Thanks to the San Diego Union-Tribune for its amusing article discussing the use of in-game cheatcodes and other game spoilers. It can be big business - regarding the cheat/hintbook market, an analyst suggests: "When you look at the magazines, Web sites and hint books, it's clear that consumers are spending quite a bit of money not just on the games. It's well over $100 million (annually). It's a big, big area." The up-side of cheating is mentioned, too - Chris Ulm of Sammy Studios says "Some of the codes let you play the game again and have a different experience. It makes the game a toy that you can play with in a different way." But the dark side is also revealed, with one piquant passage suggesting codes could be "...akin to cheating at solitaire, a source of false accomplishment and just one more instance of the fraying in society's moral fabric."

Daniel German asks: "I am in the process of preparing a lecture on the influence of computers and computer science in the movie industry. I'd like to include excerpts from the most important landmarks, and in order to give credit where credit is due, I'd like to ask for help from the Slashdot community. What are those movies and moments? The Westworld robot vision; the city landscapes of Blade Runner; Final Fantasy; Toy Story; the water beings from The Abyss; the starting sequence in Forrest Gump; bullet time; and so on. What do you consider to be the scenes that have become landmarks in computer generated special effects in Movie History? I am not only looking for Science Fiction, in fact, I'd like to have a wide range of examples on how computers have altered the way that a director can bring his or her vision to the screen "

RunAmuk chimes in with this off-beat query: "Several of the software packages the company I currently work for sells, are 'critical' applications at our client's sites. As such, we have to have support staff on call 24/7 and the company provides several cell phones for this purpose. These cell phones are rotated through the support staff on a weekly basis, so that everyone gets a chance to share in the joy of the 2am support call. This morning as I overheard the pass-off of the phone ('Sorry about the antenna, my cat was chewing on it') it brought to mind a couple of the other 'incidents' that have occurred where the phone didn't quite make it to the hand-off. I'm sure we aren't the only company to have had amusing incidents like this, does anyone have any good stories to share?"

Thanks to The Times Of India for their article reporting the official launch of the PlayStation 2 in India, with pricing set at Rs 17,900 ($390 USD) - almost double its grey market price. The article quotes a Sony spokesman as saying "PS2 console prices are high because of the 66 per cent customs duty. We have launched it officially as there is a potential market for it in the country." But the piece continues: "Sony has a tough battle ahead with the grey market, in addition to intense competition from [other consoles via] ..the smuggled goods market", and explains that "...games like Eye Toy, Formula One 2003, Final Fantasy X, Tomb Raider, Lord of the Rings are best sellers this month in India. In general, titles in action, adventure sports, violence and wrestling generate interest in the Indian market."

Mitch Randall writes "The new type of gaming coming of is NOT a video game, but robotic gaming - it's the next step beyond video games, where the characters in play are real, articulated robots. I've been working on robotic gaming technology which has been picked up by a major toy company, and is due for release next year. In addition, the system will be optionally controlled by a Nintendo GameBoy SP. We are assembling GameBoy developers to coordinate the release with several game cartridges." Plenty of hype here, but some some interesting ideas involving a sonic positioning system, too.

Eric Schlaepfer writes "Here's another great toy for your wish list! ICOM manufactures the highly advanced IC-R3 portable scanner/television set. Besides picking up radio stations in the frequency range of 0.495-2450MHz, the IC-R3 also receives regular television signals, amateur television, and wireless security camera signals."

A long, long time ago, you asked lobbyist Morgan Reed questions about lobbying, undue industry influence on United States laws as they apply to the tech sector, the future of internet taxation, and more. Reed, in the meantime, has switched jobs: he's now working for the Association for Competitive Technology (as he candidly and lightheartedly acknowledges, "the enemy" to many Slashdot readers, since they lobby for large software corporations, notably Microsoft), and is finally free to answer your questions. Read on for about as inside a viewpoint as you can find on how you can affect your elected representatives, from someone whose job is to do just that. Update: 08/01 19:24 GMT by M : That's Morgan Reed, not Reed Morgan. We suck.

Cyrrin writes "The 2003 Siggraph conference is under way in San Diego, and the Emerging Technologies booth is showcasing several noteworthy projects in the field of human-computer interaction in music production. First, The Continuator system, from Sony Computer Science Laboratory, Paris which learns in real-time the style of a performing pianist, taking into account chord structures, rhythm, and melody, and then renders a musical performance in a similar style. Next is The Augmented Composer Project which uses real-time image processing to read the arrangement and orientation of symbolic cards on a table to allow a composer to assemble components of a musical phrase. Finally, those wizards at the MIT Media Lab bring you Hyperscore, a visual composition program which is intended for childen to be able to easily create complex and fantastic music sequences. (And it's fun for adults too!) Hyperscore is part of the Toy Symphony project and is available for download by going to the Musictoys->Hyperscore-> Showcase page (Windows-only though)."

Thanks to CNN Money for their article discussing videogame plans for the forthcoming football season, particularly focusing on the fact that "publishers are interested in discovering exactly how dedicated electronic football fans are to the online element." EA president John Riccitiello explains: "The online connected console is a brand new concept. We do not want to set a long term precedent that it's a free benefit, but we don't think we can get paid for the simple act of matching two consumers to play against one another. So what we've been doing is looking at alternatives." According to the article, EA will be trying pay-to-play tournaments (but only in NBA Live for now, not Madden), and the opportunity to purchase downloadable content, as EA learns "what the consumer is willing to pay for."

