News for the Week of July 10, 2005

The top stories in family-PC news this past week were: some very credible confirmation that cellphones and driving don't mix, a widely covered story about porn in a videogame, and some PC-security news:

Of drivers on phones: This story was headlined in print, radio, TV, and Web news outlets, so maybe the teenagers have heard it too: Drivers are four times more likely to crash when talking on cellphones. That's "four times as likely to get into a crash that can cause injuries serious enough to send them to the hospital," the Associated Press reports, and it includes drivers using headsets, talking hands-free, the BBC reports. The findings were in a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety published in the British Medical Journal. Some California legislators are proposing banning mobile phone use by young "provisional drivers," the Los Angeles Times reports, leading with the story of a 17-year-old who died in a crash caused by speeding while talking on the phone (she also was not wearing a seatbelt). "Legislators in California and a growing number of other states say something has to be done to curtail such tragedies," according to the Times. "The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that the number of US motor-vehicle fatalities involving 16-to-20-year-olds rose to 7,405 last year, up from 7,353 the previous year."

X-rated Grand Theft Auto. There's was a debate in the tech media about whether the sexually explicit material was in "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" videogame to begin with (and "unlocked" with a "modder's" code circulating around the Net) or created by the modder. There was not question, however, that the US's game ratings body, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, is looking into whether it should change its "M" (17+) rating of the game to "AO" for Adults Only. A Dutch fan of the game, Patrick Wildenborg, "unlocked mini-games in the PC version of San Andreas that allows players to make game characters perform sexually explicit acts," the BBC reports. The Boston Globe explains that Wildenborg is a "modder," a gamer who uses software tools to modify the look and feel of his favorite games." Gamemakers like modders because they tend to increase games' popularity and shelf life and often add tools to the games which make it easier to create modifications. "Inevitably," according to the Globe, "some modders have reprogrammed popular games to add explicit sexual content. The popular game The Sims has inspired some steamy mods.... But 'Hot Coffee,' an eye-popping [Grand Theft Auto] mod created by Wildenborg and some of his friends, goes a good deal further, with highly explicit images." Wildenborg claims that a million people have downloaded "Hot Coffee" since it was posted on the Internet a month ago. [Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is No. 2 on the latest "10 worst videogames" list - see my 11/26/04 issue.]

Get the new patches! If you haven't yet upgraded the family PC to Microsoft Update - which patches Windows and other Microsoft software automatically - go to Update.Microsoft.com to get the two critical patches all family PC owners need. They fix two security flaws that are already being actively exploited by malicious hackers hijacking people's computers, CNET reports. They're using the flaws to download Trojan software onto computers that they can then control. The hackers add these infected PCs to "zombie networks" that they use to make money or launch denial-of-service attacks on large Web sites such as governments'. A separate CNET report has numbers showing that computer hijacking's way up so far this year. Here are Microsoft's instructions on how to turn on automatic security updates. For more, see "Fending of zombie-dom" and "What if our PC's a zombie?".