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 PC World | GTA Ads Yanked in Chicago: Game Maker Calls in Lawers Not Thugs PC World - The Chicago Transit Authority has allegedly pulled an ad campaign for Grand Theft Auto IV and the video game's publisher is suing. Take-Two sues over yanked 'GTA IV' ads Take-Two sues Chicago Transit Authority |
 RTE.ie | How Not to Make a Deal New York Times - Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, announced on Saturday that his company would end its pursuit of Yahoo. Microsoft initially offered to pay $31 a share; Yahoo demanded $37. To: Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang NYT: Yang Says Microsoft Didn’t Want to Negotiate |
 Columbus Dispatch | Electric sports car debuts in US Epoch Times - By Jason Wyatt Green speed…Designed to beat a Porsche or Ferrari, Tesla's electric Roadster can do 0 to 100kmph in just over three seconds - with no greenhouse gas emissions. Tesla opens first dealership in California Long-awaited electric sports car rolls out |
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 EL33TONLINE | GTA crisis averted: new XBLA game tomorrow CVG Online - After GTA IV hijacked last week's release to make sure the entire network didn't explode, Xbox Live Arcade Wednesdays are back on schedule. Board-Game Maker Enters Cyberspace Xbox Live Arcade To Get Board/Trivia Conversion Wits & Wagers |
 eFluxMedia | Xobni Makes Outlook Searchable And Social InformationWeek - Xobni makes Outlook social by scanning your e-mail to find connections between e-mail senders and recipients. By Thomas Claburn A startup called Xobni on Monday released a new, free beta plug-in for Microsoft Outlook that aims to help make e-mail more ... OK, just admit that Outlook's lame--and fix it, already Xobni touts social network for the inbox |
 MTV.com | Harmonix releases DLC on discs for Wii CVG Online - Harmonix will be releasing a compilation of downloadable Rock Band tracks for Wii and PS2, starting with a 20-song Rock Band Track Pack in July. “Rock Band Track Pack Volume 1” For PS2, Wii Coming Up On July 15 Rock Band DLC boxed for PS2, Wii |
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 Bigmouthmedia News | Google questions Verizon 'open network' Register - By Cade Metz in San Francisco → More by this author Google wants to make darn sure that when Verizon opens up its wireless network, it actually opens up its wireless network. Google to Verizon: Don't shirk open access responsibilities Verizon urged to pledge on open access |
 eFluxMedia | Consumer Reports: Apple #1 in Tech Support The Mac Observer - by John Martellaro , 8:00 AM EDT, May 6th, 2008 Based on 10099 notebook and desktop computer owners who contacted customer support between January 2006 and January 2006, Consumer Reports found Apple to be number one in technical support. Computer Customer Support? Apple Does It Best! Consumer Reports: Apple leads in support - by double digits |
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 TechShout! | HTC Beats Apple to 3G With Microsoft-based IPhone Rival PC World - High Tech Computer announced the HTC Touch Diamond on Tuesday, a smartphone running Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional and with a touch screen designed for one-handed use. Taiwan's High Tech Computer Takes Aim at Apple's iPhone HTC unveils new flagship smart phone "Diamond" |
 The Money Times | Global Warming Pushes Tropical Insects Towards Extinction eFluxMedia - By Dee Chisamera Global warming caused by anthropogenic intervention could have a serious impact on terrestrial organisms, especially for those living in the tropics, due to a greater biological and physiological sensitivity of these organisms to ... Tropics insects 'face extinction' Scientists: Warming may greatest threat to tropical species |
"This is a country with which we now have excellent relations, South Africa, but it's frankly a rather embarrassing matter that I still have to waive in my own counterpart, the foreign minister of South Africa, not to mention the great leader Nelson Mandela," Rice said.Link (Thanks, grayman23!)Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., chairman of the House International Relations Committee, is pushing a bill that would remove current and former ANC leaders from the watch lists. Supporters hope to get it passed before Mandela's 90th birthday July 18.
"What an indignity," Berman said. "The ANC set an important example: It successfully made the change from armed struggle to peace. We should celebrate the transformation."
