Author: Serkadis

Rip, you’re getting too old for this…..

Rip’s in trouble again! Actor Elmore “Rip” Torn was arrested Friday evening after breaking into a Connecticut bank while carrying a loaded revolver, police in Connecticut say. The star has long struggled with alcohol addiction and was under the influence at the time.

When Connecticut State Police responded to The Litchfield Bancorp in Salisbury they found a broken window in the rear of the building and an intoxicated Torn walking around inside, according to The Register Citizen.

Drunken misbehavior is nothing new for 78-year-old Rip: He was convicted of DUI in 2008, pleaded guilty to being ability impaired in 2007, and was acquitted of drunk driving in 2004.

Cops say the actor has been charged with carrying a pistol without a permit, carrying a firearm while intoxicated, first-degree burglary, first-degree criminal trespass, and third-degree criminal mischief. Torn — a resident of Salisbury — is being held on $100,000 bail.

Mass Effect 2 takes the series into a bold new direction, while keeping the stories and characterization that made us fall in love with the first game. OnLive is facing some serious skepticism after the controversial road test by PC Perspective, and another beta tester confirms the initial impressions of lag and a lack of graphical fidelity. Tatsunoko vs. Capcom? You need to play it.

These stories and more are waiting for you in the week in gaming.

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Article Tags: AmazonGate, Christopher Booker, Headline Story

The claim in an IPCC report that 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest could disappear through global warming turned out to be unfounded Photo: LEE FOSTER/ALAMY

The IPCC is beginning to melt as global tempers rise

It is now six weeks since I launched an investigation, with my colleague Richard North, into the affairs of Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the hugely influential body which for 20 years has been the central driver of worldwide alarm about global warming. Since then the story has grown almost daily, leading to worldwide calls for Dr Pachauri’s resignation. But increasingly this has also widened out to question the authority of the IPCC itself. Contrary to the tendentious claim that its reports represent a “consensus of the world’s top 2,500 climate scientists” (most of its contributors are not climate experts at all), it has now emerged, for instance, that one of the more widely quoted scare stories from its 2007 report was drawn from the work of a British “green activist” who occasionally writes as a freelance for The Guardian and The Independent.

Source: telegraph.co.uk

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Filed under: Detroit Auto Show

The 2009 edition of the Detroit Auto Show was depressing on a variety of levels, ranging from the number of automakers who either pulled out or didn’t bring anything new, to the industry’s general malaise as a whole. The show was upsetting on a regional level because attendance dropped.

Luckily, 2009 is in the books and 2010 appears to be better on nearly all fronts. While new introductions at the show seemed down this year again, the bright side is that more automakers participated and, perhaps more importantly for the struggling region, attendance was up in a big way.

The Detroit News reports that 715,000 men, women and children paid up to $12 to attend the show this year – up 65,000 from 2009’s dismal numbers. Part of the reason for the increase came courtesy of surprisingly good weather (for Detroit), while the overall outlook of the industry isn’t (quite) as dire as it was one year ago. Also, that higher attendance number happened despite the fact that the Audi display caught fire and cleared Cobo for one afternoon.

[Source: The Detroit News]

2010 Detroit Auto Show attendance beats ’09 by 65k originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This just in: Tila Tequila is batshit. The Internet sensation has set the gossip world on its ear once again by claims that rapper Game is the father of her baby in a series of updates to her Twitter page on Friday.

The model-turned-reality TV star announced she was pregnant earlier this month after backing down from a pre-Christmas announcement claiming she was going to be a surrogate mum for her brother. Tila took to her Twitter.com blog and revealed the father was a war hero who fought in Afghanistan. She also recently claimed the father was Swedish.

Game is the latest man to be linked to paternity drama — although the father of two denies ever having met Tequila.

“@IhateGame promised to take me shopping today for the baby clothes! EVERYONE GO HARASS HIM SO HE DONT FORGET! IMA B MAD!!! GRR,” she Tweeted Friday.

@IhateGame is Game’s Twitter.com moniker.

