Category: News

 VidZone, the free online music video service for the PS3 will be expanding to 11 new countries in Europe this month.The Netherlands, Portugal an…

Contest: Win a Nikon D3000
The third day of Peek-Mas
Self-powered diaper monitor system automatically detects wet diapers
Review: Big Buck Hunter Pro TV Game
T3’s “Netpad” puts a few new twists on the tablet format

Remember when the first generation Zune stopped working on (I believe) December 31, 2008 because of a leap year date calculation problem? Well, Google has joined Microsoft in creating a date based bug. This item in Engadget is almost surreal…

Motorola Droid camera autofocus fixed in secrecy? (Update: it’s a date-related self-correction)

Here’s a comment to article attributed to a Google Android engineer: There’s a rounding-error bug in the camera driver’s autofocus routine (which uses a timestamp) that causes autofocus to behave poorly on a 24.5-day cycle. That is, it’ll work for 24.5 days, then have poor performance for 24.5 days, then work again.

The 17th is the start of a new “works correctly” cycle, so the devices will be fine for a while. A permanent fix is in the works.

So, Droid users (like me) should be able to auto-focus until around mid-day December 11. A Verizon technical note discussed here earlier talked about a December 11 Droid update. So, a permanent fix may be available by then.

To be honest, I’m not too impressed by the Droid’s 5-megapixel camera so far with or without autofocus. It has a very grainy look IMHO.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

If you have just downloaded Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, you probably just figured out that once again the folks at Ubuntu have made this version a little bit harder to customize. When I say customize I mean change the boot splash and login screen.

Why is that? It is because they have replaced uSplash with Xsplash and GDM with X11. So what does one have to do to pimp out this version of Ubuntu? I’ll tell you.

To customize the login screen, you can’t simply download a GDM theme from Gnome-Look.org anymore. Now you have to change the look and feel the same way you do with your desktop, by changing the wallpaper and the metacity theme. To do that open a terminal and run the following:

# gksudo -u gdm dbus-launch gnome-appearance-properties

That will bring up the options to change the wallpaper, colors and settings for the login screen.

To change Xsplash, this is actually a little easier. Go to Gnome-Look.org and do a search for ‘Xsplash’ and you will find a few boot splash screens. Go ahead and download the one of your choice. (I like the new Bauer-Puntu Xsplash screen personally ;-P) Once you download your theme, extract the contents, and copy the pictures inside to /usr/share/images/xsplash.

Reboot, and you are good to go.

Speaking of pimping out your Linux. I know I mentioned doing away with Bauer-Puntu, and going with a Suse based distro. Well, I changed my mind on that. Suse studio kind of sucks. No, I will make a Bauer-Puntu 9.10, but I am going a different direction with it this time. Stay tuned for the next few days for the official announcement.

The main reason I bought a T-Mobile HTC Touch Pro2 back in August was the promise that the Windows Mobile 6.5 upgrade would be available for it shortly after 6.5’s introduction. Windows Mobile 6.5 was launched on October 6. Here it is November 18 and T-Mobile USA shows no sign or hint of when or even if an upgrade will be made available.

You can find an appreciable amount of venting by TP2 owners over on the…

T-Mobile Forums focused on the Touch Pro2

There is one bit of speculation in that forum area that an update “might” be available in December. If it is, you will probably be able to find the upgrade information and link where other T-Mobile USA Windows Mobile upgrade files are linked…

http://www.t-mobile.com/wmupgrade/

As usual, Microsoft and the phone’s manufacturer, HTC, appear to have nothing to say either. It is a good thing I have an iPhone and Droid to keep me busy.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Much of the value proposition for Windows Azure — the star of the show Tuesday at PDC 2009 in Los Angeles — has been its ability to open up new business avenues for customers who had not been able to envision hosting high-intensity data center operations before. Azure could give these customers a leg up, a new and more affordable way to get off the ground.

But once they’re off the ground, the question becomes, why stay up in the air? What’s to keep those customers grounded — to mix metaphors like an old editor of mine — in the cloud? The surprise answer to that question is coming from a senior product manager for Windows Server, not Azure. Scott Ottaway told Betanews today that provisions are being planned for customers to move their deployed applications back off the Azure cloud, onto on-premises data center servers.

“Our goal is to provide a common application platform, just the way that we support ASP.NET in both places, PHP in both places. We want to supply a common platform so customers don’t have to make the hard choice up front about where they’re going to run something.”

