The International Consumer Electronics show came to an end less than a week ago, and Boxee seemed to steal the spotlight both on the show floor and in awards alike. They won the “Last Gadget Standing” accolade along with Popular Science naming them “Best of CES.” You may have seen the Boxee logo showcased on the bosom of the stunning Bob and lovely Jaylin, who also came to profess their nerdy love for this revolutionary device.



The Boxee Box specifically, presented by D-Link, has earned many honors since its announcement. We have been hearing a lot about how amazing it is, the way it will change how we experience media in our homes, and lists of feature after feature that sound cool. But you may have been thinking:

After meeting the Boxee and D-Link team at this year's CES, I am here to help!

For quite some time now, the big deal in home entertainment has been the Home Theater PC (HTPC for short). HTPCs allow us to play, through our home theater or other audio/video setup, all our media, including recording and playing television signals through the use of a TV tuner, CDs and DVDs (including Blu-Ray), downloaded, stored, or streamed videos, music, and pictures, or even direct playback of media from the Internet (such as flash video from Youtube). The HTPC is basically your PVR/Tivo, a CD player, mp3 player, Blu-Ray DVD player, media manager, and web browser all in one. Properly set up and configured an HTPC can become the nexus of a stunning home entertainment system.



Boxee (the software) is an open-source media center designed to be the heart of an HTPC. Born of the XBMC (formerly Xbox Media Center) project, it is engineered to be easily controllable by someone sitting comfortably on their couch watching television (the so-called “10 foot interface”). Some of the interesting things about Boxee compared to other media center programs available are that it has a built-in bittorrent client (for those of you who acquire multimedia from the Internet), and it is designed to be a social networking platform. You are required to register a username to use Boxee, but your login will become a tool for sharing with your friends (and rating) everything you are listening to, watching, or reading. It also has built-in Facebook and Twitter integration to make communicating with your friends even easier.

Here is a demonstration of some of its new features being displayed at the Boxee booth at CES:



Boxee is available for download should you want to make your own HTPC. However, the greatest drawback to the HTPC today is that it requires a lot of effort (and can require a lot of cash) to set up and maintain. The PC components must be carefully chosen, as must the operating system and media center. Even for someone who has experience setting up Linux servers (like me) this can be a very time-consuming and somewhat daunting task.



Enter the Boxee Box by D-Link, running on custom hardware and a modified version of Linux. The reason this gadget has captured the attention and buzz of the consumer electronics industry is because of how simple it makes the whole process. Instead of purchasing hardware, building your PC (or paying someone to do it), installing and configuring the software, and keeping it all up to date and working properly, you can simply purchase the Boxee Box to do all of this for you at a very competitive price.

So for the very first time the HTPC will become a practical reality for people who don't have the patience to build one themselves, or the knowledge or desire to maintain a PC when all they want to do is watch movies. The wealth of features that an HTPC used to provide to a very knowledgeable (or wealthy) few will become available to everyone, in an attractive, convenient package. There are a lot of reasons to love the Boxee Box; I think it can be to the home theater what Tivo was to watching television.



And, best of all, Boxee has its own Suicide Girls application, and we all know boobs are even better in 1080p!

This week at CES Unveiled, a company called Power Mat technologies created a lot of buzz around a product designed to charge mobile devices "wirelessly." The company remains mum on the tech behind this innovation, calling it proprietary information. We can assume that it, like many new devices hitting the market, functions through magnetic induction.

Power Mat's product is, befittingly, a mat with three charging pads, enabling to charge three devices (cell phones, PDAs, iPods, and so on) at the same time. Currently you need to attach a sleeve to the device to enable charging. The product appeared to function as advertised, with interested media handing over their phones (I even saw a sweet new Nexus One) to be placed on the charging mat, with a cheerful tone greeting the delighted onlookers.



Ok, so this isn't the most amazing, futuristic product out there. I mean I've been charging my toothbrush that way for a couple of years now. Why should you care about it, then?

Up until recently, cell phone (and other mobile device) companies have refused to standardize on how to charge their products. USB was a great thing for consumers to hit the market, and greatly simplified things, but we still have a number of different connectors. Mini USB, Micro USB, USB A, USB B...the list goes on.

Not to mention the few companies who stick to proprietary connectors/dongles (*cough*Kodak*cough*) even though it really is a pain for their customers. One can only assume that the reason for this has to do with money, with squeezing out a few extra dollars, to eek out a tiny extension of those slim profit margins (or huge, if you're Apple).



Soon, though, consumers are going to have another option, and this option is going to be a game changer. How you charge your mobile devices may not be a very glamourous topic, and most consumers don't really give it a second thought...until they're caught without their charger and are stuck paying more than $30 for a new one at their local Best Buy. Or $20 for a simple cable that has the right connector on it. Imagine if your car, your home, and even public places simply had little pads that functioned to charge every small device you owned. Anywhere. No matter who manufactured it, and no matter how tightly they control hardware design.

I think this is going to be one of those technologies that people shrug their shoulders and say "meh" about...until one day, they suddenly think to themselves, "How in the world did I ever live without this?"

It tears through the skies at staggering speeds, completing a flight around the earth in less than two days at a grueling 600 miles per hour. Sporting a sexy skin-tight coating of rubber that would make Batman jealous, this metal falcon is virtually undetectable by enemy radar. Loaded with all of this sleek technology, was difficult to imagine anything more powerful than the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.



Until now.

Meet the Next Generation Bomber. Boeing has teamed up with Lockheed for the ultimate tech showdown against their competitors, Northrop Grumman. With a shape much like the X-47B Navy attack drone, Northrop's prototype will pack much more of a punch than its stealthy predecessor. The company plans on stocking their next-gen models with a whopping 28,000 pounds of weaponry.

Boeing has been presenting ideas for their competing hypersonic speed demon with pilot-less potential. An unmanned aircraft of this caliber would be above and beyond the capabilities of current technology. Based on Boeing developmental concept designs submitted thus far, these Next Generation Bombers will have a radar signature of less than 1/5h of a fruit fly.



The financial results Northrop released last April show that there was a $2 Billion budget increase for “restricted programs” in their aircraft division, but the money was nowhere to be found on the recent Airforce budget reports. Rumors abound that the undisclosed billions will fund a black ops program to carry nuclear weapons on board the new Next Generation Bomber, projected to be in production in 2018.

Will these Next Generation Bombers be simply the most advanced in aviation technology, or a top secret project to carry 14 tons of nuclear power in the fastest, most stealthy machine ever created? Either way, we will have to wait 8 years to find out.



