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Veto override for Utah game bill still possible, improbable
Utah-based newspaper Deseret News recently ran a piece about the extraordinary measures Utah state legislators would need to take to resuscitate HB 353, which enforces strict penalties on retailers who sell M-rated games to minors, following Gov. Jon Huntsman's somewhat unexpected veto. The paper claims "legislative sources" are reporting neither the Utah House nor Senate have the votes to reach the two-thirds majority to override the veto -- though this may end up being the smaller of two hurdles supporters of the bill will need to clear.The larger obstacle standing in the way of HB 353's sponsors is cold, hard cash. Earlier this year, the legislature canceled an "interim study day," effectively saving the state $25,000. In order to call a legislative override session, the state would essentially spend the funds they saved due to the cancellation. Hopefully, they have the good sense to just let the thing die -- on the off chance that they should manage to pass the bill once more, they'll almost certainly be paying more than $25,000 to the ESA for legal fee reimbursement.[Via GamePolitics]
VC Tuesday: Mach Overrider
With four games released this week, the US Virtual Console was all set to win a battle in the nonexistent VC Content Wars on quantity alone. But then Japan fought back with five games, which, as any Donkey Kong Jr. Math player will tell you, is more than four. We still win in overall quality, even though Japan got the hard-to-find Golden Axe III, and that's the one with the weird cat-guy in it. This week's Japanese VC releases: Battle City (Famicom, 1-2 players, 500 Wii Points) Mach Rider (Famicom, 1 player, 500 Wii Points) Golden Axe III (Mega Drive, 1-2 players, 600 Wii Points) Legend of Hero Tonma (PC Engine, 1-2 players, 600 Wii Points) Override (PC Engine, 1 player, 600 Wii Points)
Emotive's Push Ringer overrides ringtones, pranksters overjoyed
Forget personalized ringtones and ringbacks, the next tween obsession has arrived in the form of Push Ringer, which "enables a caller to push an outgoing ringtone to the receiving phone -- allowing the caller, not the called person -- to set the tone." We're assuming you're either elated or sighing mightily after reading that, but there's 7.7 million reasons why you wish you would've implemented it first. A group of deep-pocketed investors have sunk $7.7 million into Emotive Communications' flagship idea, which temporarily overrides the phone's preset ringer, and moreover, allows the recipient of the surprise sound-byte to "instantly buy a copy" if they so desire. Notably, this very service has already taken the VoIP world over, as Skype users are probably more familiar with the RingJacker concept. Now, who's down for inventing the Push Ringer Reverser to send a "you got punk'd" clip back at the egotistical sender?[Via The Raw Feed]
How to permanently activate Windows Vista, at least for now
While Microsoft's Vista hasn't quite had time to make it out to us normal folk just yet, there's certainly versions floating around thanks to the November 30th corporate release, which has in turn led to the new discovery of a method to circumvent Redmond's most valiant efforts to make us activate the darned software. With the help of a few background apps, a little registry tweakin', and whole lot of deviousness, you can reportedly freeze the 30-day countdown timer within the operating system in order to prevent it from ever leaving the fully functional evaluation mode. Purportedly, the TimerStop Vista crack works "on all 32-bit x86 editions" including Ultimate and Premium, but the success rate in 64-bit (x64) environments is "likely to be low." Notably, the folks behind the crack suggest that Windows Updates will still be accessible, as will Microsoft's "value-added software downloads" typically only available to those who pass the WVGA validation process. So if you're looking to hit up a new OS in the coming weeks, or you've already got 'er up and running, be sure to peep the read link if you're interested in pulling this off -- but don't count on Microsoft to sleep on this one, holiday break or not.[Via Digg]
