Nintendo has said this week that children under the age of six will be banned from using the 3D functions of the upcoming 3DS handheld at next month's introductory event.

The 3DS supports 3D images without the need for stereoscopic glasses and will launch globally in February through March.

"Looking at 3-D images for a long time may harm the growth of children's eyes," said the company in a note to would-be visitors of the event.

Therefore, all young children will be banned from trying the 3D aspects of the game, at least during the event.

In general, Nintendo says users should take a break after every 30 minutes of 3D playing time, or immediately if they feel dizzy.

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Last week, Skype had its second-longest outage, ever, with most of its users being unable to access the service for just over 24 hours.

Today, Skype explained what happened, which I will post a snippet of here:

On Wednesday, December 22, a cluster of support servers responsible for offline instant messaging became overloaded. As a result of this overload, some Skype clients received delayed responses from the overloaded servers. In a version of the Skype for Windows client (version 5.0.0152), the delayed responses from the overloaded servers were not properly processed, causing Windows clients running the affected version to crash.

Users running either the latest Skype for Windows (version 5.0.0.156), older versions of Skype for Windows (4.0 versions), Skype for Mac, Skype for iPhone, Skype on your TV, and Skype Connect or Skype Manager for enterprises were not affected by this initial problem.

However, around 50% of all Skype users globally were running the 5.0.0.152 version of Skype for Windows, and the crashes caused approximately 40% of those clients to fail. These clients included 25–30% of the publicly available supernodes, also failed as a result of this problem.

As part of an apology for the downtime, Skype has given a credit voucher to paying members, of $1. That $1 can get you around 30 minutes of international calls, says the company.

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According to a new Bloomberg report, Apple may be unveiling the oft-rumored Verizon iPhone 4 on Valentine's Day, February 14th.

AT&T has been the exclusive carrier of the iPhone since its launch in 2007, but Consumer Reports recently ranked them the worst carrier in the nation, and iPhone owners have long complained of slow 3G speeds and dropped calls, especially in metropolitan areas.

Says the report:

"Verizon enjoys a reputation for reliability. AT&T is notorious for dropping calls, especially in densely populated places like New York and San Francisco where iPhones are most common and cell towers get loaded."

Apple's event will include a "splashy product introduction to announce a new version of the iPhone that work's on Verizon's network," and that it will definitely be later than next month's CES, likely on Valentine's Day.

While in the long run, the loss of an exclusive iPhone contract will be a concern for AT&T, the report says it may not be easy for Verizon, at the start:

"At least initially, Verizon's iPhone may have weaknesses compared to AT&T's. The expense and hassle of changing carriers could also work to AT&T's advantage."

AT&T's early termination fee for smartphones is also $325, which will certainly dissuade many current owners from switching.

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South Carolina police officials say a 23-year old man was hit by an SUV on the highway after he decided to play a real-life version of the classic game "Frogger."

"Frogger," which launched in 1981, was about as simple as games get. With a few lives, you have to navigate your frog across a highway (or river) by hopping forward, left, right or back, while avoiding vehicles or other objects.

The police say the man was discussing the game with friends, while the group loitered around the intersection of two highways.

Someone in the group then yelled "GO!" and the victim began running across the highway, which was still busy at 9 PM.

The victim was then (obviously) hit by a 2010 Lexus SUV, but remains in stable condition at a nearby hospital. The driver is not expected to be charged.

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A hacking group called "fail0verflow" has presented at this week's Chaos Communication Conference 27C3, showing off the PlayStation 3 "private key" that Sony uses to authorize code on all retail consoles.

Knowing the private key means any hacker can gain full control of the PS3 system, without needing to jailbreak it using a USB dongle.

The team's site (here) is not available yet, but should be soon, giving more details.

If used, the PS3 should be permanently jailbroken, as unofficial code can be quickly updated when Sony creates new firmware updates like version 3.55, which added nothing of use to the console, but did block USB-based jailbreaks.

Fail0verflow says their main goal now "is to have linux running on all existing PS3 consoles, whatever their firmware versions."

In a tweet, the hackers note what many have been saying for months, that Sony made a terrible decision when the removed OtherOS, the built-in ability to run Linux. Says the group: "We only started looking at the ps3 after otheros was killed."

The video is very long, but interesting, especially for those with PS3 consoles:

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Mozilla has confirmed this week that a database of inactive Mozilla usernames and encrypted passwords was compromised, with the accounts being leaked to the Internet.

Chris Lyon, the Mozilla director of infrastructure security, says (via CW) 44,000 inactive inactive user accounts "for the addons.mozilla.org site were inadvertently placed on a public-facing Web server."

While noting that the "exposure posed minimal risk to users," Lyon says the company has erased all the passwords, which were encrypted anyways, and accounted for all downloads of the database.

All current users of addons.mozilla.org needn't worry as Mozilla upgraded its database and procedure for encrypting passwords in April of last year.

Security officials for the organization were notified of the leak on December 17th, through the bounty program which pays out up to $3000 to volunteers who submit security-related vulnerabilities, bugs and exploits.

All account holders in the leaked database were notified on December 27th.

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USC researchers have hacked the Microsoft Kinect motion-control system, giving users a chance to play the popular MMORPG 'World of Warcraft,' and other PC games.

The researchers have made the software available for free, online, dubbed the Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit (FAAST).

FAAST makes it easier for users to play PC games that would otherwise require a keyboard and mouse, by translating body movements into those inputs.

Says researcher Skip Rizzo (via LAT):

"I think the real compelling aspect of all this is that you can now take off-the-shelf games, content that's already built, and emulate the keyboard actions with body movement. This opens up the doorway for building rehabilitation exercises for people after a stroke or traumatic brain injury. And in an area that's getting a lot of attention, the area of childhood obesity and diabetes.

You got a kid who's interacting with World of Warcraft for six hours a day, perhaps a parent can step in and say, 'Hey, alright, for one hour of that time, you're going to do it with the Kinect ... and you're got to exercise while you're doing it,'

So, instead of using a thumb controller to move your character, you've got to run in place, you've got to use arm gestures and you actually build into the application for a way for a kid to physically engage with digital content like a game.

You can download the software here: FAAST homepage

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