A man serving life in prison for first-degree intentional homicide lost his legal battle today to play Dungeons & Dragons behind bars.

Kevin T. Singer filed a federal lawsuit against officials at Wisconsin's Waupun prison, arguing that a policy banning all Dungeons & Dragons material violated his free speech and due process rights.

Prison officials instigated the Dungeons & Dragons ban among concerns that playing the game promoted gang-related activity and was a threat to security. Singer challenged the ban but the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday upheld it as a reasonable policy.

At the end of last year, we saw a lot of lists of best games of the decade. But we didn’t read about the turkeys. The games that really flopped. The games industry’s equivalent of Waterworld. Or Ishtar. Or Heaven’s Gate.

I’m not just talking about games that were bad. There are lots of those. I’m talking about games that took down companies. Some of them were never released. Some of them came out and no-one cared. Some of them even made decent sales — just nowhere near enough to cover the costs.

And all of them were costly for someone. Several of them destroyed companies. Some destroyed careers. Others were, in my view, brave and sensible gambles that didn’t pay off.

As the practice of high-frequency trading continues to become more widespread, concerns are growing that erroneous trades carried out by "algos gone wild"–a sort of digitally amplified version of the "fat finger" phenomenon–could cause a market crash at Internet speed, a meltdown that no one could stop. Two recent market glitches could provide a preview of what's to come.

On Monday night, I tried my best to look like a respectable member of society and popped along the Houses of Parliament to attend Labour MP Tom Watson’s discussion about the place and perception of videogames in UK society. A gathering of politicians, educators, games industry folk and random interested onlookers (hullo!), it was a fascinating few hours. Given the knee-jerk hullabaloo we’re so used to from mainstream media coverage of games, it was surprising to the point of surreality to be amidst politicians, hearing discussion of the form on the sort of level we have, say, here. Obviously, games have some distance to go to obtain to achieve full societal acceptance — even though that has clearly little-to-no effect on the ever-escalating success of the bigger titles — but that this kind of discussion is at least happening is a cheering sign.

Lead brains in the discussion were Watson himself (though he was clearly pro-games, he was more an MC than active participant); journalist, author and World of Warcraft gonk Tom Chatfield, one half of the legendary Oliver twins (creators of Dizzy, now running Blitz Games), Philip, and Guardian columnist Sam Leith. While the Tory’s Shadow Minister for Culture ED Vaizey showed up late in proceedings, sadly the debate lacked anyone who seemed especially concerned that there might be negative moral and social implications to gaming. Don’t get me wrong — I’m enormously glad to hear politicians being rational and positive about the industry, but given the opportunity of the event, it’s a little disappointing that it seemed to be a matter of preaching to the converted.

“I would strongly recommend that no donation drives be conducted unless there’s an existing organization on the ground, in Haiti, that has asked for the help,” Rothe-Smith said. “It does pile up very quickly.”

Donations of old clothes, canned goods, water and outdated prescriptions are accumulating, said Brooks. While such items sound useful, they’re actually expensive to sort, to transport and to distribute, she said. Cast-off drugs can be dangerous.

Oftentimes, the household items donated are simply not useful to the disaster victims they’re intended to help.

“I guarantee you someone is going to send a winter coat or high-heeled shoes,” Brooks said.

"The spread of multimedia communications and its rich 'menu of options' might make us think it sufficient simply to be present on the Web," but priests are "challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources," he said.

The message, prepared for the World Day of Communications, suggests such possibilities as images, videos, animated features, blogs, and Web sites.

There have been rumors for years that Microsoft planned to buy Japanese game maker SEGA. But did you know SEGA hoped to make the original Xbox compatible with Dreamcast games?

The SEGA Dreamcast was launched in late 1998 to great fanfare. The console – featuring dial-up online – was years ahead of its time. Then the Sony's PlayStation 2 launched, and the SEGA console never recovered.

SEGA Chairman Isao Okawa was not willing to go down without a fight. "Before Mr. Okawa passed away," tweets former Microsoft exec Sam Furukawa, "he visited Gates several times, to see if it would be possible to add Dreamcast compatibility into the Xbox." According to Furukawa, Okawa was offering the SEGA assets to Xbox, it seems, which would create a path for Dreamcast customers to migrate to the Xbox.

In October 2007, the release of Halo 3 gave Hollywood honchos a reason to be concerned. The third installment of the popular X-Box computer game series had already generated over one million pre-order sales and there were worries that the cinema-going demographic would stay at home playing the new game instead of spending an additional USD$24.50 for popcorn, soda and seeing either Ben Stiller's Heartbreak Kid or William Sean Scott's Mr. Woodcock.

They were right to be worried. Both films seriously underperformed while Halo 3 raked in USD$155 million on its first day sales. In comparison, the first Spider-man film had an opening weekend of USD$151 million.

Ever since, film studios have been wary about releasing films during the same weekend as anticipated video game releases, and nothing could have been more highly anticipated than Modern Warfare 2.

Late-night traffic on one of the Russian capital's busiest roads slowed Thursday as a couple's explicit escapades appeared on the 9-by-6-meter display.