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Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe.Link (Thanks, Clifton!)
Charles Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said the government had no comment. “There is really nothing we can say at this time,” he said.Link (Thanks, Mutant Rob!)But the Justice Department has already all but conceded that Professor Duffy is right. Given the opportunity to dispute him in a December appeals court filing, government lawyers said only that they were at work on a legislative solution.
They did warn that the impact of Professor Duffy’s discovery could be cataclysmic for the patent world, casting “a cloud over many thousands of board decisions” and “unsettling the expectations of patent holders and licensees across the nation.” But they did not say Professor Duffy was wrong.
If it was a legislative mistake, it may turn out to be a big one. The patent court hears appeals from people and companies whose patent applications were turned down by patent examiners, and it decides disputes over who invented something first. There is often a lot of money involved.
Pollan's In Defense of Food is a fascinating treatise on eating and food, taking as its central tenet, "Eat food, mostly plants, not too much," and cutting through all the "nutritionism" science that proposes to feed us on individual molecules instead of whole food. Link (Thanks, Avi!)
See also: In Defense of Food: NPR interview with Michael Pollan about "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
I just spent some quality time poring over the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) tables, which are reported each month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and determine the U.S. inflation rate. According to the release, prices for urban residents have risen 4.0% over the past year, and it's fun to look at the different numbers and see how they contribute to the overall result.LinkFor example, in the Transportation category (up 8.2%), a dramatic increase in Gasoline prices (26%) is balanced in part by a more heavily-weighted decline in the cost of New vehicles (-1.1%). In the Food and beverages category (up 4.4%), relatively modest increases in Meats, poultry, fish, and eggs (3.8%) and in Fruits and vegetables (1.7%) are counteracted by sharper increases in Cereals and baking products (8.1%) and in Dairy and related products (11%).
Meanwhile, the entire index is pulled lower by something called "Owners' equivalent rent of primary residence," in the Housing category, which accounts for 23.942% of all expenditures and rose 2.6%. I'm a layperson in economics and statistics, but I'm hooked-- I'm looking forward to seeing April's numbers, which come out May 14.
This week, it's HOWTO build a spice-mister, a low-intensity edible pepper-spray to douse your food with (one of the characters in the book is a serious capsaicin junkie). Being the kind of guy who'd brush his teeth with Tobasco if I could, I love this one.
Link, Link to feed for Little Brother Instructables
Putting the spice mister together is not hard. Simply remove the pump, fill with your choice of hot sauce, and put the pump back in.To add a quick burst of intense flavor to your food, hold the mister a few inches above the dish and spray. Repeat until desirable heat is reached.
Keep it away from your face, and never spray at anyone else - capsaicin in the eyes hurts like hell. Pepper spray is nasty, evil stuff and should never, ever be used on anything except food.
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1937: The German passenger zeppelin Hindenburg explodes and crashes while landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 36 people and dooming the future of commercial trans-Atlantic zeppelin service.
The Hindenburg (which might have been named Adolf Hitler if not for the strong anti-Nazi views held by Hugo Eckener, director of the Zeppelin Company) and its sister ship, Graf Zeppelin II, are the largest aircraft ever to fly. They stretched 804 feet — nearly the length of the largest trans-Atlantic ocean liners of the period.
Although other nations, notably Great Britain and the United States, built rigid airships, the German technology was superior. The Hindenburg’s latticework airframe was constructed of a lightweight alloy composed largely of aluminum and copper. Sixteen gas cells expanded to a capacity of 7,062,100 cubic feet for lift, and the airship was propelled by four 16-cylinder diesel engines, allowing it to carry 72 passengers and 60 crew across the Atlantic Ocean in just three days at a brisk 135 kilometers per hour (84 mph).
And it carried them in comfort. The passenger accommodations, contained in the airship's hull rather than its gondola, were designed by Fritz August Breuhaus, who had done similar work with Pullman railroad coaches and ocean liners. Hindenburg at one point carried a grand piano on board, although this was later removed to save weight.
