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The new Samsung SLM is the first phone to download Napster songs over the air.
Beginning somewhere at the end, singer Evagelia Maravelias looks inward and backward, reflecting on the dissolution of a relationship. by Sal Cinquemani
Two little crybabies
We say this about pretty much every Alicia Colon column, but today's dispatch from the trenches of Lunatic City must really be read in its entirety so that you can appreciate the sheer insanity displayed therein. Alicia tackles the charged topic of gun control (SPOILER: she's agin' it) with her standard rhetorical method of support for her argument: interspersing one or two well-known historical events with anecdotal examples from her personal life.
Four decades ago, a gunman accosted my mother, who was on her way home after attending the 6 a.m. Mass at St. Lucy's in Spanish Harlem. When he demanded all her money, she looked him in the eye and said, "What would your mother think of you doing this?" The gunman turned around and fled, saying nothing. These days, she likely would have been shot dead.
My mother-in-law bought her shotgun at Kmart. She and her family lived near the Everglades, where snakes and alligators are unfriendly neighbors. My uncle-in-law owned a gas station in a rough neighborhood, and had been beaten severely by robbers. He started carrying a .45 wherever he went, and was never beaten or robbed again.
My daughter-in-law has been stalked by an ex-boyfriend. He kidnapped and assaulted her and violated more than 20 orders of protection. He served a minimum sentence of a few years, and as soon as he was released came back to issue more death threats. How likely would this be if he knew she had a loaded weapon and knew how to use it?
So many questions. Like, why does the world have it in for Alicia Colon's family? How thrilled must her daughter-in-law be to have made the papers? And is Alicia packing? Because if so, we'd advise her Arab neighbors on Staten Island to start apologizing for all the terrorism they support posthaste. Bitch will totally bust a cap in your ass.
A Case For Guns [NYS]
Earlier: Gawker's coverage of Alicia Colon
YourKit Java Profiler is a CPU and memory profiler
that makes it easy to solve wide range of CPU- and
memory-related performance problems. It features
automatic leak detection, powerful tools for the
analysis of memory distribution, an object heap
browser, comprehensive memory tests as part of
your JUnit testing process, extremely low
profiling overhead, transparent deobfuscation
support, and integration with Eclipse, JBuilder,
IntelliJ IDEA, NetBeans, and JDeveloper IDEs.
License: Free for non-commercial use
Changes:
Paths to other GC roots are now shown if the the object itself is a GC root. If an object is in the constant pool, the object is assigned an allocation thread and frame of its class (if any). The Mac OS X bundle now correctly starts on the Intel platform.
Thats gonna leave a mark.
New novel on bookshelves now
This mod puts you in the tiny shoes of a chicken who must outrun the chef and everyone else trying to chase him down in order to survive.
Rolling out server virtualization can save companies money -- and upset the balance of power in IT operations, according to users at this week's VMworld conference. The solution: A little healthy in-house politicking.
Kevin Rose, founder of social news pioneer Digg, boasts that his site beat Google News, Netscape and other aggregation services to the punch when Donald Rumsfeld resigned. Live coverage from the Web 2.0 Summit in Monkey Bites.
Description Not Available
Finally, a competent Wii shooter?
UPDATE: Momentum is building and we're pulling ahead fast! Now Gizmodo is ahead by more than 550 votes with less than 45 miutes left until polls close. Tell everyone you know to vote GIZ! Loyal Gizmodians, this is your last chance to vote for Gizmodo for Best Technology Blog in the 2007 Weblog Awards. The polls close today (November 8th) at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time (that's 2 p.m. Pacific). You can vote once every 24 hours, so please support Gizmodo for Best Technology Blog. [2007 Weblog Awards]
The rebel base is under attack! Check out these Jedis as they bust out in this gameplay clip from Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga.
You cannot possibly have missed the relentless ads for CNN's October "Planet in Peril" documentary, a four-hour eco-soap starring Anderson Cooper, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and (of course!) Animal Planet's Jeff Corwin, the impoverished man's Steve Irwin. The "CNN Worldwide Investigation" (oooh...heavy) took a year to complete, cost the network some serious change, and was hailed as its first high-definition documentary, following the fall launch of CNN-HD. Too bad that sister-company Time Warner neglected to get with the freaking program already—the largest cable provider in New York and LA still doesn't carry CNN in high-definition.
