From the BBC article:

Qui Chengwei stabbed Zhu Caoyuan in the chest when he found out he had sold his virtual sword for 7,200 Yuan (£473).

The sword, which Mr Qui had lent to Mr Zhu, was won in the popular online game Legend of Mir 3.

Attempts to take the dispute to the police failed because there is currently no law in China to protect virtual property.

Here’s a Flickr group that has scans of crappy pirated DVD covers. The Fantastic Four cover has the credits to Bulletproof Monk.

Ecommerce sites use your personal info to charge you more. From the article on the EFF site:

CNN has a report detailing an unsavory practice euphemistically called “price customization.” In short, websites examine the web data you automatically shed (cookies, IP address, etc.) so they can charge you a different price for a product or service depending on your “identity” and shopping habits.

The article cites “a retail photography Web site charging different prices for the same digital cameras and related equipment depending on whether shoppers had previously visited popular price-comparison sites” and “one [Amazon] buyer [who] deleted the electronic tags on his computer that identified him as a regular customer and noticed the price of a DVD changed from $26.24 to $22.74.”

The MARC commuter trains between Baltimore and DC are sporting these terrornoia posters styled after the heyday of Stalin’s totalitarian regime, when Soviet citizens were exhorted to spy on their neighbors and fink them out for suspicious behavior. And they say irony is dead. From here.

From the Ninja Mind Control book, comes the move, “Monkey Steals the Peach.”

Followers of the Iron Hand styles immediately clench their fists tightly, with a crushing grip, and jerk the hand sharply back to the near hip, effectively ripping away the genitals. Massive blood loss causes death.

Full shot here.

Gary Wolf writes a thought-provoking and short (both good) article for Wired opining that the future of American security lies in ignoring the Department of Homeland Security, with its “rainbow of doom,” its magic airport involuntary nudity machines, and its suspension of the Constitution and relying instead on common sense and democratic fundamentals. Regarding 9/11:

After both buildings were burning, many calls to 911 resulted in advice to stay put and wait for rescue. Also, occupants of the towers had been trained to use the stairs, not the elevators, in case of evacuation.

Fortunately, this advice was mostly ignored. According to the engineers, use of elevators in the early phase of the evacuation, along with the decision to not stay put, saved roughly 2,500 lives. This disobedience had nothing to do with panic. The report documents how evacuees stopped to help the injured and assist the mobility-impaired, even to give emotional comfort. Not panic but what disaster experts call reasoned flight ruled the day.

In fact, the people inside the towers were better informed and far more knowledgeable than emergency operators far from the scene. While walking down the stairs, they answered their cell phones and glanced at their BlackBerries, learning from friends that there had been a terrorist attack and that the Pentagon had also been hit. News of what was happening passed by word of mouth, and fellow workers pressed hesitating colleagues to continue their exit.

Penn Jillette, of Penn and Teller, has a new daughter that he named, Moxie CrimeFighter. From the AP article:

We chose her middle name because when she’s pulled over for speeding she can say, “But officer, we’re on the same side,” Jillette explained. “My middle name is CrimeFighter.”

Florida judges are tossing out DUI cases when defendants ask to see the source code for the breathalyzers that busted them. The manufacturers won’t turn over the source, and since the machine’s correct operation is critical to establishing the case against the DUIers, the case is dismissed when it can’t be produced. From the article:

All four of Seminole County’s criminal judges have been using a standard that if a DUI defendant asks for a key piece of information about how the machine works – its software source code, for instance – and the state cannot provide it, the breath test is rejected.