p—bNintendo releases e-Book collection for DS/b : Move over Kindle, there's a new e-Reader in town—the Nintendo DS. Well ... not quite, but the game giant did announce the availability of "i100 Classic Book Collection/i" today. The game features classic tomes from Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Shakespeare, among others. DS owners flip the portable console on its side to read, use the stylus to flip through pages, and can even search through and bookmark segments. Currently, the title is only slated for a European release, with 10 additional titles available via download via the DS Lite Wi-fi feature. Still, U.K.-based a href="http://www.electricpig.co.uk/2008/12/01/nintendo%E2%80%99s-ds-e-reader-priced-and-dated/" title="tech site Electric Pig"tech site Electric Pig/a begs the obvious question: does anybody really want to read an entire book on the DS' tiny screen?nbsp; /p p —bAcclaim unleashes iRockfree/i, free music game/b : MMORPG publisher Acclaim is developing iRockfree/i, an online game that will let players create avatars, open up their own rock "club" and battle against other players online. Slated to go live in Q109, a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21292" title="Gamasutra says"Gamasutra says/a Rockfree will feature tracks from Warner Music, Sony (a href="http://finance.paidcontent.org/paidcontent?Page=QUOTETicker=SNE" class="ticker" title="SNE"NYSE: SNE/a) and EMI artists, in addition to more than 40 songs created just for the game. The title also has free written all over it: gamers don't have to pay to play it, nor will they have to pay for extra downloadable tracks. /p p —bAOL preaches game safety on new site/b : AOL (a href="http://finance.paidcontent.org/paidcontent?Page=QUOTETicker=TWX" class="ticker" title="TWX"NYSE: TWX/a) has launched a href="http://www.playsavvy.com/" title="PlaySavvy.com"PlaySavvy.com/a, a new site aimed at helping parents understand gaming consoles, interpret the game rating system and better determine which titles are appropriate for their kids. The site features reviews and how-to guides, and of course, "relevant advertising." Wonder if there will be any conflict of interest issues (like the ones a href="http://www.gamespot.com/" title="GameSpot "GameSpot /afaced last year, a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2007/12/05/gamespot-addresses-gerstmann-gate-concerns-in-depth/" title="per Joystiq"per Joystiq/a) or concern about ads being run for games that aren't exactly family-friendly ... a href="http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_viewnewsId=20081201005158newsLang=en" title="Release"Release/a. /p p —bDouble Fusion beefs up in-game ad lineup for PS3/b : Game advertising company Double Fusion has inked exclusive deals with THQ (a href="http://finance.paidcontent.org/paidcontent?Page=QUOTETicker=THQI" class="ticker" title="THQI"NSDQ: THQI/a), Sega, Eidos and Midway to handle the in-game ads for their PS3 titles. This is in addition to the deal they first brokered in July with Sony to put ads in PS3 games, though Sony announced a similar partnership with Double Fusion rival IGA Worldwide in June, and launched its own in-game ad division in October 2007. a href="http://doublefusion.com/press/html/PS3_12_01_08.html" title="Release"Release/a.nbsp; /p p!-- iMark Logic Digital Publishing Summit, Thursday November 6, Westin Times Square. Insight and perspective from Outsell, Gilbane, Simon Schuster, BusinessWeek.com, more. Evening cocktail reception. Cost is complimentary. a href="http://content.adbureau.net/accipiter/adclick/CID=000010cb0000000000000000/SITE=PC_US/AAMSZ=PREMB_NEWS/relocate=http://marklogicdps.eventbrite.com/"Register now!/a/i --/p pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?a=LURJGK"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?i=LURJGK" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=7YRrO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=7YRrO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=EzwFO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=EzwFO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=Pke8o"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=Pke8o" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=NCcjO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=NCcjO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=YLkHO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=YLkHO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pcorg/~4/472017563" height="1" width="1"/

So as suspected, that blue Datel battery, it’s a total sham… Well, sort of… When put into service mode on the PSP-3000 it’ll result in nothing but a flashing light and black screen; at least for those sporting a TA-088v3 motherboard. Someone still needs to bypass or hack the pre-IPL hash process. [...]

Social site Facebook has rolled out a system that lets members use other sites via the social networking portal.

Ericsson is to shed about 100 staff and 200 contractors in Australia and New Zealand over the next six months, but says this represents the local implementation of a global...

