In fact, many of you have commented that you have cancelled your preorders in response to the design decisions made by Infinity Ward. But Activision, publisher of what will be one of the largest titles of the year, doesn't seem all that worried about the backlash from PC gamers.

"We're, of course, watching this very carefully and paying attention to it," Activision president Mike Griffith said in response to a financial analyst, as noted by Kotaku. "But we're not overly concerned about it."

"One of the problems with our PC SKUs in the past is that it has not been as friendly a consumer experience in terms of matchmaking and online play as the consoles have allowed it to be," he added. "Our solution here improves that consumer experience overall by a significant margin. And so we think that the benefits we will see are going to far outweigh any negatives that seem to be surfacing."

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:

* That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

* That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

As a fan of the ridiculous acrobatics in the games, one of the aspects I was specifically watching for in the trailer was the stuntwork. As expected, the action is heavy on the CG, but as a result the free running in the trailer is as unbelievable as in the games, if not more so. Some specific moves shown off in the trailer will be familiar to fans of the games, while others are so fantastic that a game would be hard pressed to replicate them outside of a cut-scene or quick time event. Suffice it to say that I was pleased with the quality and density of acrobatic stunts in the trailer, and I hope that the movie maintains both.

As far as combat, there is not much to say. Much like combat took a backseat in The Sands of Time videogame, it wasn't featured particularly prominently in the movie trailer. I can say that bows and arrows are confirmed, as is at least one swordfight. At least!

What dominated the trailer, however, was the newly scripted story, which borrows elements from The Sands of Time trilogy (most obviously, the Dagger of Time), but otherwise introduces a new prince, a new female lead, and an original plot. The trailer naturally spoils very little of the film, but it showed enough to be clear that it won't simply be a silver screen retelling of the videogames.

The first step to solving this problem of limited inventory space is to use your characters as mules. In my game, every single character has a secondary weapon equipped. Every amulet and belt slot is used. Both ring slots are filled. Not necessarily because the character is going to use those items, but because it frees up slots in my backpack.

The second step is to shell out for the backpack expansions. These are an ingame money sink. They partly encourage you to visit various merchants to see if they sell one of the precious backpack expansions. But they mostly force hard decisions about how to spend your money.

But then there's the third step. It's called Warden's Keep and it'll cost you seven dollars to download. It adds a new party camp that includes storage so you can free up backpack slots when you're adventuring. Bioware claims this was created after early reviews complained about the lack of inventory space. But rather than fixing the game by giving everyone a storage locker, they opted to use the problem as a way to make more money.

In terms of data on current human scales, a yottabyte is nearly infinite (though I'm sure the NSA will manage to fill the thing in like 2 weeks, and iPods will come with yottabytes in just a few months).

To be fair, the yottabyte figure is just one estimate generated by a Pentagon think tank. The facility could hold a mere hundreds of petabytes. But either way, the prospect is as unsustainable as it is frightening. This one facility will burn through as much electricity as the entirety of Salt Lake City.

All of this data comes from the book The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency by Matthew M. Aid. And while the paranoid among you may read it, I, MARK WILSON, HAVE NO REASON TO FEAR THE NSA'S INVOLVEMENT IN MY LIFE OR INFORMATION AT ALL. [NYBooks via CrunchGear]

A Philadelphia developer has rooted out an unfinished feature of Windows 7 that turns any laptop into a wireless access point, allowing other Wi-Fi-enabled devices to share the connection without special software. Nomadio, which specializes in military network consulting and development, used the new "Virtual Wi-Fi" feature in Windows 7 to create Connectify, a free application that it released as a beta last Friday.

PC Advisor reports that Philadelphia developer Nomadio has discovered an unfinished Windows 7 feature (Virtual Wi-Fi) that can turn a laptop into a Wi-Fi hotspot. That means other devices in the near vicinity can access the Internet without the need for special tunneling software. The company has now exploited the uncovered treasure and created a free application called Connectify, released just last week.

The good news is that this feature-rich handset, running version 2.0 of Google’s Android OS, compares very favorably to the Goliath of the smartphone world as a utility mobile-computing device – and, oh yeah, a phone. The bad news is that there may be too many good things going on to make using this device the quick, intuitive, out-of-the-box experience it should be. That’s a problem, given that the iPhone has set the usability bar so high.

Especially snappy is the Droid's Web browser, which loads images quickly thanks to the powerful 550MHz processor and speedy hardware-accelerated graphics. Though you are at the mercy of your 3G high-speed data network coverage, once you're in it, Web surfing is breezy and smooth. Video from sites such as YouTube looks equally impressive; the playback of a high-definition YouTube cartoon ("Sita Sings the Blues") was excellent, with no stalling or audio dropouts. Audio also sounded great piped through a pair of high-quality headphones. The straightforward music player supports playlist building, album art, and shuffle and loop playback modes. You can purchase DRM-free music at the Amazon MP3 store via the preloaded app on the device.