Photos courtesy of the Air Force and Northrop Grumman

Those wacky Japanese are at it again with their love of robot women.

The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology has created a cybernetic cute, code-named HRP-4C, with the goal of seeing her do her little turn on the catwalk, on the catwalk, on the catwalk, yeah.

It would appear she (it?) is already on her (its?) way. Just like your stereotypical human supermodel, she's lost a fuckton of weight to gain a competitive edge. No clue if she glosses her teeth with Vaseline, though.

Due to HRP-4C's technological limitations (i.e. she will probably kill any model who stands in her way in a catty, yet precisely calculated fury), she will be kept in her own little section for a March 23rd fashion show in Tokyo.

Ohh, my. That sound you just heard? That quite, yet steady rumble? That, kids, is the sound of a million sex-starved otaku (and equally deprived Blade Runner fans) creaming their pants at the possibilities.

Japan has cornered the robotics market in recent years, with companies from Mitsubishi to Hello Kitty creator Sanrio taking part. We've seen receptionists, companions, and robots as "performance art."

I see this ending in fire. That's all we need is senior citizens manning psychotic Nurse-Bots. Didn't any of you learn from watching Roujin Z?

For now, it appears HRP-4C will be limited to a menial life as a greeter and curiosity before taking the fashion world by storm. Shuuji Kajita, from AIST's humanoid research group, reassures, however:

Step 2...robots invading America's Next Top Model? I don't know about you, but the thought of Tyra Banks getting vaporized by a backsassed 'bot would get me to tune in. I'm a fan of Dancing With the Stars, anyway.

AIST website (in English)

YouTube video of HRP-4C in action

thefreak wonders whatever happened to AIBO.

It's official, folks: the future is now. Sure, we still don't have hovercraft cars -- yet -- but between the government building imperial walkers and American Apparel hawking all the metallic spandex a girl can carry, yesterday's science fiction is looking pretty tangible and bright. What's more, like any good piece of science fiction, the future promises to be filled to the brim with robots.

The latest offering to be brought to the robot table comes out of Fudan University in Shanghai. He has no given name yet, but what the cute little Rosie the Robot-type roller does have is voice recognition and some seriously sophisticated AI, notably the ability to continuously learn and memorize new commands.

It all sounds like trivial tasks, but it's just baby steps. Speech recognition has been around for a couple of years now, but is mostly confined to very specific rote branches of information. Learning how to respond, comprehend, and compile new memories based on any new given command is one stop closer on the express railway to building complex conversation programs for Wife 2.0.

Meanwhile, apparently my home country is setting me up for grand disappointment -- Lance Ulanoff over at PC Magazine just published an editorial on why the United States might be behind the times when it comes to welcoming our new robot overlords. It is definitely a relevant parallel, considering our newest aforementioned friend hails from Shanghai, and his piece brings up some interesting points, starting with how depictions and emotions toward mechanical friends differs back around on the other side of the Pacific.

Here, I thought of the robot in Hayao Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky -- though huge and lumbering in appearance, he nevertheless proved friendly, as the devoted infinite guardian of the castle gardens and all who lived therein. Which is nice, right?

So what's our problem then, doc? Why do more realistic robot toys sell so poorly over here? Why are American grandmas getting their knickers all in a bunch over a damned Roomba when the future of AI is on the line? Ulanoff, examining our Western culture, seems to find the answer in 19th-century psychology.

Actually, Lance, the word you're searching for isn't so much "grotesque," but rather one of Sigmund Freud's favorite buzzwords this side of cigars, "uncanny."

Which is all a very long-winded way of saying that what the average person finds most threatening and creepy are things that are perfectly commonplace, and yet, at the same time, wholly alien. It's why The Twilight Zone was so popular, and it's how Stephen King makes millions of dollars on horror stories like Cujo (an ordinary dog... of EVIL!) and Christine (an ordinary car... OF EVIL!!!). More relevantly, it's why Optimus Prime at his most photogenic still looks like a mack truck, while the smartest thing the CGI artists working on that Will Smith I, Robot debacle ever did was capping the robots' spindly wire bodies with soft, thoughtful, and ultimately cruel human faces.

Ulanoff also offers another possible explanation for the Western world's unwillingness to embrace the bots: we just care too damn much. It's a lot to swallow, but given what a tear-jerker that Haley Joel Osment robot movie was, it's not out of the question.

Though I want to stop and dwell for a bit on the embarrassing ludicrousness of people dressing up their Roombas, the real point of the quote is a study in contradictions. On the one hand, as an intelligent nation, replicants creep us the fuck out. On the other hand, the idea of being duped by a hot Jude Law-Bot who may never truly love us back... well, it creeps us out. To a point, I can buy it. It's every wildest fear -- eradication vs. abandonment -- all rolled into one. Who would have thought robots would make people so emotional?

Ulanoff does stress that the robot revolution will come, subtly or otherwise, whether the United States accepts it or not. I, for one, prefer to think of the robot revolution as a kindlier Studio Ghibli sky-garden sort, that might just be a childhood spent in Japan talking. Çe la vie.

Thank you, Slashdot.

I was watching NBC's "Bionic Woman" the other day, (yeah, I'm not sure why, either), when I was struck with the sudden and unexpected sensation of actually, "enjoying myself." No, it wasn't because of Katee Sackhoff. Nope, it was this guy, fulfilling a rich legacy far greater than his role on an average show. He plays the "nerdy tech guy" that works for the top-secret, black ops agency that also employs the Bionic Woman.

The nerdy tech guy is awesome. Not all of them. Certainly not the ones in the real word. And even fictional NTGs don't mean much to me when working in offices, businesses or other mundane outfits. Nope, the only kind that matter must work at some sort of ass-kicking gov't agency. FBI, CIA, SD-6, NTAC -- fictional or real, I don't care.

I guess this type originated with James Bond's Q but has undergone radical changes since then. My favorite is easily Marshall Flinkman from "Alias." Other examples are "4400's" Marco (a pretty obvious clone of the Flinkman character), The Lone Gunmen from the "X-Files," and from comics Microchip from "The Punisher." Much looser variations on this type are Mac from "Veronica Mars," Willow from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," Winifred Burkle from "Angel," and... that's about it. For such an iconic character type, I can't seem to think of any more...

NTGs are invaluable to the hero. They provide countless weapons, gadgets and surveillance gear (they're always very picky with this shit, as it's usually a prototype weapon or one of five on the planet that each cost a billion dollars.)

