[Catch of the Day - Thanks Crowyourboat!]

You can change the details of the invasion in any way you choose: Zombie speed, infection rate, number of civilians, percentage of civilians armed, number of highly effective police and more.

You can play around with it to either defeat the zombies (boooooring), let them take over the city and pretend like some of their more gruesome kills are of your opposition politician of choice (take that, Michael Atkinson!), or try to make the odds even and see who really wants it more.

Warning: Turn down your speakers if you’re at work. The eerie post-rock soundtrack is accompanied by the expected array of flesh-hungry moans, which is the kind of thing that’s sort of tricky to explain away as part of your quarterly PowerPoint earnings presentation. [Class 3 Outbreak]

Nothing says “functional relationship” like destroying someone’s property rather than talking things out. I’d like to think this is fake, but this girl has a whole bunch of other videos where she’s equally horrible. She’s not worth it, buddy.

First off – the controls. One of the first thing that struck me (and many of you) about the PS3’s implementation of iView was that it was just a big-screen translation of the web interface, meaning you need to use the dualshock to manually drag a pointer around the screen to do anything. The Bluetooth remote doesn’t even work. Both Sony and the ABC are aware of this restriction, and will be working to fix it in future versions. In order to make that possible, they need to throw a layer of HTML code over the top of the service, a process that takes time and money.

The service itself has just been optimised for viewing on a big screen, but all the content is exactly the same. They guys at the ABC are currently in the process of transitioning their video content from flash video to H.264 encoding (running at 600kbps), a process that should be completed by the end of the year. At the moment there are both formats on the iView platform and although the H.264 can still appear a little blocky at 50-odd inches, it’s still a lot more fluid than the flash vids that are still up there.

At the moment, the ABC hasn’t ruled out a HQ stream for people with higher bandwidths, but it’s not something they’re planning in the short term. Essentially, this launch on the PS3 is a trial – the ABC have big plans to diversify how people access their iView service (the move to H.264 is as much about getting iView onto platforms that don’t support Flash as it is about smoother picture) and the PS3 is the first step in that diversification. There’s no commercial arrangement with Sony on this one. The trial is set to run until the end of March next year, at which point they’ll collate all the data and try and focus what works and what doesn’t into an even better service.

As such, they plan on fixing issues like the UI and the backlight (if your PS3 is set to dim after a period of time to prevent burn-in on plasmas, the iView app doesn’t override this) as time goes on. Also worth noting is that Sony are planning on using this as a learning experience as well, stating that they won’t be launching any more IPTV services until after the iView trial is over come March next year.

One other cool thing – you can apparently stream iView to your PSP via Remote Play. Hopefully that’ll work around any regional restrictions for international travellers too…

As the first real move from a desktop app to something you can watch on the TV, this is a good first step. But it’s hard not to look forward to the inevitable developments that will take iView on the PS3 from good to fantastic. Hopefully it’ll happen sooner than later…

From the petition:

TO: The Honourable the Speaker and Members of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland
Queensland residents draws to the attention of the House that the Classification of Computer Games and Images Act 1995 is currently out of step with the wishes of the electorate.

Your petitioners, therefore, request the House that it be amended to permit computer games to receive the R18+ classification when they have been refused classification under the Commonwealth Act.

The petition, which is only available to Queenslanders, will probably amount to nothing, but even so, if you’re a maroon, you should definitely head here and put your signature onto it. After all, if you’ve got the government working on your side, you may as well take advantage of it…

[Queensland Parliament e-petition, via Atomic - Thanks Adam!]

What you will get is a kind of “service offering with premium content and services” that you can’t get in the free edition, but what that is is unclear. But it’s unlikely that Sony will charge for the services they give away now, such as the ability to play for free online. [Gamespot via Engadget]

The kid hung up mid-call, but officers went to his house and told him to listen to his parents. They didn’t ask why the little shit was in trouble in the first place, but I’m pretty sure annoying emergency services won’t help get him to get back MW2 any faster.

At least he didn’t go crazy like that Japanese guy who doused himself with kerosene and torched his house after his mum threw away his Gundam action figures. [Chicago Tribune via Obscure Store]

Seriously now, my youngest sister has a phone she never uses – save for texting. LOLs and TTYLs have long replaced spoken word and the clickity-clack of her slider phone keyboard easily drowns out the family small talk at the dinner table during holidays.

It’s only natural that some entrepreneur would turn this phenomenon into a game and make a little coin off of it. The game features arcade and race the clock modes, as well as a two-player competitive mode. The joysticks are toy mobile phones. Obvi.

And I’m just speculating wildly here, but since Rockstar didn’t develop this one I’m pretty certain there’s no hidden Hot Coffee sexting level. [ChipChick via Ubergizmo]

In the olden days of pinball, there wasn’t much to adjust. Free game scores were hard wired into the machine and couldn’t be changed. But with the introduction of Williams High Speed in 1986, things got more complicated.

The new machines would dynamically adjust the free play score based on an algorithm. It also introduced a method where if you had already scored a free game, it was impossible to win a random free game.

The post goes into much more detail over at Cheap Talk, but ultimately, these algorithms exploits, and the layouts of the tables themselves got so complicated that new players couldn’t figure out how to master them. And, as we all know, pinball faded into the night. If you’re at all a fan of pinball, it’s an interesting read. Head on over to check it out. [Cheap Talk via Retro Thing]

Image via ktpupp