I ran across a story at BBC News (via Digg) that is just plain depressing. It seems that Knut the polar bear killed 10 live carp in front of zoo visitors. The seemingly natural act has caused some controversy, with critics saying that the fish shouldn't have been there in the first place. German media claims that the fish were there to clean up algae, and they quickly point out that we are talking about a polar bear, the most carnivorous bear species in the world.

Won't someone think of the children?!?

As if we needed any more proof that CAPTCHAs don't always work, it seems that spammers have now successfully cracked the GMail CAPTCHA. A one-in-five success rate is being reported, and it appears that there are multiple bot-nets taking a tag-team approach in hacking the sign up process. This is particularly dangerous, since Google's domains are highly unlikely to be blocked by any website or ISP.

I don't know what the solution to this problem is (if I did I'd be rich), but hopefully Google will figure out a way to prevent this kind of nefarious activity from continuing to happen.

Slashdot is running a story on RoadRunner intercepting domain typos. My dad noticed this 'feature' a few weeks ago, and opted out via their preferences page. In addition to the Slashdot story, Ryan Govostes has an interesting article (written back in December) on the security holes lurking in this opt-out program. According to his post, one could wreak all kinds of havoc with TWC's poorly written page, enabling or disabling the service for essentially all RoadRunner customers. SQL injections also appear to be a possible line of exploits.

Slashdot is running a story on how Time-Warner is considering moving to a per-gigabyte service fee. According to them, 5 percent of their customers use over 50 percent of the network. So, because of these few "bad apples," they'll make everyone pay more. Steven Levy of the Washington Post has an interesting theory that Time-Warner is trying to hobble movie rentals via iTunes (trying to keep their pay-per-view stuff alive in the process).

I hope above anything else that this 'idea' of theirs never sees the light of day. Capping folks at 5-gigabytes (which is their current idea ... can you believe that?) is incredibly poor judgment. This kind of thing will single-handedly destroy the online viewing capabilities of Netflix, it will ruin online gaming, and it will make MSDN subscriptions irrelevant.

And that might just be Time-Warner's ultimate goal. Let's hope they fail in every way possible.

It seems as if Sun Microsystems has purchased MySQL. I don't fully understand the motivation behind this purchase, but Sun must have some plan; otherwise they wouldn't have paid one billion dollars for the company. In my opinion, Sun doesn't have the greatest track record in software, so it should be interesting to see what happens as a result of this change. According to the official MySQL post:

Will MySQL’s support for other programming languages and operating systems now be given less attention? Absolutely not. MySQL is still being managed by the same people, and the charter is still the same.

We can only hope.

Gizmodo has a Cliff's notes edition of some recent statements made by FCC chairman Kevin Martin. While the article (and the statements) have to be taken with a grain of salt, if any of what he says comes to pass, it will be good times for consumers. Particularly interesting to me are the facts that he thinks cable is too expensive (it is), and that the term "broadband" should indicate something higher than 200 Kbps (I had no idea our defined value for that was so low!). We can only hope that he keeps his word on at least a few of these items.

Warner Brothers studios has officially defected to the Blu-ray format, and now Paramount seems poised to do the same. This is all but the end for the HD-DVD format, which is a real shame. Granted, there's no real difference between the two formats (none that are apparent to the common consumer, anyway). Blu-ray discs may end up being more expensive, due to the fact that they cost a little more to manufacture. They also continue the stupid "region coding," where certain discs will only play in the players purchased in a specific geographic location.

If for no other reason, I wanted HD-DVD to win the "format war" because Blu-ray is backed by Sony. Any day that Sony fails is a good day in my opinion, and it's a shame that the movie studios decided to take the low-road. Time will tell how well this format takes off.

I missed one highlight from CES in yesterday's post. Namely, the 150-inch television from Panasonic. With televisions like this on the horizon, I predict a weakening in movie theater ticket sales.

