News Briefs

Beauty is in the eye of the hacker

A computer programmer named Bernie Peng decided to propose to his girlfriend using the computer game, "Bejeweled." He hacked the game such that when his girlfriend, Tammy Li, reached a certain score in the game a marriage proposal would appear. When she reached that score and saw the message she said yes. The couple will be getting married over Labor Day weekend, and PopCap, the company that made the game will pay to fly them to Seattle as a portion of their honeymoon. The company, rather than filing a lawsuit against Peng for changing the game, is embracing the situation. They will even be giving copies of their game out as a wedding party favor.

Buried jersey removed to fend off curse

The New York Yankees recently had a Boston Red Sox jersey removed from a burial spot in the team's new stadium. A construction worker buried the jersey under two feet of concrete as a way of cursing the team. Several workers overheard the man talking about the jersey and where he buried it. They later phoned in tips about the shirt's location. Yankees' President Randy Levine originally thought about leaving the shirt where it was, but then it was decided that they didn't want to reward someone who had bad intentions. It took over five hours of drilling to reach the jersey. The jersey will be cleaned up and sent to the Jimmy Fund, a charity associated with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

Lawmakers angry at Google's games

Several U.S. lawmakers are angry at the game that Google played with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with regard to the auction of the 700-MHz spectrum. They were not happy that the FCC's auction rules didn't force Google to make a strong attempt at winning the auction after getting the open access requirement attached to the auction. The company admitted that they were not interested in winning the auction. They only wanted to ensure that applications and handsets had open access to the spectrum. Florida Republican Representative Cliff Sterns protested that Google had no incentive to give telecommunication companies such as Verizon and AT&T a run for their money. Republican Fred Upton, of Michigan, said, "Google is one of the richest companies in the country with a market cap of $140 billion dollars. That's $40 billion more than Verizon." Despite the protests, FCC chair Kevin Martin was very happy with the outcome.