Thanks to Wired News for their story discussing the forthcoming book, Dungeons And Dreamers, which is subtitled 'The Rise of Computer Game Culture From Geek to Chic', and "..documents the manically creative lives of gamers by tracing the career of eccentric 'Lord British,' as [Richard] Garriott is known to millions of fans, and panning out to explore the social anthropology of computer game culture." The article points to the book's official website, where you can also find a copy of the book's first chapter, and, as for the wider implications of success stories like Ultima creator Garriott's, co-author John Borland says: "..history matters, and we want people to realize that Quake isn't an isolated phenomenon. Games back in the 1870s had similar themes, so did mid-century toy soldiers and H.G. Wells novels."

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to Boomtown's hands-on preview of Sony's Eye Toy, the forthcoming USB camera add-on for the Playstation 2 which comes with a suite of mini-games. As the preview explains, "The Eye Toy has motion detection capability, so you basically play all the games by moving your hands, your head, or even your legs." Interestingly, future plans for the Eye Toy, which was one of the E3 Game Critics Award winners, are also discussed, showing Sony are committed to using the hardware for more than just the one title: "The next instalment of Eye Toy: Play is already in development, and is due for release this Christmas. It will be a far more music-oriented product, featuring many tracks by popular artists. It will also feature full online video messaging capabilities."

joestar writes "Just released today at ISC2003, Germany, is "MandrakeClustering", a high-performance computing Linux distribution/solution, which sounds interesting, at least in the PR: Pentium support with optimizations made with the Intel compiler, 64-bit Opteron support (with in this case, up to 16 GB of RAM for each cluster's node!), parallelized URPMI (Mandrake's apt-get) and other dedicated tools. This product is based on a one-year research project "CLIC" involving MandrakeSoft and partners. A good snapshot of the product running a 3D real-time demo is available here. The interesting point now: MandrakeClustering's goal is to provide a system which is easy to deploy, easy to administer and use. Well... Mum would certainly love to play Quake with this toy."

Thanks to InsertCredit for pointing to a feature on the NFG Games site discussing the HiSaturn Navi, a rare and bizarre Japanese incarnation of the Sega Saturn from 1995, which included an add-on LCD screen, a car adaptor, GPS navigation software, karaoke compatibility, and lots more. The unit even has some strange car safety features courtesy of a sensor attached to the handbrake cable - "Game playing was prohibited while the car was in motion - without the handbrake sensor installed and the handbrake applied the screen would shut off after a game started to load." Still, at $2000 (with screen) when launched, and $1200 even now for second-hand models, it's only a toy for the truly insane Sega fan.

Thanks to several readers for pointing out the E3 Game Critics Award winners have been announced, speculating on the most promising titles from the nominations announced a couple of weeks back. The big winner was Half-Life 2, with a total of 4 awards, including Best Of Show, and Sony's Eye Toy and THQ's Full Spectrum Warrior also picked up a couple of awards each. You can also check out previous winners to see how well the critics' crystal ball has functioned in the past.

rocannon writes "Cellular-news reports that NEC has announced a technical cooperation with the Japanese toy manufacturer, Konami to enable its range of MICROiR toys cars to be controlled from the DoCoMo N504iS handset or the J-N51 handset sold by J-Phone. More details on Cellular News."

Slashdot Games is continuing to cover events from the show floor at the E3 Expo in Los Angeles. After covering Nintendo's booth, our next subject is Sony, who backed up the information contained in their pre-E3 press conference with a bevy of playable titles. Read on for what we found at Sony, including Gran Turismo 4, Resident Evil Online, and the very cool Eye Toy.

Earlier today, Sony's pre-E3 press conference here in Los Angeles announced their PSP handheld console, as we've already covered at Slashdot Games. But there were plenty of other important and interesting announcements in the Sony briefing that we can summarize here, in the same way as we've done for Nintendo's and for Microsoft's pre-E3 press conferences. Read on for info about Gran Turismo 4, Eye Toy, the next Grand Theft Auto, and more..

More companies are announcing their line-up for E3, and one of the most interesting rosters comes from Capcom, who now have an E3 preview page up on their site. Highlights include Resident Evil: Outbreak (the online Resident Evil for Playstation 2) and Onimusha Blade Warriors (more of a fighting game?), as well as other new Maximo and Onimusha titles, though sadly there are no screenshots available there. Also announcing their product line-up are Eidos Interactive, whose press release mentions Thief and Deus Ex: Invisible War from the Spector-headed Ion Storm, plus interesting Legacy Of Kain and Tomb Raider sequels. Finally, a preliminary list of E3 titles bundled out of Sony Europe by Eurogamer includes Gran Turismo 4, Syphon Filter: Omega Strain, Eye Toy (using your Playstation 2 plus a camera add-on), Ratchet and Clank und Jak and Daxter sequels, and plenty more. Excited yet?

zymano writes "Now this is a cool toy for the office or home! RC microhelicopter here that is flat out cool but not for sale. So small that it can drop a sugar cube into your cup of coffee. It's 100 grams or lighter now. Some gallerys and videos on the page. You can buy one here and here."

theodp writes "Eleven groups, including the Electronic Privacy Information Center and Junkbusters, filed a complaint with the FTC, asking that it investigate Amazon for violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. An Amazon spokesman called the complaint groundless because "Amazon.com is not a site directed at children." So what was the deal with those Amazon Press Releases for the Harry Potter Magical Candy Contest For Children Ages 6 to 13, Toy Quest Toy Design Contest For Kids 12 And Under, and the Be a Poet Contest For All Kids 12 and Under?" Update: 04/23 23:54 GMT by T :theodp writes with an update from Ad Age which says that Amazon has "announced it has removed children's identifying information from its Web sites."