Well, triple resurrections, if you also include the upcoming sequel/relaunch. For the purposes of this post though, it’s vintage Mechwarring. Not been able to try this myself yet — mainly due to the torturously slow proprietary bitorrent client necessary to download the thing — but there’s a whole lot afoot in Mechwarrior land. First, a major new version of a free remake of Mechwarrior 2 made in Blitzbasic. It’s called Assault Tech 1: Battletech. Tech tech? Tech. Tech! Apparently, it now looks better than the original, thanks to a revamped DirectX7 engine. Oh, mighty seven. Decide for yourself in the videos below. As an additional ray of robotic rapture, the MW fan/mod site behind AT1:BT, MekTek.net, are also gearing up to re-release the rather splendid Mechwarrior 4, in its DRM-free, modern-Windowsed entirety.

Speaking at BAFTA’s Annual Video Games Lecture last night, Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux revealed what he believes to be the 5 most revolutionary games from the past 20 years.

In a typically passionate and engaging presentation, Molyneux spoke of the need for designers to defy perceived wisdom and custom, saying, “The best innovations come from challenging the foundation stones of conventional wisdom.” The 5 games selected by Molyneux were specifically chosen for their success in doing just that.

The first title Molyneux highlighted for discussion was Dune 2, an early RTS. Molyneux said Dune 2 took gaming away from twitch-based reactions and instead encouraged a slower, more cerebral approach. Furthermore, alongside its innovative multiplayer, Dune 2 could be played in a variety of ways. Terms to describe these differing play styles, such as ‘turtle’ (where the player is overwhelmingly defensive), are still used in gaming to this day. According to the man himself, Molyneux is a turtle.

No, really.

"Rockstar Games is proud to be a major sponsor of Movember, the annual, month-long celebration of the moustache, highlighting men's health issues, specifically prostate cancer. Grow a rugged moustache and send us a photo by the end of Movember for an opportunity to be immortalized as a character in Rockstar Games' next action-adventure, Red Dead Redemption."

Read the details here.

If you're unclear on how your 'stache ties into fighting prostate cancer, check the bullet points more closely. Right after Rockstar asks you to register with your email so that you can be kept abreast of developments relating to their upcoming Western action game, there's this:

"Tell your friends and family and get them to sponsor you and raise money for men's health charities."

Just picked up from Richard Cobbett’s twitter, it appears that Interplay are re-releasing Planescape Torment. Its release date is listed as the 30th October and the price is a — not-much-change-from-the-nature-of-twenty-quid — 17.99 of your Earth pounds. In fact, it appears to be a whole load of Interplay other material too. It’s a surprise to see a decade-old game released at a mid-range price… but it’s also one that I find hard to argue against. A game that’s still placing high in all-time lists, that’s been unavailable for years, that goes for full-price when it turns up on eBay and hasn’t been superseded in any way. If the gaming equivalent of the Beatle’s price never going down and this means that Dan Gril has no excuse but to finally return Alec’s copy to him. Hand it back, you bast.

The Internet is set to undergo one of the biggest changes in its four-decade history with the expected approval this week of international domain names – or addresses – that can be written in languages other than English, an official said Monday.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN – the non-profit group that oversees domain names – is holding a meeting this week in Seoul. Domain names are the monikers behind every Web site, e-mail address and Twitter post, such as ".com" and other suffixes.

One of the key issues to be taken up by ICANN's board at this week's gathering is whether to allow for the first time entire Internet addresses to be in scripts that are not based on Latin letters. That could potentially open up the Web to more people around the world as addresses could be in characters as diverse as Arabic, Korean, Japanese, Greek, Hindi and Cyrillic – in which Russian is written.

I've read so many posts of such a batshit, bugfuck nature about this Modern Warfare Server Thing that it's hard to know where to begin. If you are angry at this break from tradition, and if you feel betrayed by these eleventh hour revelations, these are both situated well within the reasonable and comport (by and large) to the known. Do not buy it. Your platform of choice is the most open, universal digital venue on the planet. A suitor will be along presently.

It's not cherry-picking to say that the notion of Microsoft somehow being involved runs deep. You could be charitable and say they mean Infinity Ward was infected somehow by Microsoft's peer to peer vision, but that's not what they're saying. They're talking about literal collusion to bring about the downfall of the PC. Even though Modern Warfare 2 is launching on Steam, leverages Steamworks, and grants Steam Achievements.

Some of the rage is channeled semi-constructively into (not a boycott, per se, but) a redirection of funds from Modern Warfare 2 over to Battlefield 2: Bad Company - a notion that has been cannily seized by the would-be recipient. Battlefield 2 is going to be pretty good, so why not buy it - but let's pause for a moment and really absorb the idea that PC gamers are rallying around a DICE console port in their zeal. Nevermind the fact that you can't host your own Battlefield 2 servers, and that having a dedicated server for the game involves renting it from one of their partners. Maybe they didn't read the FAQ?

