This is not to say that both Jesus and Diablo don’t have their place. Personally I’m rooting for both of them. It just seems to me that if Christian leaders think that making an even crappier version of Castleville (I didn’t think that was possible) is going to draw gamers away from a release like Diablo 3, they have another thing coming.

After sampling the game, I have to say that it will not help anyone become more interested in the story of Jesus. Adding pointless tasks like chopping wood and tending flowers, does not make His story more compelling. The character art of Jesus and friends also comes off as creepy rather than comforting and inspirational.

Those eyes are a little too sparkly.

Unfortunately, you can’t see it here, but all of the characters stare eerily to you when you play the game. Even worse is your avatar, who never takes his gaze off you as he chops wood, waters flowers, and generally tidies-up around Israel.

This game is a direct rip off of Zynga games, and even asks you to pay real money for collectables and to advance through the game. Hmm, you have to pay to advance and learn the tenets of Christ. This sounds more like a cult than Christianity.

Along your journey you’re given prompts that refer to the Bible, but you are so annoyed with chopping wood and paying for energy that they are meaningless:

“Life is hard in Israel, but people are talking about John the Baptist. Is John the long-awaited Messiah who will save Israel, or is he ‘a voice calling in the wilderness…’?”

“You heard a voice from heaven declaring, “This is My Son!” What could this mean?”

Along the way you meet a gaggle of ne’re-do-wells who are seeking redemption: “I’ve been looking for love with a lot of men, and I still feel empty… I just want to get free of my past…”

“Looks like you need to get right with Jesus; and by that, I mean give us $60 for 760 pieces of fake gold.”

Jesus’ Corporate Sponsorships. Oh really now.

All in all, I think that if you want to learn about Jesus’ teachings you should probably go to church and read the Bible. Then you can practice them by treating people fairly and volunteering in your community. Leave the video games to Satan.

Why is Beelzebub made of Gold?

Furthermore, it may also explain why Verizon is getting rid of unlimited data plans. I mean, associating yourself financially with summer blockbusters can’t be cheap can it? Well, it’s probably cheaper than improving your infrastructure to the point where it actually supports unlimited data, but why do that when there’s Alien prequels (or are they?) to associate your brand with? Yes, my digression may be simplifying things, but at some point in the near future, one hopes these mobile service providers will actually address the issues that cause unlimited data plans to be abandoned.

Until then, product placement and tiered data plans are the the “in” thing.

As for the promotional clip, besides virally advertising Verizon’s Home Monitoring and Control service, it gives us more exposure to Noomi Rapace’s character, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw. The video, titled “Quiet Eye” is a futuristic voicemail from Rapace’s Shaw, asking the Weyland Corporation for interstellar travel help, and if you’ve seen any of the trailers, Dr. Shaw does indeed get the help she’s asking for. Of course, once she arrives to the destination, all hell breaks loose, at least according to the footage we’ve seen.

Verizon’s promotional part comes into play when viewers click the Facebook linkprovided on the YouTube page. From here, users can “explore the world of Prometheus and learn about Verizon Home Monitoring and Control.”

Once the tie-in page is accessed, visitors can either play Verizon’s “Prometheus Mission Connect” game or learn more about the home monitoring service. Naturally, Verizon’s Prometheus game makes use of their monitoring software, which is the point of the product placement/tie-in effort.

Anonymous says that they had nothing to do with it. @YourAnonNews recently tweeted this out to clear their name:

As much as I love @YourAnonNews, he or she doesn’t speak for the entirety of those who identify themselves as Anonymous. It still could be a self-acting person who likes to think of themselves as Anonymous, but really isn’t part of the movement at all.

Of course, there’s also The Pirate Bay coming out themselves to tell us that Anonymous had nothing to do with the attack. So there’s goes that theory. They do have a good idea of who might be behind the attack, however, so we’ll just have to wait until we get more details from the group. Until then, enjoy these entertaining Facebook posts from The Pirate Bay.

The Pirate Bay 41 minutes ago

Just to clarify, we KNOW that it is NOT Anonymous who is behind the ddos attack. Stop spreading rumours like that.We may not agree with Anonymous in everything, but we both want the internet to be open and free.There, now carry on with whatever it is you were doing <|:)

The Pirate Bay hit by hack attack
File-sharing website The Pirate Bay appears to have been hit by a coordinated hack attack, the site has said.

