SlipperyBrick is a huge fan of the Fallout franchise. In fact, I would rank the Fallout series as my all time favorite right behind Planescape: Torment. I loved the Fallout humor. The music ,the fifties cartoon-ish illustrations and the ability to put a shiny metal ball through the eyes of a mutant at 50 yards with my Red Ryder BB gun.

Like many fans I have waited for the release of Fallout 3 with a great sense of expectation. Then as the game was sold by Interplay to Bethesda, I assumed that the game would just die. Apparantly, Bethesda has been developing the game since late 2004 and is now working on it with most of its resources.

According to Video Game News,

Speaking to Todd Howard (Executive producer of Oblivion, Morrowind and Fallout) with regard

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Americans are dumping their land lines for mobile phones. This alone probably does not surprise and you may wonder why anyone cares. Well there is a segment that does care: telephone surveyors. You know those pesky callers you get right about the time you’re about to dig into that yummy Tater Tot casserole.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in 2006, one out of every eight households did not have a land line. CDC researcher Stephen Blumberg said that there was a trend towards fewer land lines in the last several years but it seems to have increased in 2006. The 13.7 percent of homes without phones represents those that have mobile phones and those that just don’t have a phone. The assumption is that many consumers are using …

Reuters has recently reported that the Zune, Microsoft’s media player which launched in the US in November, could be launching for European customers before the end of 2007 but Microsoft is not ready to make the announcement official quite yet.

According to Jason Reindorp, Zune marketing director at Microsoft, they understand the competition they are up against with the Apple iPod, and ready to face the challenges. “You couldn’t get a more entrenched competitor,” he said at the annual music industry Midem Net conference in France. “But we feel really good about the first steps that we’ve taken.”

The Zune from Microsoft is a 30 GB digital media player that features some wireless functionality to share pictures, music, and video between devices, as well as a built in FM-tuner.

“The industry moves in this sort of Christmas …

How many games have you played that featured a railgun as a weapon? I’m guessing just a few under a thousand. From Halo to Stargate to the movie Eraser, railguns are just as much a part of the sci-fi genre as bad acting and large-chested blue aliens. Now however, railguns are no longer science fiction. They are a reality for the US Navy.

The Navy demonstrated its new toy at the Naval Surface Warfare Center. The weapon uses electromagnetism to propel non-explosive projectiles to high speeds. The new weapon should increase the range of US Navy vessels as well as decrease the cost. The railgun is expected to replace the expensive Tomahawk missile saving the Navy a lot of money. Because of the speed of the projectile …

Four of the leading technology companies in the world have come together to announce an agreement along with human rights groups for a working set of principles addressing freedom of expression and human rights.

Google, Microsoft, Vodafone and Yahoo along with the Berkman Center, Business for Social Responsibility, the Electric Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch and Reporters without Borders among others were all involved in the creating the code of conduct, which is designed to hold the participants responsible in these areas. There would still be a number of questions involved with this agreement, the largest of which is the deterrent to keep companies in line with the agreement.

This agreement comes after multiple technology companies being scrutinized for providing hardware or software that allows the government to censor or monitor information running through them. A prime example is …

Sony just can’t catch a break. Recent Japanese sales data on the PlayStation 3 indicate that the expensive console has had its worst week since its launch in Japan. In the week ending January 14th, Sony sold a paltry 25,531 units.

Overall, the console market has slowed. The Wii turned in its second worst week with sales of 93,708. The Xbox 360 sold a meager 9,035 units. The source of the sales data is Media Create, Co., a Japanese console gaming research company.

The big news is that while Sony claims to have shipped a large amount of consoles the sales reported by retailers is fairly low, indicating that once well publicized shortage is being replaced apathy on the part of consumers.

PlayStation 3 games are slow to sell also. …

Do cell phones cause cancer? That is what the British government wants to know. Some recent studies have raised questions about the safety of cell phones after ten years of use. Specifically, does using a cell phone for ten or more years lead to an increased chance of brain cancer?

Many studies have been conducted over the years, some with conflicting results but the latest consensus is that cell phones are generally safe for use in the short term. The effects of long term usage have yet to be studied. Some researchers feel that there is a critical need to study the long term effects and believe governments should be more concerned about the health of its citizens.

Professor Lawrie Challis is one such researcher. He is currently securing funding from the British Department of Health …

LG and PRADA have announced the release of a new designer mobile phone with a complete touch screen interface which could make some trouble for the new Apple iPhone which was unveiled earlier this month boasting a similar touch screen as a key feature.

The PRADA phone by LG (KE850) was built with the same attention to detail and quality that would be seen in other products from PRADA, and the price is in line as well. The PRADA phone will be available to customers in UK, France, Germany and Italy in late February, but of course luxury (and touch screens) don’t come cheap. The phone will retail for around 600 Euros (about $775 USD), which is almost $200 over the expected cost of the high-end iPhone.

