First time accepted submitter CtownNighrider writes "I'm in my senior year of high school currently in a selective program for future engineers. I have always been a good student and feel like I can get into most good schools (MIT is a long shot but RPI isn't). I plan on studying aerospace engineering (most likely getting a dual major with mechanical) in college and working for a company like SpaceX once I graduate. I would love any advice anyone can offer for my college search or being an engineer in general. I live in upstate NY and don't want to travel super far, I'm thinking about a 5 hour radius. I have the RPI medal so it's one of my top choices and MIT is my long shot but I'm having a tough time figuring out what schools are worth applying too. Academics come first hands down so male/female ratio and party scene aren't too important."

Perhaps emboldened by the similar setback to Champions Online, Jumpgate Evolution developer NetDevil has announced that the space MMO will not be released in June, as was originally planned. NetDevil's president, Scott Brown, said, "One of the things we've always promised is that we would not release an unfinished product, nor would we subject players to a sub-par experience. ... Jumpgate Evolution is nearly feature complete, but since entering the Friends & Family phase of testing we've been able to bring new eyes onto the game and get solid, crucial feedback from actual players and fans. Based on these results, it is clear that the product needs more time to meet its objectives. As an example, we have received and read lots of feedback regarding the instanced and public PvP systems. The feedback has been vital in helping us polish and improve this core feature of the game." A new release date has not yet been selected.

Jim Rossignol writes "An article on a new blog I'm contributing to discusses how The Sims (mostly the original, but also the sequel) gets used for sexual purposes, and also examines how this kind of response is essential to the appeal of the game. Here's an extract: 'On sites like Simulated, Eight Deadly Sims, Pandora's Sims and Strange Sims we see increasingly bizarre uses of the modding tools. While mainstream sites are for all ages, these have reached such a level of risqué or alternative content that the majority hide behind pay-for-access barriers to ensure that the users at least have a credit card (i.e. aren't minors), and to earn a little cash. Of all the mod cultures online — and virtually every PC game has users making their own additional content either in publisher-supported or unofficial ways — it's only The Sims which has such an obvious number of sites which demand money for access. This is particularly unusual: there's a clause in EA's tool license that they can only be used 'on your personal non-commercial website'. That Electronic Arts hasn't gone after such a sizeable community is interesting in and of itself.'" Jim Rossignol is a well-respected games journalist in the industry, and his new blog (Rock, Paper, Shotgun) is well worth checking out.

bluephone writes "Colin Barrett, one of the new Mac geniuses, and an Adium developer, has posted an entry on his blog offering an open call to all Mac users of Firefox asking them, 'What sucks about Firefox on the Mac?' He says he already knows about and is trying to solve such things as: 'Native Form Widgets (currently scheduled for Firefox 3), Keychain Integration, Firefox should have a Unified toolbar (not completely hopeless, it turns out), Performance...', but he wants to hear what else Mac users want from Firefox. So please, if you're a user of Macs and the interwebs, then RTFA, unclog your tubes, and send him your ideas."

An anonymous reader writes, "At 2:46 CST today, the game Second Life was hit by a massive attack by a rogue programmer. Spinning gold rings began to appear in the air and on the ground, and as users interacted with them they began to chase and replicate. Apparently, most people are willing to touch an object they've never seen before and this invoked a worm script that was designed to multiply and spread across the 2,700+ servers run by Linden Labs in California, the game's owner. Many of the six hundred thousand active users experienced serious lag and lost connectivity to the servers, making it one of the largest known denial-of-service attacks in an online game. Linden Labs had to invoke martial law and lock out all logins by users except their staff as they began the task of cleaning the servers of what they began to term 'the grey goo.'" Comments in the SL blog entry indicate that Linden Labs had already deployed a "grey goo fence" before this worm struck, but someone found a hole in it.

robustyoungsoul writes "From the same guild leadership as the fellow who started an internet storm with his post about his experience in WoW comes a different point of view: it doesn't have to consume your life." From the article: "I got a Masters degree in policy from one of the most difficult schools in the country while at the same time playing WoW and working a part time job. I would come home from a busy day and think about how to use what I learned to make the guild work better. It was a way for me to practice what I was learning and to discover what was involved with leading people (mostly getting all the blame and no thanks, it seems :P). I've learned the lessons of clear communication, sacrifice, compassion, tough love ... and balance. I plan to use these skills in my professional life. So in short, I play the game because I get something tangible out of it."

Robaato writes "Stephen Levy writes in the Guardian about the perception of randomness, or the lack thereof, on an iPod set to shuffle." From the article: "My first iPod loved Steely Dan. So do I. But not as much as my iPod did.... I didn't keep track of every song that played every time I shuffled my tunes, but after a while I would keep a sharp ear out for what I came to call the LTBSD (Length of Time Before Steely Dan) Factor. The LTBSD Factor was always perplexingly short." My first iPod shuffle refused to let me delete (sigh) Weird Al's Polkamon off of the flash memory.

gerald626 writes "IBM announced today that they have formed an agreement to purchase ISS for 1.3 billion dollars." From the article: " The all-cash transaction of about $28 per share is meant to bolster IBM's ability to deliver security services to corporations, the company said. ISS builds network protection products and services, including intrusion detection and monitoring tools. IBM said it intends to use ISS's expertise and software to provide more robust security-related services to its corporate customers."

There's been a lot of talk (maybe too much talk, to paraphrase Bono) about The Long Tail and how it changes everything about what people consume, how hits are made, what people want to hear, how everything big is small again -- but people have taken that perhaps too far as Lee Gomes contends in a recent blog post about hits. Lee's piece is well thought-out, and I think raises a very valid point that whereas there is value in the Long Tail idea, sometimes people take it too far and that "Hits" still count for a lot. His earlier piece is a more direct critique of The Long Tail and worth reading as well; we covered that piece about the Long Tail a couple weeks back.

Billosaur writes "The Center for Citizen Media Blog has an interesting overview of the Collaborative News Survey 'Hype versus Reality', detailing the results of a study done by Hsing Wei from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government on why users are attracted to collaborative news, commenting and blogging sites. Among the conclusions of the study are that people who use these sites are 'mostly young and male, especially those who visit technology-related sites, looking for 'a fix of unique, informative fun,' and 'filling in the blanks' left by traditional news sources. Or is it just because it beats working?"

NeoPrime writes "CNN Money web site has a story about Northrop Grumman forecasting development of a laser shield 'bubble' for airports and other installations in the United States within 18 months. The system will be called Skyguard — a joint venture with Israel and the U.S. Army. It will have the capability to generate a shield five kilometers in radius."

Valthan writes "Macsimum news has just released news about a new version of the iMac that is being touted as an educational machine. It seems to be a nice setup, and has the cheapness that us university students strive on, I think they just may have a winner here to get people on the Mac. Now if only JCreator worked on it ..." From the article "Featuring a 17-inch widescreen LCD display, the iMac for education includes a Combo drive for burning CDs and reading DVDs, 512MB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory expandable up to 2GB and hard drive storage capacity up to 160GB. Every iMac also includes a built-in iSight video camera, built-in 10/100/1000 BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet for high-speed networking, built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11g WiFi for up to 54Mbps wireless networking, a total of five USB ports (three USB 2.0) and two FireWire 400 ports."