During the October 2008 PDC conference when Windows Azure was first introduced, it wasn’t exactly clear who Microsoft was targeting as its customer. Thirteen months later, we have a much clearer picture of cloud services customers comprising three discrete classes: one that is made up of SMB businesses investing in affordable data center architecture for the first time, and building entirely new cloud applications that have never been tried; another made up of applications and services hosts that are simply mirroring their existing apps to the cloud space for affordability and scalability; and a third class in-between comprised of businesses of all sizes, who aren’t looking to the cloud as a migration platform, but as a way to backup, complement, or augment their existing customer services as necessary.

The common factor between each of those classes is the need for a bridge — perhaps now, perhaps later — between their on-premise and off-premise cloud platforms. That’s the reason for Microsoft’s latest brand, announced Tuesday morning.

“If you write your code for Windows Server AppFabric, it should run on Windows Azure,” said Ottaway, referring to the new mix-and-match composite applications system for the IIS platform. “What we are delivering in 2010 is a CTP [community technology preview] of AppFabric, called Windows Azure AppFabric, where you should be able to take the exact same code that you wrote for Windows Server AppFabric, and with zero or minimal refactoring, be able to put it up on Windows Azure and run it.”
AppFabric for now appears to include a methodology for customers to rapidly deploy applications and services based on common components. But for many of these components, there will be analogs between the on-Earth and off-Earth versions, if you will, such that all or part of these apps may be translated between locales as necessary.

“Right now, if I have an ASP.NET app running on Windows Azure, and it’s using SQL Azure, I can pull that off with minimal refactoring, in most cases, and run it on premises on Windows Server, because Windows Server supports ASP.NET via IIS, and our .NET Framework, and it supports SQL Server,” remarked Ottaway. “So I can move a certain class of apps that I have up there, off — not all.” Applications that utilize binary large object (BLOB) storage, and other Azure-specific features, would still require significant refactoring. “But if it’s just an ASP.NET app through SQL Azure, you should be able to pull it back on-premises without much effort at all.”

Some of the more recently deployed, non-Microsoft language platforms, including PHP and MySQL, will also aid customers in that transition.

“Whether there’s a total cost-of-ownership advantage to being off-premises or on-premises, depends on so many factors. Are you highly virtualized? Do you have really good management tools? Do you have affordable staff? Regulatory concerns? Privacy, security concerns?” remarked the Windows Server senior product manager. “There’s many, many factors that may indicate to you that…you want to keep it on-premises, or that it’s okay to go all the way off-premises. But it’s probably going to be more of a non-enterprise decision; it’s going to be project by project and app-by-app.”

Next: Virtual machines migrate to Azure…

Virtual machines migrate to Azure

One of the distinguishing factors between Microsoft’s cloud platform and Amazon’s has been the distinction in what’s being served. Specifically, Amazon’s EC2 gives customers a way to deploy entire server images on its cloud, while Azure provides an active cloud-based .NET runtime for the deployment of applications rather than servers. Still, that distinction will grow fuzzier, first with last week’s announcement by Amazon of an SDK for cloud-based applications deployment, more similar to Windows Azure.

Then there’s Microsoft’s announcement Tuesday — effectively made by Ottaway during an afternoon press conference — of a system for deploying Windows Server virtual machines to its cloud.

“What we’re announcing is that we will have what we’re calling Windows Server Virtual Machine Roles on Windows Azure,” Windows Server senior product manager Scott Ottaway told a press gathering Tuesday afternoon at PDC 2009. “What these will be, are pre-configured images of Windows Server — one might have .NET [Framework] 3.5 on it, the next one might have .NET 4.0 when that’s available. And you can bring your existing app, that you’re running on-premises now on Windows Server, to Windows Azure, deploy it in this virtual machine image, and there you have existing applications support or migration — you don’t have to necessarily write new apps to take advantage of the Windows Azure service.”

Notice the distinction still exists, if lessened a bit: VM Roles will provide Windows Server admins a way to deploy apps in the cloud as though they were being deployed on virtual machines locally. It’s still not deploying servers, like the Amazon model, but it’s closer. One big reason, Ottaway said: Customers already have applications that they paid for; they don’t want them redeveloped.

But the other reason (and here’s the basis for Microsoft’s new value proposition for Azure) is that it makes less sense for customers to deploy servers in the cloud (including from a licensing perspective) when their goal is really to add scalability to their applications and public-facing services, not to Windows.

