Today, highly outspoken, mal-practicing — and in this writer’s opinion, mentally unstable — Florida lawyer Jack Thompson faced a hearing before the Florida Bar. Thompson has been under much legal scrutney for his very controversial techniques in court cases mostly about the banning of violent video games. His antics include harrassing  game journalists with calls to the FBI and other law enforcement authorities, defending a teen who shot and killed police officers saying Grand Theft Auto made him do it, and even encouraging the portrayal of the murders of real US citizens in the gaming industry.

The Florida Bar’s hearing was held to provide recommendations to the Florida Supreme Court on how to discipline Thompson. The judge’s final recommendations were given only after Thompson objected (from a 14 page pre-written document) that the court did not have the authority to rule over him, the judge was incompetent and would be removed from office, and he himself has been the sole instrument in bringing injustices to light. He then walked out of the courtroom, reported by Kotaku.com. The hearings continued without Thompson’s presence, however. The judge’s final recommendation was that Thompson should be disembarred for 10 years — unable to practice law in that time.

I guess when you’re so full of yourself and offend everyone — media, legal system, citizens — you can make a mockery out of court hearing and still walk out of the front door? Oh well, he still thinks adult gamers are neo-nazi delinquents who are rarely seen outside of jail.

Via Wired.com and Kotaku.com.

Head over to Wired.com this morning and you’ll see an amazing article. Inventor of the Segway has dedicated the last two years to research and development with the Department of Defense. The agenda: develop a robotic prosthetic arm that is strong enough to hold heavy objects, light enough to weigh as much as a real arm, delicate enough to pick up a grape without crushing it.

The amazing part is they did just that. The even bigger part is the arm is fully controllable by the person wearing it. Click on the link for videos and more info on this wonder of modern day technology.

Dean Kamen’s Robot Arm Grabs More Publicity

The big Apple rumor going around the net right now is the possible new wireless/portable device the company may have up its sleeve.

Even with Intel Germany’s recent support of such a device and then reinterpreting those words to be more vague, something like the Apple Tablet would be possible, and to die for.

Imagination runs wild when you consider the functionality of an iPhone mixed with Mac OS on a screen double the size of the iPhone… Cool doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Remember, don’t hold your breath. None of this is official, however, Apple Rumors always seem to be able to add a little truth in with the speculation.

Via Wired.com.

It is truly amazing how our understanding of technology changes on a day to day basis.

While running an Operation System on a removable drive is nothing new, promising that an OS will run directly from a 2.0 Gb USB key is pretty spectacular.

Enter Fedora 9, the latest release of an open source, linux-based operating system. Fedora 9 has been designed to run as light-weight as possible with little need for hard-drive space. This enables the OS to be very portable; able to be run from virtually any computer with the correct processor for your build of Fedora.

The system promises to run on all Intel Macs, PPC Macs and Windows machines, but you should know what you’re doing before messing with disk partitions, dual-booting, and the like. Sadly I cannot test the portability myself, as the installers do not work on a Mac. It’s a PC world…

Via digg.com.

With the amazing push against video games being present in the open market, it’s hard to focus on how other forms of media are doing when mature content spreads across all spectrums.

I found this story via Wired.com’s Game | Life blog in which the author focused on how much mature content was being kept from younger hands over the past years. When I began reading the story, I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw the percentiles of other forms of media.

The FTC, Federal Trade Commission, which takes the control of explicit material through commercial media and broadcast media very seriously, performed a 2008 study in which 13 to 16 year olds were asked to try to purchase R-rated movie tickets, R-rated and Unrated DVDs, Parental Advisory Label (PAL) music CDs, and M-rated video games. The FTC has performed 4 other similar studies in 2000, 2001, 2003, and 2006.

In 2008, the percentage of young teens that were able to purchase M-rated video games was 20%. In my opinion, that’s still too high (check out the original article to see which retail chains are to blame).

However, the next lowest percentile of susseccful purchases by minors is nearly double that of video game’s failure. Movie theater chains allowed 35% of the study’s minors to purchase R-rated movie tickets. However, according to the graph, the theaters have been the most successful over the years keeping mature content from minors, but they don’t seem to be making much headway for improvment.

Retail chains show apauling statistics, with 47% minors able to purchase R-rated DVDs, 51% able to purchase Unrated DVDs, and a staggering 54% able to purchase music CDs with Parental Advisory Labels on the front cover.

Thankfully, these percentages are coming down from the years of previous studies. And maybe because I am a gamer I have a cetain talent for hearing or reading the onslaught of video game bashing brought forth from the likes of Jack Thompson, FOX News, public organizations, city councils and even federal and state governements.

It has been years since I’ve heard a whisper about other violent/sexual forms of media and how to keep them out of the hands of minors. How can those with a voice continually lynch the most successful ratings system that is being enforced better than all the others?

My speculations? Some are simply trying to jumpstart a political campaign (Hilary Clinton, Jack Thompson, etc.) on a topic they know next to nothing about, OR they truly are egomanics crazy enough to label a whole demographic as “neo-nazis” deserving to spend life on deathrow.

