Apple's 30th Anniversary is prompting retrospective looks at the company's last three decades. C|Net grounds their look back in the here and now, commenting on lawsuits and competition. ZDNet complains that Apple still isn't in the workplace. The BBC looks at the company's world-changing aspects in a more upbeat story. Nick Irelan wrote in to mention a Forbes piece entitled Apple's Biggest Duds, so you can image what what side that article comes down on. CNN puts the whole thing in perspective, with a balanced look at the company's good and bad points. Finally, if you want some rumourmongering, 192939495969798999 writes "Industry sources have leaked that tomorrow, on the 30th Anniversary of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs will announce that the new intel-based Mac laptops will support dual-booting Windows XP and OS X 10.4."

An anonymous reader writes "Spam king Christopher William Smith, aka Rizler, is facing up to life in prison for conspiracy to tamper with a witness and up to 20 years for endeavoring to obstruct justice. The charges are based on an alleged phone call in which he threatened to have a witness or the witness' family killed to prevent them from testifying against him in an upcoming trial on drug and related charges.

Ronald Moore may have done a lot for the Trek series of shows, but recently he's been making new fans with his work on the Battlestar Galactica title. He was invited to speak at GDC to relate ways in which intelligent folks can adapt an existing franchise. He focused on not only adapting and improving the original, but maintaining the core goodness of the inspiring work. Read on for notes from his talk. Update: 03/22 22:11 GMT by Z : Fixed Adama/Psylon spellings. I need a nerd-friendly spellchecker.

Mike writes "Will Wright writes in Wired Magazine, primarily centering his focus on imagination, how it affects the way we play games, and how it is affected in turn by the games we play. From the article: 'Games cultivate - and exploit - possibility space better than any other medium. In linear storytelling, we can only imagine the possibility space that surrounds the narrative: What if Luke had joined the Dark Side? What if Neo isn't the One? In interactive media, we can explore it.'"

Bundini writes "Primotech has an interview with Chris Livingston, creator of the immensely popular Concerned Half-Life Comic. He talks about the impact of machinima, posing ragdolls with Garry's Mod, and what's next for Gordon Frohman. From the article: 'There's a sort of smug satisfaction one gets when tuning in to the Gordon Frohman show every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. It's like an inside joke only you (and the other however-many million players of Valve's epic first-person shooter) will get.'" I highly recommend this gent. Concerned is a great comic.

Just a few days after it passed the Utah House of Representatives, the 'Games as Porn' law has died in the Utah Senate. Gamepolitics reports: "The Senate, however, never moved the bill out of committee for a floor vote. Dying a quiet death, HB257 has now been thrown on Utah' s legislative scrap heap - at least for the current session. Perhaps the Utah Senate recognized the obvious constitutional concerns surrounding Hogue's bill. As noted by GamePolitics, a pair of well-known First Amendment scholars savaged HB257 in a recent guest editorial in the Salt Lake Tribune."

Gamespot reports that despite earlier reports, Microsoft's Origami isn't intended as a portable Xbox. From the article: "As shown in the leaked video, Origami machines will feature a touch-sensitive screen a la Microsoft's tablet PC line, will run Windows XP, and will be priced lower than most full-size laptops, running from around $500 to $1,000. If that price tag seems too low for a mobile PC with a high-end graphics chip--which would be necessary to run the Halo footage shown in the leaked concept video--that's because it is. The AP article says flat-out that the Origami is 'not a portable version of Microsoft's Xbox videogame console,' nor is it 'a music player designed to take on Apple Computer Inc.'s mega-popular iPod.'"

Waxy.org has some good news for Penn and Teller Fans. They have Smoke and Mirrors, a long lost Penn and Teller game. The game is available for download, and features (among other things) a bus drive across the Nevada desert as one of the title's mini-games. From the article: "The most infamous part was 'Desert Bus,' a 'VeriSimulator' in which you drive a bus across the straight Nevada desert for eight hours in real-time. Then you drive it home. Also, I'd read the bus veers to the right, so you can't just leave the joypad propped up. The rumor was that if you won the game, you got one point. I'd assumed for years that the entire thing was a hoax, but last September, Frank Cifaldi (founder of Lost Levels) received a backup CD-ROM made by a fellow videogame writer of a review copy he'd received a decade earlier. He posted extensive screenshots and a review to the Something Awful Forums. He eventually added a torrent, but it's long since dead."

Gamasutra has a piece looking at the good news in digital distribution. Getting games to consumers with bits, rather than boxes, seems to ensure that we'll have a wider variety of titles to choose from in the future. The path looks at indie title Red Orchestra on its path to our desktops. From the article: "Of course, with a digital distribution deal, there is usually no big marketing push from the distributor like there is with a big publisher. But, through Steam we would be selling into the hardcore FPS gamer market. And as a result of the Valve deal, Red Orchestra got solid editorial exposure in major PC game publications, including two page 'preview' articles in PC Gamer US and UK."