Makers of "World of Warcraft" - Blizzard Entertainment, are being sued by the parents of a 13-year-old Tianjin boy, on charges that the game caused the death of their son.

The parents have filed a law-suit against Blizzard Entertainment, alleging that their son jumped to his death while re-enacting a scene from "World of Warcraft".

Anti-Internet addiction advocate, Zhang Chunliang, is backing the parents of the deceased boy. Chunliang is said to have spoken to 63 parents, whose children have suffered due to online gaming addiction. The advocate plans to file a class-action suit in the matter. There have been no comments from Blizzard Entertainment so far.

China's online gaming market, which raked in $580 million this year, is believed to be the fastest-growing market in the world.

Blizzard Entertainment's "World of Warcraft" alone is estimated to have around 1.5 million paying players, bringing-in moolah to the tune of $30 million per month in subscription fees.

Vivendi Universal Games, parent company of Blizzard Entertainment, which has pegged the "World of Warcraft" global players count at 4.5 million, is now forced to contend with the back-lash of parents concerned with their children's addictive behavior.

Parents of dead teenager sue Blizzard over 'Worlds of Warcraft'

"I think it's a healthy thing in a democracy to have people disagreeing, but if you're screaming or demonizing, then the very people you want to reach — which is those who don't agree with you — can't hear you."

Amen.

USATODAY.com - Clinton calls for kinder, gentler political talk

10.28.05 - As we near completion of our speaker selection process, we are excited to clue you in on the second round of selected speakers for ShmooCon 2006, which includes: Richard Bejtlich, Damin, Deviant Ollam, Elonka Dunin, HellNbak, Jason Scott, Hendrik Scholz, Eric Smith, Joel Wilbanks, and superstar of "The Matrix: Reloaded"... Fyodor!

Shaping up to be quite a con! Who else is planning on going? January 13-15, 2006, Washington DC.

Elonka :)

ShmooCon 2006 - Speaker List Updated

If you are near to this picture, Mr Angry is on the left and Mrs Calm is on the right. If you view it from a distance, they switch places.

Optical Illusion: Mr Angry and Mrs Calm

I started this blog because I was accumulating a lot of interesting and amusing links and I love to share them. I was sending out too many emails to various friends and thought it would be easier just to create a blog where they could come to and perhaps find something amusing that would help the hours at work go by a little bit faster.

Every so often someone mentions one of my pages in their blog, and it's not just a "them and their friends" spike in my traffic, but I instead find my site getting deluged with hundreds (or thousands) of new visitors. This is one of those blogs. The guy gave me one mention, and my daily traffic jumped about 50%. Looks like this guy has thousands of daily readers. And I have to admit, he's got a knack for blogging a lot of interesting stuff!

Elonka :)

Cynical-C Blog

A is for awk, which runs like a snail, and B is for biff, which reads all your mail. C is for cc, as hackers recall, while D is for dd, the command that does all. E is for emacs, which rebinds your keys, and F is for fsck, which rebuilds your trees. G is for grep, a clever detective, while H is for halt, which may seem defective. I is for indent, which rarely amuses, and J is for join, which nobody uses. K is for kill, which makes you the boss, while L is for lex, which is missing from DOS.

An *awesome* page full of tech-songs. Another one I really enjoyed:

100 buckets of bits on the bus 100 buckets of bits Take one down, short it to ground FF buckets of bits on the bus FF buckets of bits on the bus FF buckets of bits Take one down, short it to ground FE buckets of bits on the bus ad infinitum . . .

Elonka :)

Songs and Poems - 'The ABCs of Unix'

The Alter Ego display shows what kind of virtual characters people choose to be in online games and 3D worlds.

This is an article about an exhibit which juxtaposed pictures of "real-life" people, next to images of the characters that they played in MMORPGs. Click on the picture in the article, to be taken to more side-by-side images. I found it very interesting to observe how some people were very different from their avatars, and others were very similar. Though of course the editors seemed to concentrate on the images that provided the most dramatic differences.

BBC NEWS : Virtual gamers reveal themselves

Stare at the crosshairs in the centre of this picture. After a short while you'll notice that there is a green dot revolving around, replacing each purple dot in turn. Then if you keep staring the purple dots disappear, and all that remains is a circling green dot.

But it's all an illusion - there's no green dot and the purple dots never actually disappear.

Interesting effect.

Optical Illusion

Initially, Cisco and ISS were happy with Lynn presenting his research result. They changed their minds at the last minute. Lynn gave an interview to Wired that talks about some of the details; I am impressed with his integrity in this matter.
 . . .
I can't imagine the discussions inside Cisco that led them to act like thugs. I can't figure out why they decided to attack Michael Lynn, BlackHat, and ISS rather than turn the situation into a public-relations success. I can't believe that they thought they could have censored the information by their actions, or even that it was a good idea.

High praise for Abaddon's integrity, and a well-deserved criticism of Cisco's actions, from the crypto-luminary Bruce Schneier in this month's issue of Crypto-Gram.

Crypto-Gram: Bruce Schneier on the Cisco/ISS Story

A témával foglalkozó Elonka Dunin arról számol be, hogy webszájtján az utóbbi időben egyre többen járnak. A weboldal korábban napi 5-600 látogatót fogadott, mostanában viszont előfordul, hogy 24 óra leforgása alatt harmincezren jönnek.
A hirtelen magszaladt érdeklődésen a Kryptos-szobor létrehozója, Jim Sanborn is csodálkozik. A művészt 1989-ben kérte fel a CIA akkori igazgatója, William Webster az alkotás elkészítésére. Sanborn az egyik kódfejtővel, Ed Scheidttal közösen tervezte meg a titkos szobrot.

I got a smile out of seeing this. I don't speak Hungarian, but my ancestry is Hungarian (I am named Elonka because I was named after my grandmother, ilona, who had Hungarian parents). So it's a neat kind of "full circle" feeling to see my Americanized-spelling name of "Elonka" on a Hungarian webpage....

Kryptos in Hungarian