We've been meaning to interview the developer of Mighty Jill Off and Calamity Annie for a while now, but alas Eegra and Lesbian Gamers got to her first. Still, better late than never as the old saying goes. What follows is a chat transcript of our discussion about fanart, art games, indie games, IGF, IFs, and more. (interview archives)

Hi Anna, how about we start off with a short introduction of who you are and what it is exactly that you do.
i'm anna anthropy. my nom de game is "auntie pixelante." i make games.

When did you start making games? And how many games have you made since then?
i started making games when i was little, with whatever tools i could get my hands on: zzt, stuff like that. i still use whatever i can find to tell stories. i like games that allow for creativity as much as destruction, so i spend a lot of time with games that have level editors. my own games i usually put together in game maker, which isn't ideal but is easy and cheap, which is why it's brought a lot of people into game design who wouldn't otherwise be.

Which of your creations are you most proud of?
mighty jill off seems to be the game i'm most associated with, though i'm just as proud of other projects. calamity annie is important to me, as it came out of a time of trial for me -- i'd just gotten kicked out of game school for using the word "art" to refer to something other than photoshop and i felt a drive to prove myself. i made a game this past weekend, a one-switch version of mighty jill off called "jill off with one hand," and maybe i'm still in the afterglow but i'm very proud of that right now.

Games


Were you pleased/thrilled with the number of turnouts for the Mighty Jill Off fanart contest? Which entries were the most arousing to you?
my only disappointments with the competition were the entries that didn't get finished! josh rylander pencilled a wonderful drawing of jill creeping over a pit of spikes that seemed to have claimed the life of an earlier jill, and mariel cartwright sketched a perspective drawing of the queen stamping her boot on jill's face, which is the sort of thing i am all about.

How long do you see yourself still sticking with making freeware (or donationware) Game Maker games?
donationware is a good model for me: what's most important to me is for people to be able to play my games. if those players feel there's value in what i do and want me to continue to do it, that's dandy. "donationware" allows players to decide how much my games are worth.

Which of your game has done the best in terms of donationware, and why you think that is the case?
calamity annie was the first game i asked for donations for: players who donate any sum receive a password that unlocks hidden characters in the game, a totally superficial extra. i like to think that both as a measure of the game's quality and as a show of support from my players during that rough time, annie made more than enough money in donations to pay for both annie's and mighty jill off's admittance to the upcoming independant games festival.

Is there actually any secret easter eggs that fans of your games don't know about?
calamity annie is pretty much all easter eggs. but here's one i like: get the "happy ending," then play three games without losing before you reach the bar. you'll see a special message i wrote to my slut.

Do you harbor plans on milking Calamity Annie and Mighty Jill Off for all they're worth by releasing sequels in the near future (besides Jill Off Harder)?
i think our medium is too obsessed with sequels: sequels to videogames tend to offer new content but not new ideas. i say this, of course, after having spent a weekend working on a one-switch spin off to mighty jill off. i'm not interested in retreading ground i've already explored, though it seems i'm building a cast of characters.

Are you currently working on anything new then?
always. at the moment, not to give too much away, my projects include a reimagining of the data east game nail 'n scale, a rom hack of megaman 2, and an rpg of the "pen and paper" variety, though it most likely won't involve either pens or paper. and i'm dangerously prone to getting sudden ideas and spending the next few days putting them together, so i can't make any guarantees.

Let's just say you have a choice of collaborating with any indie game developer out there, would you do it? Who would you choose, and why? And what sweet games would you make?
i ought to collaborate with messhof. we keep being in the same room and nearly meeting. i can't say exactly what we'd create, but it would have lots of flashing colors. if anyone reading this is messhof, feel free to collaborate with me.



Playing Favorites


Which game genres are your favorites?
i think that discussing games in terms of genre is dangerous and paralyzing. part of the reason we see so many games that are the exact same experience is because our critical vocabulary only allows for us to discuss games, and what games might be, in terms of these very limiting, established models. though i have to confess, i'm typically drawn to shooters (of the "space invaders" variety) because what they represent is the most basic, abstract form of videogame interaction: one actor sends a signal, another actor receives it, and reacts.

Any favorite indie games then?
among freeware games, those that have impressed me recently are knytt stories, barkley, shut up and jam: gaiden, karoshi 2.0 and psychosomnium. nifflas, jesse venbrux and cactus are among the designers i most admire, them and emily short. and linley's dungeon crawl is probably the game i will have spent the most time with, in total, when all is said and done.

