The Week in Review – Disappointment, Denial of Service and David Jaffe

In this week’s edition, it’s bad news for Professor Layton and Phoenix Wright fans and Gene Simmons picks a fight with the internet.

David Jaffe Plays the Killjoy

The ESA has been mobilizing gamers across the US against the California law that would make it illegal to sell a mature rated videogame to a minor. But God of War creator David Jaffe thinks that nothing the ESA does will make a difference, no matter how many people they get behind them. Writing on Twitter, he said that the Supreme Court wasn’t a democracy where people had a say in what laws it enacted, and anyone who thought that they could sway the court was naïve. (Link)

MineCraft Pounded by Denial of Service Attack

Someone, or a group of someones, with an axe to grind against MineCraft creator Markus Persson took down the MineCraft site with a dedicated denial of service attack, effectively preventing anyone from playing the game online. A group claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that it was just a taste of what might happen if Persson didn’t start releasing updates at a pace they found satisfactory. The veracity of the groups claims can’t be verified, but let’s face it, stranger things have happened on the internet. (Link)

Pointing Investigators Staying in Japan

The news that Professor Layton would be teaming up with Phoenix Wright got a lot of people very excited. That is until Capcom went and spoiled it all by saying that the crossover game was only coming out in Japan. All is not lost however, as Capcom says that if Western fans show enough support for the idea, it will consider releasing the game outside of Japan. Now, if you’ll excuse me for just a moment, I need to send a couple of hundred emails to Capcom. (Link)

KISS Boss Battles Anonymous

Gene Simmons managed to raise the ire of Anonymous recently when he said that musicians should sue anyone and everyone who downloaded even one of the musician’s songs. Anonymous responded with a DDoS attack against Simmon’s site, pausing just long for Simmons to poke his head above ground and provoke the group some more. Anonymous then started redirecting visitors to Simmon’s site to either the Pirate Bay or a cybersquatting search site. Simmons seems to have regained control of the site for now, but who knows when he’ll poke the hornets’ nest again. (Link)

Super-Considerate Thief Returns Stolen Data

A Swedish Professor had his laptop stolen when he left his bag unattended in his apartment building’s stairwell for a few minutes. While obviously upset about losing his stuff, he was more concerned about his lost data, which included a meticulously documented calendar that stretched back more than ten years. The thief returned most of the professor’s belongings, but kept the laptop and the professor assumed his data when gone forever. Until, that is, he received a USB stick containing all his documents and personal files in the mail. The Professor said it had given him “hope for humanity.” (Link)