An anonymous reader writes "Last week several defendants including one high-profile TV presenter were sentenced in Portugal in what has been known as the Casa Pia scandal. The judges delivered on September 3 a summary of the 2000-page verdict, which would be disclosed in full only three days later. The disclosure of the full verdict has been postponed from September 8 to a yet-to-be-announced date, allegedly because the full document was written in several MS Word files which, when merged together, retained 'computer related annotations which should not be present in any legal document.' (Google translated article.) Microsoft specialists were called in to help the judges sort out the 'text formatting glitch,' while the defendants and their lawyers eagerly wait to access the full text of the verdict."

Hugh Pickens writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports that devoted fans at the recent Star Wars Convention V, many dressed as Jedi knights, stormtroopers, or the indomitable Princess Leia, sat opposite one another for a series of 3-minute speed dates, in hopes of finding a connection with a fellow Star Wars enthusiast. 'Over the course of the three events, due to size and time, we turned away about 600 participants,' says Ryan Glitch. 'Yesterday, this room was packed. We had to keep shoveling people along.' Meanwhile in the main exhibition hall, a chapel was set up to allow fans to profess their love and devotion to each other in the form of commitment ceremonies. 'I've been told that we've had two commitment ceremonies from people that met at my event,' says Glitch adding that he saw eight additional couples at the convention made up of people who had attended his speed dating sessions."

An anonymous reader writes "South Korean MMO game publisher NCsoft is finding itself facing another lawsuit, this time for making games that are 'too addictive.' US Lineage II player Craig Smallwood is suing the publisher for $3 million because he found himself playing Lineage II for 20,000 hours over a period of 5 years. At times, his average play session would persist for over 11 hours, crippling his life and ability to function. A federal judge is allowing the court case to go forward (PDF), stating that the plaintiff has a claim for negligence and gross negligence against the publisher."

theodp writes "A third-grader in a small Texas school district received a week's detention for merely possessing a Jolly Rancher. Leighann Adair, 10, was eating lunch Monday when a teacher confiscated the candy. Her parents said she was in tears when she arrived home later that afternoon and handed them the detention notice. But school officials are defending the sentence, saying the school was abiding by a state guideline that banned 'minimal nutrition' foods. 'Whether or not I agree with the guidelines, we have to follow the rules,' said school superintendent Jack Ellis."

An anonymous reader writes "Wondering where all that bloat comes from, causing even the classic 'Hello world' to weigh in at 11 KB? An MIT programmer decided to make a Linux C program so simple, she could explain every byte of the assembly. She found that gcc was including libc even when you don't ask for it. The blog shows how to compile a much simpler 'Hello world,' using no libraries at all. This takes me back to the days of programming bare-metal on DOS!"

Bethesda Softworks has filed a complaint with the District Court of Maryland to forbid Interplay from selling older Fallout titles. The complaint alleges that Interplay failed to hold up its end of an agreement that required it to submit marketing and packaging details to Bethesda for approval. In addition to that, Interplay was supposed to initiate full-scale development of a Fallout MMO by April, 2009, gathering at least $30 million in funding to work on the game. "If Bethesda prevails, Interplay would lose the rights to develop the Fallout MMO. There is little to show for the progress of the Fallout MMO in public venues, although many speculate that a mysterious title called Project V13 is in fact the Fallout MMO."

MTV's Multiplayer blog sat down with Jun Takeuchi, producer for Capcom's Resident Evil 5, about the feedback they've gotten from the game's demo, which has been downloaded over 4 million times. He comments on the changed control scheme, which has generated a lot of discussion and criticism, by suggesting that their decision will become clear once the full game is out. "We understand that there are many people who want to run and shoot at the same time, but it's not the right alignment for the game." He also says the finished game will have shorter loading times, and he briefly discusses the media-fueled race controversy over the fact that Africa's zombies have dark skin. Takeuchi says, "People will be able to play the game and see what it is for themselves." Kotaku recently ran a preview of Resident Evil 5.