Friday, April 7, 2000

More on the id, et al, Lawsuit -- 1:59 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

This ABC News article gives more information on the lawsuit against id and many other companies which was thrown out of court yesterday (story). Here's what the parents of the victims were claimed, and the main reason the suit was thrown out:

The lawsuit accused 25 companies of negligence for not warning consumers that content they made available could incite copycat violence.

Heaven help us if everything that could possibly set someone off would have to have a warning label. I also love it when these suits assume that music, games, etc., main purpose is to get you to kill yourself or others. Seems to me that would kind of cut off ye olde revenue stream. While my heart goes out to the parents who must have gone through indescribable pain, it doesn't justify punishing someone else. And yes, the shooter was convicted and will spend the rest of his life in jail.

More Obi-Wan Screenshots -- 11:37 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

GamersZone has some new screenshots from Obi-Wan, LucasArts' Episode I first/third-person shooter, as well as some concept sketches. Thanks JediKnight.net.

Thursday, April 6, 2000

Lawsuit vs. id Thrown Out -- 5:52 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

id's Todd Hollenshead updated his .plan with news that the lawsuit pending against them and others has been thrown out of court.

In a decision that has just been made available, id has prevailed in the Paducha lawsuit (more formally known as the "James Case") on all points. Judge Johnstone has dismissed the case on all grounds, validating what we have said all along: the case lacked a shred of merit.

The "Paducha" lawsuit was after a 14 year old in Kentucky shot several of his schoolmates to death in December of 1997. Here's a link to the Avault report of this lawsuit when it initially occurred, courtesy of Blue's News.

John Carmack .plan update -- 12:02 pm CST, Update by The Master

John Carmack updated his .plan with some observations on his research for the new graphics engine he's working on. If you are a hardcore geek, go read it.

Netscape 6 PR1 Review -- 10:49 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

PC Week has put up a review of Netscape 6 PR1. They give it a mostly favorable review. One comment that they make that I don't understand is that there is less screen real estate than previous versions. Haven't they figured out how to turn off the "My Sidebar" panel? Thanks Linux Today.

My top reasons to use Netscape 6/Mozilla:

• It's smaller, thus less bloat (about a third of the size of an equivalent IE install)
• It's portable: the Mac, Win32, and Linux versions are almost identical
• It's open source: no more hiding "features" and worthless code
• It's standards-compliant. 'Nuff said.
• It's not tied so tightly to my OS that when the browser crashes, it takes my computer with it (hello, IE!)

It's a little unstable for full-time use right now, but once it is out of beta (or even alpha for that matter), Mozilla will be my full-time browser. I suggest you do the same.

No Verant Snooping -- 10:30 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

It seems that some people at Verant must've completely lost their minds for a moment. Fortunately sanity has been regained. According to this News.com article the latest EverQuest patch contained a small utility that would scan a user's hard drive for cheats. The license with the patch included this ominous statement:

"You also grant us permission to access, extract and upload data relating to any program that we, in our reasonable discretion, determine interferes with the proper operation of EverQuest"

They also had said that people who refused to allow their drives to be scanned would not be allowed to play EverQuest. After an obvious public outcry, the scanner has been removed and Verant has backed off.

"We can admit when we make mistakes, and I believe this is a case where we owe an apology to our player base," wrote Verant Interactive chief executive John Smedley in a message to players this afternoon. "In our haste to try and thwart people from damaging the game, we went overboard."

Wasn't ANYBODY at Verant bright enough to see that people would justifiably have multiple hemorrhages about this? Yikes. Thanks Slashdot.

LucasArts Obi-Wan Page -- 10:14 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

LucasArts finally formally admits Episode 1: Obi-Wan exists by adding this page to their website. Not much information there, except a couple of screenshots. Thanks Blue.

Past Two Days' News

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