“You guys stop asking me if @IhateGame is the father of my child…..STOP ASKING ME! GO ASK HIM!!”

But the rap star — who famously feuded with 50 Cent — insists he’s not the father of Tila’s child.

“Game…. When it comes to Tila Tequila’s unborn child……. You are NOT the father. wouldn’t hit it wit 50’s pole,” Game joked in response to Tila’s Tweets, later adding, “The Los Angeles lakers are the baby daddy.”

Speaking to TMZ.com late Friday, Game seemed baffled by the Tila Baby Rumor: “I woke up this morning and there was all this hoopla on the Internet… I ain’t never had a conversation with her (Tequila).”

Article Tags: ClimateGate, James Delingpole

A mighty outpouring of rage today from Philip Stott, foaming with righteous indignation, on the life and imminent death of the AGW scam.

Part of him is naturally enthralled:

“….as an independent academic, it has been fascinating to witness the classical collapse of a Grand Narrative, in which social and philosophical theories are being played out before our gaze. It is like watching the Berlin Wall being torn down, concrete slab by concrete slab, brick by brick, with cracks appearing and widening daily on every face – political, economic, and scientific.”

He recognises that this an era of massive geopolitical power shifts:

Source: blogs.telegraph.co.uk

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Filed under: Gaming, Features, iPhone, iPod touch, App Review

Catan. If you’ve ever visited, there’s a good chance you’re passionate about it.

First unveiled as a traditional board game in 1995, the now-classic trading and settlement game has evolved over the years to include dozens of scenarios, expansions and reworkings, from limited edition game maps to browser-based Internet versions. Naturally, the Settlers of Catan is now also available for the iPhone [iTunes link], and it’s a a damn good condensed version.

First things first. This is the full, but basic, game. The original ruleset isn’t condensed at all, but none of the expansions are present in the current version. While long-time board gamers might scoff at simple “vanilla Settlers,” the basic game as presented in Exozet’s iPhone version acts just like the tabletop big brother. You can choose to play on the fixed beginner board or a random map, you can play with three or four people (or bots), you can trade, you can go for longest road, etc. All the things that make Catan such an enduring game are here, and that’s great to have in your pocket.

Read on to find out more about Catan: the First Island on the iPhone (and iPod Touch).

The Game

The Settlers of Catan is, at heart, a game of collecting resources and building a collection of settlements and cities on a modular board, with the goal of reaching a set point total (between 8 and 12, but defaulting to 10) before the other players. Players who know the rules will be able to jump right in. You can set the animations to turbo and turn off the opponent comments for the fastest possible game. If you’re quick, a full game can take around 10 minutes – about as much time as it takes some people to set up the tabletop version. Players who aren’t familiar can go through a tutorial with digital Catan’s familiar Professor Easy to learn how to build, trade and acquire points or read up on the game at Board Game Geek.

The App

The Catan gameplay doesn’t suffer on the iPod’s small screen. Each resource hex is clearly differentiated by both color and graphics, but colorblind players might have trouble figuring out which settlements and roads belong to which player since there are no player icons to be found. You’ll have to rely on memory to kept things straight,

Figuring out how the game operates is superbly straightforward. Things blink when you can can affect them, the menus are easy to figure out and so on. If you know how to play the tabletop game and aren’t totally new to the iPhone, you will probably know how to play the app in, at most, 90 seconds.

Take, for example, the trade screen. You can see the five resource types and how many you happen to be sitting on at any given moment. Flick one up towards your opponents and the number goes down. This is what you’re offering. Flick one down towards your player avatar and the number goes up. Simple and clear. Click on the big green checkmark to try and seal the deal – and notice how this icon is located at the opposite side of the screen from the decline/exit button. Very smart.

If you get fed up with AI opponents trying to trade with you, there is an option to decline all offers for the rest of the turn. When you have the resources that you want already, this greatly speeds up the game (a good thing).