Your favorite IF writers? And favorite IF games?
i admire emily short immensely: she's interested in the discussion of design, which is something we need far more of. i very much like zarf's work, particularly "hunter, in darkness" and "so far." i like some of adam cadre's more formal experiments, like 9:05 and shrapnel. and i consider victor gijsbers's the baron to be pretty important, since i keep citing it as an example of how games by hobbyist game developers are allowing the medium to shift away from men with guns and toward the exploration of more relevant and human topics.

Recent indie games which you've been playing?
lately i've been spending time with an early nineties mac game called glider, now freeware. it's neat in that it's played with just two buttons, to move your paper plane left and right, and the y axis is accounted for by gravity and gusts of wind. what's particularly charming about it is the sheer breadth of things that have been implemented simply for the sake of implementation, like a guitar that plays a chord as your plane glides across its strings.

Any unreleased indie games you can't wait to get your hands on?
i'm excited about games that haven't yet been made, because there are so many of them, and lots of them explore our medium in ways we haven't seen so far. i am looking forward to the day when these games are made.

Being Indie


What do you think is wrong with the indie games scene? Any suggestions on how to improve the situation?
a problem i think the "indie" games scene unfortunately shares with the larger community surrounding videogames is that of exclusion. that's why i don't like the "indie" label - there's a sense of this is us and these are our values and these are our private jokes that only serves to keep people out, when what should be the real strength of independant game development - the thing that above all the industry is incapable of - is diversity. independant game development should be an avenue for anyone to tell her stories, not another tiny, self-congratulatory circle.

What are your thoughts on the subject of art games?
i think the discussion of whether games are art, or whether some games are art, or which games are art and which aren't is a diversion and a waste of time. what's true is that games are an expressive and communicative medium and that, at the moment, they aren't communicating very much. we need to be telling more interesting stories, mapping out the potential of our medium, and saying a lot more than we are now.

This is sort of related to the Eegra interview you did back in September (2008). Do you prefer the word gamer or player?
i don't like the term "gamer," as it implies that one defines one's identity around videogames. which, apart from being shallow, ties into this poisonous idea we have in our medium that playing a game should be considered an end in and of itself. we need to escape this complacency: videogames are not worthwhile unless we are doing something worthwhile with them. i find "player" a more useful term in that describes an act -- it describes someone who is in the process of playing a game -- not an identity.

The Festivities


What are your modest expectations on how the two games you've submitted to IGF will do?
i'm not holding my breath. there are categories for innovation in graphics and innovation in audio, which are neat parlor tricks, but there are no awards honoring holistic game design or storytelling. i think that's another trend that it's unfortunate to see the independent game community share with the mainstream: partitioning games rather than considering the work as a whole. there's supposedly a new category this year to address this issue: i'm interested in seeing what it produces.

So what changes would you like to see made to the competition?
i've sort of already answered this question: i want to see the awards recognize progress in storytelling rather than technology. the latter we have plenty of, but it's the former that is going to allow our medium to come into its own. i would like to see more celebration of bedroom coders, of hobbyist game designers, of people that are outside the mainstream and who really are outside the industry and whose lives would actually be changed by getting the thousand dollar prize for their creations.

Played any competition entries in this year's IGF yet? Anything that impressed you?
i'm sharing the entry list with a lot of games i admire: barkley, shut up and jam: gaiden, which i've mentioned before, dino run, i wish i were the moon, dangerous high school girls in trouble. quite soulless is competing, and i hope it and i both make finalist so i can meet vasily zotov. i'm a little disappointed that none of my former classmates seem to be competing in the student competition.

Who would you like to see win the grand prize?
i want barkley, shut up and jam: gaiden to win, and i want the developers to be handed their award by none other than charles barkley himself. then, right there on stage, they break for an impromptu game of b-ball as everyone in the audience whistles "sweet georgia brown" in unison. i can't help it. i think it's an important game. though i don't know if, legally, they can. tim, talk to simon. do whatever you have to do to make this happen.

I'll consider that a prediction then. In closing, any favorite haunts? Any shoutouts?
i'll give a shout out to my comrades at glorioustrainwrecks.com, a site that champions the value of spirit in game creation above technical ability. we have an amazing two-hour game jam the third saturday of every month - traditionally using free copies of klik & play - and all are invited to join in.


More...

