If there’s something I need more of, it’s ways to waste time on the internet. Luckily, the nice people at Joystiq hipped me to a cute new game called Super Chick Sisters.

Instead of shooting and killing and driving and blowing things up, like I normally like to do in video games, this little platformer will let you tag along with Chickette and Nugget as they save innocent little chickens from Colonel Sanders, or some reasonable facsimile thereof. You can even unlock Pamela Anderson as a playable character.

Along the way, the Chick Sisters will tell you about some of the heartbreaking conditions that the chickens that are raised to go the way of being Kentucky Fried have to put up with. Personally, the bad service at KFC is enough to keep me out.

Even if you don’t agree with the message, the game is fairly cute and entertaining. Give it a try and see what you think.

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Don’t adjust your TV set . . . er . . . computer. If you’re having trouble getting to craigslist, livejournal, or a number of other sites, so is everyone else. Technorati (another of those sites that was suddenly down) is now reporting on their front page that San Francisco is suffering a city wide power outage. Along with about 750,000 people, many of your favorite web 2.0 sites live out there. Please try to not be too upset.

It just goes to show my usual assertion that the internet isn’t some ethereal other place.  It’s made up of real people and real cables, and real limitations.  Anyway, happy, lights-on thoughts for our friends out west.

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. . . so you had better make sure that you ask! CNN and YouTube have gotten together for what I think could be an ingenious mash-up-contest-sort-of-thing. You have until July 22nd (that’s SUNDAY!) to record a question for one or more of the Democratic presidential candidates and upload it to YouTube. CNN’s political team will pick the ones that they find most compelling and play them during a televised debate on July 23rd.

Don’t worry, the Republicans will get their own CNN/YouTube debate on September 17th. I’ve got to get to work making these pieces snazzy, because after almost getting arrested for grocery shopping in khaki pants, I’m not afraid to ask the hard questions.

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If you find yourself having to ask that question and you aren’t playing games with a two-year-old, you may be in luck. Boing Boing has hipped me to a new advance in prosthetic digits. Rather than your usual, run of the mill cosemetic finger replacements, the X-finger can respond to the motion of your hand to flex and extend. Now before you whip out the powertools in celebration, you might want to know that the X-finger comes with a multi-thousand dollar price tag. It’s kinda like the X-finger is giving us the finger.  Ouch.

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The old folks used to say, “Tell the truth, shame the devil.” Lucifer must have hung his head low somewhere when John Riccitiello, CEO of EA Games, told the Wall Street Journal that “We’re boring people to death and making games harder to play.”

Personally, I’ve felt that way for a while now. I’ve often wondered how in good conscience you can call a game “Final Fantasy” when you’re coming out with sequels to it’s sequels. Obviously, it’s not final anymore. And I am tired of Mario (with the exception of Mario Kart [besides double dash, or as I like to refer to it, “Mario Kart - needless complication”]). Don’t get me started on Legend of Zelda (it took 2 hours to figure out how to fish in Twilight Princess).

It’s not all disappointment on the gaming front though. Riccitiello seems to like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. I’m pretty excited about those myself. He also mentions World of Whatever-craft. I’m not so convinced on that one, but other people seem to like it.

So what’s all this mean? Not a whole lot, but there are a few games out there that are breaking ground. If you don’t think you like video games, I’d suggest giving something fun like Amplitude, or Katamari Damacy a try. You might be surprised.

My wife is out of town – she’s a writer and she goes on these writing retreats to get stuff done. They close themselves off to technology (the horror!) and head somewhere like upstate New York – where there’s no phone and no television. For me, this usually means a chance to bachelor out. It takes about 4 hours for the place to look like a college dorm. I’ve got my laptop teetering on stacked-up pizza boxes, empty soda cans thrown around the floor, and I’m playing Xbox. There is porn everywhere.

Also, I can’t sleep when she’s away. Which means I browse the web. After there’s nothing else to look at you start to wonder, what else is there? At 2:30 a.m., I start reading about technology. My most recent obsession is with high end audio.

Here is the story of one man, one weekend, and one-thousand dollars.

Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever wanted to run your own prison? Have you ever even wanted to be anywhere near one? Well, one of the newest expansions of the Tycoon series from ValuSoft (a division of THQ) is ready to let you give it a whirl with Prison Tycoon.

The game allows you to play the warden and build your prision to rehabilitate the prisoners, or punish them. Perhaps it’s just the progressive in me, or perhaps it’s because statistics woulod have me believe that I should be in jail by now, but I just can’t see the fun in torturing a large group of people, or a small one for that matter.

More disturbing than that, however, is the first paragraph of the game summary, “Private prisons have become the new growth industry.” Think about that the next time some well-to-do politician tries to convince you that they’re tough on crime. Maybe they’ve got some investments in NYSE:CXW or NYSE:GGI.

Good lookin’ out to Z magazine for writing the article and thanks to Alex for passing it along.

For those of us who have managed to get ourselves on the no-fly list, there’s a wonderful little flash game that will let you experience all the fun of waiting in line at the checkpoints at the airport in the comfort of your own home!

Airport Security: The Race to Confiscate will allow you to do your civic duty at your computer by making sure that lines of evil-doers are not held up at the checkpoint while you confiscate the contraband of the moment. Pants, hats, toothpaste, preparation H, you’d be surprised at what could compromise the security of an airplane. Oddly enough, I’ve yet to see them confiscate the snakes. Maybe they haven’t seen that movie.

Thanks BoingBoing

Technorati: airport security game humor

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It seems like you can’t swing a dead cat these days without seeing some computer security alert. It seems like people are getting numb to them. That may be why there hasn’t been a lot of buzz about the VML vulnerability in Windows XP.

VML stands for Vector Markup Language. It’s an up and coming way to display graphics over the internet. Unfortunately, if you view a malformed VML graphic in Internet Explorer 6, it could allow something to be installed in your computer.

Anything.

Adware, viruses, keystroke loggers; all this could be yours, if you don’t run Windows Update.

The ugly thing about this one, is that according to the latest episode of the Security Now podcast, naughty webmasters can purchase a kit that allows them to take advantage of this vulnerability to infect your computer. Usually they install adware on your system that they get paid to deliver. Luckily the host of Security Now, Steve Gibson, has a test you can use to safely check your computer for the vulnerability on his website at GRC.com.

Now before my fellow Mac users get too smug, you should know that there was a security update for Mac OS X.4 released last week. Make sure you apply it, and future updates, by setting up your Software Updates.

Another public service anouncement from your friendly friends here at citizenzero.net.

From time to time, people come to me and attempt to tell me any old thing like I’m BooBoo the fool. For example: Someone once tried to tell me that the subway stops running at midnight for maintenance, when I know good and well that it stops running so that cab companies can make a killing porting drunkards out of town when the clubs close at 2am.

Not everyone is as sharp as I am though. If you would care to test your skills, there’s a neat new internet time-sucker called blufr.

Blufr will present you with facts of varying levels of truthiness. If you can tell right from wrong, then you’ll score points. Maybe you can get the high score. If not, then perhaps I could interest you in a financial opportunity involving nigerian royalty.

Thanks TechCrunch