I would like to point out that you can still read every techTalk article that has appeared in the Crestview News Bulletin and on our website.

Simply keep checking here and there will be a list on the side of this blog that will keep up-to-date techTalk articles for easy access.

So far, techTalk articles have included:

techTalk: Grand Theft Auto IV here to stay
You may call me biased. You may say I’m morally devoid of the concepts required to make a rational, kind-hearted human being. Whatever you may say, I’ll still believe Grand Theft Auto IV is a superb piece of interactive entertainment…

techTalk: Tech for your grad
As graduation draws nearer for the class of 2008, parents and relatives are gathering ideas of gifts to give to commemorate this passage into the adult world…

techTalk: Take it, share it
So you received a digital camera as a gift recently. Or you had the technological itch to buy one. In some way, you now have a digital device you use to keep your memories and loved ones close…

techTalk: What are your kids playing?
Your little ones may like to play video games. If so they probably like to play them a lot…

techTalk: What DTV Transition Day means to you
Since television entered American homes in glorious black and white transmissions, programs have been broadcast over the air in analog format. Simply put, whatever channel you are tuned to, that’s the only broadcast you are receiving at that one time.

techTalk: The Blu-ray/HD-DVD war is over
The high-definition format war is finally finished. The battlefield has been cleared and there is only one survivor. Luckily for us, this is a great thing.

I have to get this off my chest. There’s this game scheduled for a Fall 2008 release that has me vexed by some sort of spell.

LittleBigPlanet for the PlayStation 3 is an incredibly unique game promising some amazing gameplay and experiences.

Think Super Mario Bros. having a freak genetic accident with MySpace, creating a social network specifically for gamers, in which everyone is a sock-puppet jumping, running and creating custom content in a photo-realistic, building block world.

That’s just all kinds of cool.

In single-player mode, the object of the game is to collect, collect, collect! Any piece of material, object or even music found in the game’s default levels are automatically added to your inventory in custom edit mode. Players can then join the game’s online features and share custom levels and objects via a world-wide social network.

For some reason, this game just makes sense. It’s just supposed to be. LittleBigPlanet releases fall this year.

Check out some amazing gameplay videos and trailers here: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/25200.html

You may not have heard about the acquisition story of the year (so far), so let me give you an update, in my favorite “laymanese” languages.

Back in late January, mega-corporation and software giant Microsoft placed a bid to buy everything Yahoo!, the online search company dealing in many facets of the online communities existing today. The bid was priced at $44.6 billion (huzzah!) and Microsoft patiently waited for Yahoo! to bite.

Yahoo! didn’t. In reply, Yahoo! said it was worth more, estimating a $5 billion inscrease for the company’s worth. Microsoft gawked and held fast to it’s original bid.

After several weeks of analysts puring over the possible merger, Yahoo! defiantly shouted “No!” again and again at Microsoft.

So this month Microsoft finally backed off from the deal, withdrawing it’s bid. However, many in the tech news industry speculate Microsoft may still take more hostile actions to aquire Yahoo! any way possible.

In my opinion, if Microsoft were to aquire Yahoo! and it’s retained brands such as Flickr, Yahoo! Mail, Geocities, etc., Microsoft will have its hands in many more properties than it can handle at this point. Microsoft seems to be losing focus in every one of its properties and failing to perfect the ones the company relies upon to survive. Windows Vista is a very good example of this, and yet Microsoft would rather dabble in the venues of online advertising, search and community than improve upon its best franchise.

Now I’ve never been a fan of Nine Inch Nails. Mainly due to lack of interest. However, when any band does something amazing with the way they would like to distribute music, THAT catches my attention.

NIN is allowing free distrobution and download of the new album entitled “The Slip” from the band’s Web site. Not only are they releasing MP3s of every song on the album, they have several different options that offer higher audio quality for the audiophiles of the world.

Just like Radiohead released it’s newest album for a mere donation that you decided, NIN seems to be rethinking the way music should be distributed.

Personally, I hope this begins a trend in the music industry. Record companies have been needing a good slap in the face since the days of the original Napster. Artists simply want the music heard. Record labels want the music to fill the corporation bank with high prices.

Here’s to the online music revolution! And props to NIN for bravely facing the online frontier.

I apologize in advance for the third blog post on the subject of video games in a row, but I saw this on digg this morning and was very impressed. A study was launched to go out into the real world and find out how violent video games actually effect children and teenagers. Authors Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olsen lead the study and published their findings in the book Grand Theft Childhood.

G4TV’s Adam Sessler interviews the two authors on his show X-Play, a show about video game news and reviews. That video can be found here.

In the interview, Kutner and Olsen explain their findings were worlds apart from popularly cited research programs that claim violent video games make a violent person. They even included non-gamers and children who play non-violent video games into the study. Their findings are very interesting.

In the end I think the only answer left to the big debate is there are good people and there are psychopathically deranged, homocidally preoccupied, should-be-locked-up bad people.