Hindenburg, designated LZ-129 by its builder and named for Field Marshal (and Weimar President) Paul von Hindenburg, was designed to be filled with nonflammable helium as the lifting agent. But when the United States, which possessed all the world's natural helium sources, imposed an embargo on selling the gas to Nazi Germany, the company turned to the far-more-combustible hydrogen.
The exact cause of the Lakehurst crash has never been established. Given the strained relationship that existed between Germany and the United States at the time, sabotage was an early and popular theory. It seems likelier, though, that a lightning strike, or sparking on the hull that ignited leaking hydrogen, was to blame.
Whatever the reason, the spectacular crash killed 35 of the 96 passengers and crew aboard, as well as one member of the ground crew. It also killed the trans-Atlantic zeppelin business.
The industry might have survived, at least until World War II, if not for the intense media coverage of the crash, highlighted by radio reporter Herbert Morrison’s anguished cry as he broadcast from the scene: "Oh, the humanity!"
(Source: Various)
: On May 6, famed director Steven Spielberg will release his first collaboration with game publisher Electronic Arts -- a clever, innovative Wii game called Boom Blox. Inspired by Spielberg's childhood love of destroying his toys, Boom Blox lets players experience the joy of smashing elaborate towers of blocks by throwing baseballs at them using the Wii remote.
But it's got much, much more. Multiplayer modes that mimic Jenga have up to four players pulling and throwing blocks in fierce competition. And a robust creation mode lets you make your own puzzles, then trade them with friends online.
Left: Gamers of all skill levels can enjoy throwing balls at this tower of blocks: Winding up with the Wiimote, then letting a baseball fly at the tower, is a universally fun experience. But hardcore gamers can approach each of Boom Blox's hundreds of puzzles with an eye towards perfection. One of these blocks will, when struck precisely, cause the whole tower to come tumbling down at once, as shown here.
: A tower of wooden blocks explodes, thanks to some strategically placed red Bomb Blox, as the town full of chickens panics in reaction.
While the core concept of Boom Blox was pure Spielberg, one of the Indiana Jones director's other major contributions to the game design was adding a cast of animal characters and a variety of different settings, like the Old West. "We were on the path of creating a very generic puzzle game, and he came in and really championed having themed worlds and characters you interact with to add that sort of emotional wrapper to it," says Amir Rahimi, the game's producer.
: Having carefully placed his Bomb Blox on this tower, Boots Beaverton celebrates as he knocks down a whole pile of valuable numbered Point Blox.
In addition to the extensive single-player puzzle mode, Boom Blox also contains a great deal of multiplayer content, both cooperative and competitive. In this mode, players compete to knock down as many gold blocks as possible. Each has a specific point value that players will earn if the block hits the ground during their turn. The game's physics engine accurately calculates the blocks' weight, so you'll have a harder time knocking the bigger ones over.
: An army of skeletons bears down upon the kittens' fortified stronghold. Can you hold them off and save the poor cats?
Some of the levels are purely twitch- and timing-based. In this level, you have to defend the adorable bow-tied kittens from the evil skeleton army. If you throw balls at the red Bomb Blox, they'll explode and take down the skeletons. As with all Boom Blox challenges, perfection (less dead cats, in this particular case) will give you higher scores and unlock more and more challenges.
: Dragging this block out of the way will help the mother gorilla get to her little children.
Not only do all of the different character blocks have different behaviors, they also act differently depending on what other characters are around. In the case of the mother gorilla, if her babies are on the screen, she'll do anything she can to get to them. This sets up some clever puzzles in which you have to gently move blocks around in order to create a path that Mom Gorilla can follow to her brood.
: This would represent a very bad move.
Boom Blox isn't all about wanton destruction. Just as many of the levels involve precision movements. In a mode reminiscent of Jenga but significantly more complex, you pull individual bricks out of a tower without letting it fall over. Some multiplayer games have blocks with negative values, and if you accidentally pull them out, you lose points.
