The Master Chief hoodie is Ecko's latest geeksploitation jacket. It's $88 and vaguely resembles Spartan power armor, in a nylon and stickers kind of way. But if you aren't diving through the vacuum of space through a planet's atmosphere to land without a parachute or whatever, then this hoodie will serve you just fine. All Master Chief ever wanted, really, was to feel the warm embrace of semi-permeable textiles. [Ecko via technabob via DVICE]

The desktop is made from a string of custom Rainmeter configurations on a Halo 3 background image. Rykennedyan's list of features:

• Grenades - Each grenade launches a specific application. I currently have them set to, from left to right, Pidgin, Steam, Foobar, and Firefox.
• Power Drainer - Opens a Shutdown menu. You can choose Shutdown, Restart, and Sleep
• Health Bar - Displays current track progress, with artist and title above it.
• Battle Rifle and Ammo Count - Displays current unread message count from Gmail and the Battlerifle opens Gmail.
• Ammo Clip - Top clip is download traffic; bottom clip is upload traffic.
• Radar - As of now, all this does is download and save an image for the local radar from Weather Underground. I'm currently editing a GIMP script which will automatically crop and edit the picture to display properly upon download. What you see here is the intended look. It also displays the current temperature.
• Time and Game Type - Display current time and date.
• Blue Score and Red Score - Display current CPU and RAM usage.
• Player Callsigns - These behave just like my TweetScanner skin.
• Battlerifle Ammo Count - Displays current battery status; it displays 0 in this picture because I'm using my desktop which is not on a battery.
• Also, the visor outline is done in Rainmeter as well.

Daniel Petric was caught with Halo 3 on his way into the house after sneaking out to buy the game. His father then took it, placing the game in a lockbox—the same lockbox in which he stored his 9mm handgun.

Somehow, Petric retrieved his game and the gun from the lockbox. And according to his father, Petric entered the living room with a chilling request.

Would you guys close your eyes? I have a surprise for you.

At that point, he was said to shoot both of his parents in the head, killing his mother.

Petric's lawyers gave an opening statement mentioning that he'd suffered from a severe staph infection and found himself homebound to games and television for a year.

As of late, video games seem inundated with tragedy. [Cleveland via Kotaku]

[Download Page via PaperKraft via Ripten]

As Ars points out, Microsoft's been pretty public and all apologetic about the rampant Red Ring plague, dumping a billion dollars into seriously (and appropriately) extended warranties for repairs multiple times, and beefing up hardware to take the heat. More importantly, the Xbox 360 was killed by Halo with the candlestick in the living room connection is a thread that hasn't exactly lit up the internet or the media, and they (we) love jumping on that kind of stuff.

Our verdict? Bogus and unnecessary. We sentence you to death by Needler. Before they put it on steroids. [Ars]

On to the match. We'll be playing something like 7 games or something. Here we go.

PS, I curse a LOT when I play, so if you have sensitive ears, mute it. Earmuffs!
UPDATE: Results are in...

We won.

Game one was in Guardian, and I think for the first minute, we were pretty shocked to see how good Team Kotaku's Luke "Legendary" Smith...who works at Bungie...was. Hammer and shottie? Greeeaaaat. It was over pretty quickly at 40 to 50. I wasn't feeling confident, but I also don't think we were grouping very effectively.

From Kotaku:

BOMBSHELL. Readers we didn't lie: We will be talking on Gizmodo with Crecente, Fahey, Mark Wilson and Luke... Luke Smith. Former Kotaku writer and current Bungie employee. Giz will be bringing on former writer Travis, who doesn't work for Bungie.

But Gizmodo writers never whine (that much) and don't make excuses (that much). I was rattled, but only enough to get more focused for the next match.

Second match, we were warmed up. We played construct, and Kotaku still had really aggressive momentum, coming in with swords and rockets, and grenades. I was kind of freaked out, and started yelling...a lot. But we took at 50 to 42 by proceeding cautiously and playing defensively. Matt was warmed up, and tied Luke at 16 kills for the board. The rest of us were on par with around 8-12 each (I had last place.) It was tied 1 and 1. Confidence restored a bit.