This brings up a point: who is this app’s target audience? With the tutorial and the easy playing time, someone totally new to Catan could pick up the game and enjoy it. But, c’mon, the people who will be most excited about this are the hardcore players. A skilled player will be able to beat the game’s toughest bots – William and Hillary – with some regularity, but there is still enough challenge here to be worth the five spot. If you’re addicted to Catan and want ultra-easy access to a quick game (make your decisions fast and you can be done in ten minutes), this is the app for you. Hopefully, enough players will complain about the less-than-brilliant AI and we’ll get another update to make them play better.

While it would be feasible to implement in the tabletop version, one new feature in the app is the “resource bonus.” This setting allows a player to never go too long without getting at least a little something. Especially early in the game, a series of bad rolls can mean you’re not building anything while your opponents erect cities all over the place. With the resource bonus option turned on, after five empty rolls, a player can simply select one resource of their choice.

A drought like this is less likely to happen if the dice option is set to Stack (or Stack5). When using Stack, the dice rolls have perfect distribution, so that if the game ends after exactly 36 rolls, you’ll have seen every possible combination of two dice during play. With Stack5, five random options are removed at the start of the game and the numbers reset after 31 rolls. There is a deck of cards that Mayfair Games sells for the tabletop Catan version that does the same thing, but the extra text on those cards is not included in the iPhone version.

Speaking of mini-additions, the First Island is ripe for mini-expansions like The Great River of Catan or The Fishermen of Catan, and I hope we’ll be seeing some of the more game-changing expansions like Seafarers or Traders & Barbarians. They’d better be working on these options. Seriously.

Looking even further down the road, should Exozet ever develop a larger version for the iPad, adding the 5-6 player expansion might also be cool, and players could play a tabletop game just by setting the iPad on the the table and going from there (dealing with cards hidden in players hands will be tricky, for sure). It’s a thought.

Final thoughts

For some reason, Exozet thinks players want to listen to in-game music instead of their iTunes library. The game’s music and sound effects can be muted, but is still doesn’t allow your own music library to play; that’s annoying, and one of the most-requested changes in customer reviews. Another downside is that there’s no way (that we could find) to offer trades with other players on their turn. This is important if you’re trying to offer 2-1 trades to stay under the 8-card robber hand limit, but because the game moves so fast it’s not that much of a problem, really.

We’d also really, really love an undo button. The app is pretty idiot-proof, but mistakes do happen.

Finally, there’s a bonus feature to this $5 app that hasn’t gotten nearly the attention it deserves. The Settlers of Catan needs at least three players (the 2007 expansion Traders & Barbarians expansion for the tabletop game gave us a reasonable two-player ruleset, but it’s not the same game) to get going. With this app, we now have a very good way to play real two-player Catan. It’s a slight hassle to coordinate, but this app gives two people a third “player” whenever needed. Catan: The FIrst Island is the next best thing to having an extra friend around who’s always up for another trip to Catan.

TUAWCatan: The First Island brings tabletop gaming glee to iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In the tradition of the Billshrink infographics, Darren Beckett has thrown together this nice little infographic comparing the entry-level iPad’s cost and functions to other popular e-readers like the Amazon Kindle DX and the Fusion Garage Joo Joo. While the iPad ties as the most expensive on the list, I think it’s fairly obvious if you need anything more than a simple e-reader, the iPad offers the most bang for your buck.

As a guy who’s just written his first novel and a long-time bookaholic, I’ve have always said I’ll never go with any kind of e-reader. I love the feel of a book in my hands. Paper books are romantic in a way electronic books could never be. Plus, you just look really educated when you’ve got scores of them lining your shelves Also, when I go to the beach, I’m not worried at all about leaving my book when I go for a swim. If my $500 e-reader got lifted, that would be another story.

That being said, the iPad is starting to look appealing as an e-reader based on the videos I’ve seen (love those page-flips), but what’s more is the iPad has also gotten me interested in the Kindle (which I’m hoping to find a friend with one so I can do an iPad/Kindle e-reader-function-only review).