They also offer moral and tech support when you're in the field through those headset earpiece things... Need to jam a frequency? Unlock an electronic safe? Use Google? They'll help you out... (This isn't really help, but, if you're maneuvering through a laser beamed alarm system, if they've got video capabilities they'll often say shit like "Watch it!" And when you make it they'll often collapse on the keyboard in an exhausted heap and say something like "Whew, that was, close... too close.")

Regardless of what you ask them, they need, "more time." This is always going to be, "time you don't have." When they're reminded of this they'll start to yell back, then suddenly have an epiphany, rush off, returning moments later with the decoded file/antidote/green ooze you needed.

They'll often make jokes that no one will laugh at. In fact, if you're at a top secret board meeting filled with blueprints, 3-D maps and intensely furrowed brows, and everyone suddenly looks annoyed, it's usually because the tech guy tried to make a joke. (Quick sidebar, these jokes fall into two categories: 1) Nerdy techno-babble, computer jokes that maybe other nerds would've gotten, and 2) something casual and pop culture-based that may've been mildly funny under other circumstances but, dude, what the fuck, we're trying to storm a lair here and people could die, could you get serious for two goddamn seconds?)

They also seem to eat a lot of junk food and, oddly enough, are usually the characters that dress most like real people. Clad in shorts, T-shirts and sloppy, open button-downs while everyone else scurries about with rock-solid abs, shoulder holsters and windblown blazers.

Perhaps the NTGs are in danger, on NBC's "Chuck" they made the hero and the tech guy the same person... But, I hope that's not the case. Without them, the heroes would be nowhere, we'd have no one relate to in the meeting scenes and no one would be there to work in a goofball reference (well, I guess there's always the "maverick, wild card hero," but that's another topic.)

The fake spy game just wouldn't be the same without them.




TheCoolerKing thought about including The Wire's Roland Pryzbylewski but thought it was a stretch.

Each week, Ariel Waldman serves a tasting of the latest in sex and tech.

(Image: Ariel Waldman, Sean Bonner, Violet Blue taken by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid)

Arse Elektronika, a conference about “pr0nnovation” and the intersections of sex and technology, kicked off at Kink.com's Porn Palace in San Francisco over the weekend. Myself and fellow SG friend Sean Bonner were in attendance for the anticipated debauchery.

Audience Member Fucks A Machine

The opening night catered to many sights (and sounds) from various performances. A review of the first half of the night, including the opening speech by Johannes Grenzfurthner of Monochrom and a demonstration of the "Moaning Lisa" modified mannequin can be found at Shake Well Before Use. However, the most notable and naughty part of the evening began much later. A session on Fucking Machines by Kink.com showcased Fuckzilla, a treaded robot literally armed with a dozen-tongue-chainsaw and dildo. Asking "so who wants to fuck a robot?" to the audience, a woman volunteered and was subsequently video-taped (in this NSFW video, she is behind a curtain giving the play-by-play). Apparently, from various sources, the unidentified woman had never used a vibrator before, yet climaxed twice. Needless to say, Friday night's Fucking Machines presentation created rapidly viral conversations.

Ceiling Cat Is Watching More Than Masturbation

Speaking at a session titled "Ceiling Cat Hates Your Porn: Sexual Privacy Online", Violet Blue discussed the intimate logistics behind being intimate online. The root of the issue is that the internet has changed human sexuality, yet people don't realize it. People often times aren't as anonymous as they think. Violet cited the Craigslist Experiment to her experiences with Flickr (aka "Censr") as examples of violated privacy. She also discussed the current state of affairs among many Web 2.0 companies fumbling around with community management. Reading from A Girl With a One-Track Mind's experience with being publicly "outed" after being anonymous, the true emotion and importance of privacy online became overwhelmingly clear. Violet concluded that the general state of blogging and privacy online comes down to risk-assessment.

More from Arse-Elektronika

Arse Elektronika featured many other fabulous speakers and presentations over the course of three days. A conference about the interaction of sex and technology can leave many insatiable. As such, a few more reviews can be found here:

Laughing Squid
The Underwire
qDot
BotJunkie

As you may remember from previous articles, I have yet to hesitate when it comes to welcoming our over-the-top weapon overlords. As technology progresses ever forward toward the future, everything is bound to get a little more creative, and military intelligence is naturally no exception. The surprising thing is that the technology of the future looks a lot like an '80s sci-fi movie. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

First of all, who doesn't love laser guns? That was a trick question: everybody loves laser guns. I dare you to show me someone who has never even secretly dreamed about charging through a bay of the Death Star, pursued by a horde of storm troopers, blaster pistol blazing for a daring escape; in turn, I'd show you someone who has never truly dreamed. Of course, the only things more awe-inspiring than swift hand-held laser weapons are mammoth ground vehicle-mounted laser weapons. Remember the Battle of Hoth -- when all those Imperial Walkers showed up, all lasers and ion cannons akimbo, lumbering over the ice planet's rebel base like creaking metal elephants of law over so many matchstick houses? You bet you do; it's some powerful imagery. The U.S. Army also remembers, and that's when their imagination really started to run wild. I can picture them saying, "Sure, we don't have any AT-ATs... yet... but what do we have?" Then, visions of felled Iraqi X-Wings dancing in their heads, they set about finding who would be willing to mount laser cannons onto tanks.

Yes! Thank you, Boeing, for getting this ball rolling. As the article points out, laser cannons have some obvious advantages over even already-advanced radar-controlled rifles: they are faster, they eliminate the worry of errant shells, and also they are awesome. Boeing's initial development contract is for a paltry $7 million, but chances are high that this will be huge. Once these get off the ground and into combat, everyone else may as well give up. Anyone can come at us with all the Molotov cocktails and dirty bombs they want; we will have laser cannons. Star Destroyers can't be far behind.

Of course, our army is not content to get just one eighties movie reference all up in their tactical warfare. DARPA, everyone's favorite semi-clandestine Pentagon research branch, is reportedly hard at work trying to design software that will predict battle outcomes for military commanders. The goal of the program, thus far code-named "Deep Green," is to identify plans going awry and develop possible alternatives ahead of time, allowing troops to always stay one step ahead of disaster. It's apparently a fairly complicated process, and if I'm reading this right it involves what sounds like back-issues of Beetle Bailey and every book I ever checked out from the school library in fourth grade.

