Wowzer writes "Nintendo hopes that Solid Snake's appearance in Super Smash Bros. Brawl on Wii will encourage other publishers to allow their characters to join the Smash Bros. line-up, and is already actively negotiating for the rights to include at least one or two other non-Nintendo character. The plot thickens when Smash Bros. series director Masahiro Sakurai and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto say that 'Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog is the character that Smash Bros. fans have requested the most.' This begs the question, which non-Nintendo characters are most likely to appear?"

Max Fomitchev writes to tell us that Pay By Touch, the biometric identification service, has announced an online version of their service. While currently the only implementation of this service is in the brick-and-mortar storefront of Star Markets grocery stores, the company hopes that online vendors will start signing up soon.

Justus writes "Gamers with Jobs has posted an article covering EA's privacy policy for Xbox Live users. In a nutshell, by using an EA game over Xbox Live, you are automatically creating an 'EA Online' account and granting Electronic Arts the ability to collect your name, address, and credit card information, as well as a variety of demographic information about how you use their products. Not only that, they explicitly say that they may tie these demographics to your personal information — no anonymous aggregation here! When Gamers with Jobs asked EA and Microsoft about these issues, they were met with stony silence, a fact they attribute to the pending release of the new Madden game next week. Without an official comment from the companies involved, it certainly looks like EA has the most invasive privacy policy they could come up with."

bcaulfield writes to tell us Zhou Hongyi has filed a 3.6 million yuan ($450,000) defamation suit against Yahoo China. Hongyi, the former president of Yahoo China, filed his suit in response to comments made in a recent Yahoo press conference accusing him of unethical business practices. From the article: "A rift between Mr. Zhou and Yahoo China has been developing since before his departure from Yahoo last year, just prior to Alibaba's takeover of Yahoo's China operations. Mr. Zhou doled out generous bonuses to Yahoo employees in a ploy his detractors derided as a naked purchase of loyalties. Mr. Zhou defended the disbursements. 'Many of these people were longtime Yahoo employees, and they were under no obligation to follow me,' he said. 'It was my money to do with as I wanted.'" Update 08/20/2006 15:01 GMT by SM: Corrected the currency for the suit.

broswell asks: "We rent computer equipment and occasionally our equipment gets stolen. I wrote a little VBS script that calls our webserver every hour (script below) and installed it on our laptops. Sure enough, some laptops went missing. One of the stolen laptops is now calling in from a Verizon Internet account which appears to be in a neighboring town. The Baltimore City Police grudgingly filled out a police report 'so we could collect insurance' but don't seem willing to subpoena Verizon, find the address of the end user, recover tha laptop and prosecute the thief. They seem clueless. The Maryland State police has a computer crimes unit. The have a clue, but they claim they don't have jurisdiction. It is not about the money (our customer signed for the computers and will pay for the stolen items), we just want justice." With all of the necessary information in hand of the proper authorities, how likely is it that the stolen laptop will be recovered?

New Scientist is reporting that in the not-so-distant future computer monitors, and televisions may utilize a color changing polymer that responds to a current instead of existing techniques. From the article: "Aschwanden and colleagues built arrays of 10 pixels, each 80 micrometers across. The pixels consist of a piece of polymer covered with ridges tipped with gold. When white light is shone at the polymer from one side it reflects out of the screen and is also split into different wavelengths by this 'diffraction grating'. However, a slit above the polymer ensures that only one wavelength of light escapes, giving the pixel its color. The pieces of polymer also contract in response to current, like simple muscles. As they do so, the fan of light-waves is moved, changing the color that is fed through the slits above and out of the screen. Cutting the current causes the muscle to return to its original state."

GGLucas writes "Contrary to the rumours that have spread about the Rockstar game, Bully, and it's storyline, the game's trailer as released by IGN today spins in a completely different direction, anti-game critics will not be happy. From the article: 'Bully puts players in control of 15 year-old Jimmy Hopkins — a boy who has just begun his first year in the New England-based Bullworth Academy, and a guy who's charged with the mission of ridding the school of a number of its undesirable elements.'"

KermodeBear writes "Eight of the original 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books are to be republished this summer. From the Article: 'First published in 1979, the books let readers remix their own stories - and face the consequences. [...] the original titles return to bookstores, revamped with 21st-century references (cell phones!).'" For me, it's all about 1987's Space Vampire , by series originator Edward Packard. "Do you eject the vampire through the airlock?"

