The New York city has hired the controversial consulting firm McKinsey & Company to study its waste containerization needs and design a citywide pilot program, Streetsblog has learned. From the report: For the next 20 weeks, the global management consulting firm will assess streets across the city with an eye toward what could work in a large, diverse urban environment and identify models for a such as program from among the many different solutions around the world -- working with the Sanitation Department to figure out the kinds of containers it needs, find appropriate vendors, and structure costs.

New York is decades behind other world capitals in terms of waste collection and containerization, so there are many models from which to choose. (Barcelona and other cities have underground trash bins that are lifted out for collection.) The goal is for McKinsey to design a request for proposal that can ensure that "it is not just another pilot, but something that can actually work all over the city," DSNY spokesman Joshua Goodman said. "In other words, in a matter of months, we will have a final, market-ready Request for Proposals -- including recommended commercial terms, performance requirements, and specifications. The details on widespread, scalable containerization in New York City are finally almost here."

Tumblr, the underground social media site known for its pornographic content and tight-knit community, will be instituting a major change to its guidelines in a couple of weeks. The company said in a blog post today that it will permanently ban adult content from its platform on December 17th. The company flatly stated that "adult content will no longer be allowed here." The Verge reports: Banned content includes photos, videos, and GIFs of human genitalia, female-presenting nipples, and any media involving sex acts, including illustrations. The exceptions include nude classical statues and political protests that feature nudity. The new guidelines exclude text, so erotica remains permitted. Illustrations and art that feature nudity are still okay -- so long as sex acts aren't depicted -- and so are breastfeeding and after-birth photos.

After December 17th, any explicit posts will be flagged and deleted by algorithms. For now, Tumblr is emailing users who have posted adult content flagged by algorithms and notifying them that their content will soon be hidden from view. Posts with porn content will be set to private, which will prevent them from being reblogged or shared elsewhere in the Tumblr community. "Blogs that have been either self-flagged or flagged by us as 'explicit' per our old policy and before December 17, 2018 will still be overlaid with a content filter when viewing these blogs directly," the blog post reads. "While some of the content on these blogs may now be in violation of our policies and will be actioned accordingly, the blog owners may choose to post content that is within our policies in the future, so we'd like to provide that option..."

Last week we asked for interview questions to help supplement our face-to-face interviews at Blizzcon. Over the course of the two-day con we were able to sit down with StarCraft II's Dustin Browder, Diablo III's Leonard Boyarsky, WoW's J. Allen Brack, and Battle.net expert Rob Pardo to answer a few questions on each of the four major camps in Blizzard at the moment. Since this wasn't a usual Slashdot-style interview, we tried to use as many of your suggestions as possible, but the conversation often took us in a unique direction once it got rolling.

Last year's Blizzcon was tremendously popular. So much so that their servers were unable to handle the strain of fans competing for 15,000 available tickets. This year, Blizzard was more prepared; they made an additional 5,000 tickets available and set up a queue so that the transaction servers weren't overwhelmed. CEO Mike Morhaime said during the keynote address that if you weren't able to get into the queue within 30 seconds of its opening, the tickets were sold out before your turn came. Tens of thousands more chose to order the pay-per-view coverage, demonstrating the extraordinary enthusiasm felt for Blizzard's games. Their presentations didn't disappoint. Read on for details on the status of StarCraft II, Diablo III, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and the new Battle.net. It's divided into sections by game in case you're only interested in one or two of them.

This year's Blizzcon saw 15,000 gamers descend from 27 different countries to take part in two days of discussions, tournaments, and sneak peaks at upcoming releases. Several big announcements were scattered among a raft of new details about Diablo 3, Starcraft 2 and Wrath of the Lich King. The new information went a long way toward drumming up interest for what already appear to be worthy successors to old favorites. Read on for more.

It's a big year for tabletop gamers. In just a few months the first books for the Fourth Edition of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) will be released by publisher Wizards of the Coast (WotC). The last major update to the game rules was released in 1999, and sparked interest in D&D not seen since the early 80s. To attempt to answer some of the biggest questions about this newest edition, WotC has learned from mistakes made in 99', and is previewing their game updates with a pair of softcover books. Called "Races and Classes" and "Worlds and Monsters", the two titles cover everything from character creation to the new default world's pantheon. More importantly, it includes a large amount of commentary from the designers about why things are going to be as they are. In short: they're must-haves for hardcore D&D fans. Read on for my impressions of these highly entertaining (and vastly overpriced) chapbooks.