: The dogs are attempting to defend their castle from the army of invading skeletons. Don't let them take your green Gem Blox away!
The real meat of Boom Blox is the game's extensive creation mode. You can edit any of the game's puzzles and change things up. It could be as simple as swapping out a bowling ball for the baseball -- try throwing that and see how much easier it is to take down a tower!
But you can also create your own elaborate puzzles with a whole variety of different goals. You can then upload them to EA's servers, where other players can download your creations and attempt to solve them -- then tweak them and re-upload them as slightly different puzzles, if they so desire.
: So many golden Point Blox, so few bombs. Where can you place them to ensure that this entire structure blows up in a chain reaction?
"In my opinion, part of what makes Steven Spielberg the master filmmaker that he is is his ability to spot and deliver what is universally compelling," says Rahimi. "The core of this game, that urge to build something up and break it down, exists with just about everybody in this world. So when you pick up that Wii remote and start bashing stuff down, it satisfies something that's really primal and really deep.
"When I heard the idea, it made perfect sense. In my mind, his credibility as a gamemaker just about tripled that day, because he figured out an idea that would be a fun videogame. And that's the mark of someone who can really deliver entertainment."
: SAN MATEO, California -- Maker Faire has a reputation as the premiere destination for people who like to build stuff of all shapes, kinds and scales.
This year's Bay Area iteration of the event didn't disappoint, with tens of thousands of nerds, hackers and crafters descending on the San Mateo fairgrounds outside San Francisco for two days of circuit boards, fire and do-it-yourself demonstrations.
With nearly 500 exhibitors presenting their creations, the Faire can be bewildering, so we sent a crack team from the Wired.com office down Highway 101 to cherry-pick the 12 coolest projects that we spotted over the weekend.
Left: Members of LUNAR, the Livermore Unit of the National Association of Rocketry, sent rockets flying into the air. They also provided the lighter side of rocket science. In this shot, some of the group's junior members give it a go.
: Bay Area husband-and-wife art team, Dan Das Mann and Karen Cusolito led the creation of these 30-foot-tall sculptures along with more than 100 collaborators from the Headless Point Artists' Retreat and Labor Camp.
Originally created for Burning Man, the two sculptures, Ecstasy, the feminine sculpture, and Mambatu, the squatting man, guarded the food court at the Maker's Faire.
The oversize figures are part of a larger eight-figure installation called Crude Awakening.
: An enormous skull greeted visitors to the Faire, 9-feet-tall and made out of e-waste. Its eyes and teeth were flat-panel screens.
A projector mounted on the skull played a series of sci-fi classics like The Last Man on Earth. Faire-goers could even text the skull and hear their message read aloud by one of hundreds of synthesized voices. Self-powered, it moved to the theme from the movie Jaws.
Its maker, James Burgett, describes himself as a "self-educated electronics recycler and generally strange guy who gives away computers."
: Acme Muffineering presented their whimsical take on personal transportation, which is essentially an electric vehicle set inside a metal "muffin" tin. The group says the muffins are about 18 times the size of your average muffin, but decidedly less delicious. On the other hand, the muffin cars can speed up to 18 mph, which is beyond the reach of your ordinary morning confection.
: A 17-foot robotic giraffe with webcams in his eyes and special touch-sensitive sensors proved a crowd pleaser over the weekend.
"Hello, my name is Russell," the electric giraffe, aka Rave Raffe, said to a crowd of children.
Russell rewarded kids tickling his sensors by saying, "He. He. He. That tickles," and "That feels nice." The whimsical giraffe is the creation of Russell Pinnington, after whom the robot was named, and Lindz Lawlor, who provides the base for its voice. You might have caught earlier versions of the beast at Burning Man over the last couple of years.
: Husband-and-wife industrial-arts team Dan Das Mann and Karen Cusolito presented their 6-ton, 20-foot-tall sculpture Epiphany to the Maker Faire.
The team considers the fire-spewing figure a manifestation of the current state of an oil-dependent economy.
"She could be fearful or hopeful, worshipping either a tree or oil derrick," Cusolito said, "but either way, she's engulfed in a state of fervor."