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "As lawsuits mount against phone companies from plaintiffs who allege their call records were handed over to the National Security Agency illegally, the companies' defense may get help from the U.S. government, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'The plaintiffs, who accuse Bell phone companies of privacy violations and are seeking billions of dollars in damages, would need to delve into the depths of the NSA's surveillance program to make their cases. But the government considers such information top secret, and legal experts expect the Bush administration to assert the "state secrets" privilege in the 20 or more lawsuits filed by privacy advocates in recent weeks. If judges accept the claim, as has been the case in nearly every instance in which it has been asserted since the early 1950s, the suits will dissolve.'"

valdean writes "Disney, Intel and Cisco have teamed up to launch Moviebeam, a $200 set-top box connected to your TV set that offers 100 movies at a time, with 7-8 new films replacing the 7-8 oldest each week. Movies cost $4 for new releases and $2 for old ones, with each payment granting 24 hours of access to that movie. There is no subscription fee and no monthly minimum. The nifty part? MovieBeam's movies are encoded in the broadcast signal of PBS stations across the United States, so you don't need a computer or an Internet connection. The bad part? The Moviebeam player also requires a connection to a phone jack -- every fortnight the box dials a toll-free number in the middle of the night to tally how much you've spent on movies so far, for the benefit of your monthly statement."

user24 writes "MSN reports that Microsoft 'is launching a subscription service aimed at providing better protection for the Windows operating system, which has been vulnerable to Internet attacks. Windows Live OneCare will protect up to three computers for about 50 dollars a year.' From the OneCare website: 'Windows Live OneCare works continuously, automatically, and quietly in the background on your PC, ever vigilant against threats but never in the way, allowing you to have fun and be more productive:'"

ethan_clark asks: "I work for a small company (< 10 employees) as a software engineer. The company got its start with a software product written by the owner in VisualBasic. He hired me to assist in rewriting the software – only catch is, he's stuck on having it re-written in VisualBasic. This scares me, but I honestly can't make a good argument against VB because I'm not familiar enough with it. So my question is twofold: I am looking for some confirmation to my suspicion that VB isn't the greatest language for large projects; and If VB isn't good, arguments against using it. If it is good, what arguments would you use to argue for it (for my sake)?" If you are going to argue against a language, it is best if you do so after you become familiar with it so that you can argue fairly on its merits and deficiencies. VisualBasic, like just about every other language, has its place. For the sake of discussion however, what tasks would VisualBasic not be suited for?

Valley Redneck asks: "The last few members of my extended family just entered the 20th century and went to broadband. Now that we're all on-line with small home LANs in place, we'd like to start sharing stuff via a VPN. The only problem is I'm the only marginally tech savvy one in the bunch, and I'd rather not have to hop a plane to configure everyone's box. Any recommendations for a broadband router that supports VPN to use on the mother-ship network that will play nice with all versions of Windows XP SP 2 (Pro, Home and Media Center) and its VPN client?"

higuita asks: "A few days ago, I was asked to check our backups policy, how they are being applied and to try to make it safer and more useful. Being new to the company, I started to check what is being done right now and found several problems. Since I don't have much experience with enterprise backups, what are the most used backup policies, software and global ideas about this issue? We have less than 1000 workstations (Windows and Macs), about 20 Oracle and Exchange servers (split between Windows, Solaris, and Linux), and it all needs to be backed up. Right now, we use the HP data protector with several tapes, where most things have a weekly full backup and daily incremental backups, and that most full backups are archived permanently in a safe we have for this purpose. We also have off-site storage for backups, as well. What practices and policies do Slashdot users implement for backups they perform at their office (home backups practices I am not interested in)?"

RockClimbingFool writes "Tom's Hardware has a pretty good overview of what the current beta version of Microsoft Windows Vista has to offer. The article is written from an average user's perspective, specifically highlighting exactly which differences the average computer user can expect to see from Windows XP to Windows Vista. It covers everything from IE7, to the new Windows Aero interface, to brand new games." But if you'd like your eye candy open source and downloadable now, check out Lunapark6's review of the current version of Ubuntu Dapper, with "emphasis placed on helping someone set up the system for everyday desktop usage."