I have recently bought and Downloaded Acquisition but i have not downloaded anything or will be downloading anything from it. Will still owning the program make it illegal

A Japanese company, Sosu, has recently revealed "healthy cigarettes," a rechargeable battery-powered device that emits flavored steam, complete with glowing LED lights. Unfortunately these cigarettes...

pMySQL 5.1 has been released, but MySQL cofounder Michael Widenius says that the new version isn't ready yet and has serious bugs. He says that the software was released prematurely because MySQL management no longer treats quality as the highest priority./ppa href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081201-mysql-creator-version-5-1-released-with-fatal-bugs.html"Read More.../a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/4mB2FyGNt4ADzDxf4DpxHF2A8RM/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/4mB2FyGNt4ADzDxf4DpxHF2A8RM/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?a=tofk6vZ9"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?i=tofk6vZ9" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?a=mcjQ5L0m"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?d=50" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?a=LDptWmp6"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?d=41" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/arstechnica/BAaf/~4/0L4bI9jvG8A" height="1" width="1"/

whats difference between factory unlock iphone and illegal unlock iphone? i just got my iphone yesterday....

How the Honeycrisp apple went from being nearly discarded to one of the a href="http://www.minnesotaharvest.net/apple_honeycrisp.htm"tastiest best-named apples of all time/a -- NYTimes says "a href="http://select.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/nyregion/15towns.html"the iPod of apples/a" -- and more about a href="http://www.citypages.com/2008-10-01/restaurants/with-honeycrisps-patent-expiring-uofm-looks-for-new-apple/"the patenting and branding of apples/a. br / blockquote"[D]uring its time of evaluation, Honeycrisp, being a beautiful but partially-colored apple, effectively waited in the wings until the big stage was set. I'm not saying the University would not have introduced Honeycrisp against the tide of Red and Golden. I don't know that. It just takes years to get to the point of taking the leap, and maybe 1991 would have been the leaping point regardless of the current. But there's no doubt Honeycrisp jumped into a very favorable current, one that had been started with Granny Smith and had gained irreversible momentum with Gala and Fuji. Its time had come.br / br / But even when your time has come, if you're an apple, it'll still be a while. There are millions of Honeycrisp trees in the ground right now, but a production ranking is nowhere in sight. Like Gala, Honeycrisp will take a few more years before it climbs out of the "All Others" category.br / br / So, if you're David Bedford, and you evaluated a variety for many years until 1991 and then released it, and it's been out now for well over a decade and it's still in "All Others," you've done a wonderful job. That's just the speed of this game. Honeycrisp is on a meteoric rise. This is a thing that's happening very fast, in apple terms."/blockquote

Over a year ago on Boing Boing, I linked to this video from a guy who made a propeller-powered vehicle that he claimed could travel downwind faster than the wind. Some people think it was a hoax, and some don't. In Make Vol. 11, Charles Platt made a miniature model of the vehicle and came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a wind-powered vehicle that can travel faster than the speed of the wind. Now there's a new video on YouTube (above) that claims it is possible to sail directly downwind faster than the wind (aka DDFTTW). You can read heated discussions about the video and its claims at Makezine, the Mythbusters Fan Club discussion board, and Randi.org. The creator of the video, spork33, hopes that the Mythbusters folks will attempt to replicate the experiment. I admit that I don't understand the physics involved, so I don't really know whether DDFTTW is possible, but I am siding with Charles on this because I've never known him to be wrong when it comes to math, physics, or electricity....br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=4621981516ac0922900688b4a0c6caf5p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=4621981516ac0922900688b4a0c6caf5p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=4621981516ac0922900688b4a0c6caf5" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