Some people took pictures of the sight with their mobile phones and posted them on the Internet.

Simon Glik, a lawyer, was walking down Tremont Street in Boston when he saw three police officers struggling to extract a plastic bag from a teenager’s mouth. Thinking their force seemed excessive for a drug arrest, Glik pulled out his cellphone and began recording.

Within minutes, Glik said, he was in handcuffs.

“One of the officers asked me whether my phone had audio recording capabilities,’’ Glik, 33, said recently of the incident, which took place in October 2007. Glik acknowledged that it did, and then, he said, “my phone was seized, and I was arrested.’’

The charge? Illegal electronic surveillance.

If you want to play the latest mech game, you're going to need a copy of Crysis. Your latest option to stomp around in a giant robot is a Crysis mod called MechWarrior: Living Legends. Stomping around in giant robots is a dying art, often relegated to parts of larger games, such as Riddick, Avatar, and F.E.A.R. Here it's the centerpiece for a mix of gameplay styles.

Over the last few years, a couple of enterprising fellows named Joel Musch and Daniel Bass, together with a not insignificant number of cast and crew, have been making a fan-film based on Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. But rather than call it that, they've called it Hero of Time. You know, the avoid any legal complication. You can follow the updates here, where you'll note the movie was finished last June. It was screened at a few public events. It was posted on Dailymotion.com on December 14th for its world-wide release.

Users can expect to see the processing speed of Intel's desktop processors hit 15GHz by 2010, while chips powering wireless devices and PDAs (personal digital assistants) will reach 5GHz, according to the chip maker's chief technology officer.

The 15GHz desktop chip, some five times as fast as the company's soon-to-be-launched 3GHz Pentium 4 processor, will pack one billion transistors, said Pat Gelsinger (pictured), vice president and chief technology officer of Intel as he delivered a keynote address to the company's Intel Developer Forum Japan conference in Tokyo today.

"Desktops today are [consuming power of] 75 to 100 Watts and when you go to handheld devices you are typically operating at less than one Watt," said Gelsinger. "Obviously, you are optimising the design for different criteria. So today, if I was going to look at a StrongArm or XScale core, could I create a 2GHz or 3GHz XScale today? Absolutely. Could I do so and deliver the best trade-off of power and performance inside a one-Watt envelope? No. You tend to design the chips differently to live inside different devices."

BEFORE settling on Seattle as the home of Amazon.com, the founder, Jeff Bezos, considered placing the company on an Indian reservation near San Francisco. “This way, we could have access to talent without all the tax consequences,” he said in a 1996 interview with Fast Company.

The reservation couldn’t be used as a sales-tax haven, after all, Mr. Bezos said he learned, so he had to look elsewhere. Offering prices free of sales tax to customers in California, the most populous state, would be possible only if the company were placed elsewhere. “You have to charge sales tax to customers who live in any state where you have a business presence,” he said then.

Today, Amazon collects sales tax in only five states, which gives it a continuing advantage over companies who do collect them in all or most states. Competitors aren’t the only ones hurt by Amazon’s stance on sales taxes: it also means the loss of considerable revenue to states and localities that badly need it.

Parse through the legalese in relief measure No. 17 and you find the F.T.C. opening the door for Nvidia to obtain an x86 license from Intel. That’s big news, since Intel had very little motivation in the past to grant Nvidia such a license. With an x86 license in hand, Nvidia could go the hybrid route as well, and the world would end up with not two but three chip powerhouses going at it for mainstream computing devices.

The catalyst for Intel’s legal woes (besides their own actions, obviously) has been AMD complaining to various regulatory boards about anti-competitive actions undertaken by Intel. Based on those complaints, the European Commission, the South Korean FTC, and the American FTC have been investigating Intel for some time now over these alleged actions. Intel has been found guilty and fined in the EU and South Korea (with both cases on appeal) while the American FTC has continued to investigate.

The idea of a tax break for the UK games industry, similar to those given to the smaller film industry, was proposed and quickly shot down by government officials in the last month. Since then UK developers have hinted that they may look at moving abroad.

The reason for the rejection was apparently that the UK government was "unconvinced" by arguments that the lack of a tax break may force companies to move overseas.

"The evidence said that if fiscal measures weren't put in place, the industry would decline and the skilled workforce would leave the British economy lock, stock and barrel," he told GI.biz.

Early this month, I was having a discussion about free-to-play games and virtual items with Raigan Burns of Metanet Software. He was arguing that virtual items represent the equivalent of digital snake oil -- you’re paying for a few altered lines of code.

The main thing that sets the new version of the Acer Aspire 1410 apart from the previous model on the software front is the fact that it runs Windows 7 Home Premium instead of Windows Vista. This is a huge step up, since the laptop generally feels more responsive.

Aside from the processor and graphics performance, the thing that sets the Acer Aspire 1410 apart from a typical netbook is the 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display. And overall, it’s just about the perfect size and resolution for an ultraportable.

Of course, it doesn’t matter how good the webcam is. If you’re overdue for a haircut, you’re still going to look like you need a haircut.

