8 Ways to Sunday

Valve Software and Vivendi Universal Games are locked in a contract dispute that may delay the release of Half-Life 2 for up to six months, according to legal documents recently uncovered by GameSpot. At issue (and at stake) in the dispute is nothing less than full intellectual property rights to the Half-Life franchise and the legal viability of Valve’s popular Steam distribution system.

That second article goes into the details of the threatened six-month delay, and relates the story of a similar fate that befell another unfortunate game development company. Sounds like VU is a real bastard when it comes to IP demands and distribution. I hope they lose a shitload of developer contracts over this.

SitePoint columnist Mike Truck learns valuable lessons in web development from his loogie-hockin’ Aunt Gracie.

Very good stuff in this article. It’s laid out in a way that even a beginner can understand, yet deep enough to serve as a good refresher for seasoned pros. It’s a little on the aged side, but unless you’re going bleeding-edge not enough has changed in web dev since February 2003 to make it obsolete.

An open source software project called Synergy allows users to share a keyboard, mouse, and clipboard seamlessly and simultaneously between multiple displays from different computers running different operating systems.

Someone testing the program has posted videos of the see-it-to-believe-it results. Plus, check out this five-monitor setup with a panoramic desktop background image across them all.

(brainscat and random($foo) via Photo Matt and Photo Matt)

Someone sees the work of a higher power in the paths taken by recent hurricanes.

Nasty yes, but still funny.

(via Photo Matt)

The new Xbox game Fable has broken sales records in its first week and raked in about $18.7 million — a domestic take which tops that of box office champ Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow over the same period — according to a press release from Microsoft Game Studios.

Anyone who doubts that games have come into their own as a form of mainstream entertainment: now is the time to get out from under your rock.