wars

First, there was the Cold War. Now, perhaps, there's the Cold Space War.

Retired Major General Leonid Shershnev, the former head of Russia's military space intelligence, thinks the recent collision between an Iridium satellite from the US and an out-of-service Russian Cosmos 2251 may have been a set-up.

I can barely understand traffic, so I will make an extra effort to summarize the Major-General's suspicions.

He seems to believe that the Iridium satellite was part of a project called "Orbital Express." This project, which was officially completed in 2007, was to see if on-board refueling … Read more

With the March 3 release of Halo Wars for the Xbox 360, one of gaming's most popular brands took a potentially risky step into uncharted waters. Instead of a twitch-based first-person shooter, Halo Wars is a real-time strategy game. This complex genre, perhaps best described as Stratego meets the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, has befuddled mainstream gamers for years, even with occasional hits such as Command & Conquer and Starcraft. (Despite having covered the video game business off-and-on for the past 10 years, I'm still an RTS novice.)

Having had a chance to get some serious hands-on time with … Read more

Synergy. It's not just a square on the buzzword bingo cards you take with you to big meetings. George Lucas and Disney have been pals for quite a while. They even have "Star Wars" weekends at the parks.

Now I'm a fan of "Star Wars." Not a rabid one, mind you, but I can't believe I missed these before now:

Limited statues of Disney characters as Star Wars characters. Ooh ooh, and each one will set you back 195 clams.

Each.

I'll just sit back while you let that sink in for … Read more

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