99 Lives

Finally, Kotaku gets the straight dope:

The party was held on March 1, and attended by around twenty European journalists (none from the UK).

The actual article in the Official PlayStation mag was written by a guy who wasn’t in attendance; the piece was done on the basis of the party’s invite, “which employed a degree of hyperbole in order to encourage attendance”.

The goat in question had already been killed (ie it wasn’t killed at the party), and had been sourced from a local butcher.

The goat’s “entrails” were actually bowls of traditional Greek meat soup. At no stage was anyone allowed to touch the goat, nor did anyone eat or drink anything from inside the goat. After the party, the carcass was returned to the butcher.

SCEE say that they first saw the photo last Thursday and immediately ordered it to be pulled from the magazine, and on Friday Official PlayStation Mag agreed. The magazine never reached general circulation, but subscribers did receive the issue with the offending picture included.

SCEE closed by saying: “We are conducting an enquiry to establish the circumstances behind the event in order to ensure this does not happen again. We also apologise to anyone offended by the article in the OPSM.”

So in other words, the Daily Mail article while technically true was another entry of yellow journalism from a long list of examples from its tabloid history.

Countless blogs and other new media sites swallowed the spin as the proverbial truth while traditional sites such as IGN waited for a response from Sony and ended with a more balanced, objective piece:

Although the Mail on Sunday claimed that at the event in Athens, guests were invited to reach inside the goat’s still-warm carcass, pulling out and eating meat they were told was the goat’s intestines, Sony has since clarified exactly what happened.

A European spokesperson said: “The ‘warm entrails’ referred to in the invitation and in the Mail on Sunday article was actually a meat soup, made to a traditional Greek recipe and served to attendees in china bowls direct from the caterers. There was never any question of journalists being able to touch the goat, or indeed eat the soup direct from the body of the goat, as one report has alleged. The goat was returned to the butcher at the end of the event.”

Visitors on blogs often compete to be the first to leave a comment under a big story, forsaking substance for bragging rights. Sadly, it looks like many new media “journalists” are following their example.

Update: There is hope. Check out The Guardian’s Gamesblog coverage on this story.

No stranger to controversial ad campaigns, Sony has managed to outdo itself in a promotional event for God of War 2. Attending guests ended up being treated to being fed grapes by topless models and competed in contents involving knife-throwing or manhandling snakes with ones bare hands.

Of course, such benign activities pale in comparison to the main feast which was a freshly slaughtered goat. nearly decapitated with its head hanging by a thread of tissue from its corpse, with blood dripping to the floor. Guests were invited to dine on prepared offal stuffed into its stomach.

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When Microsoft originally announced its 120 GB hard drive add-on, early adopters (read loyal customers) ended up getting shafted thanks to restrictive measures and a $179 price tag.

If you agree with the above sentiment then you’ll be pleased to find out that with some tech know-how, you can easily put together your own for $100 or less.

To summarize, you’ll need to purchase a WD Scorpio 120GB Hard Drive (this is the only one that works) and download HDDHackr which will extract your firmwire from your old 20gb, letting you dump it on the other hard drive from a floppy disk.

Full instructions can be found on the download page for HDDHackr. Just be sure to exercise caution as this will void your warranty.

Happy modding!

Source: Dailytech

Yes, you read the headline correctly. According to Second Life Insider, the Brussels Court will be working with the Federal Computer Crime Unit to “patrol in Second Life” after a virtual rape case that involved a Belgian Second Life user.

So how does one exactly rape on Second Life?

Well after digging further, I’ve found out that one can actually purchase modifications that enable sexual ability (they’re designed in game by other SL players) but you can’t get your groove with someone unless they give consent prior. Kinda like how it works to initiate PvP battles on most online RPG’s, so in other words, you can only rape the willing.

Or maybe not. “dandellion Kimban” posts about her raping on Second Life Insider:

O_o um, I don’t see how it’s even possible to “rape” someone unless bumping them with your avatar counts? — Nacon

It counts. From the moment some griefing idiot did just that, I do count. It made me do the article mentioned above. Believe it or not, it is not nice experience, actually, it made me feel much worse than I expected. — dandellion Kimban

After reading this, I’ve come to realization that I must have been raped roughly a thousand times as I moved through the crowded streets of Tattooine on Star Wars Galaxies. Man, I feel so dirty now.

