New Yorkers line up at midnight to purchase the Motorola DROID.

Whenever Apple launches a new iPhone, there's always huge queues. Similarly, when RIM launched the Blackberry Storm, Blackberry fans lined up to be the first to get their hands on the device and Android fans lined up for the HTC G1. Last night it was Motorola's turn to have fans queue up around the block.

CNet reports that one Verizon Wireless store in Manhattan had roughly 100 people lining up, with roughly 60 of them there at 11:30 p.m. on Thursday, nearly 3 hours before the store was due to open. Most of those in line were loyal Verizon Wireless fans.

One such customer is Geoffrey Aravallis, who headed to Verizon to pick up his Droid on his way home from clubbing. Aravallis said he had been tempted to switch networks just to get the iPhone but is now happy that he didn't.

"I use Gmail and all kinds of Google services, so it's nice to be able to have all that on my phone," he said. "And the Droid is much more open than the iPhone."

Are you buying a DROID today? Let us know!

Read the full story here.

With almost every smartphone released coming with the magical $199 price point, is Apple going to try and undercut the competition with a cheap, 8GB iPhone 3GS?

Boy Genius Report today carried rumors of a $99 8GB iPhone 3GS. Citing two sources, the site says Apple and AT&T are mulling over the idea of a $99 iPhone 3GS in an effort to combat the Verizon and Motorola's DROID.

Before Apple launched the 3GS, folks speculated that the company could offer the old 8GB iPhone 3G for $99. A lot of people rubbished the rumors because Apple selling anything for ninety-nine bucks sounded plain ridiculous. However, the Cupertino-based company did go on to announce the 8GB iPhone 3G for $99 once the 3GS launched, so maybe this rumor is true too. Then again, that $99 deal was to get rid of old inventory and this would involve actually making an 8GB 3GS first.

Would you be interested in an 8GB iPhone 3GS for $99?

Ball gets recognized too.

The Game Boy was a revelation for gaming. It was the device that allowed gamers to take a screen, d-pad and buttons along with them wherever they went for portable gaming.

Playing Super Mario Land or Tetris on that monochromatic, puke-green screen provided many of us with soul-saving entertainment on otherwise boring outings.

Likely for that very reason, the Game Boy is now in the Strong National Museum of Play’s Toy Hall of Fame.

Also joining the Game Boy in the honors is the Big Wheel tricycle--wait for it--the amazing BALL! Yes, after centuries as a plaything, the ball finally has its recognition for being a wonderful toy.

Share with us in the comments your fond memories with your Game Boy, Big Wheel, or even your ball.

Sorry HD fans, Nintendo isn't feeling it.

Love your HDTV and how it's able to display such crisp images when paired with a high-definition source? Of course you do. But things seem a little off when your Wii is pumped through your HDTV even with its 480p signal. We'd imagine that things could be improved vastly even with upscaling to a native HD signal, which leads many hoping for a Wii HD.

Sadly, it seems that Nintendo doesn't feel the same way. Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime told GameTrailers TV in certain terms that a Wii HD isn't coming.

Reggie: Michael [Pachter] continues to be the only one who believes that this is gonna happen. I don't know how forcefully we can say there is no Wii HD.

Keighley: It's not coming, period?

Reggie: No.

Source: GameTrailers via Kotaku.

An iPhone game developer secretly acquired the numbers of iPhones.

We certainly like a good techie scandal--the whole Macpadd.com incident should be proof of that. With that said, it wasn't hard to jump on the news that another iPhone game developer was accused of stealing personal data from its consumers. A class action lawsuit, filed in San Francisco (PDF), alleges that the company used an "electronic backdoor" to access the information.

The developer in question, Storm8, is well-known in the iPhone gaming community with popular pseudo-MMORPGs such as iMobsters and Vampires Live. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Michael Turner of Lynnwood, Washington, says that the information acquisition involves the execution of "malicious software code" and is not authorized by Apple, Inc.

"Storm8 has written the software for all its games in such a way that it automatically accesses, collects, and transmits the wireless telephone number of each iPhone user who downloads any Storm8 game," the lawsuit claims. "Storm8, though, has no reason whatsoever to access the wireless phone numbers of the iPhones on which its games are installed."

Boingboing adds to the report, indicating that players were unaware of the number farming until the company acknowledged the process as a "bug" back in August. The lawsuit alleges that "very specific and specialized software code" could retrieve telephone data, and seeks injunctive relief and damages. Boingboing said that Storm8 has not returned its queries at the time of this writing.