I've only been casually following the events at this year's CES, but a few things I've seen have been pretty impressive:

• Super-Black Kuro Concept TV: the black values on this concept are unreal.
• 9-mm Thin Concept Plasma TV: can televisions get any thinner?
• Alienware Curved Monitor: I'll take 2, thanks.
• Closed captioned HD radio: this is a great idea, and I'm surprised it's only now showing up.
• Bloggers were given different badges than the regular press. The writeup at Gizmodo about this fact is so true.
• Finally, the humorous video from Bill Gates' last keynote. What can I say? The guy knows how to make fun of himself.

There's currently a lot of buzz about the supposed firing of Jeff Gerstmann, a long-time editor at GameSpot (Penny Arcade! even has a comic about the incident). He was apparently fired based on a poor review he gave for "Kane & Lynch: Dead Men," a game for the xBox 360. Eidos, who publishes the game, currently has a large advertising partnership with GameSpot for the game. This move indicates to me that Eidos was attempting to buy a good review, which they didn't get. I have no trouble believing that they had a hand in getting Mr. Gerstmann fired.

It's really sad to see when professional reviewers are forced to say one thing or another, but it's not surprising. The almighty dollar seems to make most of the decisions these days. Years ago I subscribed to Computer Gaming World magazine, but I canceled my subscription after the quality took a nose dive. The "larger" gaming websites are starting to head in that direction as well, especially after shenanigans like these. I do most of my game review reading through Metacritic, checking out what reviewers as a whole have to say about various games. I also try to seek out independent reviews, from people like myself.

This kind of story is one reason that I decided to post my own reviews here on this website. Although I don't have as much readership or visibility as the big review websites, I try to provide an alternative to the paid endorsements that publishers try to shove down our throats. Hopefully you find my reviews to be useful and honest. If so, then I'm succeeding where the large sites are failing. And that's good enough for me.

I really hate how news outfits continually refer to Cyber Monday as 'the busiest online shopping day of the year.' If you take a look at the Wikipedia article, you'll see that the term "Cyber Monday" is actually a neologism, undoubtedly created to generate public interest (and therefore, boosted sales figures). A number of online retailers point out that early December is actually a busier time than today supposedly is.

That being said, I love shopping online, and I try to do most of my holiday shopping through online outfits (though some things just have to be bought locally). How about you? Do you do your holiday shopping online, or do you head to the brick and mortar stores?

File this one in the "Oops!" department.

During a recent US Navy exercise in the Pacific, a Chinese nuclear submarine popped up in the middle of the US fleet, completely undetected until it surfaced. I'm guessing that the top brass in the Navy will demand answers for why the submarine was not detected. This was no doubt a shock to everyone aboard the US ships, as the Chinese sub was easily within range for launching torpedoes.

So a guy goes into a Best Buy, purchases a Western Digital hard drive, and finds out later that the box is filled with bathroom tiles. He tries to return the hard drive (since it wasn't what he thought it was), and the manager says that they can't do that. Instead, he should take up the complaint with the manufacturer. How is this even legal?

I'll just add this story to the ever-growing list of reasons why I don't shop at Best Buy. Amazon.com FTW.

Amazon.com recently purchased AmieStreet.com, a digital music store that uses a unique demand based pricing. There has been some speculation as to what Amazon intends to do with this acquisition, but I'm guessing they will use this idea in their upcoming online music store. A demand based pricing system is interesting: all music starts out free of charge and, as the demand for specific tracks increases, so does the price. There certainly must be a price cap (no one would shell out lots of money for a single music track), but I'm not sure what that might be.

I think this could do very well for Amazon. One of the biggest selling points is that all music will be completely DRM free. Only time will tell how well Amazon can do against the existing juggernauts.

It was announced on Monday that EA will reorganize into four labels: EA Games, EA Sports, EA Casual Games, and The Sims. This is an interesting move on their part, intended to "streamline the company" (don't all companies seem to do this on a daily basis?). It should be interesting to see if this makes any real difference, though I doubt it does. I've heard that working for EA is like working in a sweat shop; it's amazing that any products are released at all, if that's the case.

