“We have an Aliens game with Sega and 20th Century Fox which we're really excited about,” he told MCV. “It’s the thing I've been stealing from all my career. Now I'm really working on it, but we've been quiet about that so far.”

Furthermore, it’s the success of recent 2K Games hit Borderlands that seems to have slowed progress on the project.

“Borderlands took over Gearbox,” he added. “We had so much fun working on that and when we finished we wanted to carry on. And the DLC — we've launched two so far and there’s a third to come which take us to a new level in every way.”

Sega’s appetite for the title is likely to have been ramped up following the success of Rebellion’s recent release Aliens vs Predator, which shot straight to the top of the ELSPA GfK Chart-Track All Formats Top 40 this week.

Excellent. I gotta say, the last one wasn't as tits as I had expected it to be. (Shock, a bad execution of Aliens and Predator IP?)

I'm always looking forward to the next delicious, acid-blooded disappointment. I'm not even really being sarcastic, either. This stuff makes me giddy. I touched the Captain's USS Nostromo cap. The original one, the movie prop. My friend Rich has it, it smells funny.

Funny like undashed expectations.

And... scalp.

Als er elf war, bekam er mit dem Amiga 500 einen eigenen Computer. 1987 war das Gerät auf der Hannoveraner Messe Cebit vorgestellt worden. Die Öffentlichkeit staunte, Mrozek auch: „Die neuen Möglichkeiten waren gigantisch.“ 23 Jahre später steht für ihn in Hannover wieder ein wichtiger Termin an. Dieses Mal will er derjenige sein, der die Augen der Besucher zum Leuchten bringt. Am Samstag wird er auf der Cebit seine mobile Spielekonsole vorstellen. Pandora heißt sie. „Mit ihr wollen wir den Traum der Community erfüllen.“

Die Community, das sind Menschen wie Mrozek, die von den alten Spielen für den C64 und den Amiga auch heute noch begeistert sind. Nur eines stört die Leidenschaft der Retro-Liebhaber: Die Hardware ist meist nicht mehr erhältlich — und nicht jeder verfügt wie Mrozek über eine umfangreiche Sammlung. Seine Konsole soll Abhilfe schaffen: Mit den aktuellen High-Tech-Spielzeugen von Sony und Nintendo kann die Pandora zwar nicht mithalten, die alten Atari-Spiele laufen aber einwandfrei.

Yeah, here it is "translated".

So the Open Pandora is a little late. Like, by a couple of years. But they've been good years, with the closing of Gitmo, the discovery of kinda-black Presidents, and, shit, Gitmo's still open.

Just like the Pandora--the world's first completely-open-source gaming handheld*!

*It's not.

Buy one here! It'll exist eventually!

UbiGate continues apace. Yesterday, seemingly cracked versions of Silent Hunter 5 and Assassin’s Creed 2 appeared. Ubisoft have since responded to say these DRMless versions are not complete, backed up to some extent by various forum comments observing that the SH5 scene release can’t make it past the first mission. Other comments claim otherwise. What’s a poor website to believe?

Here’s Ubisoft’s statement:

“You have probably seen rumors on the web that Assassin’s Creed II and Silent Hunter 5 have been cracked. Please know that this rumor is false and while a pirated version may seem to be complete at start up, any gamer who downloads and plays a cracked version will find that their version is not complete.”

Give it more time, this DRM will fail. Either that, or Ubisoft will.

I actually tried the crack, it didn't work. To be fair, that did save me from having to play a submarine simulator. I mean, I can stay inside, wax my shoes, scrub the toilet, and masturbate at home. Do I really need a soundtrack and special effects?

Wait, would that be fun with a soundtrack and special effects?

I better reread Jackspeak...

PC gaming isn’t going anywhere. The platform’s infinitely adaptable, it’s currently hand in hand with the dramatic rise of casual, ad-supported, digital download and subscription-based games, and it’s got a back catalogue several hundred orders of magnitude huger than any other gaming system.

In terms of that incredible back catalogue, PC gaming history is currently undergoing two very important changes that may rescue it from the impotence of dusty floppy disks and pop-up-infected abandonware sites.