Before the iPad, I couldn’t imagine not having hundreds of books lining my shelves. And now… well, I might need to find other things to fill those shelves with. But what say you guys and gals? If you’ve thought about getting an e-reader, would you consider going with an iPad now, since it offers a lot more functionality for not much more money?

TUAWInfographic: Cost/benefit analysis of the entry-level iPad and six other ereaders originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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[Welcome Sean Carroll, and Host Chad Orzel.] [As a courtesy to our guests, please keep comments to the book.  Please take other conversations to a previous thread. – bev]

Sean Carroll’s From Eternity to Here sets out to explain the nature of time, particularly what’s known as the “arrow of time,” the fact that we experience time as a flow in only one direction, from the past into the future. This is a daunting prospect, as just setting up the question requires a discussion of just about every important physics discovery of the 19th and 20th centuries. Carroll manages to make it all readable, though, and whether or not you end up agreeing with his preferred approach, you’ll leave the book with a clearer sense of the problems and the physics involved in the nature of time.

From Eternity to Here is a little unusual in that it is not just a popular-level explanation of well settled physical questions, but a book-length argument in favor of a particular theory of the universe. This is much less common in the science side of academia than in the humanities, where the scholarly monograph is one of the standard units of academic production. Scientists, for the most part, don’t write books, and as a result the interested reader usually needs to piece together a full argument from a large set of journal articles and a great deal of background knowledge. It’s a pleasure to see everything laid out in one place like this.

The humanities style is probably fitting, as the subject matter often straddles the border between physics and philosophy. Any book asking questions like “What should the Universe look like?” ought to contain a healthy amount of philosophy, and this delivers, along with a rich assortment of literary and cultural allusions, delivered with dry humor.

While the book is ultimately an argument in favor of a very particular physical model of the universe, it is not an intimidatingly mathematical work. Carroll includes citations of most of the critical papers in modern theoretical physics, but the text here doesn’t involve anything more daunting than scientific notation (inescapable when you’re dealing with a book about the entire universe) and the occasional logarithm (which are explained clearly and concisely in an appendix).

While the book contains an excellent summary of all the major theories of modern physics, the key concept here is the notion of entropy, and the key scientific figure in the story is Ludwig Boltzmann, who first explained entropy as a measure of the “disorder” of a system. Carroll recasts the question of the arrow of time as primarily a problem of thermodynamics, and the second law of thermodynamics in particular. The arrow of time is inextricably bound up with the increase of entropy in the universe, and Carroll makes a case that the crucial question in cosmology ought to be “Why was the entropy of the early universe so low?” This puts a very different slant on the usual questions about the cause of the Big Bang and the eventual fate of the universe, and suggests a very different answer.

The final section of the book runs through a large number of possible explanations put forth for the origin and fate of the universe, and makes an argument for Carroll’s own preferred model, in which our universe is just one of many “baby universes” spawned from quantum fluctuations in an eternally existing “multiverse.” One may not find the arguments in favor of the multiverse picture as the most satisfying of these options entirely convincing– something that I hope we will discuss a bit in this book salon– but just setting up the questions makes this a very thought-provoking book.

From Eternity to Here provides an excellent and highly readable survey of pretty much the entire history of physics, and uses it to attempt to explain pretty much the entire history of the universe. While it may or may not convince you that physicists have glimpsed the “ultimate theory of time,” it’s a book that asks deep questions and provides thoughtful answers, and that alone makes it a rewarding read.

 

A certain UK bank operates a delightfully dorky advertising campaign whose slogan is “we give you extra.” Well, in the case of mobile software communities, that’s exactly the case. From jailbroken iPhones to PS One-emulating HD2s to multitouch-enabled browsing on the Nexus One, the one group of people we know we can truly rely on are other geeks. So let’s salute those heroes once more, in recognition of the VisualBoyAdvance — a webOS-based emulator for Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games. The former two categories are said to play smooth as you like, whereas the Advance stuff suffers from slight slowdown at present. We’ve only seen it playing on a Pre, but there should be no reason why your Pixi wouldn’t be allowed in on this party. A quick video demo awaits after the break, and the source link has all the installation details you’ll need.