Sweet! War is a turn-based Choose Your Own Adventure novel. I sure hope Deep Green comes with the option to surreptitiously keep a thumb in the last page visited, so that if you get to a page that says "YOU HAVE ENTERED A TRAP, AND ARE KILLED BE INSURGENTS. END." you can flip back really quickly before anybody notices.

Actually, in my heart of hearts, what I truly hope is that after searching through millions of options, the program eventually comes to the conclusion that the only winning move is not to play; then maybe we could put all the weapons down and slowly back away from World War Three.

But, then, what would we do with all these lasers?


_DictionaryGirl_ wants to know how it is that we can be building AT-ATs and WarGames computers, but she can't get her computer to work for more than a month without having to send it in to the shop for repairs. What gives, man?

Also, super-props to geniuses Admiral_Pants and baudot for pointing out Deep Green's roots in computer-based chess mastery. I've always been more of a Battleship kind of girl.

Each week, Ariel Waldman serves a tasting of the latest in sex and tech.

One Porn Per Child

Easily accessible, the One Laptop Per Child initiative brings more than just technology to children's fingertips. A recent report pointed to porn surfacing across numerous pupils' screens within a primary school in Nigeria. "Efforts to promote learning with laptops in a primary school in Abuja have gone awry as the pupils freely browse adult sites with explicit sexual materials," stated the News Agency of Nigeria. What better lesson in learning than an accurate introduction to the internet?

Outdoor Shower Lets You Lather, Rinse, Repeat Your Lovemaking

Adventurous towards the outdoors? A new way to wash off the dirt may save you a skinny dip after a messy sex session in the mud. The Outdoor Shower, created by Danny Venlet for Viteo, consists of a pressure-activated platform that sprays upwards once stepped on. Aside from lathering off your lust, we're sure the shower provides a pleasing bidet-like sensation to your recently pleasured parts.

Watching The Submarine Races

Deep-sea sex is nothing new for the rich and flirtatious. Submerged in a submarine, Mile Deep Club veterans prefer the privacy of the Pacific. Unfortunately, the well-off are learning quickly that the ocean is not entirely their oyster. Reports of "excited" dolphins interrupting intercourse have emerged from various luxury vessels. "Dolphins are easily excited when they sense people making love. They get jealous and bang their noses against the window," said US submarines president Bruce Jones. While the idea of making dirty-minded dolphins jealous may be a turn on, it's probably best to watch the submarine races in safety.

This ultra-connected world we live in is really cool, isn’t it? Any information we could possibly want is literally at our fingertips: we get directions from Google Maps sent straight to our cell phones, our GPS devices ensure that we’re never lost (despite our best efforts) and the days of wondering what that actor’s name is, or what the lyric to that song actually was (Alex the Seal? What the hell does that mean?) are gone forever, replaced by just a few keystrokes at Google or Wikipedia.

Do you know the actual phone numbers of the people you call regularly? Or is that just saved in your cell phone? When you’re online, do you actually know your passwords, or are they auto-saved as well? Do you have a roadmap in your car, or a Thomas Guide? What would you do if you got lost without a cell phone or a GPS device? Have you ever stopped to think about how dependent we actually are on technology, and what we’d do if we suddenly lost it one day?

I think about it all the time, and I have considered trying my hand at writing a short SF story about what happens when all the technology we rely upon goes kaput one day. Because whenever anything bad happens to technology, the most correct way to describe it is “kaput.” I’m serious. Go look it up at Google, or go to the library and use the card catalog if you really want to see what I’m talking about.

If you don't have time to go to the library at the moment, keep reading: I unintentionally got to experience how it felt to be entirely “off the grid” and live a technology-free life for five days beginning last Thursday.

It was a hectic morning. I went out to Beverly Hills to shoot some video for FanLib, as part of this Star Trek fanfic contest I’m hosting (note that this contest wouldn’t exist without the Internet. That’s important). Traffic was miserable, so I didn’t get home until four hours after we’d planned to leave, and I still needed to ftp my book’s files to the printer. (Please note that, just ten years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to ftp a bunch of pdf files to a printer, who would use digital printing for my book. I would have to print everything out and ship it overnight. What took fifteen minutes last week would have taken at least 24 hours a decade ago). Shortly after I sent all the files to the printer, I hopped into the car with my wife, kids, and dogs, and headed up to Lake Tahoe one last family vacation together before Ryan goes to college in August.

I haven’t taken a real vacation in years, mostly because it’s hard for me to justify the cost (especially now that I have a kid going to college in about five weeks). It’s also hard for me to get away from the work I do online every single day, because I really do spend about half of my waking life connected to the Internets in some way. (Please note that I’m not complaining about this. About two months ago, I got together with some other full-time bloggers for drinks, and we all marveled at how we all had jobs that didn’t even exist when we were in high school, because the Internet wasn’t the massive series of tubes that it is today).

I didn’t know about the vacation until two days earlier, when my wife sprung it on me as a surprise (Pleae note: Wil hates surprises). I didn’t even want to take the vacation, citing the above reasons, but Anne pointed out that we haven’t had a family vacation in years, the kids will be out of the house before we know it, and, oh yeah, she worked her ass off for the last two months so we could afford the trip.

“Really?” I said.

“Yeah,” she smiled, “I didn’t think you’d notice because you were in Gotta Finish The Book Land.”

She was right, and I’m a sucker for my wife’s smile, so I scrambled like crazy to get five days of work done in two days, and just after 2:30 on Thursday, we were all in the family truckster, heading up the freeway.

Wednesday Night:

“I have to bring my laptop,” I told her while we were packing, “because I still have lots of work to do. I have a column to write, I need to work on my Geek in Review, I have my Netscape submissions to post, and I’m --”

“There will be wireless Internet near the cabin,” she said, “and you can get all your work done while we’re there. Don’t worry.”

I was skeptical, but she used the goddamn smile on me again.

“Okay,” I said.

When we got to the cabin, it quickly became clear that there wasn’t convenient wireless Internet; we were staying near Tahoma, on the West shore of the lake, and the closest WiFi was in Tahoe City, about ten minutes down the road.

I freaked out a little bit, and began to think of ways I could get online: walking around the neighborhood and hoping for an open access point seemed like a possibility. Driving into Tahoe City and buying a cellular wireless card was another.

Or . . . I could just let it go. None of my deadlines were until Wednesday, and we’d get home Monday night. I’d have a hellish day on Tuesday, to put it mildly, but I could still get everything done on time.

And I’d get to have the first real vacation I’ve had with my family in years, at a time when I needed a real vacation more than just about anything else in the world.

