Itagaki's First Post-Tecmo Interview	fun & games
Link #140182 submitted by XIV on Aug 28, 2008 03:10am.   (+120XP) http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=0&cId=3169608
It was a comfortable day in Tokyo when I found myself prowling the quiet campus neighborhood of Waseda University, the school that produced former Team Ninja boss, Tomonobu Itagaki, who recently parted ways with Team Ninja and parent company, Tecmo. Obviously, to say "parted ways" is to put it nicely, as Itagaki not only recently handed in his resignation, but took the publisher to court for unpaid bonuses and broken promises. While litigation is great and all that, we're more concerned with what Itagaki's doing with himself now that he's cut ties with the team he made famous with games like Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden. In this, his first interview since going underground, we literally talked with him underground, in a small but well-appointed bar in the area of his alma mater. In our chat Itagaki opens up to us about a number of topics, such as the stagnating (or not) state of Japanese game development, what Western developers do better than Japanese developers, what Japanese developers do better than Western developers, and how he feels about other action games. He also offers up a hell of a lot of analogies about World War II fighter pilots. It might have had to do with Itagaki being drunk.     Most coherent and literate translation of drunken rambling in Japanese to English I've ever read. Comments: 1   Hits: 2   Points: 162217   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Running the numbers on Congresional Wealth	government
Link #140181 submitted by Mac on Aug 27, 2008 08:13pm.   (+80XP) http://fortune535.sunlightprojects.org
The Ethics in Government Act of 1978 requires members of Congress to disclose information on their personal finances, including their assets, sources of income, transactions and debts.     Are average citizens better off than members of Congress? Comments: 0   Hits: 55   Points: 158879   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Microwave baby retrial shifts focus to boys	current events
Link #140180 submitted by rover77 on Aug 27, 2008 05:41pm.   (+130XP) http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/27/microwave.baby.ap/index.html
At the trial of a woman accused of killing her baby, a boy testified Tuesday that he saw another boy carry the baby into a kitchen, heard the microwave start and then saw the baby burned in the oven.     Comments: 0   Hits: 65   Points: 157659   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Unknowns Tomb crumbling; caught in fight	destinations
Link #140179 submitted by rover77 on Aug 27, 2008 05:40pm.   (+140XP) http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/08/27/tomb.unknowns/index.html
The Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery is at the center of combat between preservationists and cemetery officials.     Comments: 0   Hits: 56   Points: 157637   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Perspectives (Firefox 3.0.*)	the wired
Link #140178 submitted by LinusMines on Aug 27, 2008 05:22pm.   (+120XP) http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~perspectives
When you use a secure protocol like SSL or SSH to communicate on the Internet, your communication is vulnerable to a "man-in-the-middle" attack unless you are able to identify the remote server in a secure manner. One way to do this is to have the server participate in a "Public Key Infrastructure" (PKI) and buy a certificate from a certificate authority like VeriSign.     Unfortunately, PKI's can be expensive and cumbersome to operate, leading to widespread use of a simple and cheap "Trust-on-first-use" mechanism commonly associated with SSH and HTTPS with self-signed certificates. Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of security...     Few users bother to verify the correctness of the key manually (hey, we're lazy by nature!), but Perspectives provides a simple "no effort" way to get significantly more information about whether a key is correct for that destination. A client can automatically make a secure connection to one of several publicly available "network notary servers" located around the world. These servers tell the client:     1. What key does the server see for host.domain.com right now?   2. What keys has the server seen in the past for host.domain.com ?     The replies from the network notaries can go a long way toward either providing the user with confidence that the key it received is valid, or that a real threat of a "man in the middle" attack exists...     By Dan Wendlandt and Ethan Jackson, Carnegie-Mellon University.     Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Comments: 0   Hits: 26   Points: 157471   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Employees: Abercrombie & Fitch judging workers on looks	work sucks
Link #140177 submitted by Mac on Aug 27, 2008 03:09pm.   (+380XP) http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/yahoolatestnews/stor...
There's no in between. You're either Abercrombie hot - or you're not.     Kristen Carmichael discovered she didn't fit the clothing store's self-described "sexy, effortless style" when she was pulled from a sales position on the floor of the NorthPark Center store and shoved back to the stockroom to fold clothes.     This was after they'd rated her face.     The college student who was in Dallas for the summer and her female co-worker had received a 0 ranking on a district manager's monthly audit. The report, posted on a wall in the office, included the question, "Do all female models currently working have beautiful faces?"     There were two choices, 0 and 5... Comments: 3   Hits: 102   Points: 156490   Rating: 7.5 / 5   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Wind Energy Bumps Into Power Grid's Limits	the wired
Link #140176 submitted by Mac on Aug 27, 2008 02:39pm.   (+190XP) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/business/27grid.html?ex=137757600...
When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing.     That is a symptom of a broad national problem. Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands. Comments: 0   Hits: 44   Points: 156171   Rating: 8.0 / 3   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