Last week, the Toronto Police Homicide Squad a href="http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/538659"launched a new website/a containing profiles of unsolved murder cases and wanted persons. Each profile contains details of the investigation -- a written synopsis, photos and links to Google maps or even YouTube videos -- and allows visitors to submit tips directly to the police. It serves not only as an appeal for information, but also as a resource for grieving families. Some of the "cold cases" a href="http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=967768"date back decades/a, and the police are hoping that increased attention on the web (or even from the press on the website launch) might lead to a break in an investigation. br /br / Police have long since used online tools to a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080221/094928313.shtml"search/a for evidence themselves, but we're starting to see them engaging online communities and developing tools and methods to appeal to the public for information through the web. A few years back, a cop from a neighboring city received a lot of press for a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20061222/090801.shtml"uploading/a a surveillance video to YouTube, and now Toronto's Crime Stoppers service has its own a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/1800222TIPS"YouTube channel/a and a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Toronto-Crime-Stoppers/31399402628"Facebook page/a. Though, in the surveillance video case, the media coverage of the YouTube angle seemed to help a lot more than the actual video (and comments on a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd6lOhNQikw"some of the Crime Stoppers videos/a make you wish the a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081009/0147542502.shtml"comment audio preview/a was mandatory.) The Toronto police have found a lot of success in solving and preventing crime using these tools, and they recently a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081124.INTERPOL24/TPStory/National"presented their methods to an Interpol audience/a. br /br / It's great to see law enforcement embracing the web as a means of two-way communication with the public, though it may take some time before these latest efforts pay off. The new site looks like it could use some more design work, and previous success has involved engaging a largely younger audience on social networks, rather than trying to draw witnesses to a separate site. As long as they continue to experiment, police are bound to find the right methods to make these tools useful.p style="border-top: 1px #aaaaaa dashed;padding-top: 5px;margin-top: 10px;"emBlaise Alleyne is an expert at the a href="http://www.insightcommunity.com/"Insight Community/a. To get insight and analysis from Blaise Alleyne and other experts on challenges your company faces, a href="http://www.insightcommunity.com/"click here/a./em/p br /br /a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081118/1343392871.shtml"Permalink/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081118/1343392871.shtml#comments"Comments/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20081118/1343392871op=sharethis"Email This Story/abr / br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=2e03bbf8f67b878b51d87a91a7b6b9c6p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=2e03bbf8f67b878b51d87a91a7b6b9c6p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=2e03bbf8f67b878b51d87a91a7b6b9c6" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?a=6HmQo"img src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?i=6HmQo" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/472012884" height="1" width="1"/

During the December 1 edition of Hardball, MSNBC again hosted commentator and author Christopher Hitchens, who again attacked Sen. Hillary Clinton, President-elect Barack Obama's nominee for secretary of state. Hitchens said Clinton "only cares about one thing, namely herself and her own prospects." He continued: "After that, her impeached, disbarred husband and the many undeclared interests of his and hers that they nurture for the future. Barack Obama has picked someone who will always be thinking about something else as well as her job."

Salon.com editor-in-chief Joan Walsh also appeared as a panelist and repeatedly called Hitchens' assertions "ridiculous." She said of Clinton's nomination, as well as the other nominations announced the same day, "I think this is a terrific appointment. I think it's a terrific set of appointments."

Later in the segment, referring to economic conditions and expected attacks by conservatives, Matthews asked Hitchens if Obama picked Clinton because he "need[s] the Democratic Party united to weather that storm." Hitchens replied: "Well, whatever the answer to that question may be, it still divides us as between those of us who think that a job must be found for Hillary Clinton, that the country would be somehow disgraced if she wasn't in an important position, and those of us who could do without her. And neither answer to that question is going to make any difference at all to where the market performs." Walsh responded to Hitchens by asserting, "[T]hat second group is a very small group, a group of eccentric Clinton haters who have made a career out of trashing the Clintons. It's a small group. It's a small group, it's not -- it's not an important group in American domestic or foreign policy." Hitchens then asked, "Which group are you talking about?" Walsh replied, "The group of people who would rather see Hillary Clinton off the world stage. I don't think Barack Obama was thinking about that at all because that group of people is eccentric, they are devoted to looking at everything the Clintons do in the worst possible light."

Toward the end of the segment, Hitchens asserted, "What you want, as president, is to know your secretary of state spends all her time working to make sure that your policies stick. With this woman, that can't be said. She's always thinking first about herself, second about her husband."

As Media Matters for America has documented, in the context of reports that Obama intended to nominate Clinton, Hitchens repeatedly attacked Clinton's foreign policy credentials during appearances on MSNBC:

• On the November 18 edition of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Hitchens suggested that Clinton was not "respected in the Pentagon," despite ample evidence that Clinton "has gained a lot of respect among military leadership" and has "built relationships" with military leaders such as Gen. David H. Petraeus and Adm. William J. Fallon.

• During the November 17 edition of Hardball, as well as the November 18 edition of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Hitchens revived his accusation, which he has yet to source, that Hillary Clinton blocked any action by the Clinton administration in war-torn Bosnia in 1993 because she didn't want it to interfere with passage of her health-care plan.

Further, as Media Matters has noted, MSNBC allowed Hitchens to attack Clinton during the presidential campaign.