What intrigues me most is the fact that "The Sims" will be broken off into its own label. Who knew that a single video game would spawn such an empire? I won't deny that I was a Sims junkie at one point. I own all of the Sims 1 expansion packs, and I even developed several tools for that very game. The game was highly revolutionary at the time, and remains one of the best examples of an object-oriented programming model (Sidebar: Each individual game object contains the necessary sounds and animations used when a Sim interacts with that object. This programming paradigm is incredibly beneficial, since new objects can be added at a later time without a need to update the game's core files.).

As one might expect, when the sequel (The Sims 2) was released, I eagerly picked it up. Surprisingly, I was disappointed with the game. Like many Maxis games, performance was sub par, even on my fairly beefy home computer (Sim City 3000, a game dating back to 1999, still stutters on my current machine). In addition, the game play mechanics had changed drastically: Sims had a finite life span, a number of goals needed to be reached through the Sim's lifetime, and relationships were even harder to maintain. I lost interest fairly quickly, and haven't played either title in several years.

So, to make a long story short, I'm a little amazed that the product line has continued to do so well. The Sims 2 has a total of 5 expansion packs (with at least 1 more on the way), 3 of which are essentially the same expansions as are available in The Sims 1. I get a "been there, done that" kind of feeling in that regard, but apparently lots of people don't feel that way. Otherwise, EA wouldn't have spun the franchise into its own label.

I try to avoid blogging political stories here at this site, but Jimmy Carter calling the Bush administration the worst in history is so awesome. A Bush administration spokesman immediately fired back, dismissing Carter as 'increasingly irrelevant.' Huh?

Quick trivia question: how many US Presidents have a Nobel Peace Prize? Answer: only one (Jimmy Carter).

In short, President Carter is the man. And I whole-heartedly agree with his statement.

It's funny because it's true.

An article posted yesterday at Slashdot mentioned a new way to break 104-bit (aka 128-bit) WEP keys in less than 1 minute. What's more, this new method requires capturing less than 10% of the packets required by the previous best method. This kind of discovery should hopefully help people move to more secure schemes, like WPA.

My family and I still use WEP around our house, but we're thinking about changing to WPA instead. One benefit of where we live is that our neighbors houses are fairly far away from ours. So, if anyone is using our access point, they are likely to be sitting out in our front yard, something we are likely to notice pretty quickly.

I stumbled across a story today at Digg that blew my mind. Scientists have discovered a method for moving fluid using nothing but a beam of light (a laser, to be specific). The attached photo in the story demonstrates the effect in a soapy liquid mixture. Even though the picture was taken at 50 micro-meters, the resulting effect is quite astonishing.

It appears that LucasFilm Entertainment is suing Digg Inc. over the use of the trademark "Digg." Strangely enough, LucasFilm claims that the Digg name infringes on their 1996 video game The Dig. LucasFilm has just lost all credibility; their glory days are truly over.

The US Mint has once again released a dollar coin, although to seemingly mixed reviews. Will the dollar coins catch on? Though I don't care one way or the other, I'm inclined to say "No, they will not." Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea failed before, and these are likely to fail again (though exactly why is debatable). I always find it interesting, however, when people from the vending machine industry are interviewed on this topic. They always give this kind of response:

Reporter: So, what do you think of these new dollar coins? Vending Machine Guy: Eh, they'll never catch on. Reporter: Why do you think that is? Vending Machine Guy: Well, people never use them in these here machines, so we don't flip the switch inside to let them accept the dollar coins.

This kind of discussion appears every time dollar coins are launched (in fact, it appears in the story I linked to above). Do you see the idiocy of the vending machine guy's statement? They won't enable the mechanism to allow vending machines to accept dollar coins because people don't use the dollar coins. Maybe people don't use the coins because your stupid machines don't accept them! Are these people idiots or what?