Ever since the dawn of man, we have been a violent prone society. We glorify it, with sports like boxing, hockey, and football. As we grow as a species, we keep trying to become more civilized, and quell our violent instincts. At times it looks as though this quest for peace is all for not, when you keep hearing about school shootings, and nonsensical violence.

So, in times when struggling with an issue, we tend to turn to our government for support. So how could the government help in this fight against violence, specifically among the teen population? Our government has turned to what they claim to be a major source of the problem, video games. All across the country, states have tried to pass new laws suppressing the purchasing of video games. Most of the evidence comes from reports stating that violence in video games, has led to violence from teens in the real world. What the government fails to mention is that as many reports that support a “video game violence-real life violence correlation”, there are just as many that refute it.

The newest bill trying to be passed, comes by the state of Massachusetts. The bill would make it illegal for the selling of violent video games to anyone under the age of 18. Anytime news of this comes about, you can hear the cringe of video game fans around the globe. While our voice tends to just be heard in forums, and social networks, a new voice has emerged, and one that alot of people might listen to.

Stephen King, a legend in the horror novel genre has recently spoke up about the new video game bill trying to be passed in Mass. In a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly, King wrote in his column about his views on the government’s involvement in the video game industry. Instead of para-phrasing his words, I’ll provide you with a few quotes from the article.

“What makes me crazy is when politicians take it upon themselves to play surrogate parents. The results of that are usually disastrous. Not to mention undemocratic”

“What really makes me insane is how eager politicians are to use the pop culture as a whipping boy. It’s easy for them, even sort of fun, because the pop-cult always hollers nice and loud. Also, it allows legislators to ignore the elephants in the living room”

It’s so refreshing to finally get some backing from someone with a reputable standing in the entertainment world. King mentions that he’s not a gamer himself (kinda sad, would bring a smile to my face seeing Stephen King playing some GTA III). King’s article has been getting some buzz online, so let’s hope that this can spark some kind of awareness to the masses.

It doesn’t seem like that long ago that Windows Vista was released to the public. It was met with a pretty shaky release. Some marveled at the new glossy interface, and the “aero” layout. Others had a little less enjoyable experience with Vista. Some early Vista problems, were system requirements and how much of your computer’s power it took to run the OS. Others faced some graphic card driver problems, that could cause Vista to crash.

Vista is starting to come around now. A new update is on the horizon, which is said to fix some major problems with Microsoft’s OS. While this is great news to most, it is being overshadowed by the latest news, given by Mr. Gates himself. During a meeting at the Inter-American Development Bank, Gates released information about “Windows 7″ during a Q&A session. Gates announced that Microsoft’s next OS could be released as soon as next year. Afterwards a Microsoft spokeswoman stated that Windows 7 would be released sometime in 2010.

Bill Gates Staying Tight Lipped About Window 7….except for it’s release date

Unfortunately Gates didn’t reveal any details on what would be available with Windows 7. Also, the release window that Gates provided was the pre-release testing for Windows 7, not the retail launch. So for anyone that’s avoided Vista so far, it looks as though you’ll have to wait awhile before the next OS launches.

It seems that the online search engine world has turned into a huge soap opera. There’s the main villain (Google), and everyone else is scrambling to keep up by forming relationships through mergers. I’m pretty sure that was a close synopsis to a certain episode of “Passions”.

The drama is really heating up on the relationship between Yahoo and Microsoft. The computer giant, Microsoft has been trying to lure the search engine veteran Yahoo back to its’ bachelor bad for months. They keep offering them drinks, but Yahoo wants Cristal, not Bud Light. Ok, I’ll stop relating the aptly name “Microhoo” news to soap opera shows and bar pick-up scenarios.

If you haven’t been keeping up with the Microsoft-Yahoo situation, it’s been pretty easy to follow. Yahoo wants to be bought, they just want the right amount of money to be put on the offering table. The problem is, when you hold out for more money, the list of interested parties starts to decrease. The list is so small, that only one company is interested in Yahoo, which of course is Microsoft. And although they are interested, they still haven’t given a price large enough for Yahoo to sell out.

