Briareos was one of several readers to write with news that TellTale Games, along with LucasArts, will be bringing new Monkey Island games later this year. Tales of Monkey Island will be a series of episodic games released for PC and WiiWare in the coming months, and The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition will be a remake of the original 1990 game, available on the PC and Xbox Live. A trailer is available for the former, and this is what the press release says about the latter: "The development team at LucasArts is bringing the game into the modern era with all-new HD graphics, a re-mastered musical score, full voiceover, and an in-depth hint system has been added to help players through the game's side-splitting puzzles. Purists will also delight in the ability to seamlessly switch between the updated HD graphics and the original's classic look." Grumpy Gamer has a nostalgic look back at the franchise.

Eurogamer reports that the $600 PS3, which comes available with an HDMI port, will not ship with the necessary cable to actually hook the machine up. From the article: "According to the specs page on the official US PS3 website, which notes: 'HDMI cable not included. Additional equipment may be required to use the HDMI connector.' Sony has long promoted the 60GB PS3's HDMI output as a key feature of the machine. The 20GB model, however, doesn't feature HDMI - and nor does the Xbox 360, as it goes, despite occasional rumours of a hardware revision in the offing." The machine will, of course, come with a composite cable.

PetManimal writes "Wired has an excellent analysis of Sony as it struggles to overcome the failures of the 1990s and make the PS3 live up to its promise. Sony is counting on the PS3 turning around the company's fortunes, but it may have been too ambitious. Besides being hamstrung with an unusual company culture that emphasizes small hardware teams and proprietary formats, Sony's efforts to make the PS3 kill several birds with one stone and appeal to a wider customer base is turning off the PS3's core support network: gamers. From the article: 'Then there was the decision to build Blu-ray into the PlayStation 3. Sony's logic seemed ironclad: Not only would the hi-def drive's huge storage capacity allow for far-more-realistic and complex games, the PS3 would carry Blu-ray into millions of households and drive sales of HDTVs as well. As it turned out, however, Blu-ray has done nothing good for the PS3. Blu-ray was the main reason gamers weren't able to get the new machine last spring: The launch had to be postponed because the new format's digital rights management system did not yet satisfy every Hollywood studio.'"

Dwarg writes "On Aug. 10, [Human Rights Watch], headquartered in New York, came out with a report criticizing the three companies for their role helping to censor the Internet in China. The report is particularly damning of Yahoo, which Human Rights Watch says censors its Chinese site far more vigorously than either Google or Microsoft."

conJunk asks: "How do you protect against RSI? I try to practice good typing habits, but without the aid of wrist splints, I tend to get cold wrists. The splints are great, but they slow down my typing by a fair bit. What do you all do?"

ZombieRoboNinja writes "The New York Times is reporting that Sony's press conference has confirmed the delay of the PS3, which is now slated to come out in November. More interestingly, the article claims that PS3 will ship with a 60-gig hard drive, built-in network card, and Linux!" Serious stuff here, with Sony's shares falling on the delay confirmation. There was a lot more news handed out at the conference than just the delay. Next Generation has details from Ken Kutaragi's 10 Point Breakdown. From the NYT article: "'We were discussing selling it in September, and some even said put it out in July,' Mr. Kutaragi said. Some analysts were immediately skeptical of this explanation, saying Sony needed to get the console out as soon as possible to combat Microsoft's head start, and the expected release this year of Nintendo's next game console, Revolution. They said Sony may be trying to buy time to bring down the production cost of key components, particularly untested technologies like Blu-ray and Cell. While Mr. Kutaragi did not reveal a price on Wednesday, analysts say Sony will likely try to sell PlayStation 3 for about $500." Please see related links and commentary below for more coverage.