Billions are already made from in-game purchases of virtual items that are little more than code, but with amounts like this being shelled out, we could see a bigger push toward virtual goods being worth real money.

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Using videogame software code, he has built a virtual reality arm based on an arm wired with FES. Donoghue translates brain signals, and Kirsch uses them to drive the arm on a computer screen.

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He also sees a trend toward e-gift cards or virtual gift cards, which boil the card down to a bar code--no plastic necessary.

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Now using the open source code, enterprising hackers have jerry-rigged everything from virtual piano keyboards that let users play the piano anywhere, to an application for 3D drawings and digital puppeteering.

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Techniques such as extracting operating parameters, comparing application profiles across VMs (to look for signs that one has been successfully attacked), and analyzing application behavior in memory (as opposed to just code stored on disk) are far easier in a virtual environment and provide a huge advantage for stopping the most sophisticated threats.

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The Konami Code is perhaps the most famous cheat code ever, a controller sequence that unlocked extra lives and virtual goodies in console games including Contra, Gradius, and Gyruss.

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The idea: draw kids under age 12 with a code attached to the back of each card that lets users download players and their stats into their own virtual album online.

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