Third match was the one that could have decided the whole tourney. Snowbound. We went for the ghost, but we totally got our asses kicked. Then we went to the back of the board and got wiped again. We regrouped on the other side of the board, and waited while they hid inside. I started aiming properly but this started to become some crazy john woo movie with matt and luke racking up over 20 kills, with matt at 22, one above Luke. They started to come in a little less organized on this board. The score? An intense 49-50.

Now, we played this board none of us have ever played, epitah. Suddenly, we're on these narrow walkways, getting nailed by hammers, maulers, rockets and brute shots. After that, we regrouped, camped out some weapons and stuck to the same room, but in different positions to flank em and stay safer from rockets and hammers. 50-44, we won, thanks to matt earning 22 kills, and the rest of us around 10. (Luke had 20). We had only one more to play and we could win. I voiced up and noted that we'd picked no boards and asked for our favorite, The Pit.

Watch live video from gizmodo on Justin.tv

Little did I know Luke was a freaking animal at The Pit with 29 kills. He'd grab rockets and cloaking and swords and just come in on top of our tower and destroy the turret and nothing we could do would pin him down. Every time I was up there, I either got sniped or someone would nade me. I don't know where the rest of the team was, but Luke pretty much destroyed us single handedly. Did they win? Yes by 11. I wasn't happy that we were beaten on our best map. I still don't know what we could have done to not lose so badly.

I was so stressed at having been taken apart by a single man this game. My stomach was in knots.
I almost had to sit in my bathtub upside down, naked, and...never mind. But it was three games to two, our advantage. If we relaxed, they'd tie it up, so everyone had to pretend like it was the final match. The map? High Ground. I freaking hate high ground.

Travis manned the ghost, and took it up. Rest of us hung back and we split up a lot. I'm confident they were ahead for a bit, but wide open spaces like this are Matt's specialty. We spread out at the beach to flank whoever came down the tunnels or center, with trees for cover, and when we went up the sides, we grouped up. At one point, we'd occupied the base and tower, and Chen got Crecente with a laser at some distance while Brian was attacking Matt. At one point I thought we had the match: we had two ghosts, but these guys had us off of them with lasers and rockets pretty fast. Once again, they were sending luke forward, but we a) knew to watch the cloak and had the cover to do it from, and b) knew to watch the laser tower. Without a lot of support, it wasn't hard to stay on top of him. We were ahead by 8 or so, but then Luke had killed me back to back, ghost and mongoose, with the laser, and a few other guys went down. It was 47 to 49. They camped in the base, waiting. It didn't make sense to go in, but Travis and I were itching. Giz alum Travis Hudson, pretty quiet and steady all game (except for the GFY battle cries), jumped in cloaked, and started fighting Luke. Luke took him out, but Travis loosed some grenades and the win was ours.

The prize? It was supposed to be unlimited posts on the other site for a day. But after tubgirl and the original prank post from kotaku, I think we'll just pass. Tomorrow's another day.

We're looking for humor and quality, and those that exhibit both will be selected. Send your submissions to contests@gizmodo.com with "Bill Gates Photoshop" in the subject and your files named as FirstnameLastname.jpg (mine would be AdamFrucci.jpg, for example, or AdamFrucci1.jpg and AdamFrucci2.jpg if I submitted more than one). Send 'em by the weekend, and the gallery of champions will be posted early next week. Get to it, team! [Image via Seattle PI]

-"Caution: Exhaust Vents Here, Nanoreagent Emission Port" (near the bottom of the Xbox)
-"Property of UNSC/Unit weight 3.5kg/309mm x89mm x 258mm"
-"Halo 3 Bungie H3-0 1E100 0x D34th 4nGle 108 |n|n|n ROGUE PROCESS ghost.713>"
-"Fuel Intake" (by USB ports for charge cables)
-"UNSC AI HUB" (By the IR Port)
-"AI Interface Port" (By the disc tray)
-"Core Activation" (By the power button)
Really, to get an idea of how good this stuff looks, you gotta hit the gallery. I still don't know why there isn't an HDMI cable in here, why there isn't any text on the included green controller (although I'm glad there's a charge pack), and why they didn't include the 120GB HDD.