Tough to imagine how no one in the Columbus Circle building, where both Time Warner Inc. and the Anderson Coooper 360 studios are housed, managed to anticipate that one! It probably didn't help much that Time Warner bent over for Fox Business Channel, launching the barely two-week-old fledgling network in both standard and high-definition formats. 
Meanwhile, CNN's been filming in HD for just over two months without a leg-up from its parent company. DirecTV carries CNN-HD, though the provider apparently wasn't ready for the network's September launch.
But enough business talk—clearly the one good thing to come out of CNN-HD is the crystal-clear focus through which you can see Corwin's and Cooper's man-love emerge. (Also, Anderson's work with his trainer is paying off!) The trunk-caressing! The water-frolicking! The fervent snake-wrangling! The co-parenting and bottle-feeding! Phew. Cigarette, anyone?
If you looked closely at last night's episode of Saturday Night Live during the iPhone: The Affair sketch, you may or may not have noticed a certain extra "Installer" icon next to the iTunes button. So what's that icon signify? The iPhone being used was Jailbroken (or, hacked for programs and games, in layman terms).
Maybe the hacked iPhone is just part of the joke, an inside snicker of SNL writers. Maybe the hack makes for an simpler, more customizable production prop. Or maybe, since we knew Apple and NBC weren't getting along before, this is a not-so-subtle kick in the groin from one corporation to another. Hit the jump for a bigger version.
Beautiful.
One of the sleekest phones on the market, the LG Lotus straddles the line between gadget and accessory.
Firewall Builder consists of a GUI and set of
policy compilers for various firewall platforms.
It helps users maintain a database of objects and
allows policy editing using simple drag-and-drop
operations. The GUI and policy compilers are
completely independent, which provides for a
consistent abstract model and the same GUI for
different firewall platforms. It currently
supports iptables, ipfilter, ipfw, OpenBSD pf,
Cisco PIX, and FWSM.
License: GNU General Public License (GPL)
Changes:
This version comes with many new features in the GUI and policy compilers. The GUI is much faster now. New object types "Address Table", "DNS Name", and "Tag", as well as new rule actions "Tag", "Queue", "Classify", and "Custom" have been added. Policy compilers have also been updated, and support the latest features of iptables, pf, ipfilter, ipfw, and Cisco PIX 7.0.
Filed under: PC, Reviews, Adventure
Finding the appropriate words to describe the many qualities of
Sam & Max is often a lengthy and perplexing process. When they aren't menacingly hovering over a keyboard, fingers are gently stroking beards which have, since this morning, been strictly metaphorical (they're a little bit itchy.) There's surely a veritable cornucopia of applicable words, but the one that mentally manifests again and again and also concludes this sentence, is
absurd. Indeed, absurdity is what the series thrives on. It makes absurdity appealing -- it sells it to you. Telltale Games have somehow managed to reproduce this amorphous quality, put it in a bottle and make you happily pay for it, completely unaware that it will later crawl out of said bottle and eat your puppy.
We've got a massive, gun-toting dog and a clearly psychotic bunny who can not only talk, but also go about enforcing the
spirit of the law -- their knowledge of the technical details is cursory at best. They're freelance police and in this first entry in a brand new series, they prove just how successfully episodic gaming, humor and the adventure genre can collaborate, becoming something that robs you of $8.95 and makes you feel good about it. In fact, we look forward to meeting this
thing in an alley on a regular basis.
Tradition addictionThe one thing
Culture Shock doesn't do is turn the adventure genre upside-down. In fact, it mostly takes a hands-off approach, leaving our precious point-and-click customs entirely intact. Though it may sound like a dubious compliment, the best adventure games only use puzzles, inventory management and other gameplay mechanics as a means to an end, the end being an engrossing story or in this case, a dose of unquestionable hilarity. There are times when it really doesn't matter that you're examining objects or rummaging through dialogue options. You're listening to outlandish remarks, deranged dialogue and, if you're even vaguely human, laughing loudly so as to attract unwarranted attention. No really, we're fine thanks. It's just this funny game we're playing.
And it is
funny. The banter between the dynamic duo fluctuates wildly between unreasonably witty to unnervingly strange within a second and remarks about the most mundane environmental objects often lead into unexpectedly amusing territory. The game subtly tickles your funny bone with a feather or pulverizes it with a more direct sledgehammer -- often simultaneously and in defiance of most physical laws. The efficiency at which it moves from deranged non sequitur exchanges to self-referential mockery is frightening at times.
