Cody Taylor

Less than a month after the announcement of Six Days in Fallujah , a video game based upon a real-life battle between US Marines and Iraqi insurgents in 2004, Konami has decided that it is too controversial, and abandoned plans to publish the game. The developer, Atomic Games, has not commented on Konami’s decision other than to say an announcement will be made soon. Konami told a Japanese newspaper, “After seeing the reaction to the video game in the United States and hearing opinions sent through phone calls and e-mail, we decided several days ago not to sell it.” While the game did receive a great deal of criticism, others were optimistic, including several outspoken veterans of the Iraq war. One of the major complaints was that in researching the battle, Atomic Games reportedly interviewed several insurgents. This prompted speculation that the insurgents were compensated for their help, though Atomic later denied that was the case. Konami’s decision also may have been influenced by the fact that they seemed to represent it as entertainment, whereas Atomic’s president, Peter Tamte, was more hesitant to describe it as “fun.” He said, “The words I would use to describe the game — first of all, it’s compelling. And another word I use — insight.”

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jangel sends us to WindowsForDevices.com for news on a prototype device created by researchers from Microsoft and UC San Diego. It’s a USB-based NIC that includes its own ARM processor and flash storage, and can download files or torrent while a host PC is sleeping. As a result, its inventors say, the “Somniloquy” device slashes power usage by up to 50x. The device requires a few tweaks on the host OS side save state before sleeping. The prototype works with a Vista host but the hardware comprising the NIC is based on a Linux stack. Here is the research paper (PDF).

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