Hey, masochists, I am about the blow your mind with the awesome power of the internet. Check this out: If you download this special version of Internet Explorer 8, you not only receive the web browser, you receive a free, previously unreleased Nickelback track. That's right, you not only receive a fine Microsoft product with which to look at the web, you also can "rock out" to the music of one of the finest bands in rock and roll history.

Either that or you could sit in a parking lot and eat dirt -- your choice.

I asked Attack of the Show comedy guru Casey "Office Jesus" Shreiner about the deal, and he said, "Isn't having to use Internet Explorer enough of a punishment?"

Update: The name of this band is "Nickelback." I apologize to the band and all of their fans for misspelling the name of this fine musical combo in my original post.

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Long the internet's primary destination for black market file trading and bit-torrenting, Swedish website The Pirate Bay will soon go legitimate. Tech company Global Gaming Factory X said it has reached an agreement to acquire The Bay for about $7.7 million.

"We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site," Global Gaming CEO Hans Pandeya said in a statement. This is, obviously, a far-cry from TPB's original model, which entailed helping people share whatever files they wanted without worrying too much about content providers and copyright holders.

"The Pirate Bay site is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies that requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary," said Pandeya.

How the legit Pirate Bay will look/work remains to be seen, but I'm going to guess that the days of ripping huge amounts of free content from Pirate Bay bit-torrent trackers is finished forever, and with it, a part of internet history. It had to happen eventually, of course, and it's not like Pirate Bay is the only source for illegal downloads on the internet, but the company's previous complete disregard for legality and seriousness always made it a cut above the rest, so it's very sad to hear the new owner of the site speaking in obvious corporate speak about leveraging TPB's traffic and pleasing the judiciary.

One thing is almost for sure, though: When The Pirate Bay stops pointing to free content, it's position among the top 100 most-visited internet sites will change dramatically.

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Comic books have lied to us. Crime is not awesome. It rarely involves plots to take over the world or armies of atomic powered super-robots. Usually crime is just way, way stupid. For example, Jonquel Brooks, 21, was sentenced to life in prison on Friday for killing Brant Daniels and shooting Roderick Buycks Jr., Drew Pfeiff and Kodi Shiflett in a dispute over a Sony PlayStation 2.

Back in 2007, Daniels and his three friends, all college students, accused Brooks of having swiped the PS 2. They went to his apartment and accused him of the theft. Rather than call the police, Brooks grabbed a gun, killed Daniels and wounded his friends.Police later determined that the stolen PlayStation was not in Brooks' apartment. So Daniels died for nothing, and Brooks is in prison for the rest of his life over nothing. And all of this over a system that was worth like $75 bucks a couple years ago, at best.

Even Buycks feels bad for the convicted killer. He told The Fresno Bee he was friends with Brooks and said,"We didn't go over there to cause trouble... He made a wrong decision, and now he has to pay for it."

If you wonder how the seemingly huge punishment was arrived at, Brooks was sentenced to:

•  25 years to life in prison for the first-degree murder of Daniels
• 25 years in prison for using a gun.
• 59 years and four months in prison for Brooks' conviction on three counts of attempted murder in the shooting of Daniels' friends,  Buycks was shot in the neck and Pfeiff in the shoulder.

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This week on The Links Of TheFeed, we've got a drunken golf cart driver, a look at the classic trilogy The Journeyman Project, an early list of epic knockouts from 2009 and a couple other things you should click on.

• The latest trailer for Quentin Tarantino's next movie, Inglourious Basterds. [FilmDrunk]

• Tired of your pals ruining the plots of your favorite shows and movies? The hire these guys. [CollegeHumor]

• Once you finish reading our Fight Night Round 4 Review, check out the 5 best real knockouts to happen in boxing this year. [CraveOnline]

• Crispy Gamer's rulebook for videogames includes keeping your tales of Madden glory to yourself. [Crispy Gamer]

• Games Time Forgot: The Journeyman Project Trilogy. [Destructoid]

• Drunken Golfer Attempts to Drive Cart 40 Miles Home on Milwaukee Highway. [God Bites Man]

Pizza delivery chain Domino's revolutionized the pizza consuming experience today by adding live, online pizza tracking to social networking sites. This new service will allow you to order pizza, then track the progress of your individual pie through facebook and/or twitter without every leaving your chair.  Domino's also announced it is the No. 1 in online ordering in the US for the first quarter of 2009. Twenty-eight percent of Domino's orders originate from the internets, which beats both Papa John's and Pizza Hut.

