In the words of Gegtik, OMG OMG OMG OMG. A live action Transformers movie appears to be in the works, and they even have a picture of Optimus Prime standing in a NYC street in this article. Ok actually the picture is most likely fake but just last week plans were stumbled upon which do seem to be real. It's possibly being done in cooperation with the same guys who are doing the Final Fantasy movie (which looks amazing)

... the film details the entire where they came from.... how they got to Earth.... Why Decepticons can become dangerous things, and Autobots became passive domestic vehicles. The film will allegedly span something like 250 million years of history and it will have Optimus Prime [snip]

So.. fake picture, but real movie plans. Yay!

There was a story here about some DNS hack stuff that turned out to be false, apparently Microsoft however has been hacked and there is a story about it over here. Also a story about traffic from Yahoo getting hacked as well. Thanks GoofyBoy and Microsoft Fan. As for the rest of the story, we'll chalk up one for the commies.

Salon has an article looking at the current power crisis in California, where some people in the power industry are now saying the Internet is the cause of it all. This is of course the easy way out; you screwed something up? Blame the net. The Salon piece takes a look at power consumption of computers, the lobbying of big Silicon Valey players such as Intel to get more power plants built, and how the Internet might actually save power. Thanks r0ck0.

A close look at the numbers, say some researchers, suggests that the opposite is true -- that the Net may actually be helping to drive down overall energy demand. Joseph Romm, a former assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy, notes that from 1992 to 1996 total energy demand grew at about 2.4 percent a year in the U.S., during a period when the gross domestic product was growing at a rate of 3.2 percent a year. But from 1996 to 2000, when the Net boom was really taking off, the gross domestic product grew at an average of 4 percent a year while energy demand grew at a rate of only 1 percent. In other words, the growth in energy demand was far below the growth in the overall economy; as the economy grew hotter and hotter the rate of increase in the demand for energy actually slowed.

Seems everything nowadays is attributed to the Internet, good and bad.

Microsoft is hard at work on the .NET project and Whistler etc. Some more details have been coming out lately on the project which are pretty interesting. There is the question of the next IE being standalone or integrated, how the heck that whole leasing software over the net thing will work and many more. Then there is this bit from the guys at WinInfo a few days back:

the next version of Windows, now features some intriguing anti-piracy mechanisms that create a personal product identification code that is attached to the machine on which the OS is installed. If I understand the purpose of this new scheme, Microsoft is finally following through on its long-time threat to enforce its licensing policies, as each Windows license is technically attached to the machine on which it is first installed, and is not attached to the person that installed the product. With the new scheme, it will no longer be possible to use the same Product ID to install Windows to more than one machine.

The emails are just pouring in over IT whatever IT is that was mentioned in ER yesterday. Basically there is a new invention by this guy that is staging to be announced in the near future that promises to change the world, the way people think (!?) and the way cities are designed. Most people are pointing towards a new mode of transportation or energy. There is coverage in a few places so far, here's a list:

MSNBC ,  Inside.com , Salon.com , Wired , Image (Thanks BillG)
Patents from the past: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
Patents applying for: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

An interesting (amusing) story over on ZDNet has word that eBay is a bit upset that people are using eBay to find sellers and buyers and then they contact that person outside of the website for transactions instead of using eBay itself. Just look at this:

Effective immediately, eBay will first warn, then suspend, members who use their eBay connection to conduct business offline. For example, it is against eBay rules for a person to contact a losing bidder on eBay to offer that person the same product without going through eBay

Also beginning immediately, anyone who uses the Shack messagecenter to contact other Shack users will no longer be allowed to send messages to that user outside of messagecenter (read: email). I'll catch you punk!

Just because, here's a story talking about the next StarWars movie prequel (Thanks Eric) on AICN which was put together from IMDB and the official StarWars page that the latest rought cut of the movie was previewed at ILM. The news? Well one of the producers says something along the lines of "At times, you have to face the truth of what you didn't get and what you hoped for." and also goes on to say that Lucas and the other producer are stressing a bit more than usual having to 'rework' the film.

George and Rick are"stressing" over a major reworking of the storyline. It's putting deadlines back and makes our work extremely frustrating. There are whispers that Spielberg is coming on board to help with the editing and story.

This is something that should freak a lot of people out. According to a recent study by PC Data, (Thanks Eric) female gamers have recently overtaken males as the majority of gamers playing games on the internet:

while men make up 55 percent of overall gamers, females for the first time comprise a majority of online gamers at 50.4 percent. [...] Men are also three times as likely as female gamers to participate in first-person shooter games

Thats pretty nuts... I dont know what else to say but uh... so whats up baby? come here often?

You guys might remember a story a while back about British Telecom claiming a copyright on the basic hyperlink used on all websites. Then figured "pshaw, not like they will enforce it". Well they have filed a lawsuit against Prodigy  (Thanks Eric) for just that. They are going after people at the ISP level instead of the website level, which is... odd.

The telco aims to require all ISPs who use hyperlinks -- a fundamental Web technology -- to pay BT a licence fee. BT declined to say what rate it plans to charge

The government has been wrestling with the whole free speech and internet filtering controversy for a while now. A group called PeaceFire has put together software to circumvent software like Net Nanny and Cybersurfer. They released it for free.

Porn-blocking Web filters from Net Nanny, CyberSitter, and five other companies can be disabled with a program released Monday by anti-filtering group Peacefire, the group claims.  The program, available as a free download at the Peacefire Web site, was released in reaction to expected federal mandates for Web filters on school and library computers.

Ok, well I promised not to make any more full news items about the whole presidential thing until it was decided. Well with my expansive and amazing political knowledge (and from reading CNN) it looks like we're 95% likely going to end up with George Bush. Saving any last minute super-wackiness I think we can call it decided. I think we can also determine that the electoral system could use a bit of standardization and 'massaging' or something to smooth it out. I look forward to seeing this in history books in 20 years and chuckling about it.

Super coolbeans nerdy story of the day. After a couple of 'false-starts' it looks like NASA has finally found some fairly conclusive evidence of the existence at one time of water on Mars. They plan to make an official announcement about the findings  Thanks JayZee

The discovery is among the most significant concerning Mars so far, because such places are the most likely locations for fossils or other signs of past life.

Hehe... testarticle... hehe..