First, PC gamers’ values are changing — the audience is moving away from the graphics-hungry and into a breed that’s more prepared to judge a game on its less superficial merits. In short, a game consisting of 320×240 pixels, each the size of a baby’s fist, no longer causes quite so many people to scoff dismissively at it. Secondly, digital distribution services — notably Valve’s Steam and the great-in-the-States-but crap-over-here Gametap — are gradually adding classic games to their online stores — legal, free from floppy disks, and dirt-cheap. Recently, we’ve also been blessed by the arrival of bouncing baby Good Old Games, a retro-only download service specifically dedicated to re-releasing history’s finest PC games — made to work with modern operating systems and entirely DRM free. A slight spot of whimsy and a few quid is all it takes to enjoy yesterday’s finest. While it’s early days for this, things can only get better (as a relevant aside, in the year in which that terrible song was released, PC gamers were enjoying the likes of Fallout, Total Annihilation, Diablo and Quake II — defining standards of their respective genres). The past is indeed another country — but, when it comes to old PC games, lately we’re talking more Isle of Man than North Korea.

I have... all... of those games.

You know, my dad tried to grief me about playing video games all through high school, and middle school, and, well, we got that first computer when I was 8, but then there was that Atari, and that ZX Spectrum that my brother hid pot in, so I guess I don't remember when we didn't have video games. It, of course, backfired, because that's my thing now, it's what I do, but it's funny that the dad part of his brain still tried to ground me, just a little bit.

I still don't want a Wii, though. Those games look like ass.

PC gaming, as the name suggests, is usually something exclusive to the PC. Sometimes there are Mac ports, but any serious computer gamer would either have a dedicated gaming PC or at the very least a Boot Camp partition.

Steam, the online service for PC gamers developed by Valve, looks to soon be expanding onto Mac OS X. While there hasn't yet been an official announcement (perhaps at the Game Developers Conference next week), Valve has sent various teaser images that, when put together, point squarely at a product or service made for the Mac.

Educated guesses would say that all of Valve's internally-developed properties will be available for Mac, which appear to include Steam, Portal, Team Fortress 2, the Half-Life series and the Left 4 Dead games.

Shock. Valve's figured out how to compile a six year old engine to run on other operating systems and therefore squeeze a little extra cash out of IP without having to make new games?

Not that I'm dismissing the Portal stuff, though.

But I gotta say, if they push this out for OS X and not Linux a whole lot of people are gonna be pissed off...

Of course, this means PC gaming is dead as we know it, Windows is in its final throes, and DirectX 11 has nothing to offer anyone.

The massive earthquake that struck Chile on Saturday may have shifted Earth's axis and created shorter days, scientists at NASA say.

The change is negligible, but permanent: Each day should be 1.26 microseconds shorter, according to preliminary calculations. A microsecond is one-millionth of a second.

A large quake shifts massive amounts of rock and alters the distribution of mass on the planet.

When that distribution changes, it changes the rate at which the planet rotates. And the rotation rate determines the length of a day.

Who doesn't know that Earth's axis is what dictates the length of the day? Uh, please don't fill me in, I just spent all day reading up on Rupert Murdoch.

But in all seriousness, if we want to cause global cooling in the northern hemisphere, where all the cool shit is at, we need to nuke the balls off Chile. This is pure science right here, and it's super-science, what with the nukes. It's better than bombing the moon.

It'll take a hella-ton nuke to eradicate Chile's balls, though. What? It's a real term. Or it will be:

Along the lines of using the "kilo" prefix for kilometers or "giga" for gigabyte, Sendek is petitioning the International System of Units (SI) to use the term "hella" to describe really, really big measurements; such as the size of the universe. "The diameter of the universe is 1.4 hellameters," Sendek said. "You know if someone says that's 'hella meters' you know exactly what they're talking about."

Today marks a black day in the history of the Federation.

En route to the Regulus sector my ship was flagged down by a diplomatic envoy heading to Diplomatic Envoy System Prime under siege. After beaming the survivors aboard, further investigation revealed that the attackers were in fact Klingon warships infringing on Federation space. These Klingon rebels were establishing a base inside the Sirrus sector block, and we were forced to destroy them. It is a dark way to progress in my career, and I will always regret the means by which I achieved the rank of Lieutenant.

They were scientists, engineers, and civilians. We are not at war with their Empire, and yet these dissidents--

Wait, we're at war with the Klingons? What about the Khitomer Accords?

You're shitting me. You're saying these guys aren't part of the Jem'Hadar alliance, unwittingly? Dominion? Borg thralls? But we're allies!

En route to Regulus my ship was ASSAULTED by Klingon ASSHOLES and we fucked them up proper. Drinks all around, on the Captain! And none of this worthless synthahol garbage that is mysteriously worth energy credits, although I shouldn't be too surprised as Ferengi snail juice gets you ten bucks a bottle on the open market...

