Wires Crossed #95 – July 10

Teen Collapses After Modern Warfare Marathon
Following on from a recent report about a Taiwanese student who died after a 30-hour session of playing Diablo III, reports out of the US tell of a 15 year old who did similar with Modern Warfare 3. The kid ended up being hospitalised because he played the game for four days straight with very few breaks, and got dehydrated. Mum called the ambulance and off he went to get himself better again. But you can’t help but wonder why his mother didn’t kick him out of his room sooner – you know, just to get some exercise or something silly like that.

Stabbing Over Xbox Live
And speaking of stupid things, how about gamer Kevin Kemp of California who was stabbed 22 times by an acquaintance who he had had an argument with while both were on Xbox Live, but at different locations. Kemp called the friend out and told him to come on over and they’d sort it out it out mano o mano. His friend took up the invite but brought a knife and firearm with him. The assailant shot at Kemp and missed, then stabbed  him 22 times for his trouble. Wethinks they are taking this gaming thing a tad too seriously. We also think that the acquaintance is going to have four walls to look at for a long time.

Samsung Investigates Child Labour Claims
It seems Apple and Samsung have this synergy whereby they seem caught up in almost every aspect of each other’s business – whether it be suing each other over patent rights, or producing similar products that offer parallel features. Now it seems to have hit their manufacturing processes. Over the past two years the Chinese company that manufactures Apple products, Foxconn, has come under scrutiny due to the high number of employees that have tried, or been successful, at committing suicide. Now Samsung, after pressure from lobby group China Labor Watch, says it is investigating the company that makes some of its phones and DVD Players, HEG Electronics, over allegations that it is employing children as young as 11 in its factories. This is the third time Samsung has investigated the company, with nothing untoward to be found on all three occasions. CLW are yet to be convinced and have gone on record as saying that HEG working conditions are worse than Foxconn’s.

Authors Want $2 Billion From Google
Google has tried to paint itself as the be-all and end-all for all your research needs, and we’re the first to admit that “Google is our friend” when it comes to looking things up. Not that we impeccably trust our sources at the get-go, but it’s a nice starting point. So when the giant search engine scanned over 2.7 million university text books, we saw that as a good thing, right? Not if you’re the author of those books, and the universities who agreed to allow Google to scan said texts didn’t have the authors’ permission. This case has been going on for some time and was thrown back into the court system after a US judge rejected a settlement late last year saying the deal favoured Google too much. Now they are at it again. Will be interesting to see what happens as this will have a direct impact on future publications.