Please enjoy the below awesome piece of corporate-marketing-speak from Domino's official press release. It is attributed to Steve Weiss, President of Straightforward Communications, who supposedly actually said:

"Whether one is drawn by the fun of watching their pizza being built, or the efficiency of the ordering process, or the deals offered in the coupon section, or the rich data feedback of the baking and delivery process, there's more than enough appeal to make for a satisfying ordering experience for a pizza lover of any age."

But this is not all that is happening in social-networking pizza-land. In an overt act of hostility in the online pizza war, rival purveyor of nearly inedible, cheese-laden circles Pizza Hut couldn't let Domino's have a single day in the sun. They countered Domino's claim with their own social networking announcement by offering its facebook and twitter followers (over a million people) free stuffed pizza rolls. You'll find out how to get your free rolls on July 4th... because eating Pizza Hut pizza rolls is patriotic as hell.

As game systems get more complicated, errors become more mysterious. Back in the day, it was almost always dust on the connectors, so when Super Mario Brothers 2 didn't work, you'd blow on the cartridge, jam it back in your NES and bam, Luigi floats.  But nowadays, it ain't that simple. Electronic Arts is having a hell of time figuring out why Fight Night Round 4 is freezing up on some Xbox 360s.

According to EA, the freeze-up is happening to a "very small number" of users of both the demo and retail versions of the game. But EA has been unable to duplicate the problem, and thus solve it. According to EA, "unfortunately we can’t recreate the freeze issue on any of our hundreds of kits."

That doesn't mean there are no clues. According to EA, "The demo freeze that we investigated seemed to be hardware related, nothing within the game code could be seen to cause the problem," and "The problem seems to lie somewhere between audio data and online configurations." See what I mean about mysterious?

Users experiencing the problem should probably check out this official thread, and add their specs and issues. The more info EA gets, the faster it'll be able to knock this bug down to the canvas for a ten-count.

Fight Night Round 4 worked fine for me, but I only played it for like ten minutes so far. How about you? Have you had problems with Fight Night Round 4? Let us know in the comment section.

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If you're bummed at the cancellation of long-awaited video game Duke Nukem Forever here's another blow to your heart: According to documents filed in lawsuit between Apogee and 2K Games, another Duke title, Duke Begins, was also canceled.

Here's how the lawsuit describes the situation:

The original development schedule for the Duke Begins game provided that the game was to be completed and commercially released by mid-2010...

Take Two and/or its subsidiary 2K Games halted or otherwise canceled all development work by the third-party game developer on the Duke Begins game in April 2009... without Apogee's approval or consent...

When Apogee confronted Take-Two and 2K Games about the... cancellation of the Duke Begins development work... Take-Two and 2K Games simply denied it... Take-Two and 2K Games are taking such actions with a goal of pressuring Apogee to sell the Duke Nukem franchise rights to Take-Two for less than their true value.

Ouch. So it looks like two different Duke Nukem games were started by two different companies, and neither one will ever see the light of day.

It also looks as though the Duke Nukem saga will never, ever end -- ever. This is either a blessing or a curse, depending on how you feel about the original Duke Nukem games and the development of vaporware.

But hey, let's take bets: I say we'll see a true "current gen" Duke Nukem in 2011. Anyone have a prediction?

