We’re having a bit of a friendly discussion here at Geekosystem about two videos. One features the musical stylings of Pete Drake and his talking guitar, the other is a bizarre OtamaTone instrument with a “talking” rubber mouth. Both feature the tone-shaping ability of a mouth, or some kind of mouth, and both are thoroughly weird. But which is truly the strangest?

There are a lot of people who will say that Walmart has some bad business practices, treats their employees and customers poorly, and puts small companies out of business. There are less that are willing to take them to task on it. There is only one who would do it over 2 cents and principle: Mary Bach of Pennsylvania. When she was charged an additional 2 cents on top the listed price for her Banquet “Brown ‘N Serve” sausages –something she claims has happened more than once — she decided to sue, won, and was awarded $180.

From the get-go, this case seems to have all the hallmarks of frivilous, “I’ll sue you and your dog!” litigation, but Bach claims there’s more to it and I’m inclined to believe her. This is not Bach’s first suit against Walmart. In fact, she’s sued five times in the past for exactly the same thing: Being charged more money than the listed price. While it’s only a few cents, given the freqeuncy of the event and the number of customers Walmart has daily, Back thinks this amounts to some serious unearned, dishonest revenue.

Not too long ago, Minecraft creator Notch received word from Bethesda that they felt the name of Notch’s team’s next game, Scrolls, conflicted with the name of Bethesda’s golden franchise, The Elder Scrolls. Of course, Notch claims that choosing to name their next game Scrolls has nothing to do with Bethesda’s franchise, and felt the lawsuit was a tad unwarranted because the conflict is based on one common word — it’s like if Gears of War and God of War were encroaching on each others’ trademarks because the word “war” is in the title.

After praising Bethesda and assuming it’s their lawyers being unwarrantedly confrontational rather than the actual game developers, what does Notch do? Challenges them to a Quake 3 match to settle the lawsuit.

In retaliation for Anonymous’ hack of the Syrian defense ministry webpage, a Syrian hacking force alleged to be called the “Syrian Electronic Army” struck back at Anonymous. How, you ask? They defaced Anonymous’ pet project, the social network AnonPlus, by replacing the homepage with the message above, including gruesome pictures of burned and mutilated bodies. Anonymous’ original hack was said to be in support of protesters in Syria and left a message encouraging the Syrian military to revolt against President Bashar al-Assad instead of supporting his suppression of the protests. The counter-hack attributed the current Syrian violence, depicted in the gruesome photos, to Syrian demonstrators instead.

The origin of the hackers was not mentioned on the defaced website. The attribution of this hack to the Syrian Electronic Army comes from a tweet by Citizen Lab, and the SEA are a recognized, public hacking organization, strikingly similar to Anonymous in their press and methods. They even have a bit of that Anonymous flavor to their message, stating that.

In response to your hacking to the website of the Syrian Ministry of Defence, the Syrian people have decided to purify the internet of [y]our pathetic website

Read on...