Holly Wright, who owns littleplasticmen.com, a site that sells action figures, wrote to tell us about the HALO Forward Command Center (HALOfcc), a new subsection devoted to Halo, with news, giveaways, and of course, Halo action figures (both current and older). The deal that makes this newsworthy: from now through the end of November, customers will have a chance to win the Halo 2 Yellow civilian ‘hog – it’s a ‘chase figure’, which means there’s one randomly inserted in every 5 or 10 boxes of toys. (In many places, workers pull the chase figures and sell them on eBay or to friends, and the general public never even gets a shot at them.) Check it out!

kapowaz has put together a pretty fun wallpaper (preview here, 36K) that ties together the new Firefox web browser (final release is scheduled for November 9 – does that date sound familiar to any of you?) and a certain game you might have heard of. If you like it, it’s available in 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×960, and 1600×1200.

JMan of TalkXbox writes to let us know they’ve got a review of the new Plantronics Halo 2 Xbox Live headset over on their site. There’s some good info in there, so check it out!

Okay, I’m back, but I won’t be able to post news for several more hours – this afternoon will probably see a flurry of posts in the few hours before the timestamp rolls over to midnight UTC. Sorry about that. (And innumerable thanks to mnemesis, who kept the front page from being blank most of today, and Count Zero, who answered a BOATLOAD of mail.) That’s not what this news post is about, though. It seems that someone has been posting info from the Halo 2 leak on various sites, using my name as the poster. Totally, totally uncool. I will NEVER post illegal information on ANY website – and if I’ve got breaking news about something, it sure as heck isn’t going to end up in a comments section of another news site. For those who are offended that I would have done this – don’t worry, I didn’t. For the record – if you see my name attached to questionable info on a different Halo website, please, send me a note so that I can try and clear it up. Thanks.

There’s a new B.Net Top Story, “The Bungie Guide to Game Modes – Part One: Swords”. You’ve still got a few weeks to prepare yourselves, so get reading! Thanks to Anubis for the heads-up.

Wolfy writes to let us know that the Rockets On Prisoner awards for 2004 have been decided. Check ’em out! There’s some real entertainment in that bunch.

This was basically covered yesterday by noted globe-trotting gadfly Louis Wu, but enough people sent in mail noticing a particular bit of info in the latest press release for Halo 2. Apparently, over 1.5 million copies have already been pre-ordered. If you’re one of those dedicated pre-consumers, you can sigh contentedly with satisfaction, knowing you’ve been counted. Me, I’m #137,204!

James Phelps noticed that the Bungie Store is now offering pre-ordering for three of the new Halo 2 figures. Now’s your chance to ensure you get the Brute, the new MC, and the Warthog. Update: Doh! There’s a new Master Chief Hoody, too. Thanks, Dave. The store’s filling out nicely!

As noted by the errant Louis Wu (who shamelessly noticed it first on Rampancy.net), Evergreen98 at the Junkyard has a reflection on the Halo 2 leak and the community response to it. It’s an insightful read (not sure about the comparison to downloading music – NOTHING about the transmittal of intellectual property over the internet is that simple), so go check it out!

Reality check – if you thought WE were psyched about Halo 2, check the hype over at Yahoo Finance. Those are some pretty big superlatives they’re tossing around in there… Update: oops, looks like that’s just a standard press release; Rampancy.net points out Major Nelson’s blog, where it’s spelled out. Sorry about that. They’re STILL pretty big superlatives, though. (Yeah, and now I’m REALLY gone for the day.)

For the next couple of days, I’m not going to be around much. Hopefully, mnemesis and Count Zero can keep up on some of the news that comes in – but please… be patient, and do not send news items to my personal address if you want them to actually have a chance of being posted before Wednesday or Thursday. When I get back, I’ll be working on a couple of real problem machines – several sections of HBO will be spotty until then. These include The Halo Story Page, the Tips and Tricks section, and the HBO Forum Archives. Please don’t send us email about outages – we know about them. Sorry about this!

Calvin has come up with one very viable approach to keep from being spoiled in today’s Calvin and Halo.

Kevin Bunch writes about a Halo Tournament in Eastpointe, Michigan, on October 23; Entry fee is $60 per 4-man team, payout is $1000 for first place. More details can be found in this forum post.

Following up on yesterday’s story from Wired Magazine, IGN has posted a 3-page look at the I Love Bees phenomenon. If you’ve been keeping your nose out of this one, this might be a good place to find some basic info about the ARG.

Alto Darknight points out that in addition to the transcript we mentioned recently covering this week’s 60 Minutes Australia piece on Halo 2, there’s also video. I can’t watch it where I am… but you should.

Again, a number of people sent in links to this image at Circuit City – some wondered if it was a leaked shot. That seems unlikely, but the filename (and path) of the image would suggest that this came from an upcoming issue of PC Magazine. We’ll have to wait and see if this is true. First props go to Samir Patel. (Here’s a local version, in case that one disappears.) Update: Dr. Nick writes in to mention that “mag” in this case most likely refers to “Magnavox” and not “magazine.” As evidence, he points to these other shots of televisions (Sony, Apex, etc.).

Thanks to the many, many people who sent in pictures of Halo 2 on the Bungie.net webcam today – we first heard about this from Shishka (surprise, surprise – I wonder who actually set it up?), but the first submitted picture was from Adam Daniel.

Two more Halo 2 news stories today: there’s the transcript of the recent 60 Minutes Australia preview of Halo 2 (thanks, Joshua Rennert), and a piece in the Washington Post on games used for serious purposes mentions Halo in passing as a game loved by soldiers in Iraq (thanks, Adam Daniel). Press, press, and more press!

Bah. ferory sent in a scan of the September 20th issue of Canadian Weekly magazine Maclean’s this weekend – I forgot to put it up. It’s up now in our Press Scans area. A one-pager on Halo 2 – in a pretty mainstream magazine! Nice.

10 pieces for you today in the Fan Fiction section – that’s AFTER I deleted 57 duplicate submissions of the single piece by JCDentonCZ. (I left one, even.) What makes this more amazing to me is that he was part of the conversation a couple of days ago when something like this had happened before (though not NEARLY to this absurd level) – and it was made CLEAR that even though an error popped up on submission, the actual submission went through fine. If you’re wondering why the Fan Fiction section is so flakey… it’s (in part, at least) because of idiots like this, wildly overloading the system.