Today, VoIP provider JaJah announced support for the Sony PSP with its telephony service.

But don’t expect to be making phone calls from your PSP just yet. When you log into mobile.jajah.com through your PSP, you’ll be able to browse through your address book and initiate calls that you can take on a number of your choosing, mobile or landline.

Nothing too exciting till I noticed that Jajah is also working on offerings for PS3, Wii and Xbox 360. VoIP over Xbox Live? Can’t wait.

Source: Techmeme

With no E3 and with its replacement named as family-friendly “E for Everyone” spells out dismal prospects for under-sexed males sick of digging through the booth babes of yesterday at E3 Girls.

Which is where CeBIT comes in. The world’s premier consumer electronics expo shares an uncanny resemble to E3 in the booth babe department, bringing back a familiar warm feeling in the lower regions for many.

As a healthy young male, I don’t mind looking at beautiful young women while oogling the latest technology (or is that the other way around?) but is there a fine line between pandering male interests and flat out assuming we’re all mindless breast chasing bafoons?

More pictures after the jump.

Your eyes are not deceiving you. She’s just wearing body paint.

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Nicholas Deleon at Crunchgear discusses the lack of HDMI v1.3 support, forced 1080p and what the future has in store for Elite owners:

The absence of HDMI 1.3 means that Dolby’s super mega high def audio format TrueHD is nowhere to be found. This PCM audio format, which is lossless, is present on certain big money HD DVD titles, such as V for Vendetta and Batman Begins. Microsoft, we’re trying to like you. Omissions like this don’t make it easy. Neither does that fact, when using the HDMI connection, the video signal will always be in 1080p. Poor working stiffs like me (or early HDTV adopters) only have 720p/1080i capable monitors. Rather than just letting us be happy with 720p, we’ll be dealing with downscaled 1080p for the rest of our days.

That sounds about right as Microsoft should have been “skating towards the puck will be” when designing the Xbox 360 Elite. The fact that the Xbox fanboys are pointing out that no such receiver (at least within an affordable price range) with support for HDMI v1.3 currently exists is a moot point. As with all consumer electronics, economies of scale and other factors will always reduce technology to the point where it will be affordable to most consumers.

Looks like I’m sticking with my first-generation 360. Noisy fans, overheating and all.

Sacramento County prosecutors will not press charges against radio station KDND-FM for its “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest in which Jennifer Strange died from water intoxication after drinking over two gallons of water without urinating over four hours.

Jennifer Strange, 28, willingly participated in the contest by Sacramento radio station KDND-FM and showed no visible symptoms to suggest that she was seriously ill or in danger of dying, Sacramento County District Attorney Jan Scully said in a statement.

“She knew what the contest involved when she entered it and had the option to stop or discontinue her participation in the contest at any time,” said Scully, outlining how prosecutors contemplated — and ultimately decided against — filing charges of involuntary manslaughter.

“There were no observable indications or symptoms that Jennifer Strange was experiencing a serious medical emergency which would have required station employees to seek or administer medical aid to her,” Scully said.

While I’m not very sympathetic towards people who manage to off themselves in ways that places them in the running for an Darwin award, I’m definitely on the side of the Strange Family in their civil lawsuit against KDND-FM for continuing the contest despite receiving warnings about fatal water intoxication from callers.

Hang on tight. I’ll be upgrading this blog to the latest version of Wordpress and K2 within the next few hours, so which will explain any glitches you may experience.

Also since my host shit a chicken after I got on the front page of Digg, I’ll be changing hosts in the next few days to prevent any unexpected downtime in the future.

After that, it’ll be business as usual.

Update: Wordpress and K2 are now upgraded and current. Wow, that was fast. One down, one more to go.

Update #2: I’ve successfully moved this blog over to my Media Temple with minimal problems. What that means is if you’ve registered in the past, please re-register as I lost the user table in the database.