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Our beloved leader is on a bit of an anti-video game tear lately. In a Father's Day message to all Americans, President Barack Obama categorized video games as a waste of kids' time. In this Sunday's Parade magazine, Obama wrote:

We need to set limits and expectations. We need to replace that video game with a book and make sure that homework gets done. We need to say to our daughters,

Howard Huge was unavailable for comment. That's not the only Obama vs. video games news I have for you, though. In a speech to the American Medical Association, Obama got down to the nitty-gritty of preventative health care, saying it:

"means going for a run or hitting the gym, and raising our children to step away from the video games and spend more time playing outside."

I'm totally in favor of kids both doing homework and playing outside (as long as I don't have to participate in either), but I don't think video games and good grade/health are mutually exclusive. Neither does EA Sports head Peter Moore.

Time magazine has declared that social networking site tagged.com is the most annoying site on the internet. In a sea of bad design, clunky interfaces, and stupid, stupid ideas, what is it that makes tagged so monumentally bad? The way it spreads.

You may have already received an email telling you that a "friend" wants you to see some pictures on Tagged. Hopefully, you didn't go through the registration process. If you did, and you clicked the wrong box in a series of cryptic pop-ups, everyone on your contact list will receive a sign-up-to-tagged-to-see-pics message, even if you don't have any pictures on the service. So you will have spammed everyone on your contact list, from old college professors, to employers, to ex-girlfriends, to that important Nigerian businessman you're doing a million dollar deal with. And everyone will hate you for it.

The thing about tagged that makes it extra super annoying, though: It works. Common sense might tell someone to delete any message that looks like spam, even if it's from someone you know, but people are pretty dumb. Tagged.com is currently the third most popular social networking site in the country, behind MySpace and FaceBook. Tagged boasts over 70 million users, in spite of the fact that not a single person has ever pointed me to their tagged page. Man, there are a lot of gullible people on the internets.

Authorities in Jackson, Mississippi have reported that an 11-year-old boy accidentally killed his 9-year-old brother with a shotgun after the two argued about a video game.

Apparently, Darrious Finley, the younger boy ,beat his brother De-Andre at a game. De-Andre got angry enough to grab a shotgun. The two struggled, and a single blast to the chest ended the life of the 9 year-old. If  you're wondering where the parents were while all this was going on: Dad was outside mowing the grass. If that's not tragedy, I don't know what is.

The Finley parents kept the unloaded shotgun in an unlocked closet, but, according to their father, the boys knew how to load and shoot the firearm. The local district attorney is looking into the case, but it's unlikely that charges will be filed. For now, the police are regarding the incident as an accident, and the charges aren't likely to be filed, as De-Andre Finley is too young to be charged with a crime anyway.

This is definitely a tragedy, but video games are only a tangential part of the story. I sincerely hope no anti-game activists will use this as a way of furthering their political goals. It seems to me that keeping a shotgun and ammunition around your house is a bad idea if you have children, and if you're going to draw any conclusions from this incident, it shouldn't be that video games caused a needless death. How about: We should require gun owners with children to install trigger locks on their firearms. That works for me. Guns and kids shouldn't mix.

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(Thanks to TheFeed tipster J. Wang for the tip.)

Get ready to panic, Xboxers: On Tuesday, June 16th from 7:01AM UTC (12:01 AM PST) Live will be down for maintenance for up to 24 hours. As if this wasn't insult enough, when the service resumes, you will not be enjoying any new features or content. The maintenance is to prepare for some of the new goodies that are coming later this year.

Personally, I plan on spending that day on the PlayStation 3... but if you're a single-system person, you can spend that 24 hours either playing single-player games or you can just imagine how great it will be when last.fm is available through Live, you can rate all the content on Live, you can shop in the Avatar marketplace, and buy full games through the new Games on Demand service.

Although Major Nelson doesn't say it, I hope that maintenance also solves some of the lag problems and other issues Live has been having for some people as well.

So how will you spend your day apart from Xbox Live?

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I remember back in the good old days, when illicit street sales involved either pirated DVDs or black tar heroin, but up in San Francisco, they do it a little differently now. The big illegal street racket is gourmet food. Hardened gastronomic dealers like Curtis the Crème Brulee Guy, Cookie Wag, Amuse Bouche and Sexy Soup Lady have been selling black market food on the streets without getting vendor licenses. Oh, noes!