The FDIC may run out of money	government
Link #140175 submitted by jtown on Aug 27, 2008 02:30pm.   (+410XP) http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=5660122&page=1
Yep. That FDIC. The one that covers up to $100,000 per depositor when a bank fails. Which, of course, means that the government may have to bail out the insurer that bails out people who didn't bail out of their bank ahead of the crash.     "I would be quite surprised if we didn't reach triple digits," he said. "Most of them are going to be relatively small institutions, but they will add up."     "I fully expect the FDIC insurance fund to be depleted," Ryan added. "The FDIC is going to be one of what is going to be an increasing string of government bailouts."     If that happens, ultimately taxpayers will be on the hook. The FDIC borrows money with a line of credit from the U.S. Treasury, which essentially is taxpayer money. Comments: 3   Hits: 38   Points: 156110   Rating: 9.0 / 4   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Coen brothers dark comedy premieres at Venice fest	it's the arts
Link #140174 submitted by johnny2000 on Aug 27, 2008 02:15pm.   (+150XP) http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080827/ap_en_mo/venice_film_festival_b...
The Coen brothers wrote their dark comedy, "Burn After Reading," with stars George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand in mind. Not necessarily a compliment.     The movie, which premieres Wednesday at the Venice Film Festival, is a tale about idiots — and what happens when their worlds collide.     Pitt and McDormand are a pair of hapless gym employees who get in way over their heads when the memoirs of a failed CIA analyst (John Malkovich) fall into their hands and they try to peddle them as classified intelligence secrets. Clooney plays a hypochondriac philanderer having an affair with the CIA analyst's disappointed wife, played by Tilda Swinton. Comments: 0   Hits: 47   Points: 155974   Rating: 6.6 / 3   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

A Different Way to Pay for the News You Want	the "other" pile
Link #140173 submitted by johnny2000 on Aug 27, 2008 01:54pm.   (+140XP) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/weekinreview/24kershaw.html
You think your local water supply is polluted. But you’re getting the runaround from local officials, and you can’t get your local newspaper to look into your concerns. What do you do?   A group of journalists say they have an answer. You hire them to investigate and write about what they find.     The idea, which they are calling “community-funded journalism,” is now being tested in the San Francisco Bay area, where a new nonprofit, Spot Us, is using its Web site, spot.us, to solicit ideas for investigative articles and the money to pay for the reporting. But the experiment has also raised concerns of journalism being bought by the highest bidder. Comments: 0   Hits: 26   Points: 155780   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Stunning Advance Allows for Reprogramming of Adult Cells	blinded by science
Link #140172 submitted by LinusMines on Aug 27, 2008 01:30pm.   (+110XP) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/27/AR2...
Scientists have transformed one type of fully developed adult cell directly into another inside a living animal, a startling advance that could lead to cures for a plethora of illnesses and sidestep the political and ethical quagmires that have plagued embryonic stem cell research.     Through a series of painstaking experiments involving mice, the Harvard biologists pinpointed three crucial molecular switches that, when flipped, completely convert a common cell in the pancreas into the more precious insulin-producing ones that diabetics need to survive.     The feat, published online today by the journal Nature, raises the tantalizing prospect that patients suffering from not only diabetes but also heart disease, strokes and many other ailments could eventually have some of their cells reprogrammed to cure their afflictions without the need for drugs, transplants or other therapies.     "It's kind of an extreme makeover of a cell," said Douglas A. Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, who led the research...     [e-mail and password: spammy@gmail.com] Comments: 0   Hits: 36   Points: 155594   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Digital Journalist - Walter Iooss Sports Pics	it's the arts
Link #140171 submitted by bozino on Aug 27, 2008 01:14pm.   (+100XP) http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0808/iooss-bp.html
Sports themed photo gallery, with some stories, such as the following, thrown in:     On this day I had my first field pass to a pro football game. I don't remember how I got it. I took the train from Newark to Baltimore. I was nervous. I would finally be on the same field as my beloved Colts. Every Thursday there was a show on TV called Pro Football Highlights. I loved it, you could see the photographers on the sideline. I thought, "If I wear all light-colored clothes maybe I can see myself on TV." So I wore khakis and a khaki-colored jacket. With about a minute left in the game, Johnny Unitas threw this pass to Jimmy Orr, who bobbled the ball but held on to it as he fell into the end zone, and the Colts won. In those days photographers could stand on the sideline, so I was right next to Orr as he reached for the ball. I didn't have a motor drive on my camera; I didn't even own one. I took two or three steps backwards, cranked the focus and took one frame. I was sure I'd missed the shot. When Orr finished catching the ball, I jumped up in the air, like the teenage fan I was, leaped on his back and patted him like a deranged stalker. I completely forgot about being a journalist. He brushed me aside. The next Thursday when they showed the highlights of that game on TV, there was Orr bobbling the ball, and me jumping on him and patting him on the back. I was part of the highlights and I got my first great catch picture. One frame, tack sharp—impossible. But there it was.     Other Galleries on there as well. Cool stuff. Comments: 0   Hits: 59   Points: 155486   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

CalorieLab Calorie Counter	just add bacon
Link #140170 submitted by Mac on Aug 27, 2008 08:27am.   (+190XP) http://calorielab.com/index.html
CalorieLab maintains the world's largest and most up-to-date calorie and nutrition facts database.     Search items by category, ingredient, or restaurant (chain) name Comments: 0   Hits: 89   Points: 153203   Rating: 7.2 / 4   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Britain will be Europe's biggest country by 2060	the "other" pile
Link #140169 submitted by Henry on Aug 27, 2008 04:47am.   (+-90XP) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2626859/Britain-will-be-Euro...
The UK population will rise by a quarter to 77 million in 2060, the European Commission said in a study of EU states population trends.     That puts Britain on course to overtake Germany as the biggest country in the union. Comments: 0   Hits: 33   Points: 151361   Rating: 2.8 / 9   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

who's Zoomin' Who? I mean, who's suing Who?	blinded by science
Link #140168 submitted by spoon on Aug 27, 2008 04:06am.   (+220XP) http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=9807
I sort of understand where Rudy Pedraza, president and co-founder of Psystar, is coming from when he talks about his suit-countersuit legal battle with Apple.     “It’s not that people don’t want to use Mac OS X, but they’re not open to spending an exorbitant amount of money for something that’s essentially generic hardware,” Pedraza said. Comments: 0   Hits: 65   Points: 151056   Rating: 9.0 / 3   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

1 2 3 4 5 6 Next