It wasn’t as easy a decision as you’d think, and I spent much of the first day we were up there going back and forth on it. It was during a game of over the line wiffle ball in the street that evening, breathing in clean mountain air, listening to the wind blow through the pines, when my son told me how much fun it was to play like this together that I made my choice. After about twelve hours of agonizing, I couldn’t believe I’d even spent one minute worrying about going off the grid.

By the end of the next day, I was happier and more relaxed than I’ve been in ages, and I think going entirely off the grid is why. Without the cell phone constantly ringing, without a pile of Bloglines subscriptions to read, without the constant drone of news and rapid fire influx of information I’ve come to take for granted as a constantly-connected guy, I could just relax and enjoy life. I could walk my dogs, take all the time I wanted to make meals, and play Othello with Ryan, without feeling like I should really be working.

I also got to enjoy the geeky things I did long before I fell down that damn series of Tubes (please note that it’s not like a truck) like finishing The Forever War, which I can’t believe I hadn’t read until now, and has assumed a place in my top ten science fiction books of all time. (Seriously. If you haven’t read it before now, or if you’ve only read anything other than The Author’s Preferred Edition, and you enjoy military or hard SF at all, you absolutely must pick it up. I am not ashamed to admit that parts of this book brought tears to my eyes.)

I also brought some geeky games along, including Ticket to Ride: Europe, which is just like Ticket To Ride, but fun, and with a skill element involved. Nolan and I convinced Anne to give it a try, and we had one of the most enjoyable game-playing evenings we’ve had since I introduced my family to Settlers of Catan.

There was a television, but I didn’t watch the news. My cell phone got such terrible reception, I just turned it off and left it off until we were driving back down toward Sacramento Monday morning. I lived a 1995 lifestyle for five days, and I loved every minute of it. (Please note that the only bit of modern technology I really missed was satellite or Internet radio, because even though we got a cool classic rock station from Reno, I got really tired of hearing Aerosmith’s Dream On after the eleventy billionth time on Saturday.)

When I got home, I talked to my dad on the phone. He’s a perfusionist, and spent just about every childhood vacation that I can recall chained to his beeper (it pre-dates the pager, kids. Ask your parents).

I told him how great the vacation was, because I left the Internet -- and all the other distractions that so frequently get between me and the people I love -- at home.

“You know how you’d sometimes get to leave the beeper at home, and we’d have a totally uninterrupted family vacation?” I said.

“Yes,” he said, “those were my favorite times when you guys were kids.”

“It was like that, only this time it was me without the beeper,” I said.

“It's great, isn't it?” He said.

“Yeah,” I said, "It really is.”

If you get a chance to go entirely offline, even if it’s only for a three-day weekend, do it. You may have to endure a hellish Tuesday, but I promise you, it’s entirely worth it.

Wil Wheaton had a hellish Tuesday. It was entirely worth it.

Just before the end of Spring break a few weeks ago, my wife and I took our kids camping for a few days. I'm not the biggest fan of camping, but we've done this since we were dating, because it's an inexpensive way to get away from the real world and all its responsibilities, and force me to get offline for more than a few hours at a time (I'm not the only technophile who gets the shakes after ninety luddite minutes, am I?)

This year, rather than some sort of rustic camping experience on a secluded beach or high up in the mountains, we did some car camping down in Chula Vista, at this campground we used to take the kids to when they were really little. With our oldest heading off to college in a few months, I think it was as much about the nostalgia of those simple days as it was about the convenience of easily-accessible showers and a camp store, but if we were expecting anything like what we saw ten years ago, we didn't find it.

First of all, the campground has WiFi. Wait. What? WiFi? In a campground? Yes, JOSHUA, there is WiFi, and you can play Global Thermonuclear War from the comfort of your own tent. It was hard to believe, but I saw just as many guys sitting at a picnic table playing World of Warcraft as I saw people reading books in the shade of a tree.

There have always been RVs with television antennas, but nearly all the ones I saw this year had portable satellite dishes, so their owners wouldn't miss a single moment of CNBC or the TV Guide channel while they were away from home.

Isn't the whole point of camping to get away from these things? I thought so, but I'm probably out of touch, and the people who choose a well-developed, freeway-close campground probably aren't looking for the most rustic experience in the world, which is entirely reasonable, I think.

However, I did see something in this campground that really grinds my gears. While I played Frisbee with my kids, a bunch of other kids riding bikes around us, I saw one child, probably 7 or 8 years old, sitting outside at a picnic table, playing a gaming console. This kid was glued to his button mashing, oblivious to everything going on around him. His parents brought him camping, where he was surrounded by other kids his age who were all playing together, and there he was, glued to the PS2.

What. The. Fuck.

Now don't get me wrong: I love gaming. I love technology. In fact, I almost wrote a column this week all about the majesty of handeld games in the 70s and 80s (Merlin and Mattel D&D FTW!) and when I was younger, I took my Mattel Football and then Gameboy just about everywhere with me, but my parents gave me limits, (I didn't miss Old Faithful erupting because I was playing Tetris, for example) and they certainly never brought our Atari 2600 with us on a vacation.

I've been ruminating on this for some time, but I've recently concluded that there is, in fact, an entire generation of parents, about my age or just a little older, who are substituting technology for parenting. As a result, there's an entire generation of children who are overstimulated and undersocialized, and in some cases heavily medicated, because their damn parents would rather distract them with a DVD or video game than, you know, interact with them.

Is this the new way we're supposed to raise emotionally healthy and well adjusted kids? I must have missed a memo, because these people are everywhere.

Next time you're in the freeway and you see one of those obnoxious SUVs with the fucking little family sticker on the back window (you know, the one that has the adorable little stick figures of mom, dad, their seven kids and the dog) take a look as you pass them. In four out of five cases, the seven kids are all watching a DVD. On the way to the store. Because god forbid they have ten minutes in a row where they're not watching Dora or The Wiggles.

In restaurants, it's all too common to see parents completely ignoring their kid while he plays a PSP or Nintendo DS, and I've recently seen kids watching an ultra-portable DVD player while they drink Coke after Coke as mom talks on the cell phone, oblivious to everyone around her – including her child.

There's a car commercial running right now that is an unintentionally powerful and disturbing commentary on how many people in this generation of parents are raising their kids. It starts in a school lunch room, filled with kids who are jumping and running around, throwing food, and generally raging out of control. A teacher tries to get them to settle down, and is ignored, so he flips down a little display, like you'd see in a car-based DVD player, and the entire room instantly turns into slackjawed, television watching zombies. What's the message here? "If you can't get your kids to listen to you, don't worry, all it takes is a little DVD action to do it for you, so you can get back to the peace and quiet you inexplicably thought you'd enjoy when you had seven fucking kids."