What do you mean, you'll need a credit card? I'm the freaking Captain!

Buy yourselves a damn drink, then, crew. The Federation says this ship is dry.

Acting Captain Anders "Vitae, Aqua" Polito out.

I sat down with Martin Scorsese to talk about his most recent film.

Shutter Island didn't start out as a film, is that right Mr. Scorsese?
Yeah, yeah, it didn't. Nah, I was watchin' TV, on like, a Saturday night, Sunday morning-type deal. And then the fuckin' TV goes blank. Shi--shoot, I think--no wait, I said it on the couch, you know, 'cept I didn't say 'shoot', right? But then I realize: this isn't my TV, you know? It's like, this old TV show.

The Outer Limits.
Yeah, The Outer Limits. The old one, not the new shi--crappy version. At first I thought it was the Twilight Zone, which I never liked, but then it hits me: this is The Outer Limits, so I watched it for a while. And then, bang! I think, Marty, you could do it better.

So you decided to get involved with The Outer Limits.
You could say that.

OK.
Well, I got all the producers of The Outer Limits together, and I say, I wanna make another show. And they give me this fucking line of bullsh--plop so fucking fresh about it bein' off the air, which, clearly, it ain't, so I decided, fuck you guys, I'm gonna make it anyway. And I got a couple onboard, some of their writers.

But you eventually ran into some 'creative differences', is that right?
Yeah, well, a lot of the guys didn't want to do the rat thing, on account of them bein' homos. Nah, we get to the rock wall, and I have the rat barge trawl over, and these little girls throw their up mittens and walk off the set in their booties.

How did you deal with that?
We just dropped the title. How fuckin' stupid is 'The Outer Limits', anyway? It should be the inner limits, 'cause that's what we're dealin' with. Like, if you're afraid of rats, that's 'cause you're a dress-wearin' sissy. On the inside. Maybe on the outside, too. Whatever you do in the privacy of your own home is your fuckin' business.

...All because of the rats.
Well, you see, a rat is a symbol. Like when you see a rat, you know somethin's goin' wrong here, am I right? You see a rat, you know somethin' isn't what you think it is, and you smell a rat.

Thank you, Mr. Scorsese.
Call me Marty!

Shutter Island is still showing in theaters nation-wide.

We’re breaking into an elevated enemy base surrounded by jungle. We have the benefit of cover, lush overgrowth and ancient ruins. But the enemy has the advantage. The approach to their base becomes Hamburger Hill. I die over and over, sniped by a hundred unseen gunmen, trying to push my way toward the goal. The fight starts feeling pointless.

Am I getting too old for this crap?

I’m currently embedded in MAG, the new PlayStation 3 shooter that puts up to 256 players on the same battlefield. And at first, the notion of running and gunning with so many other people is exhilarating. But after all these shots to the head, I feel like this most complex of shooters may only be navigable by younger players with the free time to learn how to handle a hundred human foes.

You can say it, it's OK. You're too old for this shit.

But I gotta wonder myself--why is it that I was way better a decade ago than I am now? I used to league play, for money. We never won anything because I thought practicing was for chumps and faggorts, but my 3:1 kill standard is now 1:1 (plus team points when optional)...

And you know what I figured out? It's my monitor. I have a huge, sexy monitor that I have to crank my head around to see things on, and I have slick graphics hardware to push all the special effects. Back in the day, we had to made serious decisions: Internet and ramen, or peanut butter and ramen. We turned all the special effect off and trying that now, it's like black and white.

Literally, like going back to black-and-white. It sucks. I'd rather lose at a beautiful game than win at virtual whack-a-mole, thank you.

yes, it really was that bad

These new algorithms are developed for the calculation of illumination of the virtual space with the influence of multiple dynamic light sources. Modern algorithms for calculation of lighting illumination levels calculated for each pixel of the resulting image, which itself requires an enormous expenditure of computing power. The new algorithms use a much faster way, hoping to spot once the vector of the virtual world, and only then creating the final pixel image.

Algorithms for calculating lighting, designed Morgan McGuire, associate professor of information technology from Williams College, and Dr. David Luebke of the company Nvidia will significantly accelerate the speed of processing image data, which, in turn, will allow video games came close to cinematic quality, even with the use of graphics processors middle price range .