Like I said, I don't know how this is happening, but word on the street is that it's an exploit - created by modders - that can be "passed" around anyone and everyone who plays against them, as it sticks in their 360's cache. Only, instead of corrupting data, it blows up MW2 maps.

In MW2's multiplayer, the fastest way to differentiate friend from foe is if their name is green (teammate) or red (enemy). These colors also are used to to distinguish combatants on the game's radar. Colorblind gamers are asking for the ability to change friend/foe colorations so they can game without confusion.

America's Army cost US taxpayers $33 million

The America's Army series has cost US taxpayers around $33 million USD, according to new data.
The free-to-play online shooter and recruitment / propaganda tool America's Army has cost US taxpayers a staggering $33 million USD to develop and release, it was revealed today.

The budget for the game, which was developed to help engage with young people, was uncovered after a Freedom of Information Act request made by GameSpot.

While the game was originally planned to cost $7 million across a five year development and release period, costs soon ballooned as the title became more popular. Expansion packs and updates followed and a new game in the series, America's Army 3, was released earlier this year to a lukewarm response.

To find out the best Windows laptops of 2009, we checked in with Mark Spoonauer who, as editor-in-chief of Laptop Magazine and Laptopmag.com, oversaw 130+ notebook and netbook reviews this year. If you're buying, buy one of these.

When you buy a camera, you'll be pelted with specs from a salesperson, many of which are confusing, and even misleading. You will cower, and may cover your head for protection. He will keep pelting. And really, he has to–spec sheets and jargon are integral to camera marketing, at least for now. Here's what it all means, in one handy cheat sheet.

The potential to use a high quality LCD on any given laptop has been around for several years now, but pricing considerations frequently result in the use of substandard panels - even on expensive laptops. Unfortunately, LCD quality is something that can be very difficult to ascertain without actually using a laptop, which means judging LCD contrast based on laptop specifications is all but impossible.

Given how aggressively the recording industry likes to pursue file sharers, one would assume that the industry itself is in the clear when it comes to copyright infringement. But that assumption has been put to the test in Canada, where a massive infringement lawsuit is brewing against some major players. Members of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, including the Big Four (Warner Music Canada, Sony BMG Music Canada, EMI Music Canada, and Universal Music Canada), face the prospect of damages ranging from $50 million up to $6 billion due to their use of artists' music without permission. That's right: $6 billion.

The lawsuit in question goes back to October 2008, but continues to be dragged up in the news because new plaintiffs keep joining the case. Most recently, jazz musician Chet Baker's estate has joined the growing list of musicians and artists who are getting on the music industry's case for their abuse of a certain aspect of Canadian copyright practices–something that the labels themselves don't even deny doing.

So it might be surprising to watch him tell a class of Yale undergrads this month that suing end users for online copyright infringement is "expensive, and it's painful, and it feels like bullying." While the recording industry was big on this approach for a while, Fricklas certainly understands the way it came across to the public when some college student went up against "very expensive lawyers and unlimited resources and it felt like terrorism."

Video gamers are getting older (the average age is in the thirties) and with an older body comes new aches and pains.

Apparently the years of button mashing since the days of the Nintendo NES are taking their toll on gamers as they grow in age. According to Flexcin, the company has seen an increase in clients seeking joint pain supplements due to pain from playing video games.

The reported pain spots aren't just in the hands, as everything from wrist pain to back and neck pain have been reported by more people between the ages of 35-55 who've said they experience discomfort after playing video games. According to Flexcin, the demand from this demographic has increased 34.7 percent in 2009.

“You’re going to have a television if I have to nail it to your wall,” she told her daughter, according to comments she made at a Reuters event this week. “You have to have one.”

But she does not, actually. For 60 years, TV could be watched only one way: through the television set. Now, though, millions watch shows like “Grey’s Anatomy” on demand and online on network Web sites like Ms. Sweeney’s ABC.com and on the Internet’s most popular streaming hub, Hulu.com.

How people watch TV on demand – and whether they should pay for the privilege – is a critical issue in the landmark deal, announced Thursday, that will give Comcast control of NBC Universal. In the deal, Comcast will become a co-owner of Hulu.

What do The Bourne Identity, Mission Impossible 3, Mr & Mrs Smith, Children of Men, and Agent Cody Banks 2 have in common? Absurd, futuristic, and totally fake software interfaces, designed in part by one man: Mark Coleran.

Designing a fake dashboard for an imagined supercomputer or a hovering control panel for a worldwide surveillance system is a different process than creating a genuinely usable UI. Your goal is to imply things: that a machine is powerful; that a villain is formidable; that the software is intuitive, but that the breadth of its powers borders on unknowable. At no point does real-world usability factor in, and nor should it–this is pure fantasy, for an audience raised on Start Buttons, desktop icons and tree menus. Here's a gallery of some of the most famous interfaces; see how many you recognize.

Coleran's UIs are a mix of proudly retro and boldly new, mingling compact pixel art, wireframes and the solid, militaristic reds, blues and blacks of software from the 80s with touch-free gesture systems and overelaborate visualizations. It's the kind of stuff you take for granted in action and sci-fi films, but rounded up in one place, it's a strangely impressive, almost cohesive view of the future of software, as designed by someone with no contraints.