• During the April 5 edition of MSNBC's Tim Russert, Russert asked Hitchens if "we [are] seeing the gender card played" by Clinton in response to calls for her to drop out of the Democratic presidential primary race. Hitchens replied: "Oh, well, if you call it a card. It's just another side of her terrible self-pity and self-righteousness. If it isn't one, it's the other." Hitchens further asserted that "if you think of women who really have been put upon by men and by male supremacy, like [late Pakistani leader] Benazir Bhutto, as well, you can't imagine her resorting to this kind of self-pity or suddenly decide to feminize herself in the most clichéd way, of such -- by welling up and sobbing." Hitchens later added: "I just think that if she knew how it made her look, sort of alternately soppy and bitchy, she'd stop it. But she can't help herself, can she? She just can't."

• During the September 12, 2007, edition of Morning Joe, Hitchens asserted: "The Democratic candidates are all pretending to be as pious as they possibly can be. You see Mrs. Clinton, looking like the dog being washed, and talking about how her faith got her through the impeachment crisis with her husband." After host Joe Scarborough asked him whether he thought that "Hillary Clinton is pretending to be religious," Hitchens replied: "It can't be that she suddenly decides that she's a person of faith. She has never particularly mentioned it before." Hitchens claimed that Clinton was feigning faith in order to "play to what are called the 'values voters.' " He concluded: "[A]s with everything Mrs. Clinton does, you can see the machinery working, you can see the wheels turning inside her head as she makes her maneuvers." In fact, contrary to Hitchens' claim that she has only recently begun asserting that she is a person of faith as part of her campaign for president, Clinton has publicly discussed her faith for years.

From the December 1 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews:

CHRIS MATTHEWS (host): But first, President-elect Obama announced his national security team today with Senator Hillary Clinton as his choice for secretary of state. Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair, and Joan Walsh is editor-in-chief of Salon. I want to ask you both about my theory, which is Barack Obama knows he's going to change foreign policy, he's going to take it a notch or two to the left. He needs people a notch or two to the right to cover for him. That explains General James Jones as his national security adviser, Senator Hillary Cinton as his secretary of state, and who else? Robert Gates, the holdover secretary of defense in that same position. Your thoughts, Christopher?

HITCHENS: Well, I think you have the left-right bit wrong. I mean, he -- General Petraeus isn't a right-winger. He's the guy who's defending secular democracy in Iraq. And I think it's tolerably well-known that he hoped very much for an extension for Gates. Susan Rice, who I think should have been nominated for secretary of state -- really do think should have been -- has a long track record of arguing for political and humanitarian interventionism of the sort many of us have advocated in Darfur, in Rwanda --

MATTHEWS: But not in Iraq.

HITCHENS: Not in Iraq, no.

MATTHEWS: Why are you arguing over nomenclature when I make a simple fact, Christopher, that Hillary Clinton was a notch to the right of Barack Obama during the campaign with regard to her position on Iraq and to some extent --

WALSH: A notch --

MATTHEWS: -- with regard with Iran? Why do you not -- why do you challenge that?

HITCHENS: I was hoping you could ask, was Hillary Clinton -- is essentially in this argument, nonpolitical. She only cares about one thing, namely herself and her own prospects, and after that, her impeached, disbarred husband and the many undeclared interests of his and hers that they nurture for the future. Barack Obama has picked someone who will always be thinking about something else as well as her job. That's not a left-or-right question.

[...]

WALSH: I think this is a terrific appointment. I think it's a terrific set of appointments. I'd like to just talk about the whole team up there, Chris. And I'm going to agree with Christopher on one point, which is I'm not sure that the left-right lens is exactly the best lens for analyzing what this team is about. I saw a team of tremendous diversity, not in any kind of cheesy, politically correct way but in terms of ideology, in terms of -- you've got Republicans up there, age, gender, regional diversity as well as race, three African-Americans. That's historic. That's impressive. And then I also saw a team that will clash, that will disagree, and a man of tremendous self-confidence who said, "The buck stops with me. I want clashing ideas. I want differences. And then I'm going to make the decision." So, I think it's a day that people can feel there's going to be a balance -- those people on that stage believe in America's military power, but they also believe in diplomacy, and I think you're going to see a rounding back to -- a balance between those two ways that we operate in the world that should make Americans feel safer.

[...]

MATTHEWS: Christopher and Joan, what do you make of his commitment -- his renewed commitment today, president-elect Obama, to removing our combat troops from Iraq in 16 months, Christopher?

HITCHENS: Well, he's been rescued by the Iraqi parliament. I mean, he's probably the luckiest politician one's ever seen since Kennedy in any case, but real the luck is that the Iraqis are demanding roughly what he's been asking for for a long time, which is a deadline and a date certain.