I know this basic phenomenon is nothing new. As long as television has existed, parents have sat their kids in front of it while they did other things, but the current portability of media, and the complexity and depth of handheld video games, is leading to a generation of kids who are so used to its constant presence, when it's taken away, they just don't know what to do with themselves -- and neither do their parents. If you've ever seen a kid running around a grocery store like a ferret on crystal meth, while their hapless parent stands by and avoids eye contact with other shoppers, you know what I mean.

When this generation of kids, who have never learned how to sit still or entertain themselves for more than a few minutes at a time, grow up and meet the creepy home schooled kids whose parents have substituted mythology for science and history, the shit is really going to hit the fan.

When that day comes, though, I have a plan: I'll just carry a portable DVD player with me at all times. If any of them tries to give me shit when I'm collecting my social security check, a little Dora should transform them from annoying Customer Service Jackass into helpful Customer Service Zombie in a matter of seconds.

Wil Wheaton is totally winning this contest he's in with Rob Corddry.

12:05 PM on Wednesday is typically the highlight of my week, because it represents the longest amount of time between the publishing of the Geek in Review and the white-knuckled panic that results when I reach blindly into the creative ether and hope to pluck a new column for next week.

Usually, I know around Friday afternoon what I'm going to write about, and if it requires any research, I pick up my materials and spend the weekend reviewing them. From time to time this results in something wonderfully fun, like playing a whole bunch of Guitar Hero II or watching a ton of wonderfully awful movies; most of the time it involves me pacing around my house wondering just what the hell I'm going to write about, and before I know it, it's Monday afternoon, and I have nothing but panic and a bunch of worn out carpet. (Not like that damn Chris Gore, who makes us all look bad by writing eleventy million columns in advance and letting them sit in the queue to quietly mock us.)

When I find myself backed up against the wall, neck-deep in a mixture of writer's block and panic, I often take a long walk, let my mind wander, and hope that something drifts across my mind's eye that inspires me, so when Monday rolled around this week and I had nothing but a blank sheet of paper in my head with some doodles of a dinosaur eating a Moai while two X-wings shot at the Death Star above some Van Halen lyrics, I put on my running shoes, grabbed my iPod shuffle, and headed out into my neighborhood, determined to find something worthwhile along the way.

It took about half a mile before my brain dropped into that zone where I was sort of moving on autopilot and mentally drifting around some the ideas I'd collected and discarded over the previous five days: The one about watching 2001 at the Cinerama Dome in 1989 . . . the one about the Wii . . . the one about fan culture and different conventions . . . another look at Guilty Sci-Fi Pleasures (not enough time to watch them all, dammit. Maybe next week.)

I reached into my pocket and pressed play on my shuffle. Oingo Boingo's "When the Lights go Out" began, and I recalled listening to Dark at the End of the Tunnel on repeat while I wrote the first drafts of what eventually became Just A Geek and Dancing Barefoot. I cradled my tiny iPod shuffle and its 240 songs -- about 26 albums or so -- in the palm of my hand, and began to jog.

And that's when I had it: I held, in the palm of my hand, a gigabyte of memory, and on that gigabyte of memory sat more music than all the records I owned just before the CD came out in 9th grade. I've grown up and come of age in a world where technology advances so rapidly and costs come down so quickly, I totally take it for granted.

Think about how many times your computer, truly a marvel of modern engineering (even if it runs Vista), does some annoying thing like locking up (especially if you're running Vista) and taking a bunch of unsaved work with it (especially if you're me, and you're running a Mac to avoid these damn things.) In your frustration, you stab the power button and declare it's "a piece of shit." These things that would be magical to our parents when they were our age are such a commonly accepted part of our daily routines, we can cavalierly describe them the same way we'd (correctly) describe a 1989 K car with a busted air conditioning system.

Right now, I can splat-tab my way into Firefox, and watch this week's Heroes, and it looks good. I'm just a few clicks away from starting up MAME or Stella, and playing every single arcade or Atari 2600 game from my youth. I can access even more than the 240 songs I have on my shuffle, and effortlessly stream them through the air and have them magically come out of my totally rockin' Dolby 6.1 surround sound system out in the living room. This stuff is fucking incredible, but it's such a normal part of our daily lives, we rarely stop to think -- even for a moment -- how lucky we are to have it, and how incredible it is.

Last week, I went to the store to pick up some cables and networking equipment, and saw an external hard drive which could hold one terrabyte of data. I unsuccessfully tried to explain to my wife why the simple fact that I could own it made my pants feel funny, but that won't stop me from trying it here: I've been using computers for almost my whole life. I remember feeling like I was sitting at ENIAC when my dad got us a tape drive for our Atari 400 around 1980, and I could use it to actually save the silly little programs I copied out of computer magazines so I could turn the computer off and load them up at a later time. I still can't believe that I can play on a Gameboy the exact games I played on my NES, including Legend of Zelda, (which I finally beat in 2006, a full 20 years after I started playing it, without strategy guides or walkthrough; it turns out that the map of Death Mountain I made in 8th grade was worth the effort, after all.) The simple fact that I could hold more storage capacity in one hand than exists in every computer I owned throughout my childhood combined was exciting to me. My wife? Not so much . . . but she's not a nerd like her husband.

So as I jogged through my neighborhood, with 1 gigabyte in my hand and Boingo in my ears, I recalled how much I love technology, and how I don't mind a bit that it's so ubiquitous I can essentially take it for granted. I thought about the Internet, and what a huge difference it has made in my life -- it's not exaggerating at all to say that without the Internet, I would truly be a washed up former child actor, struggling to make ends meet in crappy direct-to-video movies, and that's if I was lucky (ah, the haters are going to have a field day with that one, but fuck 'em.)

See, here's the thing about technology and the Internet: the old rules that applied for so long, that gave voice to the very few, that kept a few old rich guys in big glass buildings very rich and very powerful just don't apply any more. When I wrote my first book, I knew that there was no way I could take it to a big publisher and expect it to get noticed; at the time, I was just a former child actor with a "Weblog" (whatever that was) and without any real scandal in my life, why bother publishing me? I also knew that a lot of people were reading my "Weblog" (it's kind of like an online journal with a guestbook!) and a lot of them enjoyed the stories I wrote, enough to encourage me to put my stories into a book.

