Best Cubicle Ever!

Bungie Plans Serious Penalties For Reach Ragequitters

If you're one of those who dashboards out of multiplayer after getting backstabbed or headshot three times, take note: Bungie told Xbox 360 Achievements that it wants to remove ragequitters from the population so they won't ruin everyone else's fun.

Brian Jarrard, the Bungie community director, said the measures will be "one of the new things people will be excited about. [Ragequitting] isn't exactly cheating, but it creates a really negative experience for everybody else in the game."

Jarrard didn't get much more specific, just said that they have advanced ragequit recognition heuristics to make sure they're not cracking down on people who accidentally drop their net connection. The penalties themselves were not discussed, so it's unclear whether this is a ban, a timeout, or a special temper-tantrum lobby where ragequitters can ragequit on each other.

"We actually have new tools now to detect that and eventually, people who do this habitually will actually be penalized," Jarrard said, "We want to be able to remove them from the population so they can't make everyone else keep having a bad time."

Just so long as I can still ragequit out of singleplayer.

Bungie Clamping Down On Quitters In Reach [Xbox 360 Achievements via VG247]

Gamer's Cafe Robbed... Gamers Fight Back!

Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game Looks Wonderfully Complex

From the creators of the World of Warcraft and StarCraft board games comes Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game, the second board game inspired by the addictive turn-based strategy game.

Sid Meier borrowed concept for the original Civilization video game from an Avalon Hill board game of the same name, so it seems a no-brainer that the computer version get its own physical counterpart as well.

Eagle Games certainly thought so, publishing the first Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game in 2002. It was a nifty little game, with a simple rule set for basic play and an advanced set with more video game mechanics involved.

The new Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game, due out this fall from Fantasy Flight Games, has nothing to do with that version, and judging by the company's past works and the shot of the game layout above, I very much doubt there's anything simple about it.

Two to four players start the game with a city, a single scout, and an army figure. From there they will build an entire civilization, advancing its technology, forging trade relations, and waging war against their opponents.

I'm a big fan of Fantasy Flight, owning the World of Warcraft Board Game and several expansions. I've never played it, though I did spend several hours setting up the game once, only to run out of time. Hopefully Civilization is a bit easier to set up.

For more on Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game, check out the link below.

Announcing Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game [Fantasy Flight Games - thanks diedan!

Hackers release browser-based iPhone 4 jailbreak

(Credit: Steven Musil/CNET)

The unlocked iPhone 4 is now technically legal and technically possible.

Just days after the U.S. Copyright Office ruled that bypassing a manufacturer's protection mechanisms to allow "handsets to execute software applications" no longer violates federal copyright law, the iPhone Dev Team on Sunday released a jailbreak for the iPhone 4 at JailbreakMe.com.

Unlike previous jailbreaks, which required the device to be connected to a computer to run the update, the latest jailbreak is accomplished completely via mobile Safari loaded on the device. The browser-based software bypass reportedly works on all iOS devices, including iPhones, iPads, and iPods running iOS 4 and iOS 4.01, but it will reportedly not work on devices running the iOS 4.1 beta.

Also, some users report the jailbreak disrupts FaceTime and MMS functionality on the device.

However, as of this writing, demand for the jailbreak is apparently so popular that the site's servers can't keep up, and many visitors report difficulty in getting through.

Jailbreaking allows devices to run apps not approved by the company producing the operating system--such as Apple, the main target of such bypasses. Jailbreaking also allows devices to run devices to run on nonauthorized networks.

While the U.S. Copyright Office has declared the software legal, Apple discourages users from loading the bypass, reminding them that doing so will void their device's warranty. "As we've said before, the vast majority of customers do not jailbreak their iPhones as this can violate the warranty and can cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably," Apple said in a statement earlier this week.

The Triceratops Never Existed

Scientists are saying that the Triceratops dinosaur – you know, the three horned one – was actually a juvenile form of a Torosaurus, the three-horned dinosaur you don’t know. Apparently, dinosaurs’ skulls can shape-shift.

The scientists, John Scannella and Jack Horner, believe that the Torosaurus and Triceratops are actually of the same species. According to the scientists, as a Triceratops aged, its horns and frill became more similar to that of a Torosaurus. Short becomes long, saw-edged becomes smoothed and so on. Having them be the same species would explain why there were never any young Torosaurus fossils discovered.

The duo say there is a clear transition from triceratops into torosaurus as the animals grow older. For example, the oldest specimens of triceratops show a marked thinning of the bone where torosaurus has holes, suggesting they are in the process of becoming fenestrated

Scientists sure enjoy crushing my childhood memory of The Land Before Time (they nixed Brontosaurus a while back). Hopefully they won’t delete Triceratops too. [New Scientist via BoingBoing]

Hot Starcraft II is Frying Graphics Cards, Blizzard Issues Temporary Fix

courtesy of DailyTech.com

Starcraft II fans beware, your graphics card may get Zerg rushed

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, the first game in Blizzard's highly anticipated real-time strategy sequel trilogy launched on Tuesday. Unfortunately, the blockbuster PC title -- which is expected to sell 10 million copies or more -- had some bumps during its launch.

There were a number of minor bugs, but nothing show stopping at first. Then the reports of melting GPUs hit.

Among those affected was Adam Biessener of Game Informer whose card melted while he was live blogging about his game experience. He bemoaned, "Three hours of cursing later, I'm posting this from my wife's laptop because both my graphics card and my work laptop appear to be fried."

The problem appears to be located in the main menu, where an uncapped frame rate maxes out the GPU, in some cases pushing it to overheating and potentially permanent failure.

Blizzard has issued a response on its support site, acknowledging that it was aware of the issue, and offering a quick fix. The company writes:

Certain screens make your hardware work pretty hard

Screens that are light on detail may make your system overheat if cooling is overall insufficient. This is because the game has nothing to do so it is primarily just working on drawing the screen very quickly. A temporary workaround is to go to your Documents\StarCraft II Beta\variables.txt file and add these lines:

frameratecapglue=30

frameratecap=60

You may replace these numbers if you want to.

For eager customers who already lost a graphics card, though, that fix may prove too late. Blizzard has not announced any plans to replace the lost hardware of victims who experienced the bug.

Many customers are outraged at this. Writes one victim Lorsaire:

Why was this not addressed already before release, and why were there no breaking news warnings or updates to fix this before people started having damage done to their hardware? My Nvidia GeForce cost me more than $300 to get a good card that was great for gaming... Blizzard are you doing anything or have plans to compensate people for the damage you've created?

Of course some of the cards may be covered by manufacturer warranties. And while it does appear a bug (uncapped framerates) is partially to blame for killing off the cards, a card pushed to the max would generally not die instantly were it not for poorly engineered and/or defective cooling. It appears that the cards ultimately were done in by the double blow of both a software bug (in SC II) and hardware issues.

The game features intensely addictive multiplayer gaming between three diverse races -- the Zerg, the Protoss, and the Terrans. It also features a single player campaign in which you play a Terran rebel. Future titles -- Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void will included Protoss and Zerg campaigns, and possibly deliver new multiplayer features as well. Just beware the uncapped framerates.