WALSH: Right.

HITCHENS: The actual date doesn't matter once you start talking about that. Can I just add, though, that I thought Obama's answer just there was incredibly cheap and evasive. I mean, he was right the first time to say this woman doesn't, in fact, have any foreign policy experience. And he could have added -- which also came up in the campaign -- that the experience she has claimed, such as in Bosnia, was fake, was fabricated. And he could also have added that she, like his other nominee for the attorney generalship, main qualification in politics is being a friend of Marc Rich, which I don't think has changed. Now, I do believe --

MATTHEWS: Well, why do you think he made this -- Christopher --

WALSH: That's a ridiculous thing to say.

HITCHENS: There's no change.

WALSH: How is that a main qualification?

HITCHENS: I don't know. Couldn't we have --

MATTHEWS: You make it sound like he's not -- he hasn't got his head together. Why would he make this appointment the most profound appointment so far --

HITCHENS: The best-known -- the best-known -- the best-known decision, the best known - the best-known thing Mr. Holder ever did as a government lawyer, shall we just say, and the biggest intervention in foreign policy made by Mrs. Clinton were both in -- to try and get this crook off in exchange for favors we don't even want to think about.

MATTHEWS: Well, we don't know what they are, do we?

WALSH: I think that's a ridiculous thing to say.

HITCHENS: Call it what you like. It's not change. It's a reminder --

MATTHEWS: Why do you -- Christopher --

HITCHENS: -- of the more sordid -- the more sordid elements of the Clinton era, which was not an era of foreign policy triumph.

MATTHEWS: What's the sordid or any motive behind this appointment then, Christopher?

HITCHENS: I didn't say this is a sordidly motivated act.

MATTHEWS: Well, what is -- what is it?

HITCHENS: I just -- I just think it's very disappointing for those who were hoping for a foreign policy change.

MATTHEWS: Well, what's the motive behind it? What's the motive?

HITCHENS: If you wanted to see foreign policy change, you should have -- you should -- consensual, I suppose. It's party unity, that sort of thing. Probably a gesture to NOW, that no doubt is involved, and so forth. Nonetheless, it's a terrible missed opportunity. Susan Rice would have made a very good appointment, safe to say. You'd have known where she stood, a person who has always approached foreign policy as a matter of principle who doesn't carry any baggage, who hasn't been a servant to special interests, is given a relatively unimportant job -- it's a major job, of course [untelligible] --

WALSH: It's a major job. It's a major job. Susan's a terrific person. She's a friend of mine.

HITCHENS: Hillary Clinton is not qualified in any way to be secretary of state --

MATTHEWS: OK, let me -- Joan --

HITCHENS: -- and she doesn't have any interests but herself and her husband --

WALSH: I think that's absolutely ridiculous.

[...]

MATTHEWS: Christopher, I want to go back to your point that this is a political move by Barack Obama, naming Senator Clinton to be secretary of state, apart from foreign policy. He must know and you all know -- certainly Joan knows, and you and I and Christopher know -- that we're facing a bad couple of years of economic history coming at us, maybe a lot more than two bad years. Not just a deep recession but a prolonged, perhaps something approaching a depression. It could be, does he need the Democratic Party united to weather that storm? Because he's going to get hit like hell by the conservatives and Republicans within about three months.

HITCHENS: Well, whatever the answer to that question may be, it still divides us as between those of us who think that a job must be found for Hillary Clinton, that the country would be somehow disgraced if she wasn't in an important position, and those of us who could do without her. And neither answer to that question is going to make any difference at all to where the market performs. However --

WALSH: But that second group is a very small group --

HITCHENS: -- the president -- the president -- it doesn't -- it doesn't help --

WALSH: -- a group of eccentric Clinton haters who have made a career out of trashing the Clintons. It's a small group, it's not -- it's not an important group in American domestic or foreign policy. And I don't think --

HITCHENS: Which group are you talking about?

WALSH: The group of people who would rather see Hillary Clinton off the world stage. I don't think Barack Obama was thinking about that at all because that group of people is eccentric, they are devoted to looking at everything the Clintons do in the worst possible light. And he's trying to solve problems. And, to you, Chris, I don't think it was done with domestic politics and --

HITCHENS: Christopher.

WALSH: No, I'm sorry, I'm talking to Chris. It's tough here, Christopher, I did call you Christopher.

