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.

Compassghost, deprived of his ability to post his cool flash stuff on our forum, has asked us to point out two new Pelican-related pieces over on the Halo Babies forums. Pretty nice work!

Xbox.com has updated thier Halo 2 Readiness Guide, with Part 2 (Enter the Halo Universe) and Part 3 (Tips from the Halo 2 Beta Testers) now online. The first gives you a nice list of appropriate books, movies, and music to help get you in the mood – the second gives you tips from beta testers on gameplay strategies. Good stuff in both. Early props go to MELEE, who sent this in last night.

Stuntmutt takes a look at potential casting pitfalls in today’s One One Se7en.

Homefront, the Battlefield: Vietnam mod, has lost their home temporarily because Gamespy’s dynamic servers are down – so they’ve got an update posted over at the Junkyard. Today is Covenant day, it seems. Thanks to Mhaddy for the heads-up.

Wow – two WILDLY different audio submissions today – actually, one came in this weekend, but I didn’t get to it (sorry, guys!).

• Welcome to Halo was created by Kil and Lox – it’s a Halo-themed version of the Welcome to Atlanta remix from Jermaine Dupri. Guns and rap – they just seem to go together, don’t they? 3:21, 4.6 mb mp3
• Death of Cortana Sample is another Mothergoat creation – don’t worry, there aren’t any spoilers here (at least none that Mothergoat knows of); he came up with the idea after reading First Strike. A moving piano piece – I’m looking forward to the full version. 1:36 long, 1.4 mb mp3

Grab them both – or pick the style that appeals to you.

Wired News has a great article on the I Love Bees phenomenon – a look at what’s behind it, and how it’s affected people. The whole shebang comes to a close on November 9, just in time for Halo 2 – I can’t WAIT for the summaries after that. This particular game, while not a product of Bungie, DOES tie in to the Halo 2 storyline, and will provide quite a bit of useful backstory for folks interested in the entire Halo universe. Just a few more weeks! The final quote in the article is priceless. Thanks, Stephen Smith.

Narcogen, over at Rampancy.net, has taken a long, hard look at the whole piracy issue (specifically with respect to the Halo 2 leak), and has blown out a few myths, and dispelled a few unreasonable rationalizations. It also looks at WHY the community has reacted the way it has. Definitely worth a read.

In early September, Fire Team Charlie released FTC13b as a member-exclusive movie. This saddened many people who wanted to see it, but didn’t want to (or couldn’t) pay the $10 membership fee. Well… now you can watch it anyway – just visit the site for details. Thanks, Ash!