"I'd like to patronize your store, and by that I mean I'd like to buy something."
"I know what it means! Don't patronize me."
"I see 20 nuns with machine guns."The top-notch writing is brought to life by a truly excellent cast, a statement that may seem contrary to initial internet buzz. Though the shift from
Sam & Max Hit the Road (has it really been 13 years?) or even the underrated animated series may take a bit of getting used to, it doesn't take long before you realize how well the new voice actors embrace their characters. Sam's noir-ish observations and deadpan responses to even the most ludicrous situations is hilarious in its own right, providing the perfect antithesis to Max's disturbing outbursts. The rest of the characters encountered by the freelance police as they attempt to thwart an evil campaign of mass hypnosis are all memorable, unique and most importantly, fundamentally unhinged.
Visually, the characters might as well have leapt from a Purcell page. In fact, the graphics engine proves surprisingly adept at rendering a world teetering on the edge of madness. A mere stroll through Sam & Max's neighborhood, complete with crooked buildings, psychologically deep street signs and an
inconvenience store proves as much. And just about everyone has a gigantic head. There's something really charming about that.
MacGyverismGiven the fact that this episode is a mere 71 megabytes in size, you might not expect there to be much content available to you. Strictly speaking, the game does have a fairly limited number of locations to explore, at least compared to other games of this ilk. However,
Culture Shock is far more thrifty than most and makes creative use of each location, where return visits (sometimes preceded by a diversionary and unobtrusive car chase) often feel like brand new adventures altogether. In the space of the three (or so) hours it takes to complete the episode, even Sam and Max's chaotic wasteland of an office becomes home to three hysterical set pieces.
The puzzles encountered there and in the rest of the game have the unique quality of being entirely absurd (there's that word again) and completely logical at the same time. Adventure games often struggle to maintain a balance between creativity and obscurity, with less successful bouts often ending up in a situation where you're expected to use the ethereal frying pan on the underwater locomotive. Most of
Culture Shock's puzzles wouldn't make the slightest bit sense on their own, but the humorous context provided will more often than not compel you to seek out unusual solutions and violently abuse dairy products. There's also a great "good cop / bad cop" dynamic which has you controlling both characters and attempting to extract information out of a kleptomaniac -- hopefully we'll see more of that in future episodes.
Tune in next timeAs if being an excellent adventure wasn't enough,
Sam & Max: Culture Shock is arguably the first game to give us a real glimpse at the ideal of episodic gaming (sorry,
Bone). The doggy detective and his rabid, rabbity sidekick are fortunate enough to be in a line of work that lends itself very well to monthly, self-contained capers. If Telltale Games can keep up this level of quality and maintain their release schedule (apologies,
Half-Life 2) throughout
Sam & Max's season, they'll have an extremely convincing argument for digital distribution and byte-sized adventures. They're off to a great start, in case you didn't pick that up from our embarrassingly gushing review.
Sam & Max: Culture Shock is available today from
Telltale Games' official website for $8.95 (that's less than a movie ticket) or $34.95 for the entire forthcoming season (six episodes). The game is also available on the
Gametap subscription service.
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SPONSORED BY: Age of Empires III - Real-Time Strategy Game Control a European power on a quest to colonize and conquer the New World. AOE3 introduces new gameplay elements, as well as new civilizations, units, and technologies. http://www.ageofempires3.com/
They get people, not data...
Intriguing moral choices and a chilling story make BioShock a must-play adventure, even a year later.
Just yesterday, the Los Angeles Times published an article talking about how Akiva Goldsman is writing non-stop to finish the script for The Da Vinci Code sequel Angels & Demons before the writers strike is expected to happen on Nov. 1.
liat aj
The RZA returns as Bobby Digital and brings along Thea van Seijen and Monk to help him spread the word about changing the hood policy in America. In the video, RZA throws a little political commentary to the mix by with floating images of Bush, Obama, Palin and a giant AIG logo. The song and video are a bit scattered, but you gotta give RZA a little credit for trying something new. Peep the “Drama”…
McG in his latest blog update convincing the planet this film won't suck balls.