Limited edition Michael Jackson phone has some serious bling bling. Shamoar!

With Michael Jackson's film now out in theaters, it doesn't seem a coincidence that a mobile phone has hit the market carrying his iconic name. Whether or not it would have received his stamp of approval is another story. However the seemingly invincible device does sport all the gold and sparkle that made the King of Pop's attire so off the wall.

At first glance, the mobile phone could definitely be a thriller to many rabid MJ fans, possibly a pimped-out, over-the-top monstrosity to others. It's decked out with more gold than an 80s rap star, covered from one end to the other and decorated with silver and (fake?) diamonds that seems more likely to weigh it down and strain the wrist.

Originally reported here, the technical specifics and pricetag weren't released. It's highly likely that the device isn't authorized by the Jackson estate, and we're not even sure what kind of phone is under all that dangerous bling--Engadget claims it may be a Vertu KIRF.

According to Shanzai, the phone comes packed with a plethora of Michael Jackson ringtones. There's only a limited number of these phones going on sale, so MJ fans may want to sell that car and figure out how to import one of the golden bad boys into the States. Currently the mobile phone is on sale in China, packed with a Jackson live performance DVD.

And yes, the names of his post-Motown albums are scattered throughout this article (save for History).

Bird drops bread on LHC, causing it to overheat.

A piece of baguette dropped on the overground part of the machinery resulted in parts of the machine overheating. The Register reports that temperatures in part of the LHC's circuit climbed to almost 8 Kelvin - significantly higher than the normal operating temperature of 1.9 Kelvin, and close to the temperature at which the LHC's niobium-titanium magnets are likely to "quench", or cease superconducting.

According to The Reg, readers monitoring the collider's operational data online noticed that temperatures started to rise in the early hours of Tuesday morning. While initial inquiries to CERN were met with assurances that everything was fine and the change in temperature was a result of routine testing, Dr. Mike Lamont told reporters that the problem was actually caused by "a bit of baguette on the busbars." CERN is assuming a bird dropped the offending piece of bread.

The incident happened while the LHC wasn't even on, which raises the question, "what would have happened had the collider been in operation?" Well, nothing hopefully. Lamont told the Register that the climb in temperature would have been noted and the LHC's beams would have been diverted to "dump caverns" lying a little off the main track of the LHC.

The dump caverns are large, artificial caves, which would channel the power into a "dump core." The core is a 7m-long graphite block encased in steel, water cooled and then further wrapped in 750 tonnes of concrete and iron shielding. According to Lamont, the dump core would become extremely hot and quite radioactive, but with massive amounts of shielding and a huge amount of solid granite between the dump caverns and the surface, " Nobody up top, except the control room staff, would even notice."

If there were no dump caverns? LHC's niobium-titanium magnets are likely to cease superconducting at around 9.6 Kelvin. When circulating, each of the two beams of hadrons pack enormous amounts of power and if they were to suddenly stop, all the energy would have to go somewhere. The Reg equates the damage to being rammed by an aircraft carrier.

Read the full story here.

Bringing up baby just got a whole lot easier.

The sound of a baby crying can frustrate just about anyone, especially if the kid isn't hungry, wet, tired, lonely or bored. Now iPhone-toting parents can figure out exactly what their baby is pining for with the help of The Cry Translator.

The Daily Mail reports that the Cry Translator can figure out why baby is bawling in less than 10 seconds with a 96 percent accuracy rate if users followed the methods suggested to calm their baby once the kid's cry was deciphered. Creators Pedro Barrera and Luis Meca say the application uses patented technology to identify the baby's cry based on five emotional or physiological states: hunger, fatigue, annoyance, stress or boredom. 'These five cries are universal to all babies regardless of culture or language,' the two say.

However, while the application can boast a high accuracy, DM points out that there is no way to recognize the cry of a baby who is not well.

Those of you with mini versions of yourselves can download the application here. Be sure to let us know how accurate it is for you!

The Beatles just got a teeny, tiny bit more digital with the launch of an Apple-shaped USB stick containing the entire Beatles catalog. However, that's about as digital as things are going to get for fans of the Fab Four for now.

EMI Music this week won an injunction against Bluebeats.com, a site the label said is selling Beatles music without permission. Bluebeats.com claims it's not actually selling Beatles music, rather it's actually offering 25c a song downloads of re-recorded tracks.