The problem with stuff like this succeeding is that NVIDIA is fighting hard to prevent PhysX from running with any ATI hardware. And this is yet another attempt at a proprietary technology; at the very least, it's another way to continue "The Way It's Meant to be Played" marketing.

The only reason PhysX and CUDA have come as far as they have is because they got their start when ATI was in a bad position with HD 2000. NVIDIA subsidized developers with cash, coders, and 8000-series hardware, and now PhysX and CUDA are somewhat common.

NVIDIA didn't stop with just game developers, either; they put CUDA into universities and every other slow-growing software community out there--which even though PhysX and CUDA will fail in a few years, ironically, that's the technology that will keep NVIDIA afloat until they recover from this 400-series fiasco.

How is this different?

During our ongoing mission to patrol the Orion sector, we were attacked by a fleet of Klingons waylaying Starbase 24. Under Admiral... Sulu? Sulu? That doesn't sound right... Under the Admiral's orders, we--wait, you can't ambush a Starbase.

waylay, English, v.

Pronunciation: IPA: /ˌweɪˈleɪ/

Infinitive: to waylay
Third person singular: waylays
Simple past: waylaid or (nonstandard) waylayed
Past participle: waylaid or (nonstandard) waylayed
Present participle: waylaying

1. (transitive) To lie in wait for and attack from ambush.
2. (transitive) To accost or intercept unexpectedly.

Starfleet, listen. It's not possible to waylay a fixed object. That's like getting the jump on a paraplegic; it's fun but we should have a cure for it by now.

So, to writ, while on route to the Orion sector, we were waylaid by Klingons attacking nearby Starbase 24. Our fleet defeated their waves arriving with conspicuously predictable frequency, but, try as we might to beam aboard to rescue the survivors, the universe vanished and all we could see was, oddly enough, a photograph of 21st-century Amsterdam. Perhaps the long-lost memento of sojourns past.

Conjecture aside, again and again, my away team and I beamed aboard Starbase 24, killing the same three groups of Klingons, but every time we attempted to contact and beam away a survivor, the universe disappeared we were haunted by the same image.

I can only surmise one thing: this is the doing of the Q. As I am not yet Lieutenant, I must assume that the same powers that be which allow me to captain my own vessel are channeling my fate, and very well, the fate of all existence.

May I lead an interesting life, just maybe. Still, I wish I could beam the patzers out of that crapshack without having to set foot on the edge of reality. Why do we have to go and talk to them in the first place? Teleporters only work one way now? What's up with that shit?

Ensign or Captain Ander "Vacation_NL_05-09-626.jpg" Polito out.

Responding to confusion over why gay relationships can be initiated by players in Dragon Age: Origins but not in Mass Effect 2, Bioware co-founder Dr. Ray Muzyka has explained that Mass Effect's Commander Shepherd is heterosexual "through choice".

The fact that Shepherd is always heterosexual whereas the player character in Dragon Age is not was a story-telling decision that Bioware made very early on in the development of both games.

Reeeeaally. You want to say sexuality's a choice, do you?

We have never considered it a 'problem', it is simply a choice we have made and we have every right to make that choice," continued Woo, who says he gets frustrated that "people who claim to be old enough and mature enough to handle sex and nudity in a game seem to believe that any lack of sex and nudity in the game is a sign of self-censorship."

Oh, you're saying it was directorial. Well, let's just hear what Commander Shepard has to say:

When I first joined the Navy, I had no idea that I was gay. I was well into my career when I realized this fact, but I was doing well as evidenced by the awards and promotions I was receiving.

In addition, I really enjoyed what I was doing and felt I was making a difference. So I opted to continue to serve, even though I knew that I would have to hide my true identity.

For most of my career in the Navy, I lived two lives and went to work each day wondering if that would be my last.

A few of our readers seem to think we have been intentionally avoiding some of these AMD issues but the honest fact of the matter is that we have felt that 5800 issues at the hands of AMD were getting taken care of. We see our HardForum posters being very vocal about these issues and we know from internal discussions that AMD is aware and working on those issues. The fact is though, when you guys are telling us we need to address a subject, we get in front of the mirror and ask ourselves the questions you put to us.

AMD has pulled up short in some of its commitments to us and we wanted to discuss these issues with our readers and hopefully give you some insight. The two main topics we are going to cover here are dongle problems with Eyefinity when used with three DVI panels and the "Gray Screen of Death" or GSOD problem.

