Anyone who grew up playing video games understands the impact of the music. But the internet has allowed all sorts of people to express their love in many different ways.
There's World of Warcraft-themed music based on existing songs like Ninja Raiders (Beyonce's Single Ladies) and Worgen of Stormwind (Warren Zevon's Werewolves of London), and some of the WoW developers themselves write original heavy metal tunes as the Level 80 Tauren Chieftains.

Older games, particularly from the older Nintendo systems, inspire reworked tunes, original tunes, and original web-based video series with musical episodes (NSFW warning!) There's also the now 2-volume Mega Man Rock Opera (previously). Brand-new games are also sources of inspiration.

There are also a whole collection of songs by major artists recorded in Simlish, which is pretty trippy. And in a fit of recursion, a song written for a game was made available in another game, which was then performed live by the creator. (Previously 1,2.)

New combination Papa London Bel-Mondo

Auteur : djackenew
Tags : Papa London Bel Mondo Manyone
Envoyé : 19 mars 2010
Note :0.0
Votes :0

Serge Betsen a signé pour une saison supplémentaire avec les London Wasps.

Mit der Hilfe seines Kampfhundes hat ein Mann in London einen 16-Jährigen getötet. DNA-Spuren vom Blut des Hundes überführten den Täter. Ein Gericht verurteilte ihn zu mindestens 24 Jahren Gefängnis.

Internet addiction, as you know, is a growing worldwide concern. Recently, the UK opened its first rehab clinic for Internet Addiction (the provocatively named Broadway Lounge), but that was only the beginning. Capio Nightingale Hospital in London has announced its own plan to get gets out of the World of Warcraft and into the real world through an intensive in-patient, day care, or group therapy environment. The program is aimed at 15 to 17-year-olds, although kids as young as 12 could participate. A hospital spokesman said that the service hopes to "address the underlying causes of this addiction to transform screenagers back into teenagers." And if you thought we were running this because we wanted to use the word "screenagers," you might be on to something.

New UK Internet Addiction clinic offers in-patient therapy to 'screenagers' originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The annual BAFTA Video Games Awards take place at the Park Lane Hilton in London tonight, and Tech Digest will have live coverage from the event, as well as a run down on all the winners and losers. Hosted by...

We've just confirmed that Morten Lund, possibly the quintessential European tech entrepreneur/investor - will be keynoting at this year's GeeknRolla in London on April 20. An entrepreneur from Copenhagen, Denmark, Lund is a talismanic figure on the European scene. While many tech players in Europe are accused of being too timid, this is a guy who - like many Silicon Valley players - bets a lot of chips at once. Indeed, his story reads like a roller-coaster ride in European entrepreneurship. Wikipedia describes Lund as a startup 'ideologist' and 'visionary' who has founded or co-invested in more than 40 high-tech start ups in the last decade, most famously Skype. In May 2008 he exited Danish social networking and mobile backup site ZYB to operator Vodafone Europe for around $49m.

Businessman Amir Jahanchahi says he will nurture 'cells of resistance' to force regime change in Tehran

Iranian opposition supporters abroad are being urged to unite in a new Green Wave movement to work towards overthrowing a divided Islamic regime in Tehran.

Amir Jahanchahi, an exiled Iranian businessman, today called on his countrymen to rally round and act more decisively, suggesting that elements of the powerful Revolutionary Guard could be persuaded to turn against the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"The opposition cannot lead the street to victory," Jahanchahi said in an interview on the eve of the Iranian new year holiday. "The leaders are not ready to accept a full change of regime. The Iranian people are ready to accept the truth that this regime will not be changed by a velvet revolution. It has to be changed by force."

Jahanchahi, 49, left Tehran after the 1979 Islamic revolution and has since lived in London and Paris. His father was the country's last finance minister under the shah. Unlike many other Iranian exiles, he has no other citizenship.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, who claims to have won last June's presidential election, has insisted that no one represents his Green movement outside Iran.

Jahanchahi said his Green Wave would be open to any Iranian who subscribed to democratic principles – although it was not clear whether that would exclude monarchists and groups such as the People's Mujahedin, described as terrorists by the US and several other countries.

"It will be a constellation of all the Iranian opposition, not an organisation or a party. I do not represent anyone. I am not Ahmed Chalabi," he said – a reference to the Iraqi exile who was highly influential in Washington before the 2003 US-led invasion but was later discredited.

The movement is to be fronted by Mehrdad Khonsari, a London-based Iranian academic. Plans include convening a group of experts to draw up plans for a provisional government to take power once the regime has been overthrown. Jahanchahi also talked of "flooding the country with money" to support transport strikes that would "bring this regime to its knees", and of setting up a Farsi-language radio station to broadcast into Iran.

Jahanchahi argues that Iranians have proved themselves capable of heroic sacrifice since the disputed election, with scores of dead and thousands of arrests in protests met with a brutal crackdown. In recent weeks the authorities appear to have regained the upper hand.

"I want to transform the cells of discontent into cells of resistance," he said. "I will help people from the regime leave the country and admit to their mistakes." He declined to explain how this would be done.

Jahanchahi is confident, persuasive and evidently wealthy – he lives in a luxurious home in one of London's choicest residential areas and insists money is not a problem. But he is unknown to Iranian opposition supporters at home or abroad. "There are a myriad of these self-publicising and self-proclaimed spokesmen and they are virtually all very dubious indeed," said one Green movement activist.