Continue reading VisualBoyAdvance turns your Palm Pre into a Game Boy emulator

VisualBoyAdvance turns your Palm Pre into a Game Boy emulator originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 16:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I’ve been quiet about the START negotiations, save for the occasional tweet, in large part because it doesn’t make sense to second-guess negotiators, especially before they’ve completed their work. (Buy me a beer, on the other hand …)

But Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) made some remarks at the recent Strategic Weapons in the 21st Century (SW21) conference that have my attention — and I think they should have yours, too.

At this point, it is no secret that the new treaty is more like a SORT Plus, or if you want to be difficult, START Minus. The Russians went in with a goal of gutting the verification regime and, since that is also accomplished with the expiration of START, the Administration didn’t have too much leverage to stop them.

We know the START mobile missile monitoring regime has been, er, streamlined with the elimination of Portal-Perimeter Continuous Monitoring (PPCM) at Votkinsk. (If you are interested in how the START regime monitored mobile missiles — which comprised an integrated system of obligations — I recommend either Kerry Kartchner’s Negotiating START or Jill Jermano’s and Susan Springer’s Monitoring Road-Mobile Missiles Under START: Lessons from the Gulf War.)

And it is no secret that the last remaining issue is the encryption of telemetry data from missile tests— START prohibited parties from encrypting telemetry as part of the verification regime for throw-weight limits. The Russians want to resume encrypting telemetry, citing the development of US missile defenses and the lack of a limit on throw-weight to verify. (Or, at least, to get comparable data from the US on missile defenses.) If you want to know more, I recommend recent stories by Josh Rogin, Rocket data dispute still unresolved in U.S.-Russia nuke talks and Elaine Grossman, Talks Hit ‘Sweet Spot’ for Landing New START Agreement, U.S. Official Says, or commentary from John Warden and Kingston Rief.

After the Jones/Mullen visit to Moscow and the Obama-Medvedev phone call, it looks like the parties will split the baby, as it were — probably with a limited exchange of telemetry data, if I had to guess. And I hate to guess.

In light of these two issues — monitoring mobile missiles and telemetry — I draw your attention to Senator Lugar’s remarks at the SW21 conference, in which he described himself as “look[ing] forward to a successor to the START treaty” and outlined his thinking on what the Senate might, and might not, consent to ratify.

This is a shot across the bow. Like most Lugar statements, it is precise, civil and free from partisan hyperbole — but that doesn’t diminish the whiff of grapeshot:

Nowhere has the value of strong verification procedures been more clearly demonstrated than the START I Treaty. Whatever is devised to replace it, must be effectively verifiable. START I, together with the Nunn-Lugar program, have served as the means for a dramatically changed relationship with Russia. In fact, recalling the testimony of Ambassador Lehman before the Foreign Relations Committee in 1992 on the START I Treaty, it was clear that a primary goal of the nearly decade-long negotiations on the START I Treaty was to open Soviet society via the treaty. As time has progressed, some have asked whether START I’s “burdensome” verification provisions are necessary given the changed world in which we live. I believe that weakening verification procedures comes with great risks, not merely because the other side may cut corners, but because our relationship with Russia benefits from the mutual confidence and interaction inherent in such procedures.

I have been a strong advocate for extending START I verification procedures. Unfortunately, a choice was made to informally act in the spirit of the treaty after its expiration on December 5, 2009, rather than to extend it by formal agreement. I am hopeful that a successor for START I will be successfully concluded in the coming months and that it will contain strong verification procedures.

The successor to START likely will be considered in the Senate at the same time that we consider the new Nuclear Posture Review and plans for modernization of our nuclear deterrent. START I was submitted at a time when the United States had an active modernization program with specific elements. Today’s stockpile stewardship program lacks this specificity and encompasses many different aspects of the weapons complex.