“Certain companies out there say everything’s going to move off-premises, and everything’s going to be a service. But there are two issues here: Network latency, the sweet nectar of having a big pipe and fast response time, is a big inhibitor for a lot of things moving off, that might make a lot of sense. And then, you want Print Server nearby, right? You don’t want to send your print requests to Dublin [the Microsoft service, not the country] before it gets to your printer. Then for security servers and your management servers for managing all your clients, you’re definitely going to want them to be on-premises.”

Ottaway pointed to a compelling demonstration during the Tuesday morning keynote, of an online automobile shopping service provided by Kelley Blue Book using Silverlight. That service was devised to take advantage of a feature called cloudbursting — using the cloud where necessary, such as in periods of heavy traffic, but not necessarily as a principal deployment platform.

“The scenario they were talking about on there was, in general, most of the time, their application and business presence runs on Windows Server and SQL Server and Silverlight. But currently, they’ve had to have a large amount of investment in server hardware, for a peak capacity that occurs very rarely across their year. And what they’re essentially using Windows Azure for [instead] is for cloudbursting, so when they do have unexpected peak capacity, they can very quickly spin up a bunch of new instances of their Silverlight application and be able to meet the demand that’s occurring.

“The key thing that’s really interesting here — and where Microsoft, again, is differentiated from other cloud providers — is that Kelley Blue Book also wants to be able to scale down, and bring everything back on-premises when that demand isn’t as great. It’s a hybrid scenario; they’re using off-premises Windows Azure to meet their increased capacity demands. That’s a unique advantage of having a Microsoft infrastructure on-premises, as well as Windows Azure.”

One reporter asked Ottaway today, is there a way for Azure customers to utilize any kind of capacity planning tool — to estimate what it might cost to cloudburst under varying traffic circumstances? The long answer from Ottaway — who seemed to take some inspiration from this question — was no. Online calculators do exist to help customers set caps on their expenditures, and to turn off service once those caps are exceeded to avoid tremendous billing. Azure can also provide customers with warnings in advance of heavy charges. Even with those stopgaps in place, he acknowledged, it may become cheaper for certain customers to keep their applications on-premises.

Customers will need to consider those possibilities and scenarios for the future, Ottaway said. But for now, the templates and policies and best practices — the “solution accelerator” for the cloud, to borrow a phrase — is very much in the works.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009

Back in September, I told you about the KatKabin, a protective outdoor cat house that provides warmth and security. Well here’s your chance to win your very own KatKabin in a brand new color — hot pink! Just in time for the cold winter weather!

To enter, please leave a comment on this post. One winner will be chosen in a random drawing on November 25. One entry per person. This giveaway is limited to addresses in the US and Canada.

The KatKabin is distributed in the US by Brinsea.

It’s no secret that there are a bunch of companies out there that trick users into signing up for a regular monthly subscription service that’s usually nothing more than an excuse to charge your credit card every month. Many of these are incredibly sneaky, such that many users have no idea they signed up for it until they get their credit card statements. Even worse, many of the “tricks” involve getting legitimate sites to offer these “services” to their users — and those included Continental Airlines, Classmates.com, Priceline, 1-800-Flowers and many others. The government is finally cracking down on some of these, but its latest investigation — into just three such services (and there are a bunch more) named Webloyalty, Vertrue and Affinion — found that those three alone brought in over $1.4 billion. Not surprisingly, the folks who work there know quite well that they’re misleading users and tricking them into signing up for stuff they don’t want and don’t need.

It’s a bit surprising, by the way, that the investigation was done by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, rather than the FTC, who you would think would be in charge of stopping these sorts of activities. Of course, perhaps that’s because the FTC has been quite busy with other scammers, such as BlueHippo, who the FTC had already reached an agreement with before and then decided to ignore it. The company basically collected millions from individuals without ever sending the promised computers. At one point, BlueHippo had delivered just one computer. After the FTC started investigating more thoroughly, suddenly BlueHippo found more computers to send, but still wasn’t delivering computers to many of the people who qualified.

It’s really stunning how many blatant scammers there are out there, who are able to get away with these things for so long.