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The Pirate Bay 3 hours ago

We were loling just like you, then we took a ddos to the knee.But now we’re getting back up! Stronger than ever!Proxy list: http://about.piratereverse.info/proxy/list.html

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The Pirate Bay 10 hours ago

We’re still under a ddos attack, go read this while waiting:A bit too nice in our view, but a step in the right direction

The Case for Copyright Reform
Legalized file sharing, shorter protection times for the commercial copyright monopoly, free sampling and a ban on DRM. These are the main points of the proposal for copyright reform that the Pirate Party is advocating and which the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament adopted as its group po…

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The Pirate Bay 12 hours ago

We’re under a quite big ddos attack. We don’t know who’s behind it but we have our suspicions…Once we’ve awaken our tech guru Winston Q we’ll get on the issue.Meanwhile, go have a lol at:

E-mails from an Asshole

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You would think that The Pirate Bay guys would be livid with their site being down from a huge DDoS attack but they’re carrying on like usual. They’re still being the informative, Internet freedom fighting group that they always are, at least on Facebook.

We’ll keep you up to date when, and if, The Pirate Bay ever lets us know who took down the Web site. It’s sure to be a riveting tale that matches up with the best tales of buccaneering across the digital waves.

[h/t: ZDNet]

Fast forward to February, when the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had concluded its antitrust investigation of the deal, and would allow the acquisition to proceed. That left the deal free to proceed, right? After all, Google and Motorola are both American companies, and the American government had signed off on the deal, so there shouldn’t be any obstacles to it going forward. Except that that wasn’t the end of it at all. The deal still had regulatory hurdles to clear in several other countries, including Russia, Canada, and China. The European Union was also conducting its own investigation, but cleared the deal on the same day as the U.S. DOJ.

While regulatory approval in other countries has proceeded quite fairly smoothly in other countries, it appears that China is in no great hurry to sign off on the deal. According to a report today by the New York Times, China’s Ministry of Commerce, which is responsible for antitrust investigations, has been moving slowly. The decidedly unfriendly relationship Google and China have had over the years – stemming largely from Google’s refusal to engage in the kind of censorship demanded by the Chinese government – might tend to suggest that the Ministry of Commerce is deliberately dragging its feet. It seems, however, that China has been taking extra care in examining several such deals in recent years, and has caused significant delays in numerous acquisitions.

I contacted Google to see what they thought about China’s slow pace in approving the deal, and the response was optimistic. Here’s what Google’s spokesperson had to say: “We continue to await regulatory approval in China and to work closely with regulators. We still expect the deal to close in the first half of 2012.”

Now, that doesn’t mean that China isn’t deliberately dragging its feet. Nevertheless, it seems likely that the deal will ultimately go through. For one thing, China has only blocked one acquisition since the passage of the 2008 law that expanded the Ministry of Commerce’s antitrust powers, and that was the purchase of a Chinese drink company by Coca-Cola. Though China may have reason to be annoyed at Google, it isn’t ultimately in China’s interests to block the deal.

Nevertheless, it remains to be seen whether the deal will close on Google’s timeline. The first half of 2012 is, after all, drawing rapidly to a close.

“We finished last night and I was so happy, I was over the moon and I said to [Derek], ‘I did what I had to do. And tomorrow–que sera!’ Whatever happens from this point on, no one will ever know. But I did it. I’m happy and proud of what I did,” Menounos told Us Weekly.

Derek Hough, Menounos’ 26 year-old partner, seems to be quite pleased with their overall performance. [We went] out on a high note. We have not had a bad dance.”

With this pair eliminated, only three teams remain. You can sample some Twitter reactions to their elimination by glancing over the posts you see embedded below.

This is what NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in charge of the Curiosity mission had to say about the scarecrow that was seen:

“Team members of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission took a test rover to Dumont Dunes in California’s Mojave Desert this week to improve knowledge of the best way to operate a similar rover, Curiosity, currently flying to Mars for an August landing. The test rover that they put through paces on various sandy slopes has a full-scale version of Curiosity’s mobility system, but it is otherwise stripped down so that it weighs about the same on Earth as Curiosity will weigh in the lesser gravity of Mars. Information collected in these tests on windward and downwind portions of dunes will be used by the rover team in making decisions about driving Curiosity on dunes near a mountain in the center of Gale Crater.”

It is called “Scarecrow” because it lacks the sophisticated computer brain that the Curiosity has. The lightened practice runabout also doesn’t have Curiosity’s rock-melting high powered laser or its nuclear power plant either. Also the real “Curiosity” lifted off aboard an Atlas V rocket on November 26th of last year. It will get to Mars on August 5th.

