Ah, this story just gets more and more hilarious. Odds are you’ve heard the tale of the Xbox burglar who was dealt a solid hand of internet justice after the console’s rightful owner, Jesse McPherson, posted the culprit’s Xbox Live Gamertag online. The ensuing harassment from the internet community eventually prompted the kid to return the ill-gotten system. If you haven’t heard the story yet, well then Philadelphia’s local Fox News recently ran a segment on it, which you can view above. For some reason, it always warms my heart a little when tales of the internet community putting their collective efforts to good use are picked up by the mainstream media. Also it’s kind of funny to hear a TV news reporter refer to the kid as a “wise ass.”

Via McFearsome

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Four days. That’s how long it took for the wrath of the internet community to cause a moron to cave and return a stolen Xbox 360 to its rightful owner. You may recall an interesting tale recently where a man named Jesse McPherson returned home to find his house had been burglarized and his TV, laptop, and Xbox 360 had been stolen. Not only that, but then he began receiving harassing voice messages on his new console from a person claiming to be the thief. So he did what anyone familiar with the powers of the internet would do and sent the internet after the thief by posting his story and the kid’s Xbox Live account online. After the story got picked up by Digg, the internet community leapt into action and managed to find out the kid’s real name, address, high school, phone number, AIM name, etc. Then they pretty much began harassing him non-stop over the weekend, leading the kid to hand-deliver the laptop back to its owner.

Well, now this story seems to have reached a somewhat happy conclusion as McPherson has reported that his Xbox has now been returned safe and sound. The kid’s mom dropped the console off on his doorstep wrapped in a white trash bag and then called him to tell him it was there. McPherson also said that the police now have a lead on the actual robber and “seem to be doing their job,” as opposed to before when he pretty much gift-wrapped a lead for them and had the door slammed in his face. But since he’s got his 2/3 of his stuff back, he asked the admin behind the wiki page with all the kid’s personal info to remove all the content; and they seem to have complied. And internet justice has prevailed.

Via McPherson’s Blog  [image via Weird Asia News]

Sit down, kids; it’s story time.

On March 12, Jesse McPherson returned from his trip to SXSW only to find that his home in Philadelphia had been burglarized. The thief made off with his TV, an old Powerbook, and his Xbox 360. Naturally, he was upset, so he took it upon himself to call up some local pawn shops in the area to see if anyone had come in trying to hock his stuff.

As luck would have it, the first place he called remembered a young man who tried to sell a Powerbook that had a few quirks similar to McPherson’s. So he went down there and snapped a couple shots from their security feed of the guy trying to sell the laptop. He contacted the police and told them he had pictures of the thief, but he never heard back from them. Meanwhile, this past Friday, his co-workers surprise him with a brand new Xbox 360 console.

Now here’s where things get really interesting. That night, McPherson goes home, hooks up his new gift, and recovers his Xbox Live account. The first thing he notices is he’s received a voice message from some random person. As it turns out, it’s the thief, who explicitly says he’s got the Xbox and offers to sell it back to him. McPherson calls the police, and the person on the other end tells him to call back during normal operating hours and then hangs up on him (note to self: never ever move to Philadelphia). Left with nowhere else to turn, McPherson did the only thing he could think of and posted the thief’s Xbox Live account on the internet. His story got picked up by Digg and within a few hours the internet community managed to uncover the thief’s name, address, high school, e-mail, phone number, etc. and even put together a wiki page to compile all of it.

Then he pretty much started getting harassed through AIM, a YouTube video, and probably every social site he’s ever subscribed to almost constantly. By Sunday, the kid actually shows up at McPherson’s house and gives him the laptop back. No word yet on the Xbox, but McPherson has said he will be in contact with the kid’s parents soon. I also have a feeling the kid will be giving up the Xbox soon, since his account’s bio now reads: “mY eFFinG xBoX brOkE sO i WoNt bE oN fOr aWhILe iF u NeEd Me SEnD mE a MeSsAgE aS lOnG aS iT aiNt vOiCe I wiLl GeT iT.”

There’s really no justice quite like internet justice. Some people have pointed out that a threat left on Xbox Live is flimsy evidence that this kid is the actual thief and not just the guy who bought it off the thief. That may be true, but it’s still a little hard to explain how an internet search that started with an Xbox Live account brought back a picture of a kid who looks a lot like the guy trying to pawn a Powerbook that sounds remarkably like the stolen one. Besides, even if he weren’t the one who broke into McPherson’s house, he still knowingly bought some stolen goods and then bragged about it to the rightful owner. That’s worthy enough of some internet backlash, I say.

Via McPherson’s Blog

In an interesting move, Blizzard finally put the kabash on one of the more notorious guilds around. Abhorrent Taboo, the group that was ousted, is well known for their complete disregard for rules and structure.