Due to the clandestine nature of their criminal enterprises, advertising is on the down low, often through Twitter. Sadly, The Man can use twitter too, and the busts may be on the way. According to Richard Lee, San Francisco's director of Health Regulatory Programs, the department has been following suspected unlicensed vendors' on Twitter, and plan to hand them over to the po-po. "Anytime we see or know about a violation, we report it to the police," said Lee.

According to Police spokesman Sergeant Wilfred Williams the case of the hardened food-dealers is still tough to crack: "At this point they haven't been able to find or locate the vendors, because they're not selling on a daily basis. They might not always be in Linda Alley, they might not always be in Dolores Park. They might not always be in the Mission," Williams said.

So hey, criminal food underground, be careful with your tweets... and don't forget to subscribe to TheFeed's twitter. We promise to tell you everything going on the world of video games and tech, and if we start selling street-corner polenta from the trunk of our Nissan, you'll be the first to know.

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According to Joystiq, Microsoft is no longer providing cardboard boxes to gamers whose Xboxes take an electronic crap. The no-more-coffins policy began on May 26 "in an effort to expedite the repair process."

So if (when?) your Xbox red-rings, get ready to find a box yourself. Microsoft will, however, cover the shipping costs for you: "Customers can now ship their consoles themselves using an e-label provided by Microsoft and do not need to wait for an empty box to be shipped to them," the company said.

I suggest shipping your Xbox in something with flair, like old, cut-up pizza boxes, or, if you're really, really angry over your useless system, ship it in a lead box*-- if Microsoft is paying the postage, why not?

Here at TheFeed, we've had numerous experiences with differently bricked 360s. Share our pain at the links below:

• Mike D'alonzo's non-red-ring death
• Ray Padilla's broken console saga

*Do not actually do this.

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I've never been there, and I don't read a bunch of manga or anything, but I love Japan. When faced with the problem of under-population on the island nation, Japanese companies are responding by offering their employees monetary incentives to have more children. Koei Tecmo, the game company behind classic(?) video game franchises Dynasty Warriors, Dead or Alive and Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball, is offering its employees bonuses of around $1,000 for their first child, $2,000 for their second child and $20,000 for their third child.

As a father, I feel I can speak from experience here: $1,000 is a poor reason to bring another life into the world, but, by the time you have two children, you might as well go for the third if it'll get you $20,000. Once you have a couple of lap-rats, you're in for the long-haul anyway, and you might as well make it a trio.

I think Tecmo should take the whole incentive thing a step further, though, and raise children itself. That way, Koei could have a child that does nothing but play every video game ever made. That child will become a super-video-game-genius, and, in about 20 years times, be able to create the greatest Dynasty Warriors game ever. Maybe Super Video Game Child will be able to explain Dead or Alive Extreme to me, too.

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Los Angeles child Moshe Kai Cavalin is a prodigy. The 11-year-old boy graduated with honors from East Los Angeles Community College with a Associate Arts degree in Liberal Studies last week. He likes astro-physics, Bruce Lee movies, and martial arts. But Cavalin does not like video games.

"I feel it's a waste of time playing video games because it's not helping humanity in any way," Cavalin told L.A.'s NBC affiliate. He'll use all that not-playing-games time in the next six months to devote himself to martial arts, write a book for kids on how to succeed in school, and take up scuba diving.

So what do you think, gamers? Is Cavalin right about this one? He has, after-all, gotten further in school than many older people, and he might be smarter than you... If you think he's wrong, I want to know how, specifically, you think video games are helping humanity.

Personally, I think if I put him in front of Super Mario Galaxy for only 20 minutes, he'd renounce his high-achievement ways and become a game-addicted slacker like the rest of us! That whole "games don't help humanity" thing sounds like something his folks said to him, instead of an opinion he arrived at himself.

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