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ngmoco is probably one of the most successful iPhone game development firms. Their…

Touch Pets Dogs

…game is a particularly interesting product for a couple of reasons…

First, it looks like a well drawn and thought out dog simulation descended from the amazing Nintendogs game for the original Nintendo DS. Nintendogs, more than any other game, probably convinced more parents (including me) that it was ok to buy a Nintendo DS for their child.

Second, it has an interesting bimodal customer rating. Of the 2211 ratings, 888 gave it five stars (high) while 632 gave it one star (low). The rest of the ratings are evenly split (193 two stars, 259 three stars, and 239 four stars). This is one of those games that you either really love or really hate it seems.

Third, it has an interesting pricing model. When I saw the free game, I assumed it had some kind in-app purchase system for purchasing virtual goods. I only played with it for a few minutes and could not find an in-app store. Instead ngmoco has a tiered model rating from free to $29.99 for a series of five versions of the same game: Free, 99 cents, $1.99, $9.99, $29.99. Each step up includes more food bowls.

Will this model work? The free Touch Pets Dogs app is currently #4 in the Free Games Apps list. However, the only paid version in the top 100 paid games is the 99 cent version sitting at #92. I suspect some kind of in-app micropayment system might be more profitable.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Congratulations to the five lucky winners of the giveaway from Marvelous Melissa:

• Parker (comment #15)
• Kris (comment #55)
• Alice (comment #340)
• Darcy B (commetn #384)
• tinagroh (comment #526)

Keep an eye out for an email and make sure to let us know if you want the Three Blind Mice or the Darn! Socks. Thanks to Melissa for a truly marvelous giveaway!

Transparency International (TI), the international anti-corruption NGO, just released its annual corruption perceptions index (CPI).  No big surprises. This is no surprise.  Corruption does not tend to change dramatically from one year to the next.  Yet it is certainly worth reviewing the new data.

Before so doing, a warning:  governance indices (including those we are associated with) are not highly accurate.  Therefore, precise rankings are misleading. There is a need to be transparent and precise about the extent of imprecision in each index, as well as the implications of such imprecision for comparisons across countries and over time.

When differences between two countries are large (or the change for the same country over an 8-year period is substantial), and such change is informed by many independent sources, one can have confidence that those differences are meaningful.  Small differences in ranks or ratings imply that the two countries being compared are in a ’statistical tie’.  Yet there is such large variation in anti-corruption performance across countries, that there are many comparisons that can be made with high confidence — without pretending precision in rankings…

New Zealand, Denmark, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland and Finland are at the top.  Comparisons among themselves, or trying to ‘anoint a ‘No. 1′ would be silly hair-splitting.  Yet one can suggest that any country in that top group does perform better than the US or France, for instance, both of which cannot be meaningfully distinguished from each other (or from Chile, for that matter…).

On the other end of the spectrum one finds well over a dozen countries regarded by the TI index as rife with corruption, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Chad, Somalia, Myanmar (Burma), Equatorial Guinea, Venezuela, Haiti, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.  Conflict is rife in some, authoritarianism and extractive industries in others.

Focusing on the group of countries that are performing very poorly on corruption, which include other dozens in addition to those listed above as well, may spur further debate about aid effectiveness.  This could be healthy.  In fact, right now in the US there are now at least three major efforts underway to review that country’s official foreign aid strategy and programs, one from the White House, another from the State Department, and yet another in the US Congress.  Indicators are key to evidence-driven policy making.

Looking at the indices on corruption, it is simple to see that countries where the US has channeled large amounts of development aid, such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and Pakistan, and to a large extent Nigeria, Egypt and Kenya, are not faring well on corruption.

It would be equally simple to rationalize pulling back from development aid.  That would be simplistic and misguided, for the US, or for other bilateral or multilateral donor agency.   Yet business as usual in development aid is not an option.  [Actually, I stand corrected; continuing old practices of funneling funds seems to be the only ‘option’ being on the table in some aid agencies nowadays…]

It is critical to probe below the surface and ask tough questions, like these ones for starters:

1.  Even if there are high levels of corruption in the country when the US (or other donors) provide massive aid, is there evidence that improvements are taking place, and that there is a reformist leadership (not just in central government) committed to future changes — so that there is a likelihood of sustained movement in the right direction?   In other words, let us not focus on mere levels of corruption, even if dire.