When I wrote my first book, I never intended to take it to a big publisher. I'd read The Cathedral and the Bazaar, and I knew that if I was going to be successful, it would happen in the Bazaar, because that's where I lived. I'd already played the stupid bullshit Hollywood game for most of my life, and I knew that if it was already that hard for me to get work as an actor with my acting resume, it was never going to happen for me as a writer if I tried to do it according to the old rules.

However, there was a different way: I could use the Internet to take my work directly to the audience, and let the audience decide if it was worthwhile or not, instead of some over-worked intern in an office somewhere who skimmed every fifth page. I didn't have to worry about convincing a bunch of bookstores across the country to stock my book, because I could keep stock in my garage, and ship it to whomever ordered it as those orders came in. Yeah, I sacrificed people who were casual browsers in book stores, but my disastrous experience with a big publisher for my second book (which attempted to play by the old rules) proved to me that it wasn't worth the trade off; new technology gave me a different way to do things. Like Yoda said, "Do or do not. There is no 'try.'" Why try to do it the old way, when I knew I could do it the new way?

I've written in the past about my doubts, but I have to admit that I love technology, and I owe much of my ability to support my family to the opportunities afforded to me because of it. Though I have occasional auditions for voice overs and other acting work, I'm very much a full time writer now, and I am published online, where I can reach a truly global audience in ways that were unavailable to all but a very select chosen few less than a decade ago, and I know I'm not alone. Right now, there are thousands of musicians, writers, artists, and other undiscovered creative people who can let the audience, not some guy in a corner office, decide if their work is worth sharing with their friends. Not all of them are great, and most of them are probably pretty awful, but at least they have an opportunity now that doesn't involve humiliating themselves and then signing on for indentured servitude on American Idol.

And one day, those people may hear one of these artists, buy her music online, and put it onto a 1 gig iPod that fits in the palm of their hand, so they can listen to her while they go out for a run to break the writer's block . . . only to discover that they forgot to charge the battery, leading to the obligatory declaration that their mp3 player is a piece of shit.

Wil Wheaton is the modren man.

“Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except over technology”
-John Tudor

In the early 90s, I walked away from a promising career in the entertainment industry, moved to Topeka, Kansas, and spent a little over a year working for NewTek, on a product called the Video Toaster.

The Video Toaster was a revolutionary product for its time, putting the power to create broadcast-quality television into the hands of mere mortals for less than $10,000. Now, $10,000 is a lot of money, but what we did with the Toaster would have cost closer to $100,000 if people bought the equipment that was prevalent in the market back then.

I know it may not seem like a big deal now, considering that every Mac in the world has iMovie, and suites like Final Cut Pro are affordable and relatively easy to use, but back then, we really did revolutionize video production. I didn't get filthy rich off of it like the programmers and company heads did, but I was proud to be part of it. I felt like I was part of something really cool that made a big difference for a lot of people, and it was the first time in my life that I realized how powerful technology truly was at a consumer level. I travelled all over the country showing it off at computer shops and trade shows, including brutal and exhausting days at CES and NAB in Las Vegas.

It was at CES in 1991 or 1992 that I first became acutely aware of how much the world was going to change over the next ten to twenty years. While the show was filled with stuff that I didn't care about (and can't remember) I clearly recall seeing HDTV for the first time, and how it took my breath away. I take it for granted now, but it was like looking through a window, and I couldn't wait for that day in the future when I could finally afford one. (They were priced around $70,000 or something outrageous like that back then. To illustrate how far we've come in just over ten years, you can now buy a very nice HDTV for around $2,000. Gasp.)

Back then, my Powerbook 170 and my ginormous Morotola flip phone were cutting edge technology, and one of my bosses had this GPS device that, though it was the size of a small briefcase and required about ten minutes to lock down a position, was light years ahead of anything else I'd ever seen. We were surrounded by emerging technology (and worked on it every day in our R&D department) but I had no idea how exciting the next fifteen years would be until one of my friends showed me a bit of plastic that was slightly larger and thicker than a credit card.

"One day," he said, "you'll be able to take all your CDs, convert them to digital files, and store them on a computer."

"That's cool," I said, "but who wants a walkman that's the size of a computer?"

He held up the plastic.

"No," he said, "you'll be able to store all your albums on something about this big, just in RAM."

It seems so unremarkable now, but at the time, that little glimpse at something so magical blew my mind. If we could store an entire record collection on something the size of a credit card, what else would we be able to do? At that moment, I understood that technology could do more than bring arcade games into my home or give me a cell phone that could almost fit in my pocket.

Over the last decade, computers have gotten smaller and more powerful, and most importantly of all, more affordable. But if what I saw at this year's CES is any indication, Arthur C. Clarke's statement "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" is about to apply to our daily lives.

Initially, I was unimpressed when I walked into the main hall and just saw tons of HD-DVD and Blu-ray devices there. I joked that we could take a photo of this year's CES, replace the format names with VHS and Beta, and see what the show looked like in 1980. (If you're wondering who is taking the lead in the format war, it may be HD-DVD. While Blu-ray Disc is clearly ahead at the moment, Sony has reportedly shunned the adult film industry, according to Vivid's Steve Hirsch. Since the adult industry led to the eventual triumph of VHS over Beta, and has driven too many emerging technologies to count, HD-DVD may have a better chance of success in the long term . . . though I find the idea of watching porn in HD a little, uh, unattractive.)

But after a full day at the show, the format wars faded into the background, and what really stood out wasn't any specific gadget or service, but an overall message they all delivered. My friend and InDigital co-host Hahn Choi called it an "evolution," rather than a "revolution." While we didn't see too many brand new things that are going to fundamentally change the way we live, we saw lots of things that make what we already have cooler and more useful. There were smaller and more duarable screens on mobile devices which will one day receive broadcast television, larger, more beautiful, and more affordable HDTVs, and the logical evolutionary step of that little plastic strip I saw about fifteen years ago: an ultra-mobile computer from Samsung called the Q1, that exclusively uses solid-state memory.

The Video Toaster got its name because the company founders wanted to make something that was so easy to use, it would be just like a toaster. Everyone knows how to use a toaster, right? While I didn't see anything this year that's as revolutionary as the Video Toaster was, or shocked me with the clarity of that bit of plastic, I did see the undeniable truth that technology which was recently too intimidating or expensive for normal people is rapidly moving closer and closer to that philosophy we had at NewTek. At this year's CES, this was most clearly embodied in a touch screen computer intended for entire families to use. It will live in your kitchen and replace white boards and Post-its, and handle e-mail and instant messaging. It's aimed at people who don't know how to boot from a CD or understand how to release and renew a DHCP lease. This may put a knot in the ponytails of several hardcore nerds, but I believe it is actually a really good thing; once technology makes it into the lives of average, normal, non-geeks, more people will understand how important it is to protect their online privacy, oppose crippling DRM, and secure their machines, because these issues which many of us are battling daily will now affect their lives directly. It's still a long way off, but if what I saw at CES is any indication, we're getting closer every day.

