Remember back a couple months? The biggest news on Earth was the Infinity Ward and Activision Blizzard screwed up MW2 and the game was going to fall into a bucket of fail. There were boycotts, petitions, and general chaos concerning the shooter. Then it launched. Then people started playing it in droves. Then people shut-up and within two months the title surpassed $1,000,000,000 in retail sales.

The press release claims that only “a handful of entertainment properties that have ever reached the $1 billion mark.” I would love to rattle off some of those properties here, but I’ve been so far unable to dig up any supporting data. Let’s assume for the sake of this post that the Sims, Half-Life 2, and one of the Mario games reached that mark. So much for that boycott, eh? I found the game amazing and plan on playing through it again starting today.

By now I’m sure you know that Blizzard doesn’t plan to support LAN in StarCraft II. There’s a petition going around that politely asks Blizzard to reconsider. Said petition has some 65,000 signatures on it. You should sign it, too.

Blizzard says it won’t support LAN in order to focus on “building Battle.net to be the ideal destination for multiplayer gaming with StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games.”

What, where’s the standard “piracy made us do it!” rationale?

While this was a difficult decision for us, we felt that moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with StarCraft II and safeguard against piracy.

Oh, there it is. Phew.

Wow, I guess the rogue in me sees this in the complete opposite way. That is, the lack of LAN will actually encourage piracy. Why pay for a game when the company is treating you like a potential criminal? (I suppose you could just skip out on the game altogether, but that’s not nearly as dramatic.) “Sorry, son, we can’t support LAN because we want you to connect to Battle.net every time you double-click the game’s icon so we can authenticate your copy.” Besides, it’s not like RELOADED or whomever won’t crack the game days before its retail release.

If we’ve learned anything, it’s that pirates will figure out how to work around anti-piracy measures. Better, I think, to ignore that segment of the population and instead play to the people who are—or were—100 percent prepared to spend $50+ on the game.

But I’m not a fancy exec in a corner office, so all of this can safely be ignored.

World of Warcraft players are a notoriously picky bunch. They know what they like, what they don’t like, and have absolutely no issue with telling you exactly how they feel. Loudly, and with many, many petitions and forum postings. And that’s just the basic game. When you get into modifications, you’re into a whole new ballgame. And just making sure you have the most up to date software installed can turn into a major undertaking.

Some guilds won’t even let you go on a raid unless you have the proper addons, and anyone who’s had to try to help the less, shall we say, technically inclined know that getting everything to work right is sometimes half the battle. Now of course, we have software like the Curse Client Addon manager.

Put simply, the Curse.com’s software client allows you to manage all your favorite addons without making it complicated. Click the refresh button up at the top of the screen, and the client automatically checks all of your installed addons for new versions, and gives you the option to update them if a newer version is available. When you are looking for something new, you can search via name, category, or author. The interface then displays the description of the addon, the version number, and has a link to the addon where it is hosted. Curse hasn’t forgotten the Mac players either, there is a version of the client that works with the Mac OS as well.

There are a few things that set the Curse client apart from the other addon management software out there. Yes, you have to log in to download the addons, but registration for the website is free. The Curse.com website also has a very active community on their forums, and many times you can discuss future versions of the addons directly with the authors themselves. Curse also has a subscription option, which adds the ability to update all of your addons at once, removes the advertisements, and allows you priority access to the servers when it’s time to download. The subscription price varies based on the time period you are signing up for, but it runs anywhere from $2.45 a month (the best deal, billed annually) to $4.95 a month (billed month to month). The subscription fees help to cover bandwidth costs, and a percentage is passed on to the addon author, making it easier to help support your favorite.

As a WoW player myself, I feel confident recommending the Curse client over the other options available. I’m also able to show you something very something very special, a sneak peek of the new 4.0 client which is still in alpha, and won’t be available for download for about 1-2 months. All I can share with you is a screenshot, but having used the new client myself, I can tell you it is significantly faster then the 3.0 version, and works great with Windows 7 and Vista.

What an absolute con! One of the few real benefits of the iPhone announcements last night was that Apple handset customers can now use their little touchscreen darlings to tether with their computers for mobile internet access. In network pricing news this morning, however, O2 has completely stiffed users by charging a premium bolt-on for this new feature that’s already built into the phone anyway. 3GB of tethered data will cost you a stunning £14.68 per month while they charge £29.36 for the 10GB package. You get free tethered access over Wi-Fi in Cloud hotspots but it’s absolutely criminal to charge you twice for the same 3G data that you’re already receiving as part of your deal. I’m absolutely fuming about this. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such blatant profiteering in all my life. This is the best advert for jailbreaking your iPhone I’ve ever seen. Jailbreaking allows you to tether your phone via Bluetooth or USB such that you can use the 3G internet connection on your phone passed on to your laptop effectively giving you mobile broadband. Already this morning the internet community is up in arms with petitions appearing on Facebook and Twitter for the O2 to charge reasonable prices for tethering and upgrades. iPhone on O2