So how easy is it to pirate? Assuming you have a Jailbroken iPhone and Cydia installed, you can simply add a new package source to download the pirating software from Hackulous. This pirating software is simply a kernel patch that bypasses Apple’s DRM system (or something like that).

When you add the package source Cydia is nice enough to give you a message warning you that what you may be doing may be morally wrong (see below). Since I was only intending to pirate our apps, I added it anyway. A quick install of the software and a reboot is all that is needed to allow your phone to run pirated software.

Once the phone is rebooted, all you have to do is download a cracked version of the app from one of the MANY places on the internet, add it to iTunes, sync, and you are done. NOTE: Surprisingly this is MUCH easier than actually buying it on iTunes!!

I’ve been playing a lot of Killzone 2 this week – which, by the way, I highly recommend – and, in many ways, it’s really just an interactive B-movie. The scripted bits that carry along the in-game action consist almost exclusively of tough-guy cliches pieced together from the last forty years of action movies, comic books, and war films. It’s silly, outrageous, over-the-top, and incredibly entertaining – just like a good B-movie should be.

Metal Gear Solid 4 makes the case even more. Like previous MGS games, it’s highly cinematic, with long, relatively complex cut scenes driving the action – in many stretches, there’s more movie than interactivity. And, like so many classic sci-fi B-movies, its story, about a near future in which war, conducted by a web of private mercenary firms, has become humanity’s dominant economic activity, is driven by a simplistic contemporary allegory. MGS4 is less to my liking than Killzone 2 – despite the more complex gameplay, the scripted bits are just too long and too ridiculous for my taste – but it makes the link between games and a certain type of overblown genre movie even more clear.

It's not often that the two most popular operating systems get major updates so close to each other, so we couldn't resist throwing them into a cage match together. Already we can hear some of you screaming that Snow Leopard isn't a major update--we know this one's personal! But is Windows 7 nothing more than "Vista done right"?

This is the operating system that Windows Vista should have been. Windows 7 is gorgeously designed, without sacrificing functionality; it prioritises security, without constantly interfering; it performs well, without demanding hardware; and it does what Microsoft has promised all along - simplifying everyday tasks and working the way you want.

DirectX is the most important interface between the graphics card and a computer game. It is this API that allows game developers to write their code without having to worry too much about the hardware in the gamers’ computers.

More than 60,000 supporters thus far have shown up to petition for dedicated "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" servers following Infinity Ward's confirmation over the weekend that it would use a player-to-player matchmaking system, much like what's used for Xbox Live and PSN play. The program, called IWnet, provoked responses from PC server supporters, eventually resulting in the petition directed toward Infinity Ward.

"Get Infinity Ward to review their decision not to allow fully dedicated servers for their forthcoming game release 'CoD:MW2," the petition, titled "Dedicated Servers for CoD:MW2," reads. "Remember that this 'Call of Duty' was made popular by PC Gamers who have supported the series throughout."

Infinity Ward's community manager Robert Bowling confirmed for the BASH podcast that "Modern Warfare 2" would opt for a more console-like experience during online PC play with their IWnet direction.

Residents in Stockholm are divided over reports that rabbits are being used to make biofuel.

The bodies of thousands of rabbits are fuelling a heating plant in central Sweden, local newspapers say.

The city of Stockholm has an annual cull of thousands of rabbits to protect the capital's parks and green spaces.

The rabbits, not native to Sweden, are mainly the offspring of pets released by owners, and are said to be destroying parks in the capital.

Since they have no natural predators, the city administration of Stockholm employs hunters to kill the rabbits.

The picture above is after our Core i7 870 (LGA-1156) processor was overclocked up to 5.19GHz using our cascade with a -102° Celsius evaporator head temperature under full-load. Processor VCC power draw at these frequencies is around 160W (this is possible only due to subzero cooling), as measured with a clamp meter installed at the 12V EPS power lead. Study the pictures closely and you should notice something peculiar. Keep in mind it comes from a CPU installed in the same type of socket from a particular manufacturer.

If you noticed something weird in the pictures then you understand the title of our article. We have what seems to be a potentially serious issue with proper socket loading on several P55-based motherboards when overclocking to the limit. We are of course not the only ones experiencing the problem as several of our overclocking peers have run into the same problem.

Normally we do not worry too much about mishaps during extreme overclocking testing as they are typically caused by factors outside of the supplier’s control. The overriding concern is that we have damaged every motherboard in our possession for the P55 overclocking (extreme) shootout as well as two very expensive i7/870 processors. These problems are the cause of a single component and are repeatable. As such, we thought we would provide details on current problems and will provide an update once all of the motherboard manufacturers affected have had a chance to properly respond.

A German advocacy group has organized an event designed to get participants to bring their “killer games” to in order to dispose of them in a trash can.

Aktionsbündnis Amoklauf Winnenden, or Action Alliance (loosely translated), has setup the event for this Saturday, October 17 in front of the Stuttgart State Opera. One game tosser will win a signed jersey from the German national soccer team. No word on what will be done with the “donated” games, but presumably they will be smashed or discarded in some way.