In 1992, we did not have the record we have today regarding access to Russian sites that produce missiles. We also did not have the telemetric data on Russian missiles provided under START I. Thus, some observers assess the impact of losing START’s verification measures to be minimal. They claim Russia will not field many new missiles in the next ten years and that we have data on all the missiles they are likely to field. However, the rate at which our knowledge erodes is directly related to the rate at which Russia fields new missiles for which we lack data or it modifies existing missiles. Verification of missile capabilities, particularly mobile missiles, depends on both how good our inspection regime is and the extent to which other data provided under the treaty informs the inspection process. Even if inspections are perfect, they will only tell us where a missile is at any given time and the number of warheads it is carrying, not what its capabilities might be.

It may be the case that for the next ten years our existing knowledge, based on what we have learned through the START regime and the Nunn-Lugar program, will provide us with sufficient confidence in making assessments of Russian missile capability. But that confidence will diminish with time. As a matter of national priority, we must maintain an ability to judge with high confidence the capabilities Russia pursues. If we cannot do so, then any attempt to negotiate additional treaties with Russia could founder, to say nothing of efforts for a world free of nuclear weapons.

Verification issues will play an important role in Senate consideration of a new treaty to replace START I. Then CIA Director Bob Gates stated before the Foreign Relations Committee in hearings on START in 1992, “the verifiability of this treaty has always been seen, by supporters and opponents alike, as the key to the Senate consent process.” Such comments equally apply to the treaty that will replace START I.

I suspect Lugar’s statement is a signal of possible trouble for the START Follow-on in the Senate — the President is asking Republicans to hand him a foreign policy victory.

The Administration is going to have to do better than arguing that the verification regime is better than nothing, that the gaps in verification don’t matter or that they’ll fix it in the next treaty. That’s going to mean committing to spend more money on US verification capabilities — note that in another portion of his speech, Lugar proposed “a new verification initiative that devotes substantially more resources to the problem” — and explaining that the Administration set, and stuck to, red-lines that result in an effectively verifiable treaty.

Yes, I knew Apple would never add Flash. Yes, I knew it was probably an accident that they showed Flash. But Apple, as we see, does nothing without running it past a vat full of lawyers. That they showed Flash on an iPad running on the NY Times website was clearly a mistake and, more important, was a mistake they quickly repaired.

Why did I post the original question? Because if they showed Flash, we could only presume it would work on the iPad. Apple gives you as much information as they want you to have and they rarely leak. The clearly incompetent video guy who stuffed the NY Times screen onto the iPad is probably dead in a ditch somewhere, throttled by gloved hands under a moonless Cupertino night and now the video he produced has been repaired.

So anyway, mea culpa. I suck. But clearly the meme stuck in Apple’s craw enough that they fixed it once and for all.

via iPadInsider

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This, my friends, is a close up.

This is further out.

And this is all of it. Wow.

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Filed under: Steve Jobs

ABC News had an interesting piece on last night about Steve Jobs, naming him “ABC World News Person of The Week”.

The segment includes a rare look at Jobs’ personal life growing up. While there’s nothing in the three-minute video that tells us anything we didn’t already know, there’s a pretty funny video of him riding a motorcycle. Who knew he was such a bad-ass?

Thanks to reader Ethan L. who sent this in.

TUAWVIDEO: A Rare Look at the Man Behind Apple originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It has been so long since Americans have seen an actual political debate that they may have gotten pretty excited, understandibly, about what they saw yesterday. MSNBC sure was. When Obama visited the GOP house caucus in Baltimore, we viewed something called a debate, or as close to it as we can manage these days.

Refreshing.

It was a relatively honest back-and-forth between the president and his opponents. The GOP members asked prepared questions that were long, laden with talking-points, and loaded with pitfalls. The president showed nimble footwork and answered most issues frankly and without pretense. He looked good doing so. So good, in fact, that the GOP may have been taken aback some, while the likes of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow were positively gushing as they fawned over each and every Obama exchange in detail. Chris Mathews had tingles running up both legs. Their collective two-hour special last night was so soaked in moist and teary Obama-love that the WH political staff must have been dancing and popping corks.

