Gamasutra has up a feature on the world of PC gaming in South Korea, a country well-known for their love of online play. Nick Rumas, the author of the piece, takes us further behind the scenes of a country stereotyped by swarms of screaming StarCraft fans. He looks at what is hot on store shelves, discusses the reality of illegal game downloading there, and walks through the ten most popular online games in the country (StarCraft isn't even #1). From the article: "That, in a nutshell, is where the PC gaming industry in Korea currently finds itself. Physical retail is dead, and while that isn't going to change any time soon, it's a rather insignificant issue, because the online market is the only one that really matters here ... The world of PC gaming in Korea may massively dwarf that of consoles, but Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are engaged in their own little war on the peninsula, as well."

Tech.Luver writes "Gene Expression reports, "Tyler Cowen quotes from a new study testing the relationship between grades and delayed sexual activity. Last December I passed a paper along to Razib showing that high-school age adolescents with higher IQs and extremely low IQs were less likely to have had first intercourse than those with average to below average intelligence. (i.e. for males with IQs under 70, 63.3% were still virgins, for those with IQs between 70-90 only 50.2% were virgin, 58.6% were virgins with IQs between 90-110, and 70.3% with IQs over 110 were virgins) In fact, a more detailed study from 2000 is devoted strictly to this topic, and finds the same thing: Smart Teens Don't Have Sex (or Kiss Much Either). ""

gevmage writes "Gary Reign, a guy with apparently way too much time on his hands, built a home theater in his basement. This is not unusual. However, the room is designed, floor to ceiling, as the bridge of a Star Trek style starship. See his photo page for details."

gamer4Life writes "The United States has created their list of products banned from being exported to North Korea. This list includes iPods, plasma televisions and Segway electric scooters. U.S. intelligence officials who helped produce the Bush administration's list said Kim prefers Mercedes, BMW and Cadillac cars; Japanese and Harley Davidson motorcycles; Hennessy XO cognac from France and Johnny Walker Scotch whisky; Sony cameras and Japanese air conditioners."

dhoyte writes, "Newsfactor.com reports that next June the French parliament will be switching from Microsoft to open source products such as Linux for desktops and servers and OpenOffice for day-to-day documents. They see it as a cost-cutting measure." The French have not settled on a Linux distribution yet. The article quotes an analyst voicing a note of caution: "'The evidence on the cost savings attributable to a switch to Linux has been mixed,' according to Chris Swenson, director of software industry analysis at research group NPD. 'There has been some evidence that companies have to spend a good deal on training and support after you deploy...'"