LG boasts the “world’s first advanced touch interface” which …

Microsoft revealed three new mechanisms for customers looking to buy, upgrade, or otherwise license Windows Vista. The new options are designed to offer greater flexibility in obtaining the new operating system and to ensure users have the edition of Windows Vista that matches their needs. The announcement is made in the shadow of the worldwide availability of Windows Vista on January 30th.

The new purchase options are:

Windows Anytime Upgrade – Windows Anytime Upgrade allows customers to upgrade their current version of Windows Vista to a more advanced or feature-rich edition through an Internet transaction. This option will be available in the Start menu in Windows and allows users to select the desired upgrade version and purchase it online.

Windows Marketplace – Windows Marketplace makes Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office release available for direct …

Handheld Enertainment unveiled is new media player, the ZVUE 260. The ZVUE 260 is an entry level, next generation media player that is targeted at the low end of the media player market.

“We wanted to build a portable media player that is not only as sexy and useful as any player on the market, but is affordable as well,” said Jeff Oscodar, president and chief executive officer of HandHeld Entertainment. “We think we have accomplished these goals by creating the ZVUE 260.

The unit is about the same size as a Video iPod. The 260 has a 2.5 inch active matrix TFT backlit screen. Videos can run at up to 30 frames per second in a resolution of 320 by 240.

The 260 has a built in speaker in case you forget your headphones or want …

On January 8th, Tony Chor, Group Program Manager on IEblog wrote that IE 7 had reached 100 million installations, bringing the stats to over 26 percent of all web surfers using Internet Explorer 7 according to WebSideStory with IE 6 not far behind in second place.

The milestone comes only a few months after the release of the browser upgrade, and still seems to be quite a feat despite the fact that IE 7 became a critical update not long after it’s launch. Mozilla’s Firefox, which many believe to be the number 2 browser is continuing to gain popularity but took almost a year to reach the same milestone. Firefox is certainly not going to let IE gain too much ground as they have a new version of Firefox coming soon.

Internet Explorer 7 was launched …

We have more details in the previous story on the woman who was poisoned by drinking too much water as a contestant in the “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest. It appears that the DJ’s knew the contest was possibly dangerous and the woman complained of ailments on air. Now 10 people have lost their jobs and a homicide investigation is pending.

One of the DJ’s is quoted as saying “Can’t you get water poisoning and, like, die?” and “Maybe we should have researched this” before the contest started. During the contest Strange, who eventually died, offered to drink more water and the hosts joked that she looked 3 months pregnant. Strange is heard on a recording of the show saying, “I could probably drink more if you guys could pick …

Wikiseek is a new specialized search engine launched by Searchme, Inc. Wikiseek differentiates itself by limiting its searches to Wikipedia pages and those sites which are referenced within Wikipedia.

By restricting its indexes to the Wikipedia network, the results of Wikiseek are touted as being more authoritative and therefore less subject to spam and manipulation by SEO experts.

With fewer pages indexed, Wikiseek holds the capabilities to be faster than the current search engines. And by utilizing Searchme’s patented refinement technology to suggest search refinements, the results will be more relevant.

Wikiseek makes use of a tag cloud to help refine search results based on related subject matter. Other search enhancements include a Firefox search plugin as well as a Javascript-based extension that alters actual Wikipedia pages to add a Wikiseek search button.

Wikipedia.org has notoriously limited search capabilities and …

Electronic Arts, publisher of The Sims franchise, is developing a new line of Sim games titled The Sims Stores, that are aimed at the laptop toting, MySpace generation.

The Sims is EA’s number one franchise. EA has sold more the 70 million Sim’s titles worldwide since 2000. The Sim’s games are notable because half the players are female. Most video games are played by males.

EA has designed The Sim Life Stories to be less technologically demanding than other video games. The games do not require expensive video cards that are a barrier to play with other titles. This is a bonus to laptop users as most laptops do not have top of the line video cards necessary for may graphics intensive games.

The trend towards less technology is in parallel to the …

The need for greater storage performance density while keeping power consumption and heat relatively low was a challenge that Seagate met back in 2003 with a move to the form factor drives for enterprise systems. Today Seagate continues leading the same market by announcing the world’s fastest hard drive – the Savvio 15K drive.

The new 15K-rpm is the latest addition to the Savvio line of 2.5-inch SCSI drives and provides an enterprise level storage solution with a seek time that’s 12% faster than any other drive. Seagate claims to provide this speed with a 30% drop in power consumption from their 3.5-inch drive and maintaining high reliability with a 1.6 million hour Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF).

“Seagate is committed to delivering solutions that will meet the needs of today’s demanding IT environment, and no product demonstrates this …