Collision891 writes "Sony is now offering a free game to anyone who had their memory cards erased by the Viewtiful Joe 2 demo on their Holiday 2004 Demo disk, sent out to Playstation Underground members . By calling Sony they will tell you where to send in your disk and a list of games of which you can choose one to receive free. The games they are offering are: Wildarms 3, Parappa The Rapper 2, Gran Turismo 3, JAK 2, Sly 2: Band of Thieves, NCAA Final Four 2004, MLB 2004, ATHENS 2004, ATV Off-Road Fury 3, and Hot Shots Golf Fore!"

tcyun asks: "The intro text from kaisyain's review brought up a thought that has been floating around in my head as I am a new home-owner. If one wanted to design a home that would last for hundreds of years, what would one have to do? I, and many of my friends, have recently/ purchased homes. As with all homes, some things are in good shape, others are not. Many items are the fault of initial design, many are due to poor upkeep and repairs. Looking around, it is possible to have a home last for hundreds of years (my family's ancestral home is about 400 years old and there are castles in Europe that are older). If one wanted to build/modify a home, what would one need to do to make sure that the home would still be standing, and usable, hundreds of years from now?" M : Wired suggests going underground.

Okay, here are Alicebot inventor Dr. Richard Wallace's answers to your questions. You're about to enter a world that contains interesting thoughts on A.I., a bit of marijuana advocacy, a courtroom drama, tales of academic politics and infighting, personal ranting, discussion of the nature of mental illness, and comments about the state of American society and the world in general. Yes, all this in one interview so long and strong we had to break it up into three parts to make it fit on our pages. This is an amazing work, well worth reading all the way to the end.

So the night after the live action Tick debuted on Fox, we rounded up 10 questions and sent them off to Ben Edlund, the Tick's original creator. Here are his answers. And you can download your official Tick poster (pdf format) here.

BigBragger sent us a story that talks about a deal between Lucas and Atom Films to allow Star Wars parodies to be distributed legally. It's a mixed bag: Lucasfilm gets a piece of the pie, and gets to choose what goes online at the site. But it does create an official place to get those vid clips like Troops which are just awesome but somewhat underground. I guess as long as they don't go after other parodies I'm cool with it, but there's something that I can't describe about this leaving a funny taste in my mouth. It's probably just paranoia.

Monday's questions for the Cult of the Dead Cow ranged from serious-tech to silly. Various members of the Cult answered appropriately. Great stuff! One warning: if you are offended by strong language or are a hacker under 18, you should not read this Q&A session. The Cult is one of those groups the assorted nanny-censor programs try to keep away from deity-fearing, good-citizen, mass-average folks because they're commie anachist no-gooders. Or something like that. (And we like them that way!) Click below to learn why these people are A Danger to the Established Order(tm).

One of America's most enduring and self-deluded myths about itself is that it's a free, thus morally superior country. It's not, as last weeks' feature on Princeton Bioethicist Peter Singer made clear. This society is riddled with unapproachable taboos. But technology is changing that, making some of our self-inflated notions of ourselves actually come true.

It's a great read, but there's not much to celebrate in "The Celebration Chronicles." Andrew Ross takes us deep into the strange world of Disney's hi-tech, meticulously planned model community of the future, still under construction in murky swampland south of Walt Disney World.

Islands in the Clickstream is a weekly reflection on the interaction between ourselves, computer tehcnology, and the ultimate concerns of our lives. CT: This is Richard's second bit to appear on Slashdot. His work will hopefully be appearing here weekly.

Richard Thieme has long been writing a weekly column called Islands in the Clickstream. Richard wants to run them weekly on Slashdot - he would be joining Katz then providing new content on these pages. I'm excited about this, and I think many of you will too. The following feature is this weeks island. Read it, vote on the poll, and hopefully Richard will be back next week.

Chris Blain recently went on an adventure that many of us will experience: Getting a cel phone. He has written up his experiences for those of you on the fence on the issue. It's an excellent piece if you've thought about it, but just didn't have the answers. He also compares various services in his area, which is probably at least a decent example of what it will be like near you.