theft

To many in the video game industry, the two words "Jack" and "Thompson" engender horror and disgust.

Thompson, a self-appointed uber-critic of the industry, has spent the last few years railing away at games he deems too full of sex or violence. Never was he out in more force than during 2005's so-called "Hot Coffee" scandal, in which the monster hit Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was discovered to have hidden, but easily uncoverable, animations that mimicked sexual activity.

In the lead-up to the midnight Tuesday release of Rockstar Games' follow-up game, Grand Theft Auto IV, … Read more

Shares of game publisher Take-Two were up Monday on the heels of positive reviews of the forthcoming video game Grand Theft Auto IV, which is being released to the public at midnight Tuesday.

Shares of the game publisher traded as high as $27.10, 3.4 percent higher than Friday's closing price. That trading price is also a good dollar a share above the offer made by Electronic Arts when it launched its hostile bid for Take-Two last month. Take-Two rejected that offer, calling it "inadequate." Take-Two owns GTA creator Rockstar.

The excitement surrounding the release has … Read more

If you're reading this, there's a good chance you're very interested in a video game being released Tuesday, April 29, called Grand Theft Auto IV (actually something like the eighth game in the series, depending on how you count).

We previously tried the game out a couple of times while it was still in development, and now that we've had a chance to give the final shipping version a serious run-through over this past weekend, here are our initial thoughts on the final game's pluses and minuses.

Information security may be improving but embarrassing incidents involving data loss or identity theft at the Veterans' Administration and at TJX Companies, the operator of T.J. Maxx and Marshalls retail chains, suggest that the battle is a long way from victory.

Indeed, three-fourths of the information security professionals around the world surveyed by Frost & Sullivan say they now consider avoiding reputation damage to their organizations as a top priority.

That fits with the times. Increasingly, companies are elevating the prevention of high-profile data security breaches to the level of a strategic goal, if not competitive weapon.

Here's … Read more

Am I the only one currently getting hammered for using a Chase Visa card? In the past three weeks, two of my Chase Visa (Marriott Rewards) cards have been compromised, despite the fact that a) my wife and I still have the cards in our possession and b) we don't use the cards on dodgy Internet sites (well, except for Arsenal.com :-).

Am I alone with the problem? It just seems to be too coincidental that both cards have been compromised in the past few weeks, especially since we don't use the two cards with the same … Read more

Are you being outranked by you? Is "your" content showing up in searches, but on sites that aren't yours? Do you have multiple websites that compete against each other? Well this discussion on duplicate content from external sources should be right up your alley.

Earlier in the week, I started our discussion on duplicate content by trying to lay to rest the idea of a duplicate content penalty. Now we pick up that discussion with one aspect of duplicate content . . . content duplication from other sites.

While I'd love to start out our discussion with the idea … Read more

We recently got a chance to sit down with the team behind Grand Theft Auto IV and sample a handful of the highly anticipated game's new multiplayer modes. Any GTA fan will tell you that adding online multiplayer is a major change for the series, but an essential one in the era of Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network, where every high-profile release is expected to offer more than just a linear single-player experience.

At Rockstar's New York headquarters, we tried four of the dozen-plus multiplayer modes over Xbox Live, playing against other journalists and the game's … Read more

Fox is essentially the end of network TV; we wish Russian Roulette would return in the place of Moment of Truth. Plus, we're excited for GTA IV, and will we see a 3G iPhone within 60 days? Either way, as long as it plays Quake, we're fine with it.

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Why didn't anybody think of this before? Grand Theft Auto franchise developer Rockstar Games has teamed up with Amazon.com in an interesting joint promotion.

When GTA IV comes out on April 29 and you are cruising around inside doing whatever evil deeds come to mind, you might like a particular song playing on one of the radio stations in the game. Well, you will be able dial a number on your in-game virtual cellphone and receive a text message with artist and title information. And if you've signed up to be part of Rockstar's upcoming social … Read more