MATTHEWS: Well, no, I'm looking that the 18 million -- look, I'm looking at the 18 million that voted for her and thinking that if he's looking at Lincoln as a role model, he clearly is looking at bringing in that constituency, not just Senator Clinton, or former President Clinton, but the 18 million working people that voted for him.

WALSH: But Chris --

MATTHEWS: I'm just thinking he might be a politician.

WALSH: Sure.

MATTHEWS: That's not a knock.

WALSH: But quite honestly, he brought them in -- no, and I know you don't mean it as a knock, at all. But he brought those people in on November 4th. For all that you and I spent a year talking every week about what was going to happen to those Clinton voters, and even I had some, you know, some weeks where I worried about it. The fact is, he brought those people in. He's not worried about that. I genuinely think if he's got an eye toward politics, it's global politics. And he wants the strength --

HITCHENS: Yes.

WALSH: -- of the Clinton name, the Clinton brand.

MATTHEWS: OK, let's -- Christopher --

HITCHENS: That's what the secretary -- that's what the secretary of state -- that's what the secretary of state is for. And what you want as president --

WALSH: Right.

HITCHENS: -- is to know your secretary of state spends all her time working to make sure that your policies stick. With this woman, that can't be said. She's always thinking first about herself, second about her husband.

MATTHEWS: What about her husband? [unintelligible]

WALSH: Well, I trust Barack Obama's opinion more than yours.

MATTHEWS: Christopher, last question here --

HITCHENS: -- [unintelligible] always. That's never changed -- that's never changed and it's never going to, so he would have [inaudible], nor would anyone.

WALSH: That's your opinion, Christopher.

HITCHENS: Well, guess what? Guess who's saying it? That's a very clever thing to say. Shall I ask, would you prefer I uttered your opinion? What a fatuous remark.

MATTHEWS: Christopher -- let me ask you, Christopher, let's raise this --

WALSH: You know, I prefer Barack Obama's opinion. Barack Obama is the supremely qualified person whose opinion matters.

a href="http://www.secrettechnology.com/madethis/enemy6.html"i made this. you play this. we are enemies/a - A new game by a href="http://www.secrettechnology.com/"Jason Nelson/a (a href="http://www.metafilter.com/60830/Flash-game-offers-doorway-into-madness"previ/aa href="http://www.metafilter.com/52258/Jason-Nelson-made-me-insane"ously/a). Featuring Metafilter's own, uh, everything! br /

There are only a few hours left to enter our CYBER MONDAY contest (and to also get 10% off our robot kits)... we were able to do up a quick code/sale for all our robot kits for today so have at it. It starts at 12:01 am PST 12/1/2008 and ends today at 11:59 pm PST. Use code CYBERM at checkout at the Maker Shed.

Out contest is simple, just post up your version of the "Three laws of robotics" in the comments HERE, make it clever, funny, outrageous. At 11:59pm PST I'll post up a winner. You can post up multiple entries, contest is world-wide. The prize? The new Co-Robot kit we just got in from Japan! Here's a video!

Pictured above, an old photo of when I was running 30 miles a week and spending a lot of time looking through robot dog eyes - it was CYBER MONDAY every.single.day (long story)....

a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/only_a_few_hours_left_to.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/only_a_few_hours_left_to.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" / Permalink/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/only_a_few_hours_left_to.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890#comments" /Comments/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/arduino/?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more articles in Arduino/a | a href="http://digg.com/submit?url=blog.makezine.com%2Farchive%2F2008%2F12%2Fonly_a_few_hours_left_to.htmltitle=Only%20a%20few%20hours%20left%20to%20enter%20our%20CYBER%20MONDAY%20contestbodytext=%20There%20are%20only%20a%20few%20hours%20left%20to%20enter%20our%20CYBER%20MONDAY%20contest%20%28and%20to%20also%20get%2010%25%20off%20our%20robot%20kits%29...%20we%20were%20able%20to%20do%20up%20a%20quick%20code%2Fsale%20for%20all%20our%20robot%20kits%20for%20today%20so...topic=tech_news" /Digg this!/a

Nato ministers prepare to meet to discuss resuming talks with Russia, which were frozen after Moscow's war with Georgia in August.

Nato ministers prepare to discuss resuming talks with Russia, which were frozen after Moscow's war with Georgia in August.

h4Apologies, but no shame/h4 pMicrosoft's search bribery machine shut down for several hours on strikeBlack/strike Friday, continuing to exhibit a unique talent for online comedy..../p