I've been avoiding posting about it, but Joystiq has a completely and utterly sane discussion of the non-story that is the Bully boy on boy kissing 'scandal'. Despite the ravings of Jack Thompson, the homosexual behavior in Bully was seen by the ESRB and is not the first game to feature such content. From the article: "The ESRB would be insane if they were bullied into giving an 'M' (Mature 17+) rating to Bully, as this story continues to gain traction in the mainstream press ... It would also force the ginormous Electronic Arts into the mix to defend the 'T' rated Sims. We're willing to wager that Electronic Arts, which has a Human Rights Campaign corporate equality index score of 88 and had transsexual game designer Danielle Bunten Berry on staff, will put up a good fight if challenged. Rockstar played this brilliantly, they slid in a topic that is controversial, but perfectly defensible, and those that would attack 'Warm Tea,' won't have an easy time of it compared to 'Hot Coffee.'" SFGate put up a thoughtful opinion piece / review of Bully this past weekend. If you're not familiar with the game, it's a great way to fully understand how there's really nothing to worry about here.

Sir Haxalot writes "The British band Duran Duran is to create a virtual island within the online world of Second Life, on which they will perform actual live concerts." From the article: "Three-dimensional versions of the band members - called Avatars - have been commissioned and will be revealed in September. The band hopes to perform their first virtual concert in the coming months. Rhodes added: 'We are hoping to give the crowd that come to the virtual concert a real immersive experience, so they can interact with us and react while we are stage.'"

nTrfAce writes "Defcon 14 is taking place right now in Las Vegas. You know it's serious when you see things like an IPV6 enabled refrigerator with an IP address of 1337:sec:badd:a22:DEF:C012::14. And of course using a rocket for war driving, er WarRocketing. And Joe Grand has created the absolutely coolest Defcon badge ever out of a PCB, PIC, and LEDs."

fremen writes "Apple today announced that they will be withdrawing their financial reports back to September 29, 2002 and delaying the filing of future reports after finding more backdated options problems. Companies backdate their stock options by looking back over a period of time and choosing a historical low as the option strike price. While not illegal, this must be fully disclosed to investors and properly accounted. Expect more uncertainty in the coming weeks as regulators must now uncover how much of Apple's record profits were incorrect as well as whether or not Steve Jobs will be able to continue leading the company."

thppft! writes "The second discussion draft of the GNU General Public License version 3 was released, along with the first discussion draft of the GNU Lesser General Public License. Along with the text for the licenses , the GPLv3 website also includes an introduction by Eben Moglen along with markup changes to the rationale and the GPL itself."

mrBen writes "This weekend (22nd & 23rd July) sees the 2nd LugRadio Live event, bringing together a huge number of top quality speakers (including Mark Shuttleworth (Canonical), Simon Phipps (Sun), Stephen Lamb (Microsoft), Ted Haegar (Novell)), exhibitors (including Ubuntu, OpenSolaris, MythTV, Joomla, Bytemark) and a slew of lightning talks and BOF (Birds of a Feather) sessions. Last year's event gathered 250 geeks from all over the world to Wolverhampton — this year's event is twice as long and twice as big, and promises to be the community event of the year."

worufu writes "Some weeks after releasing the MPX (Multi-Pointer X Server), the Linux world slowly seems to draw attention to the project which opens up the limits of simultaneous input devices of the current X server. The future possibities are unlimited and I cannot wait to see some nice applications supporting the advantages of multiple input devices.
From the project description: 'The Multi-Pointer X Server is an enhanced X server to support multiple mice. It provides users with one cursor per device. Each cursor can operate independently. A multicursor windowing system allows two-handed interaction with legacy applications, but also the creation of innovative applications and user interfaces.'"

Eurogamer is reporting on John Romero's newest endeavor, a studio designing a Massive game. Slipgate Ironworks is currently hiring, to work on ... a game. From the article: "The site doesn't offer many clues to the game's nature (although it does reveal that it will include weapons. And animation. And light!), but we do know from Romero's public comments that it will be ready 'when it's done' and isn't down for a 2007 release as some reports have speculated." I'm sure it will be up to the standards of Mr. Romero's numerous other good works.

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft kills off support for Windows 98 and Windows ME today, and ZDNet is reporting that the move will boost demand for Linux on the desktop. Unlike two years ago — when support for Win98 was extended because Linux was seen as a serious competitor — this time it seems there is no turning back."

odyaws writes "Central Vermont Public Service has launched Cow Power, a system by which power users can opt to buy 25, 50, or 100% of their electricity from dairy farms that run generators on methane obtained from cow manure. Cow Power costs only 4 cents/kWh more than market price, so a household like mine would only pay $5-6/month more at 100% usage. The big question now is whether Vermont-based Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream will use power generated from the manure of cows treated with Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone."

spensdawg writes "Here is an interesting interview with John Romero on Games.net. He gets into the original design philosophy for the first Doom games, what he would have done differently, and his plans for the future. Worth watching if you want to know a little more about the mad scientist behind Doom." A warning: this is a video interview

Bruce Perens writes "Senator John Sununu is proposing an amendment, H.R.5252, to strike both the broadcast flag and the radio flag from this year's U.S. telecommunications bill.

If the amendment does not pass, we will be faced with mandatory DRM in video and audio devices, and with a prohibition on the use of Open Source software for such devices (because it can be modified to remove DRM). Time is short, the committee markup of the telecommunication bill is proceeding now in Washington and it's important to show your Congressperson that there is constituent support to remove the broadcast and audio flags. Please see the alert and please use the information there to call your Congressperson today."

2bepissedoff asks: "According to my T-mobile phone bill, I have been receiving incoming calls from a 'NBR unavailable', since February, with talk time ranging from 1 minute to an hour. The strangest thing is, I have never received these calls (my phone doesn't ring and I haven't talked to the caller). I only started noticing them when my phone bill was charged over $40 more than my regular bill. Of course, I have a family plan (2 people only, 2 lines) and I talked to my partner. The answer: he too had not received any of these calls, especially over 300 minutes per month of them. We called up T-mobile twice and claim the possibility of phone cloning. Both representatives hung up on me, thinking I was trying to con them or something. Any advice to what this could be?"

timmit was one of many readers to point out the story of a stolen Sidekick, writing with this excerpt from the site: ""When my friend realized that she had left the Sidekick in the taxi she asked me to immediately send a message to the phone saying that we would give a reward for the phone. There was no response. After a day of waiting, she had to go to the store and spend over $300 on a new Sidekick. When she put her SIM card in, she saw that the person(s) that had taken the phone had not only signed on to AOL leaving their name and password in the phone, but they had taken pictures of themselves." I can sympathize, after someone with the address Rmluckyguy@aol.com tried to sell me back the Visor Deluxe stolen from my car last year in Philadelphia. I hope Evan has better luck.