Fire technicians Danya Parkinson and Joe Bard of art collective Pyrokinetics were responsible for rigging Epiphany's pyrotechnics: They installed a pilot light in the cardiac region of her 20-foot-tall frame that, when triggered, radiates fire outwards through her hands. The blazes are supposed to mimic a fiery vascular system.
: Any good carnival wouldn't be complete without rides, and at the Maker Faire, a 21st-century experiment in artistry, science and sideshow acts, the Unwheeldy, a two-wheeled cycle, was in high demand.
In the photo, Festival-goers Alex Woodman and Taylor Johnston, both 12, pedal the tandem two-seater.
Bay Area computer software engineer Matthew Blaine, 34, co-designed and built the vehicle, which he called a "giant tandem dicycle." The dicycle's wheels are each 9-feet tall and positioned 5-feet apart from one another, set in a steel frame.
The hardest part about building a monstrous bike? Finding super-size materials. "Most bike shops don't carry giant, 4-foot spokes," Blaine said. "So we made them out of salvaged steel."
: Stanford neuroscience grad student Alan Rorie showed off his hand-built, steam-powered time machine.
Created out of copper, sheets of steel and nitric-acid etched brass plates, the sculpture is hooked to a steam engine with a steam boiler to power its movement. Of course, Rorie's machines don't actually bend the laws of physics, but he credits his creations with helping to pass the time and "keeping [him] sane." His steampunky time machine, or "dihemispheric chronaether agitator," as he calls it, was handcrafted over the last few months.
: If one thing is true about the crowd at Maker Faire, it's that they love robots. If two things are true about Makers, it's that they love robots fighting.
This year, the world's largest robotic fighting league, RoboGames, put on an exhibition called the ComBot Cup. You've undoubtedly seen RoboGames bots in action, so we went backstage to snap some pictures of the competitors retooling their machines after several rounds of combat.
Here, R.D. van Noy and Scott Kincaid worked on their heavyweight robot "S.J." on Saturday.
: This year, the world's largest robotic fighting league, RoboGames, put on an exhibition called the ComBot Cup. You've undoubtedly seen RoboGames bots in action, so we went backstage to snap some pictures of the competitors retooling their machines after several rounds of combat.
Backstage at the RoboGames competition at Maker Faire, Curt Meyers pushes his robot, "Jaws of Death," into position.
: At sunset Saturday, the emphasis of the fair shifted from making to burning. One group, Interpretative Arson, built a "large-scale fire toy that translates anyone's movements into fire."
Functionally, the 2πR project consisted of a series of propane tanks arrayed in a circle around a central platform. The platform was mounted with ground-based sensors that were rigged to torches atop the propane tanks. A person standing on the platform could point in the direction of a tank, thereby covering the sensor, causing the torches in that direction to explode into fire.
The group allowed audience members to get into the central platform and make the fire dance, like this young boy.
: Russell the Giraffe lights up after dark, an indication that he was originally designed as a sideshow for raves. Inside that friendly exterior lurks a 1,000-watt sound system for all your electronic music needs.
Liberty City has always been a strangely lonely place.
Sure, there have always been plenty of virtual citizens in the various Grand Theft Auto cities crafted by Rockstar Games. You were constantly running into caustic gangsters, cynical cops and old folks with walkers who dove out of the way when you rolled up on the sidewalk.
But there were never any other real people there -- no live humans. In meatspace terms, when you played GTA, you played alone. It was always a single-player game: no multiplayer mode, and not even an option to engage in co-op thuggery alongside a friend.
When you think about it, this is superweird. The first GTA debuted in 2001, right around the time that games were moving aggressively online. We were constantly told that artificial-intelligence characters were too stilted -- that the only way to have realistic, unpredictable play was to let gamers engage with other folks online. Hey, Halo proved that online play could extend the shelf life of a console game for, like, 19 years or something, right?
Yet GTA remained stubbornly, even defiantly, single-player. It was as if the Rockstar designers were so proud of their painstakingly crafted metropolises that they didn't want any other messy, mostly-big-bags-of-water humans in there screwing things up.