Bluebeats.com's lawyer is reportedly basing the site's defense on "psychoacoustic simulation," an "arcane" technology that supposedly produces music enables it to sell music that sounds identical to recordings without actually infringing on any copyrights.

It all sounds a bit sketchy to us but there's a court hearing scheduled for November 20. We expect to hear all about "psychoacoustic simulation," and how copyright laws don't apply to songs produced using the mysterious technology then but for now, Bluebeats is not allowed to sell the tracks.

A web developer discovered a serious "security hole" in Facebook and Myspace.

Current Facebook and MySpace users should just accept the fact that social websites are prime targets for info mining, especially when their flawed code provides open windows to hackers. A web developer has recently found such an avenue nestled within XML configuration files used to define the cross-domain access policy for Flash applications.

According to 24-year-old Dutch Web developer Yvo Schaap, reported on his blog here (and originally spotted by Softpedia), the security hole could allow a hacker to hijack accounts and steal private information. Schaap, originally developing an application for Facebook, stumbled across the problem while trying to find a solution to a function limitation.

"Surprisingly, when [I] looked into more carefully, my solution allowed full access and control to the Facebook user account that accessed my application," he wrote. "Did I mention this would also be untraceable since exploit actions would happen from the users IP and own domain cookie?"

Essentially the security hole isn't a coding bug, but rather an insecure configuration issue in crossdomain.xml. The error allowed any Flash application, whether on Facebook or on another non-Facebook website, to access data on the connect.facebook.com sub-domain. "This wouldn't be a big deal if the subdomain only hosts images, but unfortunately, this domain hosts the whole Facebook property, including a Facebook user session," he said.

To learn more, check out Schaap's report--including a proof-of-concept--over on his blog.

Comcast subscribers can now sit back and enjoy Internet throttling at its finest.

And so it begins: the Internet is one step closer to a controlled environment thanks to Comcast. Based on information provided by a new FCC notice (PDF), Comcast has already implemented a new traffic throttling system into its broadband service. The new practice replaces the company's stricter traffic block of peer-to-peer uploading. However, Comcast said that there will still be traffic blocks, but only in extreme cases.

According to the document, Comcast's throttling with have two trigger conditions. The first is activated when using more than 70-percent of a subscriber's maximum upstream or upstream bandwidth in a 15 minute span. The second trigger kicks in when the neighborhood Cable Modem Termination System becomes severely congested and evidence indicates that the cause stems from the offending subscriber.

Internet throttling begins when either triggers are tripped, forcing bandwidth traffic to throttle down. The effect endures for at least 15 minutes, or until the average bandwidth utilization rate drops below 50-percent for 15 minutes. Comcast said that certain traffic won't be throttled: low-priority traffic will still zip through uncongested nodes at close-to-normal speeds.

To provide a better understanding, Comcast threw in a bus analogy to explain the two-tier traffic throttling scenario. "If there is no congestion, packets from a user in a BE state should have little trouble getting on the bus when they arrive at the bus stop," the company said. "If, on the other hand, there is congestion in a particular instance, the bus may become filled by packets in a PBE state before any BE packets can get on. In that situation, the BE packets would have to wait for the next bus that is not filled by PBE packets."

IGN's Direct2Drive is refusing to sell Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Oohhh dem's fightin' words! Online game retailer Direct2Drive, owned by the IGN Network, is calling rival platform Steam a "Trojan Horse." According to Kotaku, Direct2Drive is refusing to sell Activision's highly anticipated PC version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 because the game is embedded with Valve's Steamworks software.

Considering the immense popularity of the game, that's a rather bold move. However, Direct2Drive isn't alone: online retail outlets Impulse and Gamersgate are also refusing to sell the game for the very same reason. "We don't believe games should force the user to install a Trojan Horse," a spokesperson for Direct2Drive told Kotaku.

So what's the big deal? The popularity of the game should invite distributors to sign on with anticipated, sky-scraper-sized dollar signs in their eyes. After all, Modern Warfare 2's release is slated to be the biggest ever in gaming history. But despite the hype, all three outlets have expressed their dislike of Steamworks and the way it forces players to use Steam's storefront; the software's DRM and save-game management don't seem to be an issue.

Direct2Drive told Activision and other publishers that it will not sell digital versions of PC games bundled with Steamworks until Valve "decoupled its retail marketplace" from Steam's other services. The online retailer said that its beef is not with Activision, and to make up for lost revenue, the company is applying $5 coupons to select Activision titles.