Last week the German police arrested the creator of the Sasser worm. It received less coverage, but nearly at the same time they also made it to get the author of the far more hostile Phatbot.
Axel G., 21 years old and known under the nick "Ago", is responsible
for the making of the tool that can be used to steal all kinds of data
and to relay (SPAM) email among other things.

The German IT news mag Heise.de did some investigation and according to their recherche Axel G. probably also was heavily involved in the Half-Life 2 code theft that happened more than 7 months ago.
The source code and other assets of Valve's shooter then were released
on the internet by the perpetrator. The evidence hinting at Ago's
involvement include this chat log among other things.

The investigations are still going, in the meantime, however, the
police confiscated Axel G.'s passport and released him again as there's
no risk of the accused attempting to escape according to them.

In order to move that Oprah abomination off the page I thought I'd throw up a little post about the Tapwave Zodiac which is shipping today. The Tapwave Zodiac is a PDA/Gaming device based on the Palm OS. It's a PDA designed for gaming, not the other way around. It can do email, web, SMS, addresses, music, videos, photos and gaming all on the same device. The Zodiac sports a decent lineup of games and the ability to run any Palm OS game, even emulators. It also supports Bluetooth, for multiplayer gaming and internet access. Just plunk down next to somebody and hit the Bluetooth button, instant multiplayer link. Over at Shacknews there's a preview up you can take a look at to get an idea of what the machine is about. It's shipping today and costs $299 for the 32MB version and $399 for the 128MB version. You can order one at the Tapwave Store

The SunHerald put up an article on Nokia's attempt to provide a portable gaming system. While the idea behind the system isn't that bad, its technical realization contains a number of flaws the author points out.

Read on...

I wanted to take a second to point you to an article on msnbc.com about an 8-bit music event that took place in NYC. The artists featured at the event have taken the buzzy chirpy sound we remember so well and used it to create fresh new music. Thre's even a picture of one of the artists, Bitshifter, using a GBA basically as his turntables, selecting and mixing on the fly. Somebody get that boy an SP! Note that this is different than the videogame remixes found on sites like http://www.ocremix.org. Rather than using a specific game and using it as the base or the inspiration for a new composition, these grab sounds and loops from a variety of sources to create an original, fully 8-bit song. It's mentioned a few times in the article how "warm" the 8-bit sound is. I think that's a pretty accurate description after listening to the excerpts in the article. Check them out and see if you can resist the urge to imagine what kind of game they would belong to.

Infinium Labs sent out a press release featuring some information on the mystery that is the Phantom. The beta test application phase has come to an end. About 40,000 people are said to be in the race for the 300 slots available. 'Winners' will be notified around November 15th. The public beta test itself is said to launch in Q1/2004.

Beta testers must be at least 13 years old and reside either in the United States or Canada. Each beta tester must have broadband access with at least 1Mbps downstream connection with an Ethernet handoff via Dedicated Internet Access, cable, satellite or DSL provider.

So, we're slowly getting closer to see how much substance there actually is behind what is advertised to be something like the 'mostest best consule evar.' If you don't know what I'm talking about you've probably missed HardOCP's article on the somewhat cloudy background of the Phantom.

I thought a hardware article would be a nice change of pace today, so I found a review of the Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX over at AnandTech. The review goes into detail about AMD's latest processors and then provides benchmarks under 32-bit Windows so we can know what kind of performance to expect. Most of the benchmarks were on par with the fastest Pentium 4 Extreme Editions, a processor that Intel is releasing to compete with the Athlon 64 and coincidentally I did not make up.

An interesting part of the article were the Linux benchmarks, because with Linux you can have native 64-bit support simply by recompiling the OS and the applications. Therefore they were running the benchmarks in a native 64-bit environment. The performance increase when compared to 32-bit was about 10-20% using standard open source programs. Definately worth recompiling/patching to get 64-bit support, especially once WinXP64 hits shelves.

The German news magazine Der Spiegel posted an interview with Sony's Phil Harrison. He's talking about PS2 online gaming and the appeal of EyeToy among other things, but also drops some more information on their upcoming PSP system. Asked about what they're going to do about the dominance of Nintendo's GBA he responds that they're going for a different target audience. The PSP is definitely aimed at adults, a device one will be a "proud owner" of. The design is going to be slick and elegant, "like other Sony home entertainment products." They apparently haven't created a prototype yet though. Emphasizing on the multimedia capabilities, Harrison stated again that the PSP certainly will be more than just a gaming device. A GPS signal receiver won't be in-built, but upgrades like that are going to be available for purchase.

CNN Technology took a closer look at Infinium Labs' mysterious console system and also got ahold of David Frederick, chief marketing officer at the company. Frederick commented on the key concept behind the system and certain rumours.

Read more for the full article!

Newsforge has this bit on the new Phantom console made by Infinium Labs. The whole thing in a nutshell is best described by NewsForge

Let's start by saying the console is real, not vaporware. I've seen a working prototype in action. Inside the spacy-looking case it's just a PC running Windows XP that has no CD or floppy drive, and uses a proprietary encryption scheme for data stored on its hard drive.

So that's great so far, it actually exists and works. But encrypted data on the hard drive, and no CD or floppy drive? How will you get the games there? The article states you will pay a subscription and download the games from Infinium's servers. While some games may be offered for free, or free trials, you will still have to pay for the games on top of a subscription. The upside is that any game that runs on Windows XP can be sold through this service, which makes the library potentially huge. Every game ever made available for download at a click, and guaranteed compatibility. If it sounds too good to be true, read on...

Micheal Lasky, writer for PCWorld.com just got back from a stay in the Hotel Room of the Future. The Hotel room included a 42" Plasma TV, free broadband internet (even available through the TV and a wireless keyboard), a thumbprint controlled security safe, jacuzzi complete with a second TV, a Panja touch-control remote that can control almost anything in the room (lights, drapes, temperature, TV/DVD, bed, ect.) and a compressorless mini-fridge that is completely silent. Needless to say, he was pleased, though there were a few snags.

As the resident technology writer for GWJ.com, I would be interested in reviewing this hotel room for a writeup here. So Certis, get on that, I'll pack my bags.