Their welcome statement was a fairly arrogant one and probably gave Blizzard more motivation to do something about it. Their welcome statement follows:

“Role-playing is legal. Even if you are role-playing something that would be considered deplorable and highly illegal IRL, it’s still just role-playing and isn’t subject to any form of disciplinary action. Negative publicity is still publicity. Make a Digg or website about how sick we are. Report us to PervertedJustice. All it does is bring in more members. In fact, the Digg the guy on Ravenholdt made about us was so effective, several people signed up for WoW just to be in our guild. The bottom line is: We’re allowed to do what we do on any server we please and no one can do anything about it.”

In addition to their obvious rule breaking attitudes, the guild was accused of defending pedophiles and engaging in extreme sexual behavior without verifying the age of their members.

I firmly believe in freedom of speech, but it’s Blizzard’s right to pull any group from their servers for breaking rules. Their attitude towards Blizzard and the rest of the community in general was too out there. Who on earth would defend pedophiles anyway?

Via WoW Insider

Update: As I suspected, this story turned out to be completely false, but I still think Nintendo should consider some upgrades in the future.

No one really knows if this is a legitimate rumor or not. Much of game reporting is based on anonymous tips and we just have to go with our instincts. I was bashed hard in Digg comments the other day for my mention that Nintendo should probably go to a multi-tier system approach to try and tap into an even greater market. Nintendo does have some secrets up their sleeves and we expect some big announcements from them in the next couple of months. Say what you want, but if they were to announce a Blu-Ray enabled Wii system, I am almost positive it would sell like hotcakes.

An unsuspecting informant accidentally stumbled upon a Blu-ray enabled Wii while visiting Nintendo’s R&D facility. Apparently the bathroom wasn’t that easy to find.

While searching for the bathroom, the unnamed informant took a wrong turn Willy Wonka style and opened the wrong door. Upon entering the room, he noticed a small group of Nintendo employees (engineers?) watching a movie on what looked like a Nintendo Wii. The informant recounted the details to the Sarcastic Gamer, but made it unclear if the movie playing abilites were a hardware add-on, a software upgrade, or a brand new Wii model. Regardless, he took several mental notes about the situation:

* The remote control to control movie playback attached itself to the Wii-mote nunchuck style.
* The drive slot glowed blue while the disc was in but faded to black when the disc was removed
* The Nintendo employees quickly ejected the disc and placed it in what was undeniably a Blu-ray disc case
* There was an extra Wii channel titled “Wii Watch” emblazoned with a Blu-ray logo

This discovery comes after Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime hinted at an upcoming surprise for the Nintendo Wii during a Gamehead interview. “The surprise is coming,” he teased, “by the end of September.”

Via Game.Blorge.com

Our friends at the OLGn Network posted an interesting article concerning the ways statistics can be manipulated. Personally, I have always questioned the use of minimal statistics that supposedly prove a point. I often think we live in a society of numbers where common sense somehow goes out the window.

The most interesting point in their article follows:

I will tell you that if you do your home work, there is NO WAY you can make me believe video games make kids violent. If you look at the U.S. Governments numbers for people ages 12 plus here [LINK] and [LINK] . They say it right on the site “Violent crime rates declined for both males and females since 1994.“.

What is interesting about that statistic is gaming really started to boom after 1994.  Guys like the infamous JT spew out random statistics all the time, but as I have mentioned before they also avoid any statistics that could potentially damage their argument. He talks about scientific data. What a joke. Fortunately, one day these special interest guys will move on to something else. Someone on Digg commented on “Violence Causes Games” and mentioned that it’s a little known fact that the Vietnam War was caused by CandyLand, and sadly I am sure someone could dig up some random statistic to prove that as well.

Kinda contrived, kinda manipulative, kinda worth a look, though.

What you see above is the result of hundreds of people “digging” the page. For those unfamiliar, check out www.digg.com to see what the hell digg is all about. If you haven’t heard of it by now, though…

Anyway, I always like to see innovation, even if it is useless. Though, I don’t know, something amazing could come of what this guy chose to do with his time other than impress his imaginary friend Peter.

Digg users don’t like to be moderated. When Digg started moderating out references to AACS encryption keys, user blew a gasket.

Advanced Access Content System is the encryption scheme used to prevent users from ripping HD DVD and Blu-ray disks. As with any lock in the digital age it only takes time and creativity to break. The internet may offer a world without doors, but it also offers a communication medium to tell everyone about backdoors. Naturally the key made it into the wild. That’s where the fun began, as the AACS Licensing Administrator threatened legal action against Google, demanding they remove links about the code from their Blogger sites. Digg saw where this was heading and took action to remove its links. Bowing to user pressure however, Digg founder Kevin Rose has stated that references to the code will no longer be cut. Kevin went on to say “You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.”
via DailyTech