Australia has long stood as the only developed country without an 18+ rating for video games. That's about to change. The dubious distinction has led Australia to outlaw various games, such as the recent  Mortal Kombat, forcing gamers to import copies.  The lack of an adult rating has also caused a trend to classify normally adult games under the age 15 rating.

Now, their federal government has issued an ultimatum giving the states and territories till July to negotiate a new 18+ rating, aimed at preserving the integrity of the 15 rating while opening up new markets for adults.

"We're the only country that allows tens and tens of games to be used by minors that are only used by adults overseas," he told ABC Television.

"We're becoming the laughing stock of the developed world."

Before the New York Times pay wall goes up on March 28th, check out this quirky little game they have on their website. Basically, you're playing Rock-Paper-Scissors against a computer, and as you play the AI tries to statistically "learn" your patterns. So theoretically, the more you play, the worse you'll do...right?

The NY Times offers two levels, Novice and Veteran.  In Novice, the computer will only learn from your actions. In Veteran, it uses the knowledge of all players against you.

Check it out and see for yourself. I played several games and it totally kicked my butt.

My previous post made me realize I hadn't done one of these in a few days. Time for another round of Kinect goodness. You may always find the latest Kinect hacks at KinectHacks.net and Kinect-Hacks.com.

1) Tom Wyatt creates "Evil Genius Simulator" using Kinect to control Tesla coils.

2) Hacker uses Kinect to enable home automation.

3) Yves Quemener recreates Hans Rosling's TED talk interface visualizing live data sets. I went ahead and posted Rosling's talk below for comparison.

66 Teams of high school students have converged upon New York to participate in a battle of technology called the FIRST Robots regional championships. Every year, team must construct a robot capable of performing certain tasks, all the while being under attack by the other robots. Also, to encourage teamwork, the groups are allowed form 3-way alliances with other teams.

“Robotics is popular not just because of practical applications like self-driving cars, but because it captures the imagination of both scientists and the public,” said Henry Kautz, president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

I've been trying to save Kinect hack updates for Saturday, since its usually a difficult day to find good sci-tech news. But, these were too cool, so I decided to go ahead and pull the trigger on them.

I'm sure there will be more. You may always view the latest Kinect hacks at KinectHacks.net and Kinect-Hacks.com.

1) Chris O'Shea allows Kinect users to swap bodies with the previous Kinect users.

2) Evoluce demos their incredible Kinect computer interface with Windows 7.

3) Synaptic Robots develops Kinect control of an ABB industrial robot.

Geek.com has a nice full article about Epic Games' upcoming game engine. The video demo below represents the next generation of Unreal. The engine is so advanced that you can't run it on any gaming systems available on the market today. Instead, the new Unreal engine is intended for the next generation of computer hardware...the Xbox 720, the PS4 and next generation PC graphics cards.

The Geek article ponders that unless Microsoft and Sony release a new console within 4-5 years, there may be a resurgence in PC gaming, since PC's will have 2 generations of advancement ahead of the consoles.

Anycase, check out the video. This is true beauty in computer graphics, soon available on your standard PC within a few years. Use the full-screen, HD option or go to YouTube itself to watch.

Saturday's are often slow days to blog sci-tech news and today is no different. Many organizations hold off news announcements till Monday. So, let's take a look at what the (always reliable) Kinect community has cooked up over the recent week. 

You may always view the latest Kinect Hacks at KinectHacks.net or Kinect-Hacks.com.

1) A creepy humanoid robot in Germany uses motion sensing technology to interact with humans.

2) VJ in Argentina named Pixel Perez uses the Kinect in a live outdoor festival.

3) Enrique Ramos posts a Kinect Controlled Delta-Robot

Gamers have been waiting with baited breath to learn what direction Bungie, the creators of Halo, will be going with their next big title.  They've just released a blurp at the Game Developers Conference that their next project, codenamed Destiny, will be a Sci-Fi MMO. However, they stressed that the new game would not just be "WoW in space."

They got their work cut out for them. In general, massively multi-player online games based on Science Fiction haven't performed well in the marketplace. The upcoming Stars Wars MMO from Bioware hopes to reverse that trend.

The time for a Sci-Fi MMO is now though, because once World of Starcraft begins gearing up, the announcement will probably steal the wind out of the sails of many other Sci-Fi MMO projects.

The latest Kinect hacks are coming out so fast and furious that I might actually have to create a dedicated page. In the meantime, I found FOUR cool videos to highlight this time, instead of just three. There were just too many cool hacks to choose from.  You can browse more videos at Kinect-Hacks.com or KinectHacks.net.

1) Carnegie Mellon students led by Maya Irvine create comic book-style Kinect.

2) Samia Ahmed jeopardizes the jobs of thousands of spotlight operators by creating Automatic spotlight.

3) Timothy Sherman uses the Kinect to auto-create 3D virtual reality landscapes out of any objects.

4) David Stolarsky of Austria creates the Swimbrowser.

You may view the latest Kinect Hacks at KinectHacks.net or Kinect-Hacks.com.

1) Children draw and then create their own immersive fantasy worlds using Kinect.

Little Magic Stories from Chris O'Shea on Vimeo.

2) Microsoft engineers allow you to paint on table, manipulate a 3D mouse and turn your television into a window inside virtual reality. 

3) Peter Daukintis creates a drum set using Kinect.

USA Today has a neat demo of Microsoft Labs' latest avatar software. Currently, they can only create a head, but Microsoft's Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie states they intend to give us full-body avatars in the near future. In particular, there's a high buzz floating around Microsoft about the Kinect and the great impact its having for researchers all around the world. They see the Kinect as a primary motion and voice activated controller for the home.  For instance, the Kinect already allows you to Pause/Play movies routed to your TV through Xbox Live with voice commands.