I checked, 10.2, still GSODding all over the place, like, all over the screen, it's everywhere. If it helps, it happens when I run Media Center, exactly 100% of the time. I understand you're the undisputed king of video cards right now, and that's gotta pretty good-feeling, but this isn't a dongle-specific issue.

Hehe, dongle.

Not sure what, exactly, a dongle is? Well, lemme tell you this, Spy's got it, and Pyro wants it. That's kinda disturbing, actually.

Sinclair Solutions Test Pack, the first of several planned downloadable packages, contains a number of customization features that will allow players to further their character’s development in BioShock 2’s multiplayer modes and provide a deeper multiplayer experience. The pack includes:

- Rank Increase to level 50 with Rank Rewards
- New playable characters Louie McGraff and Oscar Calraca
- 20 new trials
- A third weapon upgrade for each weapon
- Five additional masks

In the coming months, 2K Games will also be publishing downloadable extensions of the single player experience that provide new insight into the world of Rapture. These packages will include more narrative, new tools and new challenges that extend the lore and fiction of the failed Utopia under the sea.

The Sinclair Solutions Test Pack will be available to purchase in March for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.

I'm just going to start calling DLC patches and the games that get it incomplete from now on. And not to be all, "this is why people pirate," but, well. Shit, I'm in a corner, here.

So like, truthishly, in the future, it'll probably be pretty hard to pirate, because the more metrics we include while surfing, the easier and easier we are to track:

We'll admit to having shared a few login credentials amongst friends here and there in our younger days, but it sounds like the party might soon be over: a company called Scout Analytics has developed a way of identifying a user's "typing cadence," and matching it to how a username and password are entered. It only takes 5 login attempts of around 12 characters for Scout to nab your cadence, and although 1 in 20,000 people will share the same cadence, combining the data with browser info and IP addresses makes it accurate enough for general usage.

that's a lamp

With companies like Ubisoft leading the way to a future where all PC games need to be in contact with their home servers all the time, one group is being particularly harmed by this movement: soldiers stationed in remote locations. Life on deployment is hard, psychologically demanding, and often lonely for soldiers missing their loved ones and families. Gaming is a popular pastime in American bases, but DRM can take that away.

He wanted to keep his name out of the story, but the description of his situation is one we've heard from more than a few members of our armed forces who write to us about Internet connections as a vehicle for DRM. "I'm deployed to Iraq right now, and [DRM] has ranged from annoying to unforgivable for me. I would like to let you know that Steam is pretty awesome with working with deployed folks to make sure we can access/play our games," he told Ars.

Although I could make the argument that DRM undoes the concepts of ownership and usage, thereby undermining the fundamental American idea of information as a basic human right and public institution, I'm just going to call Ubisoft a bunch of commie beaver-loving jerks that even France didn't want back. And terrorists, obviously. Oh, and not innuendo beaver, 'cause it's not a put-down, then.

Haven't been keeping up on this? Rock, Paper, Shotgun sums it up:

Ubisoft, by contrast, are simply employing the internet as shackles around the wrists of something that isn’t otherwise of the internet. The sustained online check has been built as an ugly addition, not a natural spine, to these games. If Assassin’s Creed 2 was a streaming game, if there were visible leaderboards or player-made content throughout it (I’m just shouting totally random examples there), this wouldn’t seem so disproportionate and unnecessary a system. And no, the cloud saving system isn’t anything like justification enough for the game to be constantly talking to a server. That’s not a convenience anyone realistically needs.

I had a chance to look up my Star Fleet record after returning from the surface of Hostile Borg-infested Planet One, and my given name is Ander. Ander V Polito; I can only assume the V is short for Very Handsome.

We dispatched several waves of Borg drones, and they were all ZZZZT, but my colleague and I were all PEW PEW, so they were uncharacteristically URGLE SIZZLE. We managed to destroy their Devices and return to the ship in low orbit over HBP-1 and continue our work on improving our key bindings.

Interestingly enough, as a by-product of our blasting the shit out of surreptitiously deceptively-helpless adversaries, I have gained the uncanny ability to increase the output of my ship's science officers as well as my warp core.

All this may be moot, however, as I have no idea what the fuck I'm supposed to do with my warp core as well as how to issue the most basic of commands to my subordinates. Not all is lost, as we are promised some free respecs should we complete our mission. Once we've cracked the enigma of how to engage warp drive, they may not even be necessary.

Acting Captain Ander "Vivacious" Polito out.

It's 1976... a different '76. Stretched out before you are thousands of miles of desert - the American Southwest. The massive engine roars as you slam down the throttle. It's time to get funked up...

