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Nexon, NCsoft refuse to fully cooperate with South Korean MMO gambling probe
South Korean MMO makers are under the Game Rating Board's microscope for allegedly obstructing an investigation related to MMORPG gambling. The ratings board has questions regarding real-world money transactions that offer a chance at valuable in-game items, and a veritable who's who of Korean development firms are refusing to fully cooperate, according to This Is Game. NCsoft, Nexon, and HanbitSoft are just a few of the companies mentioned in the report, and while the publishers have given up item names, costs, and other details related to the transactions, the companies are thus far refusing to divulge information on payout percentages. GRB chairman Soo Keun Lee says that his organization is simply trying to determine the legality of RMT transactions using a set of gambling standards adopted by South Korea in 2008. "Game companies ask us why GRB tries to touch their business model and [they] refuse our request[s]," he said.
USB Hourglass flips itself, generating random numbers in the process
This is such a bizarre combination of the old and the new that at least a few of our geekiest readers are sure to get a kick out of it. The USB Hourglass is essentially an egg timer equipped with an optical beam for keeping an eye on sand levels and a rotating mechanism for flipping the thing when all the sand has landed at the bottom. But that ain't all! The observed light levels are sent to a host PC (via USB, which also supplies power) where any of your favorite open source tools can use it to generate random numbers. The rest of this -- "entropy," "random" versus "pseudorandom" number generators, etc. -- is simply a little beyond us this morning, although we're sure that this will produce a lively and intelligent discussion in the comments (where many a lively and intelligent discussion has taken place over the years). Just make sure you peep the video after the break first -- it's a blast.