Speaking to MTV, Perrin Kaplan of Nintendo was asked about the possibility of bringing over Bungie IP to the Nintendo platforms but she didn't seem overly enthusiastic about the idea. Kaplan noted that Nintendo has it's hands full and there are no plans to reach out to Bungie. She was then asked if it would be nice to have a Bungie developed game on the Wii and she replied by saying it is hard to say and it would come down to creativity and innovation.
Tiny tail kitten
The review scores from EGM #222 (December 2007) are revealed:
* Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock: 9, 8.5, 8
* Sega Rally Revo: 7.5, 7, 7
* Conan: 5.5, 5.5, 5.5
* WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008: 8, 7, 5.5
* Clive Barker's Jericho: 3, 4.5, 4.5 (Shame of the Month)
* The Simpsons Game: 7, 6.5, 7
* Bladestorm: The Hundred Years War: 4, 6, 4
* Folklore: 5.5, 7.5, 8
* The Eye of Judgment: 8, 8, 8
* Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction: 8.5, 9.5, 9
* Halo 3: 10, 10, 9
* Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation: 6.5, 6.5, 8
* Half-Life 2 Orange Box: 10, 9.5, 10
* Beautiful Katamari: 7, 4.5, 4
* Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations: 9, 7, 7.5
* Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness: 7.5, 7, 7
* Silent Hill: Origins: 7.5, 7, 7
Check out the sweet track editor in TrackMania DS!
Exclusive partnership announced with Fiji’s Air Pacific - First Birthday special
promotion on Expedia Special Rate hotels and launch of Expedia Price Promise
This time Barker pitches in.
Filed under: Culture, Microsoft Xbox, Microsoft Xbox 360, Action, Adventure, First Person Shooters
Both Universal and Fox Studios have pulled out of the
Halo movie adaptation, citing rising movie costs and concern over the inexperience of first time director Neil Blomkamp. As the budget was rumored to be edging closer to $200 million, and Microsoft getting a lion's share of the profits, the studio execs decided it was time to pull the plug.
It's hard to argue with the logic on this one, based on the director alone. While Peter Jackson is executive producing, Neil Blomkamp doesn't have one feature film to his name, having only been a 3D animator on TV shows like
Smallville and
Stargate, and directed a
Halo-ish short film entitled
Alive in Joburg. If Jackson himself took the reins, it would probably be a no brainer, but you can easily understand Universal and Fox not wanting to roll a pair of $200 million dollar dice on someone their first time out of the gate.
Microsoft hasn't made things much easier, demanding an upfront fee of five million for the rights and 10% of the profits -- especially when movies based on video games have never been huge performers at the box office. This isn't to say the movie still couldn't get made. Jackson is still attached and pre-production continues on the film, although without a studio home it now faces a serious uphill battle.
According to Jackson's agent at International Creative Management, Ken Kamins, "What happened was this: Universal, on behalf of both studios, asked for a meeting with the filmmakers just prior to the due date of a significant payment. Basically, they said that in order to move forward with the film, the filmmakers had to significantly reduce their deals. They waited until the last minute to have this conversation. Peter and Fran, after speaking with their producing partners and with Microsoft and Bungee (the studio that designed the original game), respectfully declined."
Come on Variety, you can't even spell Bungie right?
What do you think? Should Master Chief drive his warthog out of Hollywood, or come back with both barrels blasting?
More Halo movie news on Joystiq:
So, you want to make a Halo movie?Script for Halo movie leaked and reviewed?Jackson talks about Halo filmRead |
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SPONSORED BY: Age of Empires III - Real-Time Strategy Game Control a European power on a quest to colonize and conquer the New World. AOE3 introduces new gameplay elements, as well as new civilizations, units, and technologies. http://www.ageofempires3.com/
Turn-Based Strategy, from 1C Company / Strategy First, Inc.