The latest drama coming out of this situation came by way of a personalized letter from Steve Ballmer himself. For anyone not “in the know”, Steve Baller is the CEO of Microsoft. In the letter, Ballmer voiced his frustration of Yahoo’s continuing denial of Microsoft’s bid. Further on in the letter, Ballmer gives Yahoo an ultimatum; that if Yahoo doesn’t accept the offer within three weeks, they will launch a hostile takeover. While “hostile takeover”, makes you think of something like Microsoft troops invading Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, California complex, the truth is alittle less sexy. Their hostile takeover would mean, that Microsoft would take their case directly to Yahoo’s shareholders, instead of the CEO.

This whole ordeal, really does remind me of some elementary school drama. Microsoft wants Yahoo to share something they have, Yahoo doesn’t want to share so Microsoft is going to tattle on them. All the while Google is just sitting back on their high and mighty throne, laughing at the two companies trying to come together.

Sometimes when you see a story, you don’t want to write about, but it’s so awful you’re obligated too. Like watching a bad card accident. It was reported by Tech Kills, about a week ago, an Oregon resident was the victim of a Craigslist looting attack. I’m glad to say that the people that were behind the looting post have been captured, although it’s still sad someone would stoop to it.

In case you missed out on the story, or were too lazy to click the link above, I’ll summarize it for you. Robert Salisbury had been away on a business trip, leaving his house safely behind…or so he thought. While away, he received a call from a woman who made off with his horse, which had been advertised to be abandoned in a certain Craigslist post. Once he received word of the ad, he hurried home to find around thirty people leaving his house with all kinds of his possessions. When Salisbury tried to stop people from stealing his stuff, they waved the Craigslist ad in his face like it was some kind of permission slip.

Now fast forward to earlier this week, when police found the people responsible behind the ad. Brandon and Amber Herbert a marred couple were the dynamic duo behind the post. While the original Craigslist looting fiasco occurred due to a family squabble, this couple had a completely different reason. They were using the ad as a distraction, so they could hatch their own robbery plans. Yes, that’s right, they posted the ad about looting Salisbury’s home, so they in fact could rob someone else. The whole thing kind of reminds me of a “Monk” episode, where thieves dress up as Santa Clauses and throw presents at people, all the while trying to steal the Star Of Bethlehem (a huge diamond). I’m glad to say the Santa thieves were caught and so were this couple.

A Modern Day Bonnie And Clyde Right Before Your Eyes

This recent fiasco has once again sparked the debate on just how much responsibility Craigslist should have in the situation. Since Craigslist has become such an internet phenomenon, all kinds of illegal activities have been posted, primarily prostitution. I like to think it’s the idiots who post things such as this, and idiots who respond to them who should be blamed. You don’t try to penalize a street corner, where prostitutes tend to hang out for any kind of wrong doing.

It’s been alittle over the year since the release of Microsoft’s latest OS, Vista. Since it’s release it’s been met with strong criticism, and most people reverting back to Windows XP. It’s with this strong following that Microsoft has announced they will be discontinuing its’ releasing of Windows Vista.

The big criticisms that most people have with the OS, is the hefty system requirements that Vista requires. With applications requiring more out of systems, operating systems should be using less of a machine’s power, not more.

Here is a list of recommended specs for Vista:
Processor: 2 GHZ
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics Memory: 256 MB RAM

While these aren’t requirements for Vista, this is what is recommended if you want to utilize the full capabilities of the OS. Most people haven’t upgraded to machines that have these kind of specs. So Microsoft has bottlenecked it’s consumer market, instead of expanding it.

Steve Ballmer made the announcement earlier this morning, here is an excerpt from the announcement, “We at Microsoft, believe that Vista is the future of operating systems. We will continue to work and tweak Vista to make it everything an OS should be. As of now we believe that we released Vista too early before hardware requirements could catch up. So for now we will be putting releases of Windows Vista on hiatus. We apologize for any inconvenience we have caused faithful Windows owners”

As of now Microsoft hasn’t released any plans on what it will do while it puts Windows Vista on hiatus. Most experts agree that it will continue to support and release Windows XP until it can get Vista running the way it should. In case you haven’t already figured out, April Fools everybody.