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Items of Note:
We’re podcasting live from at I-CON 28 in Brendwood, NY!
We’re proud to announce that The Geekcast has joined the Farpoint Media Network! This episode is the first show we’re releasing with FPM and it’s an exciting time for everyone. We have an updated website and we plan on bringing all of the back-episodes online so the entire Geekcast catalog is available! Your feedback is welcome and appreciated!
This is the last week to let us know if you’re interested in playing Xbox online. We need to know how much interest there is, so we can proceed accordingly, if at all. We had one other person say they’re interested, bringing the total to a whopping two!
Listener Feedback:
Kevin Writes:
Bi-weekly would be great.
What I would like to see in a 2nd abbreviated segment would be Hacks and Picks. Hacks could be anything MAC, PC, iPhone/Touch, related. Software and/or hardware. For Picks, I’d like to see what you are using on your machines that help you be more productive. Again, hardware and/or software – and “free” picks (like software downloads) are even better.
I watch for Twitter tweets, but don’t tweet much my self. So, even though I didn’t respond to your Twitter message about listening to the show – I do in fact listen when I can.
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Geek This Week:
Aaron & Gozer: Our I-Con experience
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Tech & Gaming News:
Hard time for 419s: three scammers get 4-8 years in prison
The US Department of Justice has sentenced three scammers to jail time after they spammed “thousands” of e-mail accounts asking potential victims to wire them money in exchange for a hefty payout. $1.2 million and a guilty plea later, the trio will be doing time, though other Nigerian scams are still going strong.
Three advanced-fee (also known as 419, or Nigerian scam) fraudsters were sentenced to prison in the US this week after scamming more than $1.2 million out of their victims. The three all pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy, eight counts of wire fraud, and one count of mail fraud in January of 2008, and will now do time for between four and eight years apiece.
According to the US Department of Justice, two of those sentenced are Nigerian citizens while the third is from France. Nnamdi Chizuba Anisiobi (also known as “Jiggaman,” according to the DoJ) of Nigeria got the longest sentence at 87 months, while his friends Anthony Friday Ehis (“Mr. T”) and Kesandu Egwuonwu (no interesting nickname) both received 57 months in prison. The trio was arrested in Amsterdam in early 2006 by Dutch authorities and extradited to the US, where charges were filed.
Everyone who has an e-mail account knows what these scammers did. According to the indictment, the three defendants spammed “thousands” of potential victims, falsely claiming to control millions of dollars abroad and begging people to help in exchange for a tidy sum. “In one scenario, the defendants sent e-mails purporting to be from an individual suffering from terminal throat cancer who needed assistance distributing approximately $55 million to charity,” wrote the DoJ.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/doj-sentences-three-nigerian-scammers-to-prison.ars
Guitar controllers axed from Brutal Legend
Tim Schafer, speaking to a group of (likely excited) game journalists, broke the hard truth last week during GDC 2009: “I was trying to figure out how you would throw down the controller and pick up the guitar,” he said. MTV Multiplayer is reporting that Mr. Schafer then told the group there are “no plans” for guitar controller compatibility in the upcoming Double Fine-developed, EA-published game.
We’ve got one question for you, Mr. Schafer: WHAT?! But rather than mull over the fact that we won’t be literally melting enemies’ faces In Brütal Legend with our plastic guitars — a travesty, no doubt about it — we’ll instead spend our time once again perusing the gallery of screens below, looking forward to its eventual release.
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/04/03/guitar-controllers-axed-from-brutal-legend/
AT&T Wireless has surprising new terms of service
For a moment, I thought AT&T Wireless’ new Netbook offerings were good deals. As it turns out, not so much. According to Publicknowledge.org, the company silently revised its terms of service on Monday, just a few days before it announced the new program to offer discounted Netbooks to its 3G broadband service customers in Atlanta and Philadelphia. In the “Prohibited and Permissible Uses” section, the new terms of service explicitly state:
Downloading movies using P2P file-sharing services, customer-initiated redirection of television or other video or audio signals via any technology from a fixed location to a mobile device, Web broadcasting, and/or for the operation of servers, telemetry devices and/or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition devices is prohibited.
This means you are potentially no longer allowed to stream content from third-party Web sites, such as You Tube, and may not even freely use video-streaming applications, such as Slingbox (both the existing Windows Mobile and upcoming iPhone versions) anymore. In terms of the bigger picture, AT&T is now treating its 3G wireless data network differently from its wired high-speed DSL network, which still allows you to do whatever you want. This is probably because the company does have to pay for the wireless spectrum, in addition to other investments.
While the above change affects only those who are big fans of mobile video-streaming, this next part of the revised terms of service affects all DataConnect customers:
On the 5GB DataConnect Plan, once you exceed your 5GB allowance you will be automatically charged $0.00048 per Kb for any data used. On the 200MB Data Connect Plan, once you exceed your 200MB allowance, you will be automatically charged $10 for an additional 100MB. Unused data from either your initial allowance or any overage allowance (e.g., the 100MB) will not be carried over to the next billing period; all data allowances must be used in the billing period in which the allowance is provided.
Basically, AT&T Wireless wants to spell out that, unlike for voice-plan minutes, it won’t carry your unused data to the next month.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10211311-1.html?tag=mncol
Sony: Over 50% of PSP’s 2009 Lineup Remains Unannounced
Games like LittleBigPlanet and Rock Band are just the beginning.
Rock Band Unplugged, LittleBigPlanet and MotorStorm are a few of the big PSP releases for 2009 recently announced, but as much of 50-60% of the handheld’s lineup for just this year still remains a secret, Sony Computer Entertainment America’s director of hardware marketing John Koller told GameSpot in an interview today.
“The many announcements we made on the software side for PSP were inclusive of that tremendous sales growth that we’ve seen on PSP,” said Koller. “But they were also representative of the fact that we went out and talked to publishers about what sells best on PSP and how to craft their business model accordingly. Many of them had taken a bit of a scattershot approach and done a lot of ports and titles that just weren’t going to sell very well on PSP.”
Koller claims PSP games in 2009 and beyond will not suffer from the same issues as they did in the past, and we’ll start to hear more about the other half of the PSP’s still unrevealed software lineup starting at E3 in June.
“There’s a lot of announcements coming up to E3 and particularly at E3,” Koller told GameSpot. “There’s probably 50-60 percent of the lineup for the year that has not been announced and there’s some big titles coming. So there’s a lot of excitement on PSP.” 1UP will, of course, be there in full force at E3 in Los Angeles later this year.
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3173560
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