Here is look at where the rover is in relation to Mars on it’s trip. Nasa updates this graphic constantly so keep up to date by clicking on the picture:

And just in case you were ever wondering how the heck do they land on Mars? Well here is a quick 1 minute video tutorial from the JPL lab:

Abdnor came from a farming family and was proud of his background, which he said gave him insight into the lives of the families he was helping over the years.

“I’m a farmer,” Abdnor said. “I’ve dug more field dirt out of my ears than anyone in Congress. I treasure that heritage.”

Abdnor served on the Senate Appropriations Committee and said it was one of the highlights of his career because of the strength the group had in the community, due largely because of the importance of having someone represent the residents of such a small town.

He had already built quite a political career for himself when he won over %60 of the vote in 1980 to make it into the Senate, helping to usher in President Reagan. Abdnor had over 30 years in public service under his belt, and is remembered as a man who fought hard for the working man and had more friends than he could count.

Let’s back up a little bit now. You may remember back in 2010 that an Iranian nuclear scientist, Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, was assassinated. A man by the name of Majid Jamali Fashi, a kick-boxer, was arrested and charged with the murder. The Iranian government claimed that he was acting on behalf of Israel. He was recently hanged for his supposed crime Tuesday.

These two stories seem to have nothing in common. One was a leak of diplomatic cables while the other was a man accused of assassination. The Times of Israel figures that it goes much deeper than that. They quote a story from The Times (paywall) that found the cable leaks contained a document that pointed an unnamed man that matched Fashi down to the fact that he was trained in martial arts. These documents were released a few days before the arrest of Fashi.

The timing does indeed work out and the leaked cable does point to a man that Fashi fit the description of. Do I believe that the leaks had anything to do with his capture? It’s hard to tell at this point and probably will be for a long time. Iran is really secretive about their court trials while they spoke for Fashi saying that he admitted to working for Israel.

A country like Iran will do anything to get their man. This is the country that will stoop to creating their own Internet just to keep its people away from any information that’s critical of the country’s leadership. I wouldn’t put it past the Iranian authorities to arrest some guy and make him admit to these crimes just to get their guy. They, like North Korea, like to make accusatory statements and blame all of their failings on anybody else but themselves.

It all comes down to what you think of Wikileaks. If you were one of the people crying out for Assange to be executed for treason, then you’ll likely believe that Wikileaks led to the death of a potentially innocent man. If you think that Wikileaks can do no wrong, then you probably think that this is all just a big coincidence.

It’s too hard to tell right now, but it does spin a cautionary tale about the risks of leaking confidential information. In today’s open world, information should be free. Wikileaks and its ilk more often than not help keep government’s accountable through this information sharing. There are risks involved, of course, but does the risk outweigh the potential failings of government being kept hidden?

If you haven’t already guessed by now, the whole fiasco was a publicity stunt for the actor’s upcoming comedy “The Dictator”, which opens in the States today (May 16th). Cohen, in-character as the titular leader, seemed to be enjoying drinks with Canalis, who was wearing nothing more than a skimpy hot pink bikini. As the festivities became increasingly risque and Cohen’s clothes began to come off, things got a bit interesting.

After getting a look at the weaponry in Cohen’s underwear and having a good laugh about it, the two eventually came to blows. After kicking her companion in a very sensitive area, Canalis complained to the guards about the dictator’s behavior. The result: She is effectively killed, placed inside a body bag, and tossed into the sea.

Fear not, Canalis devotees — the shapely lass is still alive and well.

The stunt was designed to drum up some interest in “The Dictator”, which is scheduled to screen at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. If you’d like to have a look at the scenario described above, the Daily Mail has a host of exclusive images featuring Cohen, Canalis, and her teeny, tiny bikini. You know you want to look.

Tomorrow they will finally set the price and trading will begin on Friday. I think we can assume at this point however, that they are done adding shares to the offering. One question that came to my mind is where did these extra shares come from? Speaking specifically about the 25% more from this mourning, they came from early Facebook investors and company insiders.

PayPal’s Peter Thiel was an early investor and he has offered some of his stock. Tiger Global Management will sell 23.4 million of their shares, and Accel Partners will contribute 11 million of their shares to the IPO. In total 84 million more shares have been made available.

The grand total of shares available has grown to 421.2 million and the amount they stand to raise could reach $16 billion depending on what the price ends up being tomorrow. As you may already know, Facebook will be traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker symbol “FB”. We’ll keep you updated as the Facebook IPO continues to evolve.