From Slashdot today we learn that the sequel to the 1983 classic “Wargames” has finally gotten underway and is filiming in Quebec. Matthew Broderick won’t be reprising his role, instead the hacker do-gooder will be played by Matt Lanter.

In this sequel, hacker Will Farmer (Lanter) cracks into a goverment super-computer named Ripley and engages it in an online terrorist-attack simulation game. Little does Farmer know that Ripley has been designed to appeal to potential terrorists, and certain glitches have turned made him paranoid.

From the AP:

Joe Barbera, half of the Hanna-Barbera animation team that produced such beloved cartoon characters as Tom and Jerry, Yogi Bear and the Flintstones, died Monday at the age of 95. Mr. Barbera died of natural causes at his home with his wife, Sheila, at his side.

With his longtime partner, Bill Hanna, Mr. Barbera first found success with the Tom and Jerry cartoons. The antics of the battling cat and mouse won seven Academy Awards. Mr. Hanna passed away in 2001.

The partners, who teamed up while working at MGM in the 1930s, went on to new success in the 1960s with a series of animated TV comedies, including “The Flintstones,” “The Jetsons,” “Yogi Bear,” “Scooby-Doo” and “Huckleberry Hound and Friends.”

Forbes has an article on why gamers cheat, breaking down the reasons into 4 buckets:

There are four major reasons why players cheat in a game: they’re stuck, they want to play God, they are bored with the game, or they want to be a jerk.

It goes into detail on each of these and also explains why cheating is actually good for you.

The author is Mia Consalvo an associate professor in the School of Telecommunications at Ohio University. Her current research examines women’s game play, the economics of the videogame industry and pedagogical uses of games. She has just written the book Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames , to be released by MIT Press in 2007.

 

Pikipimp allows you to pimp your pik. Upload a picture of a person, maybe yourself or your friend. Next, pimp it out with a beard, glasses, funny hat, scars, bruises, tattoos, body jewelry and much more.

Then you can preview it, download or save it to the gallery along with all the other buffoons.

Here’s mine. Link to yours in the comments.

I know you’re probably tired of the zillions of Flash based games on the net, for the most part I am too.

But here’s one I recently heard about that I find fun. Well I find it fun ’cause only a geek would really find something like identifying countries on a map of the world fun: World Map.

I knew I was pretty weak with the African continent, but looks like I need to bone up on my geography in Eastern Europe due to the many new states that arose from the USSR.