I'm a tad late covering this topic, but I really love the style of this viral video. Created by a company called Deep Silver, the game tells the story of vacationers who get caught on an island during a zombie outbreak.  Despite reports by Deadline.com, Variety and other entertainment news outlets that the movie rights have been sold, the game producers announced in a press release that the movie rights to "Dead Island" have NOT been sold yet.

"Deep Silver has received a massive amount of interest in the film adaptation rights to the Dead Island IP. Contrary to rumors that have been circulating, neither the film rights nor any other licenses have yet been sold by Deep Silver, which is the sole IP holder of the Dead Island brand.”

This trailer truly is a testimony to how much story and drama a director can add even while ...

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Actually, not everybody, maybe just me.  When I see really cool ones, it makes me giddy like a kid again.  Here's some of the best over the last few days. You may find more Kinect Hacks at KinectHacks.net and Kinect-Hacks.com.

1) Jean-Christophe Naour has released an early version of a program that allows you to paint in 3D space. You literally use your body to draw in the 3D space around you.

Kinect Graffiti /Mockup 0.1b from Jean-Christophe Naour on Vimeo.

2) Playing Human Tetris with Kinect

Kinect Hack Test 5 from frogNY Build-It on Vimeo.

3) TUM creates collaborative, real-time workspace monitor that helps machinery avoid collisions with human workers to prevent industrial accidents and injuries.

Well, fellow humans, Day 3 has come and gone. IBM's Watson artificial intelligence has utterly crushed both human Jeopardy champions Kenn Jennings and Brad Rutter, and there was no John Conner to save them. The final scores read Watson $77,147, Ken Jennings $24,000 and Brad Rutter $21,600.

IBM plans to donate all of Watson's winnings to charity. We've been following Watson's journey at Logic-Cool with great interest, here, here and here. In other little known news, IBM will turn 100 this June.

...because they're getting to be everywhere. Literally, I could turn Logic-Cool into a Kinect hack blog, and I'd *almost* have enough material to make cool posts every day. As tempting as it is, I'm just going to continue my practice of selecting the best out of the latest Kinect hacks.  Check 'em out!

You may view more Kinect Hacks at Kinecthacks.net and Kinect-Hacks.com

1) Ogutti from Japan has developed a hands-free vacuum cleaner

2) Aidan Feldman, Tyler Williams and Alexander Chen create a virtual strong instrument in one weekend.

Stringer (Demo at Music Hackday) from Alexander Chen on Vimeo.

3) VIVID Interactive implements hands-free window shopping.

Kinect Interactive Shopwindow with gesture controls from VIVID Interactive on Vimeo.

Ars Technica published an interesting article wherein writer Ben Kuchera relates a conversation with iconic game developer Richard Garriott about what modern games could learn from his classic Ultima Online.

What Ultima Online did very well, and what I think has never been recaptured, is allow you to become a citizen of that world in a very personal and relevant way that is unique to you and not like anyone else...As brilliant as World of WarCraft is—of course it's an astonishingly well-done product—but everyone is pretty much a fighter. Your life is, you're a fighter...That kind of diversity of life has still never been recaptured in any game since, and it's something I hope to recapture in my next work."

I agree. Every massive multi-player online game since Everquest featured "fight, kill and collect." The only way to make an honest living in ...

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IBM's Watson artificial intelligence steamrolled his mortal opponents in the 2nd round of this 3 day match. Yesterday, was a tie. However, the mellow-voiced supercomputer flabbergasted his human rivals and the host by betting cryptic dollar values, such as $6,435, to which Alex Trebek responded, "I won't ask."

Alas, humankind put up a good fight...now on to world domination. Watch and weep, fellow humans.

IBM's "Watson" artificial intelligence tied with human contestant Brad Rutter on the 1st day of a three-day match on Jeopardy with a score of $5,000. Trailing behind, Ken Jennings finished the 1st round with $2000. Jennings had previously won 74 consecutive Jeopardy matches, as well as beating Watson in the practice match leading up to the face-off. The two men had faced off with Watson previously back in January also.

Watson displayed in impressive knowledge of Beatles songs, but displayed some errors, sometimes repeating wrong answers from the previous players. Unfortunately, the erstwhile A.I. has no ability to hear the human players, so he isn't able to take their incorrect answers into account. I'm sure he would have "terminated" them otherwise.

This is a guilty-pleasure post for those who used to play the arcade game Mortal Kombat a looong time ago. I got into this game back when you still fed quarters into it. Soon after, it made the leap into the first console games. 

Michael Jai White (BLACK DYNAMITE) and Jeri Ryan (STAR TREK: VOYAGER) will reprise their roles as Jax and Sonya Blade in the upcoming Mortal Kombat web-series.

In the latest trend in movie pitching, ambitious filmmakers now invest several thousands of dollars into creating a short film in order to win higher budgets. In this instance, the Mortal Kombat reboot was sold off the strength of a viral video MORTAL KOMBAT: REBIRTH which had cost around $7,500 to shoot. I've been seeing a lot more of these pitches lately. Aspiring filmmakers take note. Technology is raising the bar.

1) Indian engineer Harishankarn creates a hack that replaces his TV remote.  Seems like he's doing it faster than these guys.

2) Surgeons are now using the Kinect to manipulate 3D CT Images.

3) We've seen Kinect Hacks where users can play drawn piano keyboards on any surface. Now we have a hack that plays piano in the air.

You may view latest Kinect Hacks at KinectHacks.net, Kinect-Hacks.com and Kinect-Hacks.net.