You are Groove Champion, auto-vigilante. Your agenda: payback for your dead sister. Your weapon: A 425- horsepower '72 Picard Piranha with two 50-caliber machine guns on the roof and a flamethrower on the side. You're one mean dude in an even meaner ride.

They've messed with the wrong Champion.

You're one bad mother--shut yo mouth!

Just talkin' 'bout Groove Champion, a name not dissimilar to John Shaft or Hiro Protagonist. You don't get a sword but you do get a fucking bored-out Pseudo-Dodge Charger with God damn missile launchers. This isn't a difficult decision, here.

I can only hope Activision is planning to re-release Battlezone in some way that brings its multiplayer back with it.

'Cause browser Tribes seems to be forgot.

Acting Captain of the USS Padamame, Ensign--I forgot my first name--Polito:

After learning how to jump over crates, I have beamed aboard the Padamame and taken the bridge. My First Mate is African-Vulcan, and is very, very fast. Together we've overcome multiple Borg scout craft, although we've lost three Federation frigates in the process.

Our goal is to retake compromised sectors of the Alpha quadrant, which is funny because we keep coming across doods from Delta, or Gamma, or wherever the Borg and the Dominion hail from.

According to the computer, my home world of Betazed has been destroyed, so I am deeply troubled and will make commensurate faces as I kill lots of the guys who did this.

But first, we must deal with the issues at hand. The interface of my ship looks nothing like what I'm familiar with, and has an inverted Y axis. We've dispatched engineers to the control consoles to little avail; constant requests for "teaming" have proven cunning distractions, and to-date, we do not understand how to rotate shields, and for that matter, had no idea that shields could be rotated. This will prove invaluable should we lose our ability to re-spawn.

Until that point arises, we shall persevere, although the answer to the question constantly eludes us: who would seriously put us in charge of anything?

Polito out.

I have decided to play the Star Trek MMO. This is not because I am a fan or have a thing for MMOs. In fact, it's quite the opposite. But I will try. It has to not be pointless; MMOs by their very design are anti-narrative. Sure, you might think you're getting a story but what you're really playing is a series of mini-games designed to obstruct the plot and distract you from its completion so that you spend as much time and money as possible before throwing in the towel.

I will play Star Trek Online because I believe it has a greater potential for narrative than other MMOs, one of two kinds of story that no other game of this kind has ever bothered with.

The first possible narrative is of legacy; Star Trek has always had an over-arching ideal with every series and, to greater or lesser success, expounded on it. The original had civil equality, the Next Generation was all about individual equity. Deep Space Nine was a different kind of Star Trek that focused on peace between ideologues, AND NOT THE ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS, NO. Enterprise was tribute to the world's ever-love for Scott Bakula. Voyager was about abortion.

It is this capacity for plying a narrative that the Star Trek medium has, and an MMO has the opportunity to do so in a very participatory way.

There is another possibility for narrative, and that's personal. I'm not saying the two are exclusive, but if it fails on one, it doesn't have to the other. But for the first time ever, someone's made an MMO that doesn't require you play with anyone else. Now that's a selling point for me right there. Because I don't want to compromise my experience over forced participation. I want to tell my own story.

It will succeed if the game lets me steal a cloaking device. I don't care if I have to duct tape a gray cardboard disk to a Romulan Bird of Kill or whatever it's called, I want to do something unique and epic. If the Star Trek MMO can do this, then it's a good game.

If it fails at both narratives, it's a pointless money-sponge.

People have wondered for years what Google might be up to with all that dark fiber it had bought up around the country. Now, we may have an answer: delivery of open-access, fiber-to-the-home Internet service at speeds of 1Gbps. That's right: 1Gbps.

Google has just announced a trial run of its new scheme, and it's asking city, county, or state officials to let it know if they're interested in a pilot project. In its initial phase, the fiber optic network will serve anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000 people.

As for the speeds, they make cable's DOCSIS 3.0 and Verizon's FiOS look like also-rans. Google promises 1Gbps home connections, which have previously been the province of boutique builders like Paxio in San Francisco.

Chrome = platform, I said it before, and I'll say it again. It wasn't a browser, it was a network in disguise.

I dunno, would you trust the largest information dealer in the history of the planet with all your data? Now, would you trust the largest information dealer with that data if you could BitTorrent at fully-blown GigE? 'Cause that's a lot of... legitimate media right there.

Sweet, sweet media.