The Null Device
2003/12/6
Taito to start selling new Space Invaders machines. They aim to sell 10,000 of the units, at US$2,772. No word on whether that includes the coloured cellophane that goes across parts of the (black and white) screen. Or, indeed, whether the machines are made using original vintage hardware (2MHz 8080 CPU and all) or whether it's running in an emulator on some modern embedded RISC chip that is several orders of magnitude smaller and more powerful (and possibly cheaper to make).
Jorn Barger is alive and well and living in the New Mexico desert. It seems that the reclusive Barger moved across the US without telling his roommates. (I wonder how long until someone starts calling him the "Wandering Jew-Hater" or some variant on that.) Meanwhile, one of his (less controversial) longtime obsessions, professional cute blonde girl Jenni Ringley is shutting down her webcam. Jenni, of Jennicam fame, was the first of millions of "camgirls", shedding her clothes in front of the computer before anybody else was doing it (let alone trading requests for Amazon wishlist items); some could argue that the blame for the blight that is Reality TV rests partly with her.
In the US, there has been some concern recently over automated voting machines that allow elections to be easily and undetectably rigged (not that anyone in a position of power would do such a nefarious thing, of course). Now the state of Nevada is putting its expertise in auditing slot machines to use on the voting machines. Slot machines (of which Nevada is full) are apparently subject to extremely rigorous technical audits to find any possible security holes, vulnerabilities or bugs that could compromise their fairness or allow them to be rigged; voting machines face no such standards. (via Slashdot)