Links For 3-1-2010

Stumped

I honestly can't decide which of the two following headlines is the best one I've read this week...

Hospital says "grandma's dead," grandma disagrees with diagnosis. Or... Do not go to Kmart in speedos and terrorize customers with a sex toy.

I just can't decide. Both made me smile.

Misc

Internet overtakes print in news consumption among Americans. I've been getting my news almost exclusively from the internet for over a decade. I might catch a bit of TV news. Newspapers are like the horse and buggy of the 21st century.

Will the soda tax do anything to curb obesity? They're trying to pull this nanny state bullshit here in Masschusetts as well. It looks like in New York that Diet soda (which is what I drink) will be exempt from this. I doubt that'll be the case here in Massachusetts.

Burger King tells singing employee to stop it. I'm amazed that the RIAA or the ASCAP aren't trying to sue the guy for "public performance" as well.

Entertainment

What will - and won't - be revealed in LOST's final episodes. I'm just hoping it won't suck and leave me feeling like I wasted a few years worth of viewing time, like BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and THE SOPRANOS did.

Video Games

FALLOUT 2's rejected 'Childkiller' icon is, uh, whoa ... Maybe I'm a horrible person, but this made me laugh hysterically.

Well, I think it's funny. Taste be damned.

Report shows taliban militants used PlayStation controller for detonator. Three guesses which news channel jumped on this first. Oh c'mon, you only need one guess.

Kojima says PEACE WALKER is a "test" for MGS series. After MGS4, I'm not sure I want to continue on with any more METAL GEAR games. I probably will though. I'm a sucker like that.

HEAVY RAIN film rights optioned by New Line Years ago. Call me crazy, but isn't New Line gone now? Or were the owners just dumped? I can't recall. Anyway, I don't see a HEAVY RAIN movie working. The game itself is a movie, really.

SPLINTER CELL: CONVICTION delays were good for development, says Ubisoft. Yeah well, let's see how good those delays were for sales. A lot of people are pretty annoyed by the game being years late.

DEADLY PREMONITION is blatantly better than HEAVY RAIN. While I enjoyed HEAVY RAIN, I got a kick out of this review, which nails some of the flaws of HEAVY RAIN.

Comics

Batman > Superman. ACTION COMICS #1 which had the first appearance of Superman sold for $1M. Now DETECTIVE COMICS #27, the first appearance of Batman, just sold for $1,075,000. So Batman is just a little bit better.

Is Superman headed to the courtroom? Warners has hired a new, "scary" lawyer to defend their claim on Superman.

Rapidshare banned from distributing pirated comic books. I think this is a bit misleading. Rapidshare is supposed to actively filter regular eBooks published by a few specific companies. None of which are comics publishers. You can still find all of the current week's comics on Rapidshare easily. Even if Rapidshare were to try filtering comics, people can easily find ways around it. Renaming the files, adding in a few dummy files (like .txt) files to the zips and rars if the original version is flagged, etc.

Yarr!!

Growing concern from european officials over ACTA. They know public outrage will follow this crap.

New ACTA leak outs who have been blocking transparency. Unsurprisingly, among them is the US.

P2P use down, but 24M fewer people bought music in '09 vs '07. I can think of two reasons for this. One is the economy. Less money means less spent on music. The second is that most popular music out there today is god awful. Seriously.

UK “three-strikes” bill to outlaw open Wi-Fi. I guess that would eliminate the slight legal loophole. After all, there are people out there using other people's network's to download stuff: Using WiFI to infringe copyright – the moral dilemma.

Cute baby video wins battle against music label. As much as I roll my eyes at this sort of inane crap that plagues YouTube, it's nice to see somebody score a victory against the record industry.