Calm down, Keith, it was a debate.

Over the last decade, many Americans have looked ever more longingly at the British parlimentary system, where actual debate is not quite so impossible, and the Prime Minister and other members of parliament engage in a traditional interchange that is frank, useful, and frequently boisterous and funny. This and other features of the British system have gained in popularity here in the States (”PM Questions” regularly carried on C-SPAN as standard programming) as our own system appears to be approaching major dysfunction.

There is talk that C-SPAN would like to run more coverage of this type, and I for one would love to see it. But rather than having such events pit the two parties against each other, I’d like to see them structured as interchange between branches of government–with the president entering honest exchange not just with GOP members, but Democrats as well. Particularly with the involvement of those well to the left of the president, in his own party.

But I also think it is absolutely critical to remember that C-SPAN covers, on a daily basis, political events that could be just as worthwhile and significant as the president’s debate yesterday. There is nothing to stop Congress from having it’s own honest debates each and every day on C-SPAN. There is nothing to stop House or Senate committee hearings from being structured in a way that allows for more than prepared statements, rushed questions, and inadequate answers.

The absolutely wrong lesson to take from Obama’s performance yesterday, imo, is that we need to see more of him lined up in cage matches against House or Senate opposition, like Daniel in the Lion’s Den. While such would be great theater for MSNBC (not so much for FOX), I’d suggest the real lesson is that the American people are nearly starved to death for lack of true debate on important issues. In that respect, any event that shows our American political leadership engaged in real debate would be highly beneficial, regardless of whether that be in the Senate, House, or elsewhere, and regardless of whether the sitting president is involved or not. In fact, debate is supposed to be much more important to the first branch of American government than the second.

To be sure, Obama and the WH staff deserve high praise for his performance yesterday, and they are rightfully getting it. I personally think it’s one of the best moves they’ve made. But let’s not respond to this event with the kind of undisguised and embarrassing hero-worship that was on display last night on MSNBC. Let’s not respond by ticking off the points that one party scored, or another. Instead, let’s use that event to realize that we could be seeing such things regularly from our government, were it functioning properly. All we need to do is insist on it.

 

Filed under: Humor

We were all glued to our computers watching the latest feeds of what was happening inside at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco on January 27th, but what was going on outside? Thanks to Current TV’s infoMania Tech Reporter
Ben Hoffman (who was never going to get through the doors under any condition), we now know.

Check out their segment below, it’s worth it alone for the pestering Hoffman gave to our sister site’s Editor-in-chief, Joshua Topolsky.

TUAWiPad inside, but what was going on outside? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Gaming, Odds and ends, iPhone, iPod touch, App Review

I admit it. I am iPadded out. I am iTired. I am suffering from iBurnout. So it was with pleasure that I found an addicting little game for the iPhone and iPod touch called Crush the Castle [iTunes link]. It’s a free medieval game where you use an ancient trebuchet to smash a variety of castles and the inhabitants standing nearby. Crush the Castle is physics based, so you have to swing a heavy projectile in the air and release at just the right point to flatten the castle off to the right of the trebuchet. After a few tries it gets damned addictive.

You have more than a dozen castles to crush in two different kingdoms. If you do well, you get some medals. If not, you are rebuked by the king. The animation is good, the physics seem accurate, and the sounds of castles coming down and soldiers screaming adds to the fun.

At each new level, the distance to the castles from your siege machine increases, so you really have to get the release point for the projectile just right.

Crush the Castle is a port of a Flash-based game which you can play for free online. If you really get into the mild mayhem, I’d suggest you look at the US$1.99 version [iTunes link] which has 90 levels, 10 types of ammo, and an editor so you can design your own castles before you knock them down.

Both versions get great reviews from users, and I’m in agreement. It’s helping me forget all the endless iDebates over the iPad and work my iAggressions out on my iPhone.