2.  Aren’t there some cases of significant aid flowing to countries where there is no endemic corruption, and what can one learn from these?   The focus on the Iraqs, Afghanistans and Pakistans can blindside one to the fact that there different country cases as well.  Colombia has been a large recipient of development aid, and over the past decade there have been notable improvements in controlling corruption.  Then in Ethiopia corruption is not endemic, another relatively large aid recipient.  Of course both countries feature other challenges (to different degrees), such as in the democratic accountability and human rights front.  Liberia, through resolute leadership, provides another potentially interesting case study in improvement in the short term.

3.  Are the programs  funds being provided by the aid program actually helping promote improved governance and anti-corruption in meaningful way, with full country leadership and partnership?  Or are they perpetuating corrupt governments, leaders and institutions?  Or are they simply being wasted and not making a difference (while they could be making a big difference somewhere else)?

4.  Where the public leadership and central government is entrenched and highly corrupt, what alternatives to working with central governments can be deepened?  What has worked, and what has not?

5.  What is the exposure to corruption in the very projects and funds provided by development aid?   [This is a well known concern, and a relevant one, although often concentrating solely on this fiduciary issue has meant ignoring the all-important development effectiveness concern in the previous four sets of questions].

Needless to say, corruption cannot be the only lens by which aid effectiveness needs to assessed.  It is often a symptom of broader governance failures. Nonetheless, a likely conclusion from a serious review of development effectiveness if governance and corruption are taken head on would be that further selectivity in aid programs may be needed.  Yet the devil will be in the details.  And in the polity.

Further consistency in applying criteria for helping countries is also sorely needed, even if imperfectly.  The treatment of similarly corrupt governments by official donor agencies tends to be very different depending on geo-oil-politics, undermining credibility and impact.  This is just for starters, and was also part of an interesting exchange today with a journalist of Sphere/AOL News, here.   And this story in today’s NYT on the politics of corruption between the US and Equatorial Guinea is very telling.

Plenty of work ahead.

Personas developers stay true to their ‘Your browser, your style!’ motto and have updated the addon to provide even more ease-of-use and customization options to users worldwide. The already well-known Firefox and Thunderbird extension has recently reached version 1.4 and got various new features, including the possibility to look for and to apply new designs from a developer users are most fond of, explore the favorite skins or undo a selection they made.

The most important novelty that the updated Personas brings is surely the ‘More from…’ button that appears when someone chooses a Persona. For example, if someone finds a Firefox theme that best suits their preferences, they will also have the chance to periodically check back that particular developer and explore the additions. Previously, this action required accessing getpersonas.com, searching for the developer name or the design title, then clicking the page of the creator. All these actions will now be replaced by simply pressing the designated button.

The previous flavor of the extension introduced the Favorites section. Version 1.4 further enhances it by allowing users to randomly apply a theme from the Favorites category, rather than a more general one (one can still choose to do this, if they want to browse through the more than… (read more)

Rolling Meadows Fire Chief Ronald Stewart always dreamed of being a firefighter, but now he has a new feather in his cap, that of a Harper College distinguished alumni.

Stewart was one of five inducted last week at the Palatine community college, during a formal reception held with its administrators. The others are: Shirley Garrison, former public relations director at Alexian Brothers Medical Center; Robin Turpin, a senior director at Baxter Healthcare; Beverly Goodman, a geo-archaeologist at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and Tom Schnecke, a vice president for CBS 2 in Chicago.

As a career firefighter, Stewart admits feeling a bit uncomfortable with being in the spotlight, but he concedes his story represents the trend in public safety: that higher education makes the difference when it comes to promotions.

“When you combine on-the-job experience with the education and knowledge you get in college level courses,” Stewart says, “it gives you the edge to meet the challenges of the modern day fire industry.”

Coming out of Fremd High School, Stewart completed EMT and paramedic courses before landing a job with the Rolling Meadows Fire Department at the age of 21. He thought his job history would earn him a shot at promotions.

It wasn’t until he met Sam Giordano, who heads Harper’s Fire Science program, that he contemplated studying for his applied associate degree.

“He really advocated veteran firefighters getting their degrees,” Stewart says, “not only to be competitive for reviews, but to gain added skills and knowledge of the industry.”

His education made the difference, he said, in getting the nod as deputy chief of his department before later being named chief. After completing his associate degree at Harper, Stewart earned his bachelor’s degree in June from DePaul University.

Today, the department that Steward leads requires an associate degree at the lieutenant level and a bachelor’s for higher rankings. As a result, many of his front-line supervisors are enrolled in Harper’s fast track degree program for their associate degrees.