Until GTA IV arrived -- and Liberty City went online. So I duly logged in, wondering, What the heck is this going to be like? Do I need other people in here? Do I want other people in here?
It turns out that I do, and I do. For my first game, I headed into Hangman's Noose mode, where you team up with other players to accomplish a mission -- in this case, meeting up with a crime boss at the airport and keeping the cops away from him.
It felt like being in a Twilight Zone version of Grand Theft Auto. Everything was the same, but ... different. Much as aficionados of multiplayer gaming would have predicted, my teammates pulled off some hilariously unexpected moves: They'd drive in more spastic or more cunningly accurate patterns than I'd ever seen -- or attempted -- inside the game; they'd perform seemingly kamikaze moves with an AK-47 that the artificial intelligence would never have dared.
Better yet, multiplayer missions give you some subtle yet fascinating new ways to experience the city. At one point, two partners and I piled into a Ferrari while another of my teammates raced across the city. Since I didn't have to drive, I was able to enjoy some sightseeing -- zooming my camera around to different, Hollywood-like angles -- that was never possible when I was the one steering.
The sheer scale of Liberty City makes for online console play that's far more open-ended than anything I'd ever before seen. Most console multiplayer gaming takes place on fairly small maps. But with the mission modes of GTA IV, you're given a really big chunk of sandbox to play in, so there are seemingly zillions of different ways your teammates can accomplish a mission.
This leads to some quite funny incidents. During one mission, one of my partners and I arrived at a waterfront checkpoint -- him in a battered van, me in a sports car. We got out of our vehicles wondering, Hey, where's the third member of our team? So we stood around for two or three minutes, puzzled, admiring the morning sunshine. Suddenly, off in the distance, we saw a car racing toward us. It was a cop car -- and it was on fire. Our third team member emerged triumphantly. I'm still wondering what the hell happened to him.
There are 15 different modes of online play, most of which are pretty good. One clear winner is GTA Race, which blends car racing with combat: You can assault one another's vehicles, and even carjack one another. The result is exquisite madness, with drivers jumping out of wrecked compact cars and in 18-wheel trucks, then tearing off down crowded sidewalks while followed by lowriders hurling Molotov cocktails. If, like me, you're a subpar driver, you can simply abandon the goal and become a machine of revenge -- setting up a roadblock, waiting for other drivers to approach, then blasting them to pieces. This is food for the soul.
Other modes, however, are more of a letdown. I found the death-match games underwhelming, in part because GTA's targeting system isn't very fluid, but also because the maps weren't well designed. They possess few of the nooks and crannies you get in a great Call of Duty or Halo map.
Overall, though, GTA IV will make you glad that Rockstar finally let other people into Grand Theft Auto's world. This city's big enough for the both of us.
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Clive Thompson is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a regular contributor to Wired and New York magazines. Look for more of Clive's observations on his blog, collision detection.
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Leif says: "Bradley J. Gake has put a set of absolutely incredible 50/60s Los Angeles Press Photographers Annuals on Flickr." Link
Today on Boing Boing Gadgets we learned that Steve Ballmer kicks Steve Jobs's ass, that furry crocodiles prefer Amstrad, and that John is consorting with space prostitutes, sort of.
We toyed with a feeble-looking convergence gadget, a pair of spy sunglasses; a robot vacuum swarm; and a new batch of tiny motherboards. Seeing a rotating DIY screw-clock with electro-ocular implants, we found Peter Jensen's retrofuturistic Nixie Tube clocks; announced the winner of this weekend's Team Fortress 2 smackdown; praised Microsoft for donating 360s; and gawked over a vacuum-tube violin mod.
That's a lot of stuff to take back to the store. Let's hope we don't end up on a shady database of shoppers who issue chargebacks.
On the most recent Sound of Young America, podcast Jesse Thorn interviewed David Hadju, the author of The Ten Cent Plague, a book about the anti-comic book panic of the 1950s. Link
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