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Survey Shows That Fox News Makes You Less Informed 1352

A survey of American voters by World Public Opinion shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. One of the most interesting questions was about President Obama's birthplace. 63 percent of Fox viewers believe Obama was not born in the US (or that it is unclear). In 2003 a similar study about the Iraq war showed that Fox viewers were once again less knowledgeable on the subject than average. Let the flame war begin!
Security

TSA Pats Down 3-Year-Old 1135

3-year-old Mandy Simon started crying when her teddy bear had to go through the X-ray machine at airport security in Chattanooga, Tenn. She was so upset that she refused to go calmly through the metal detector, setting it off twice. Agents then informed her parents that she "must be hand-searched." The subsequent TSA employee pat down of the screaming child was captured by her father, who happens to be a reporter, on his cell phone. The video have left some questioning why better procedures for children aren't in place. I, for one, feel much safer knowing the TSA is protecting us from impressionable minds warped by too much Dora the Explorer.
Games

Why Warhammer Online Failed — an Insider Story 235

sinij writes "An EA insider has aired dirty laundry over what went wrong with Warhammer and what could this mean for the upcoming Bioware Star Wars MMORPG. Quoting: 'We shouldn't have released when we did, everyone knows it. The game wasn't done, but EA gave us a deadline and threatened the leaders of Mythic with pink slips. We slipped so many times, it had to go out. We sold more than a million boxes, and only had 300k subs a month later. Going down ever since. It's 'stable' now, but guess what? Even Dark Age and Ultima have more subs than we have. How great is that? Games almost a decade [old] make more money than our biggest project." The (unverified) insider, who calls himself EA Louse (named after the EA Spouse who brought to light the company's excessive crunchtime practices) says similar trouble is ahead for the development of Star Wars: The Old Republic. EA has not commented yet. God of War creator David Jaffe has criticized the insider for having unrealistic expectations of working in the games industry.
Privacy

Submission + - Official WoW Forums to Display Full Names (worldofwarcraft.com)

Becausegodhasmademe writes: In a move that has drawn heavy criticism from the World of Warcraft playerbase, Activision Blizzard announced today that the full name of posters on their public forums will be displayed alongside each forum post. The thread on the US WoW forum announcing the changes has reached 21,000 posts at time of writing, filled with complaints from customers very concerned about their privacy. In defense of the move, a community moderator posted his full name and challenged the players to find information on him. Within 15 minutes his personal information, including address, telephone number and the names and addresses of his family members were posted, causing the community moderator to delete his Facebook account.

The account cancellation page at worldofwarcraft.com is currently down, due presumably to the volume of customers canceling their accounts. As the privacy changes will affect European forums as well, many posters are questioning the legality of the change.

Privacy

Submission + - Blizzard Eliminating Privacy on Battle.Net Forums (battle.net)

Goatbert writes: Today Activision-Blizzard announced that in addition to the current (and controversial) implementation of their RealID social network for World of Warcraft and StarCraft 2, going forward all posts to the official Blizzard/SC2/World of Warcraft forums will display the posters First and Last Name. Handles or nicknames of any sort will not be allowed.
Games

Submission + - Blizzard to require RealID for Battle.net forums. (battle.net)

An anonymous reader writes: Recently, Blizzard Entertainment implemented a feature to some of its current as well as all of its future Battle.net-based games: RealID. Today, Blizzard announced that it intends to require usage of the real names of Battle.net posters for its StarCraft II forums before release, and for its World of Warcraft forums shortly before the release of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.

"The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID — that is, their real-life first and last name — with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it. These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm. Certain classic forums, including the classic Battle.net forums, will remain unchanged."

United States

State Senator Caught Looking At Porn On Senate Floor 574

Everyone knows how boring a debate on a controversial abortion bill can get on the Senate floor. So it's no wonder that Florida State Sen. Mike Bennett took the time to look at a little porn and a video of a dog running out of the water and shaking itself off. From the article: "Ironically, as Bennett is viewing the material, you can hear a Senator Dan Gelber's voice in the background debating a controversial abortion bill. 'I'm against this bill,' said Gelber, 'because it disrespects too many women in the state of Florida.' Bennett defended his actions, telling Sunshine State News it was an email sent to him by a woman 'who happens to be a former court administrator.'"
Operating Systems

Sony Refuses To Sanction PS3 "Other OS" Refunds 396

Stoobalou writes "Sony says that it has no intention of reimbursing retailers if they offer users partial refunds for fat PS3s. Last week, the first PS3 user successfully secured a partial refund from Amazon UK as compensation for the removal of the ability to run Linux on the console. The user quoted European law in order to persuade the online retailer that the goods he had bought in good faith were no longer fit for his purposes because of the enforcement of firmware update 3.21, which meant that users who chose to keep the Other OS functionality would lose the ability to play the latest games or connect to the PlayStation Network."

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