“Many people are intimidated by the idea of going back to school, but you have to take that leap of faith,” Stewart says. “The reality is, without higher education, your opportunities are limited.”

Shirley Garrison

Garrison, of Arlington Heights, dates her connection to Harper back to 1970, when as a returning student she enrolled in journalism courses. She already had a marketing degree from the University of Illinois, but more than 20 years later, as a recent divorcee with three children, she was determined to make a life on her own.

With other single moms, Garrison became one of the first faces of what would evolve into Harper’s Women’s Program. While taking her courses, she helped college officials promote the program to local women’s groups.

Her journalism courses and job experience earned Garrison a job in public relations with Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Elk Grove Village, where she worked her way up to director.

Now retired, Garrison continues to remain enrolled in Harper courses, this time in its Lifelong Learning Institute, where this fall she signed up for 10 new classes.

Robin Turpin

Robin Turpin, of Lake Zurich, is now Senior Director of Global Health Economics, IV Nutrition for Baxter Healthcare.

In the 1970s, it was at Harper where she first discovered her love of psychology, after starting out in pre-med.

“An enormous benefit of Harper is that you are able to explore a variety of career options, and then refocus as necessary,” says Turpin.

She went onto complete her core courses before transferring to Loyola University, where she ultimately obtained a doctorate in Applied Social Psychology.

In the 1980s, Turpin returned to Harper to teach psychology, before taking posts with the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and Merck & Co, Inc.

Tom Schnecke

Schnecke, presently vice president of Broadcast Operations/Engineering for CBS 2 in Chicago, says Harper’s electronics engineering technology program helped him focus his career path.

At Harper, while taking classes in that field Schnecke became involved with the college’s young radio station. He went on to serve as WHCM’s adviser and he helped lay the groundwork for an FCC license and propel the station on to the FM dial.

Since graduating from Harper, Schnecke earned a bachelor’s degree from Columbia College and a master’s in Radio/TV/Film from Northwestern University. He spent over 20 years at NBC before joining CBS 2 in 2003.

Beverly Goodman

Goodman works as a geo-archaeologist at Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. She attended Harper in 1992 and 1993.

Goodman is a coastal geo-archaeologist using underwater excavations to study the ancient history of coastlines in the Mediterranean, but she credits her anthropology course at Harper with opening the door to her life’s work.

She later transferred to the University of Wisconsin to major in anthropology, before ultimately earning a doctorate in geology from McMaster University. Her summers spent on an Israeli excavation site helped earn her a Fulbright Scholarship to study in there for a year, where she eventually chose to launch her career.

“The foundation I received at Harper, more than prepared me,” Goodman says. “It was fantastic.”

Written by the some of the great folks at DeSmogBlog, Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming explores how such a large portion of Americans have come to believe that climate change is just a hoax. Authors Hoggan and Littlemore explain how the climate “debate” is actually a “public relations creation” and support their claims with proof, including corporate strategy papers. Unfortunately, such debate “cripples public policy and paralyzes public action”.

It seems that there are no safe compromises to be made in dealing with climate change. Denying it was wrong. Delaying action is dangerous. People who say otherwise should, at some point in the very near future, have to stand accountable for their recklessness.

It’s time to drop the hype around climate change and deal with it now. Exposing those who are responsible for creating confusion on the issue, such as Exxon Mobil that “has funneled tens of millions of dollars into denial”, is the first step, but it should also not hinder or confuse progress on true environmental policy. Thankfully, as Hogan and Littlemore write, “That tide is turning.”

Yes folks, it’s confirmed. Suda51’s free roaming action video game No More Heroes is getting a high definition treatment, a new scan from this week’s …

I’ve been ignoring this one, but people keep submitting it. BCG came out with a report over the weekend on a survey it did, claiming that about half of all people would pay for online news. It was amusing to see people react to this, as some reported it as “most won’t pay for news” and others reported it as “oh my goodness, a lot of people will pay for news.” Of course, the reality is that this is just a survey of what people say they’d pay for — and history has shown that surveys are notoriously poor indicators in terms of getting people to accurately reflect what they will and will not buy. Besides, just a day later, a totally different survey claimed that 80% of people wouldn’t pay for news online. The answer is that no one knows how many people would pay for content online, but I’d bet that the number is lower than what both of these surveys predict, and we’ll see that soon enough.

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