wars

First off, massive geek respect to anyone who's managed to hold on to their "Empire Strikes Back" AT-AT Imperial Walker from childhood. But it takes a geek visionary to tastefully slap a boombox into the side of one and paint the thing K.I.T.T. black. This thing is like an '80s nostalgia heart attack. If you know who did this, give them a hug from me.

(via Boing Boing)

Gears of War 2 writer Joshua Ortega was at Comic-Con in New York City over the weekend and had some interesting things to say about the future of his popular video game franchise.

"You will not be disappointed in the next ten years," he said to those in attendance. "It's a ten-year plan. Gears is long-term. The lancer is the new lightsaber."

If what Ortega said is really what the game's creator, Cliff Bleszinski, has in mind, that would mean the current Gears saga won't end until 2016, assuming the clock started when the first game was released.

Games lasting more than a decade isn't unheard of in the video game industry. Almost every major Nintendo franchise has been around much longer than that and the Final Fantasy series seems like it has been around forever. So there certainly is a precedent for a major franchise like Gears to last all that time.

But is there really a market out there for continuing one storyline for 10 years? The idea has been tried on numerous occasions--Yu Suzuki's Shenmue comes to mind even though Sega stopped development after two "episodes"--but so far, most (certainly not all) developers have decided that continuing one storyline for 10 years doesn't work, so they've changed things up.

Will Gears be different? I hope so.… Read more

Our resident nasal storage expert Rafe Needleman is on the show to explain some quantum physics to you. Rafe also schools me in why latency doesn't matter to bandwidth but he still won't admit that he need 60 Gbps. And we realize that the only way to save the world is by drinking more whiskey. Time to get to it.

Charter gets bragging rights with new 60Mbps broadband tier http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2009/01/charter-gets-bragging-rights-with-new-60mbps-broadband-tier.ars

iPod / iPhone CES pavilion sells out in record time, quadruples to include … Read more

With companies downsizing in the current economic crisis, and the lucky pool of survivors having to shoulder their absent co-workers' load and slog it out, there's never been a greater need than now to flog the whip, ah, motivate the office geeks.

Thanks to the site Geeks Are Sexy, inspiration lies close at hand. Enter the original Man in Black, who's been known to enforce inspire unquestioning obedience teamwork wherever he treads. Motivation on a poster has never looked so geekily sexy.

(Via Crave Asia)

Today marks the first official day of the CES show here in Las Vegas, and the entire showroom floor is buzzing about the 404! Okay, not exactly, but we're here anyway to give you our unique perspective on the goings-on. Today, we ask Crave Editor Erica Ogg to join us for the first half and speak on the Palm Pre announcement.

One thing we've noticed this year is the popularity of electronic devices targeted toward the geriatric-age bracket. We're all for helping out Grandma, but does she really need a Bluetooth diabetes monitor? She's got … Read more

The Israel Defense Forces this week extended its airstrikes on Gaza to the Web, posting video footage of its air assault against Hamas militants on YouTube and using Twitter to spread its message.

According to various news reports, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) created its own YouTube channel carrying videos that include black-and-white aerial footage of attacks on Hamas weapon sites, and clips of Hamas terrorists loading rockets into trucks.

An IDF spokesperson said it is using the platform to "help us bring our message to the world," by offering "exclusive footage showing the IDF's operation … Read more

After the mostly abysmal "prequels" that George Lucas inflicted on die-hard Star Wars fans (The Phantom Menace was so painful that I thought of suing on the grounds of emotional distress), take heart: it may actually get worse.

Lucas is planning to stage a musical version of the Star Wars series, distilling 13-plus hours of film into a 90-minute musical extravaganza. But don't despair: it's not as bad as it sounds. Les Miserables Clone Wars, it is not.

Instead, it will be an orchestral production to accompany clips from the movies, not R2-D2 belting "The … Read more

While you may think that the economic news is totally bleak, the video game industry seems like it may well be one very bright exception to the worldwide gloom.

Bolstering the theory that the industry may be recession-proof, or at least better positioned to weather the storm than most, the video game business posted a startlingly strong November, according to figures released Thursday by the analyst firm, NPD Group.

NPD reported that overall, the industry posted sales of $2.91 billion, up 10 percent from $2.64 billion in November 2007. And for the year, sales stand at $16.04 … Read more

Editor's note: This is part of a series of stories about the recession's effect on the tech industry.

Not long ago, during an evening of hanging out with friends, five of us sat in my living room, staring at and holding tight to our iPhones or iPod Touches.

This wasn't the anti-social behavior you might think, though. Actually, we were having a great time, banging our fingers furiously on the touch screens of the five devices, trying to kill each other (and not be killed ourselves) in the utterly addictive multiplayer shooting game Maze Wars Revisited.

The … Read more