The free version is no risk, except for the time you are sure to lose. Let me know if you get hooked too. Check out more screen shots below:

TUAWGot some time? Crush the Castle originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There have been a lot of mixed signals from Nintendo about whether fans should expect The Legend of Zelda Wii this year: First Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said the game was “not committed” to 2010, then Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said it was releasing in 2010, and then Reggie said on their “Nintendo Week” promotional show that it “had to be perfect” — the implication being if that means missing 2010, so be it.

And now, apparently, Zelda Wii is once again confirmed for 2010. On the latest episode of “Ninty News” (the British equivalent of “Nintendo Week”), they give Zelda a brief mention in a list of games “to get fired up about this year” (via Joystiq). The other games mentioned include Super Mario Galaxy 2, Metroid: Other M, and Epic Mickey.

So how much confidence can we have in this latest confirmation? Well, “Ninty News” is an official Nintendo promotional show, so you’d like to think they wouldn’t get their official Nintendo information wrong. But until someone a little higher up in the organization confirms it themselves, excuse us if we don’t get our hopes up…again.

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Filed under: Sedan, Hatchback, Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Rumormill

According to Automobile Magazine, Ford is putting Mercury on its list. Sorry, we couldn’t help ourselves. Specifically, the list in question contains the names of 10 vehicles the Blue Oval plans to build off its global compact car platform. Mercury will supposedly be getting one of the new C-segment vehicles based on the architecture used for the recently unveiled 2012 Ford Focus, which also shares its guts with the Ford C-Max and Grand C-Max MPVs.

Says Lincoln-Mercury spokesman Mark Schirmer, “Certainly, one [variant of the global compact car architecture] will be a Mercury… It’ll give us something to put into showrooms, and help energize the Mercury brand.” We’re glad to hear that, as the Mercury brand is in some serious need of rejuvenation.

Best guesses for what form the new compact Mercury for 2012 might take range from a slightly upmarket version of the Ford Focus (we certainly hope it’d be more than just a shoddy badge-job) or something along the lines of the Lincoln Concept C from the 2009 Detroit Auto Show. If it’s going to be one or the other, we cast our official vote for the latter. We’ll see.

[Source: Automobile Magazine]

Report: Mercury planning C-segment vehicle for 2012 originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last fall, TechCrunch50 startup ClientShow presented its innovative application to help creative, advertising and marketing professionals show, pitch, share and sell their work to clients more effectively through real-time collaboration and communication. Similar to a Web-Ex for creative professionals, ClientShow allows users to essentially create a “virtual agency” to collaborate and share ideas with clients. This week, the startup is debuting its platform in private beta. We have 1000 invites for Techcrunch readers here.

The application, which is built off of Adobe Air, includes a dashboard which lets the agency view clients, projects and pitch sessions at a single glance. The dashboard acts as an organizational launching pad, where you can see attached notes and images about upcoming pitches and a schedule of sessions. The second feature is a “work” section which actually lets you set up and prepare for the sessions. You can drag and drop your files into the application, where you can views the projects.

To engage in a virtual “pitch,”clients are given a link that lets them view the session in their browser. While the users who are pitching the idea are using an Adobe Air application, the client will see the actual pitch within their browser. Here’s where ClientShow brings in the collaboration angle: as you are pitching an idea, decision makers on a client team can approve (or dismiss) different ideas and files and give feedback automatically by adding notes and comments to the pitch that are updated in realtime.

After a pitch has ended, users will want to look back on clients’ comments and feedback, which is where the fourth part of ClientShow’s software comes in. The “vault” captures and stores all interactive feedback from sessions. You can also see session reports”in the vault that shows you every file that was documented in the presentation in the order they were presented.

The entire application is free, but ClientShow will be monetizing by offering a paid version that includes additional premium features. The startup has raised $750,000 in funding so far from undisclosed angel investors and will be launching the application to the public in the next two months.

Of course, my one complaint about the application is that it is built off of Adobe Air which is buggy and has other problematic issues. However, the realtime collaboration functionality of the application is compelling. The ability to create threaded discussions around a pitch and collaborate easily is sure to be useful to the creative industries.

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