itself. The one year that developer Obsidian had to make a bigger and better sequel simply wasn't enough - that much was apparent at review.

In this mod, over the course of 36 (!) maps, the zombies will dynamically evolve. The players will be able to upgrade their abilities using a lite RPG system. It's got a storyline, complete with new voiceover recordings. There are also survival maps that balance digging in to take a defensive position and running for your life.

As of last week the Playstation Store is the only place PSPgo owners can go to pick up their games. Just how do the prices of the Sony-operated online store compare to the prices of the same games sold as used at retailers?

We checked with four online retailers and online shopping services to see how their prices compared to the ones found in the online Playstation Store. The results? A little surprising.

Back in the pre-Joystiq days of 2003, cavemen spoke of preliminary plans for a MechWarrior movie, to be produced by Dean "Oops, I made Godzilla" Devlin who referred to the opportunity as "a real passion project" ... about giant robots. Of course, we know nothing ever came of that passion; however, with a reboot on the horizon, another MechWarrior film is "in development" at former Disney chief (and apparent Robot Jox fanboy) Michael Eisner's The Tornante Company, a trusted source told Joystiq.

Eisner owned the rights to the franchise through a series of acquisitions, series creator Jordan Weisman told Gamasutra last month: "WizKids bought FASA, and then Topps bought WizKids, and then [Michael] Eisner bought Topps." Perhaps seeing an opportunity to capitalize on the upcoming video game, our source tells us that a movie is "in development" and that the writer is one Mr. Michael Gordon, credited with screenplays for 300, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and an "in development" EverQuest movie.

EA and EA DICE are asking that the trademarks “THE EDGE”, “GAMER’S EDGE”, “EDGE”, “CUTTING EDGE” and “EDGE” (second registration covering a different range of goods), held by Edge Games Inc, be cancelled.

EA explain their interest in the “MIRROR’S EDGE” mark and say that since September 2008 Edge Games has been continuously threatening to sue over an alleged violation of their “family of registered EDGE marks.”

They explain that Edge Games Inc is the successor company to Edge Interactive Media Inc, and point out Langdell’s continuous role as CEO of both companies. They also point out that the EDGE marks were previously owned by Edge Interactive Media Inc.

13. Rock hammers

Not to be confused with tremendous mallets, these things are faster to wield and don’t leave you exhausted after two or three swings. Used for busting rocks, they can easily be repurposed to bust zombies.
Advantages: Combines all the best qualities of the 1911A1 and the pump-action shotgun.
Disadvantages: None. Anyone who suggests otherwise eats babies.
Tips: Oh, OK, these weapons do not make an appearance in Zombieland, but damn it, they were so darned effective in Streets of Fire – anything that works well in that movie is bound to work well anywhere!

Mac clone-maker Psystar is a bit like the streotypical sitcom character that always comes up with wacky ideas, much to the dismay of the studio audience. Its latest brainstorm? Despite being sued for copyright infringement by Apple, going bankrupt, and changing lawyers midstream, the Florida-based company has announced that it’s licensing the virtualization technology that allows generic PCs to run Mac OS X.

The technology–part of which is the company's Darwin Universal Boot Loader–would allow a computer to run up to six different operating systems, including Windows 7, Vista, several Linux distributions, and Mac OS X–including Snow Leopard. Psystar even includes “Safe Update” technology to allow OS X to receive normal updates. The company will allow licensees to get their desktop, server, or mobile hardware “Psystar Certified.”

The anonymous campaign against Scientology, better known among its participants as Project Chanology, continues to this day. In the months since it launched "Message to Scientology," Project Chanology has employed a variety of tactics, including pickets, pranks, and propaganda that ranges from the purely informative to the ferociously satirical. It has waxed and waned and waned some more, and yet, improbably, it has endured, evolving into a peculiarly instructive case study in the dynamics of online protest. Project Chanology may well be the first movement to realize the kind of ad hoc, loosely coupled social activism that many have hoped the ad hoc, loosely coupled architecture of the Internet would engender. But it's also the first one founded on the principles of the most obnoxious innovation that architecture ever produced: trolling.

To troll is to post deliberately incendiary content to a discussion forum or other online community–say, kitten-torture fantasies on a message board for cat lovers–for no other reason than to stir up chaos and outrage. Trolling is (for the troll, at least) a source of amusement. But for Anonymous it has long been more like a way of life. Study the pages of the Encyclopedia Dramatica wiki, where the vast parallel universe of Anonymous in-jokes, catchphrases, and obsessions is lovingly annotated, and you will discover an elaborate trolling culture: Flamingly racist and misogynist content lurks throughout, all of it calculated to offend, along with links to eye-gougingly horrific images of mutilation, sexual perversity, and, yes, kittens in blenders.