Gamasutra has a lengthy piece up today looking at the ins and outs of ESRB ratings. There are a lot of misconceptions about the process, and ESRB president Patricia Vance took some time to set the record straight: "Q: What do raters receive or know about a game before the video arrives? Do raters receive information on the game along with the video? For example, could a publisher send along promotional or explanatory material for the rater? A: Along with the video, the only other information that might be provided to raters is a script or lyric sheet provided by the publisher for the game being evaluated. Capturing language and dialogue on the video submission, particularly in context, can be tricky. So sometimes, instead of having a video with a montage of several instances of foul language (including the most extreme), the raters review the scripts and lyric sheets to gain a better understanding of the dialogue and frequency with which profanity and other potentially offensive language occur."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Pear Cable, makers of the $7250 audio cables we showed you a couple of weeks ago, has accepted debunker James Randi's (pictured at left) challenge, where the former magician's JREF (James Randi Educational Foundation) promised $1 million if anyone could prove the difference between Pear cables and their Monster Cable equivalent. Today we received an answer to that challenge from Pear Audio CEO Adam Blake (pictured above right), offering up as a double-blind tester Michael Fremer, a Stereophile Magazine writer whose work also appears on musicangle.com. Blake called Randi's challenge a hoax. Okay James Randi, the ball is now in your court. Here's the full text of the challenge response:
$1 Million Speaker Cable Challenge Accepted
Audiophile Reviewer Michael Fremer Agrees to Double-Blind Loudspeaker Cable Test
Newton, Mass. - October 15, 2007 - Responding to accusations that the high-fidelity Pear Cable Anjou loudspeaker cables could not be differentiated from typical equivalent Monster Cable, Michael Fremer, writer for Stereophile Magazine and musicangle.com, has agreed to double-blind listening tests to prove that cables can be differentiated sonically. Accuser James Randi has claimed to offer a $1 million dollar prize if the high-fidelity cables can be detected.
While Pear Cable remains highly skeptical that the challenge is genuine, full support for Michael Fremer's effort has been offered. Although the cables to be used in the test have not yet been selected, Pear Cable has offered to loan Mr. Fremer any Pear cables necessary to conduct the test if he desires to use them.
To date, James Randi has provided no scientific evidence of any kind to support his accusations. No test protocol for the challenge was stipulated in the original accusation, however James Randi reserves the right to change test protocol in any way he personally desires.
Official rules for the James Randi Educational Foundation challenge state that $1 Million will be paid to "any person who can demonstrate any psychic, supernatural or paranormal ability." Michael Fremer has expressly stated as a condition of his challenge acceptance that he does not possess any psychic, supernatural, or paranormal abilities, and that he does not believe he has above average hearing. Fremer has also asked that interconnects be tested in addition to loudspeaker cables unless James Randi will concede that they affect sound quality.
About Pear Cable, Inc.
Pear Cable is a manufacturer of high fidelity audio cables for both home and car audio. Using custom designed manufacturing equipment and cutting edge scientific principles; Pear Cable brings quality products to the audio marketplace. For more information visit: Pear Cable Audio Cables
However, Clinton continues to dominate the race for most mentions in online blogs, according to online researcher Neilsen.
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Yet another glowing review for the movie....
youtube-dl is a small command-line program for
downloading videos from YouTube.com.
License: MIT/X Consortium License
Changes:
This release fixes a minor aesthetic bug present in the previous official release.
The most notable absentee from Office 2007 is FrontPage, probably the best general-purpose Web-site editor for home and SOHO users, despite its weak support for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and other modern design features.
Filed under: TV on DVD
Here are the new TV DVDs, in stores tomorrow.
- Alfred Hitchcock Presents - Season 3
- CSI: NY - Season 3
- The Captain and Tennille - In Hawaii, In New Orleans, Songbook, and Christmas Show sets
- Creature Comforts - Season 1
- Degrassi Junior High - Complete Collection
- Everybody Hates Chris - Season 2
- Family Ties - Season 2
- Ghost Hunters - Season 3, Part 1 and Shining Hotel sets
- Girlfriends - Season 2
- Hannah Montana - Vol. 3
- Jericho - Season 1
- Meerkat Manor - Season 1
- Michael Palin Pole To Pole
- Murder, She Wrote - Season 7
- Robin of Sherwood - Set 2
- Roots - Complete Collection
- Roots - The Next Generation
- Stargate: SG-1 - Complete Series
- The Vicar of Dibley - A Holy Wholly Happy Ending and The Immaculate Collection
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Company unveils 'WidSets' for Java-enabled phones.
Intel has designed a point-of-sale system for Indian retailers, part of a new strategy to create reference designs for products aimed at India's fast-growing IT market.
If only this were true. Who knew we've been playing as him all along.
Radio-frequency identification has been a highly touted technology in recent years, but concerns -- particularly among small and medium-sized businesses -- about high costs and actual benefits have hindered its adoption. That's gradually changing as developers and vendors focus on systems design, development and interoperability of specific applications in the public and private sectors.