Wil Wheaton misses his TI 99/4A

Last night, my wife and I drove past a store that repaired vacuums, sewing machines, and typewriters.

"Typewriters?" I said. "Does anyone still use a typewriter? Can you imagine how long it must take to get any real work done on a typewriter?"

As quickly as the words left my mouth, I imagined how great it must be to tell your boss (or, in my case, editor), "Sorry, my typewriter is in the shop so I need a few more days to spend on this story."

Around the middle of November, my friends and family started asking me what I wanted for Christmas. Because the Nintendo Wii was sold out everywhere, I came up with something just as difficult to give me, but slightly more thought-provoking: "I'd like more time."

I look around my house, and around my life, and find it filled with various bits of high powered technology. There are computers everywhere, and I'm rarely more than a few seconds away from the Internets. According to cartoons of the 1960s, my life should be largely automated (and humorously labeled) while I work for a few hours a day, and spend the rest of my time goofing off with all my favorite toys.

Yeah. That's not exactly the way things have worked out.

I have this huge trunk in my living room that cleverly masks its true purpose by acting as a coffee table: though it's covered with remote controls and magazines, it's filled with all my geeky games. Illuminati, Frag, Diplomacy, Kill Doctor Lucky, Settlers of Catan, Munchkin, and Talisman are all in there, along with some classics like Stratego and Battleship. I put them in there, instead of out in the garage, because I wanted to always have quick and easy access to them . . . just in case.

There was once a time when I'd assemble a squadron of Space Marines, and wouldn't get up from my desk until they were all painted (and the occasional Ultramarine had his head appropriately "blown off" by a heated ice pick) but trying to find time to paint even one 40K figure now is simply out of the question; that time would be better spent doing things with my wife and kids (which, it turns out, is much more important to me than adding another missile launcher guy to my army.)

In my office, I have two book cases that are filled with graphic novels, science fiction titles, and O'Reilly books. From Hell, Absolute Dark Knight and three anticipted-but-unread volumes of Transmetropolitan are right next to the collected works of Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and too many Tor paperbacks that intrigued me enough to buy them to count. On higher shelves, all sorts of little animal faces peer out at me: Learning Perl, Programming PHP and A Big Book That Will Finally Help Wil Understand Cascading Style Sheets Which is One of the Last Things Online that Makes him Feel Stupid are all reminders that I was once a geek with copious amounts of time that I could spend visiting other worlds and teaching myself ways to do cool things on the Internets right here in my own, real world.

There was once a time when I'd spend an entire day banging away on my Website (via ssh, using vi on the server, natch) in an effort to earn it the W3C stamp of approval (yeah, that never happened.) There was even a time when I worked on writing a script that would detect your browser and display the page accordingly. This was for the seventeen people in the world who use text-based browsers. But time ran out, and honestly, why waste it trying to earn merit badges, when I can actually be, you know, writing the content that people come to the damn Website to read?

I once wanted a flying car, because . . . well, duh. It's a flying car. But then I started thinking about the realities of ownership: though I'd appreciate flying above the ever-increasing number of complete morons who think it's entirely safe and reasonable to weave across two lanes and go 40 because they're fucking text messaging someone, I'd also get to my destinations so quickly, that I'd somehow be expected to cram even more of them into a day.

I practically live on the Internets, and I support my family in ways that weren't possible before all this great technology existed. I don't have to leave my house for work if I don't want to, and for that I am deeply grateful . . . but when I don't get to spend more than an hour at a time with my kids because of my workload (which I've taken on, by the way, to provide for them) it makes me more than a little bit sad. I'd give just about anything to have more time to spend with them, but it looks like the magical time-saving technology which those cartoons of the 60s promised to deliver remains in the mysterious future.

Of course, I could be looking at this the wrong way. Maybe technology really has given us more time, but it has also made so much more stuff available to us, in the form of global online communities like we have here at SuicideGirls or Fark, social news sites like Netscape or Digg, and ever-updating subscriptions in Bloglines or NetNewsWire, that our time fills up unless we actively use technology to manage it. The problem isn't with technology, then, but with discipline. I think this is one of the principles behind Getting Things Done.

So though the holidays have passed, and I didn't get that extra time I wanted for Christmas, I can utilize another silly holiday tradition, and make a New Year's resolution to find and better manage time for myself and my family.

After work, I can turn off the cellphone, close up the laptop, check e-mail once or twice in an evening instead of once or twice an hour (maybe even not at all,) and wait until the following morning to send responses. I can block off hours in the day -- or even entire days themselves -- to spend with my wife and kids, or even by myself with one of those books (and not playing Vice City Stories on my PSP, or trying to do some whizbang bullshit with the HTML markup for my blog, just because it's there.) It's just a matter of discipline, so I own the technology, and not the other way around.

In fact, this column gives me an idea for a Sci-Fi story: what would happen if over-worked people, desperate to find some free time, took vacations in some alternate reality, where one day of vacation was actually one hour in their real world? What would the consequences of that be, and how would it affect their lives when they got back? Maybe I'll write it . . . if I can just find the time.

Wil Wheaton doesn't have time to come up with a clever byline this week.

Newly released trailer from game developer and publisher LucasArts, reveals that everyone’s favorite archaeologist (because there are so many to choose from) is in fact a terrible and violent racist. View, if you dare, his viciously and eerily lifelike new fighting techniques powered by the groundbreaking euphoria technology from NaturalMotion Ltd. I apologize in advance for the interminable amount of German narration throughout this shocking video.

I was able to finesse my way into LucasArts’ closed door event at E3 this year and when not openly mocking the horde of grown men stealing Stormtrooper Lego pieces from the complimentary fun bin, I could be found staring in awe at the Indy presentation. The idea of playing through the same levels repeatedly should no longer give players that feeling of repetitive dread as each and every fight could possibly result in drastically diverse exchanges. Lucky for us, LucasArts “The company that killed Sam & Max II” is going to be employing the use this unrivaled technology in a host of it’s future games for 2007.



"NO TICKET!"