From Stock Z2 to Fully Flashed with Audio, Fluxbox, Mouse, Aliosa27’s Latest Userland

Here is a video Mark and I made of the complete flashing and installation process, and a tour of the new userland features.

For those following along at home, the required setup artifacts are below. You will need

* Your zipit z2
* A linux computer with an internet connection (to download the packages below) and gparted installed
* A microSD card

Wait. What? Trent Reznor? As in "Mr. I'll Give Away My Music," "Mr. Brutal Honesty," Mr. NINE INCH NAILS? What's he doing on Joystiq?

Prior to taking the concert stage this month, The Trent Reznor, along with NIN Creative Director Rob Sheridan, opened up to us about their gaming pasts, the direction they see the industry headed in, and whether or not Trent will have a role in shaping that future.

Continue reading for Joystiq's first-ever NINterview ...

Let's start off with an easy question: What kind of gamer are you?

Trent: I am old, so I was there from the beginning. You know, from the first Pong machine.

You're going to have soldier your way through the default mode, sliced into days which progress through the same seven levels over and over, gradually layering in each new zombie, weapon, and game mechanic. It builds slowly and it takes a long time. 28 days later, you'll finally get the last weapon. A terrible boss fight comes a few days after that. And then you've still got 25 levels to go.

Remember how Intel showed off its new, advanced optical standard -- Light Peak -- this past week on a Hackintosh? Well it turns out there's more to that story than you probably know, and it all leads back to some revealing facts about the connection... literally and figuratively. Engadget has learned -- thanks to an extremely reliable source -- that not only is Apple complicit in the development of Light Peak, but the company actually brought the concept to Intel and asked them to create it. More to the point, the new standard will play a hugely important role in upcoming products from Cupertino.

According to documents we've seen and conversations we've had, Apple had reached out to Intel as early as 2007 with plans for an interoperable standard which could handle massive amounts of data and "replace the multitudinous connector types with a single connector (FireWire, USB, Display interface)." From what we've learned, the initial conversations (and apparent disagreements) were had directly between Steve Jobs and Paul Otellini. If you were wondering about that Apple-blue motherboard we saw at IDF or the aforementioned Hackintosh demo, this should explain everything.

A controversial cooker that 'grows' meat and fish by heating animal cells in your kitchen claimed first prize in the Electrolux design competition tonight.

The invention, called Cocoon, could develop food with the make-up and nutrients of real meat.

Mr Hederstierna, 27, said: 'This will create 100 per cent pure meat without the need for animals to be killed and with no risk of contamination. It will change everything.'

Keiji InafuneThis is probably not the message you would want coming out at the end of the giant industry trade show that's supposed to be glorifying your native talents, but at the Tokyo Game Show earlier this week, Capcom's Keiji Inafune (creator of Mega Man and Dead Rising) shared his starkly damning assessment of the Japanese games industry: "it's finished."

The comments were made during an event showing off Dead Rising 2 (via Destructoid), where Inafune asked the attendees for their honest opinions of what they had seen at the show so far. Then, he shared his own: "Personally when I looked around [at] all the different games at the TGS floor, I said, 'Man, Japan is over. We're done. Our game industry is finished.'"

© 2009 Valve Corporation, all rights reserved. Valve, the Valve logo, Half-Life, the Half-Life logo, the Lambda logo, Steam, the Steam logo, Team Fortress, the Team Fortress logo, Opposing Force, Day of Defeat, the Day of Defeat logo, Counter-Strike, the Counter-Strike logo, Source, the Source logo, Valve Source and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Valve Corporation.

Technology can help mitigate the new dangers presented by online dating and the "hook-up" culture of today's youth, as well as the long-present threat of sexual misconduct by trusted authority figures, according to three companies presenting at the DEMO conference on Tuesday.

One of the companies, Date Check, lets people do quick background checks on potential dates and mates from their mobile phones.

"Look up before you hook up," said John Arnold, executive vice-president of Intelius Inc., which is offering the service.

The way consumers will get the three free games is this:

(1) Purchase a new PSPgo and connect it to the PlayStation Network
(2) Load up a UMD in the older PSP unit and then connect it to the PSN as well, registering the UMD
(3) Download a new PSPgo theme and wait for the UMD voucher offering 3 free games.

Read that again: you must still have the old PSP model to retrieve the free games. That certainly blows any kind of trade-in for the PSPgo out of the water.

According to the press release, the required UMD doesn't seem to be locked in to any particular title, however Sony has limited the list of free titles to sixteen games. These include Killzone Liberation, Medievil, Wipeout Pure, Buzz Brain Bender, Buzz Master Quiz, SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Fireteam Bravo, Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters, Everybody’s Golf, Resistance: Retribution, Syphon Filter Dark Mirror, Lemmings, LocoRoco, Patapon, Syphon Filter: Logan’s Shadow, Echochrome, Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice, and Daxter.