May 30, 2008 - A computer-generated image of a post-nuclear Washington D.C., crafted by the Fallout 3 artists at Bethesda Softworks, has apparently popped up on terrorism-related Internet forums, and the image is now at the center of an online brouhaha.

According to the Entertainment Consumers Association's GamePolitics blog, U.S. defense contractor and intelligence analyst group SITE found the image while perusing message boards commonly used by Islamic terror groups, who were apparently discussing the possibility of nuclear attacks on Western nations.

SITE reportedly passed intel about the online terror activity to government and media, and the latter (including the Telegraph in the UK and the Australian newspaper) disseminated the info far and wide.

Not too long ago, users on the Neowin.net forums started complaining about not being able to send YouTube links to their contacts on Windows Live Messenger. I was skeptic at first, but it didn’t take me very long to confirm that is indeed the case.

As you can see, any messages that contain in text or links to “www.youtube.com” fails to be delivered.

Curious as a cat, I loaded up a network packet sniffer to find out exactly what’s going on behind the scenes. Technically, the message packets are in fact sent to the Messenger servers (so it’s not being blocked at your client), but the server sends back a negative acknowledgment (NAK) packet instead of an acknowledgment (ACK) packet. Simply speaking, the server is refusing the message.

As some people may recall, in 2006 there was a report quoting MSN Sweden admitting Microsoft is “censoring” messages it deems a security threat. How it does this is by matching messages with a known list of text strings which are commonly found in phishing and malware sites such as “download.php”. Microsoft doesn’t publishes which strings are on this list for obvious reasons, but a comprehensive list of known blocked strings can be found here.

We all love a good conspiracy, but I don’t think anyone at Microsoft was dumb enough to do this deliberately to undermine Google. On the other hand, even if it was an accident, how do you ever trust this system?

Phil Elliott
08:00 (BST)
14/04/2008

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David Gardner has told GamesIndustry.biz that he will consider losing the Infogrames name in favour of a full transition to the better-known, further-reaching Atari brand.

"I'd like to consider that, I think that would be the final mark of the transformation from Infogrames to Atari," said the company's CEO. "We have a new board of directors, a new management team that's less than a year old - so yes, it's really continuing.

"We like to think of Infogrames, instead of being the tired, old company, we like to think of it as the best-funded, best-branded, most energetic start-up in the history of computer gaming."

And president, Phil Harrison, added: "We are absolutely a start-up, we're just a start-up with 25 years of history."

Harrison also talked about how he and Gardner had spoken about forming a company previously, and why the Infogrames job persuaded him to leave one of the top jobs at Sony Computer Entertainment.

"We had a very interesting series of dreams, of discussions, about if we were to create a company, what kind of company would it be, and what direction would it be headed in," he said. "We got quite a long way down that path, and then, out of leftfield, this opportunity came along.

"When we were evaluating it, we thought about what we would want from a successful company. You'd want people, products, you'd want revenue and cashflow. You'd want some infrastructure, some offices around the world, and it'd be great to have a brand that was a global brand.

"And I tell you, that was the hardest thing when I was trying to brainstorm this, when I was trying to come up with a brand that we could use worldwide - every time I came up with a new name for a games company, I'd Google it and find that somebody had already taken it.

"So when we were looking at what we'd need to create a successful company, and then we evaluated what Infogrames has, it ticked all the boxes."

The full interview with David Gardner and Phil Harrison is available now.

April 11, 2008 - Bigger isn't always better, a lesson that we've painfully learned from pre-World War I ocean liners and hydrogen-filled zeppelins. You might as well throw turn-based strategy games on the list with Lost Empire: Immortals, a sprawling title similar to Master of Orion that blows away most games when it comes to scale. Unfortunately, that works to its detriment, as it comes off as more than a bit soulless, and it's such a huge game that it feels a bit like you're managing a spreadsheet than an interstellar empire at times.