Jahanchahi compared himself to General Charles de Gaulle, who announced the fight against the Nazis from exile in London in 1940. Last year Jahanchahi published a book in French entitled The Iranian Hitler: Ending Ahmadinejad's Dictatorship.

"The Iranian regime needs to be overthrown by force," he said. "The key to all the problems of the Middle East is in my country. The aim is not just to change the regime. It will happen sooner or later. The question is whether it can happen before Ahmadinejad leads Iran and the region into instability and war."

• Iran

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A British organised crime gang who made tens of millions of pounds selling fake designer clothing across the country has been smashed in an international police operation.

DNA technology proved blood on killer Chrisdian Johnson came from pet Tyson in park attack on Seyi Ogunyemi

The first killer to be convicted using pioneering dog DNA technology was given a life sentence today for the murder of a teenage boy and told he must serve at least 24 years.

Chrisdian Johnson was jailed after using his powerful pitbull-cross dog, Tyson, as a weapon to savage 16-year-old Seyi Ogunyemi.

As his slightly built victim lay helpless on the ground, Johnson stabbed him six times before fleeing the scene covered in blood.

Johnson, 22, was convicted after analysis proved to a billion-to-one likelihood that blood found on him and at the scene came from the animal.

Seyi and his friend Hurui Hiyabu, 17, were set upon by a large group of youths and two dogs in Larkhall Park, Stockwell, south London, last April, the Old Bailey heard.

Brian Altman QC, prosecuting, told jurors the case was unique because pets had been used as weapons.

One witness described the attackers as "vicious" and said they were acting like a "pack of wild animals".

Johnson, of Lambeth, south London, was found guilty by a jury of Seyi's murder and the attempted murder of his friend – said to have been lucky to survive after he was stabbed nine times.

Judge Christopher Moss told him: "You used two fearsome weapons. The first was your pitbull-cross dog, which I have no doubt you had trained to attack and bring down your prey.

"The second was the knife with which you stabbed Seyi Ogunyemi to death."

Relatives of the victim hugged each other after the sentence while friends and family of the killer cried "innocent" from the public gallery.

The judge ordered Tyson to be forfeited to the police. It faces being put down.

The judge told Johnson: "This court has not heard any evidence to explain the enmity which obviously existed between you and your victims, save that you were plainly members of rival gangs which each claimed dominion of the south London streets in which you lived. This is a social problem that blights many urban neighbourhoods in our cities.

"The courts cannot cure the problem. All they can do is react firmly and decisively and impose severe punishment when murderous young men such as you are brought to justice before them."

Seyi, who suffered from Crohn's disease, was brought to the ground and mauled by Tyson – an adult male Staffordshire bull terrier/bull mastiff cross – as he tried to escape over a fence.Johnson was arrested as he fled the scene, bare-chested and covered in blood, some of it human and some of it canine.

He had complied with a court order in late 2007 to have Tyson chipped, tattooed and insured but was also supposed to keep him muzzled and on a lead at all times in public.

New technology proved that the dog blood came from Tyson, who had been knifed during the melee. The rest came from the murder victim.

Police hailed the DNA technique, which had just been developed at the time of the murder, as a "hugely powerful investigative tool".

They said they hoped it would deter others from using dogs as weapons.

Detective Inspector Mick Norman said: "This horrific attack was committed on a very slight teenage boy who stood no chance of defending himself.

"The fact that Chrisdian Johnson also ordered dogs to take part in the attack illustrates his sickening attitude to violence.

"The advances in dog DNA and forensic work now means that anyone who owns a dog and uses it to attack people can be identified and prosecuted."

• Dangerous dogs
• Knife crime
• Crime
• Law
• Law and technology

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A murderer from south London who used his dog as a weapon on a 16-year-old boy before stabbing him is jailed for life.

Experts believe release of pent-up energy after such a long, hard winter could produce the most spectacular spring in years

Up in the plane and ash trees, all London's wildlife appeared hard at spring yesterday. Tail feathers were shaking along the Regent's canal, the first buds were bursting on brambles and honeysuckle and carpets of crocuses were delighting crowds in the grand royal parks.

But in the more egalitarian Camley Street natural park, just 100 yards from St Pancras station, there was still precious little sight or sound of a new season. A heron was spotted last week, a few tits were investigating the bat boxes but the grasses were dead, the hedgehog boxes empty and the newts absent.

It's been the longest, hardest winter the UK has known for 30 years, with twice as many frosty nights as usual, says the Met Office. Wales has barely seen a daffodil and vast swaths of countryside that should be green by now are still dull and grey after months under snow. But – shout it! - tomorrow is the vernal equinox, the official first day of spring in the northern hemisphere, when night and day are the same length.The release of pent-up energy could spur the most spectacular spring for years, but there have been losers as well as winners.

For more than a decade, ever milder winters have led to ever earlier springs, with daffodils and frogspawn found at Christmas and confused insects and small mammals stirring in January. But this year, says Matthew Oakes, conservation adviser to the National Trust, harks back to older times when British life, to all natural intents, began near the end of March. "The trend is to earlier seasons, but this is a slow, late, old fashioned spring," he said.

Oakes, who keeps meticulous records of nature's first sightings, says wildlife in London is well ahead of the rest of the country because of the "heat island" effect of 12 million people driving cars and heating their homes. "Outside London, everything appears incredibly late this year. It's the first year since 1996 that there have been no bumblebees in January. In the woods very little has been happening. The bluebells and wild garlic are putting up their first spikes and the primroses are just starting. There a little bit of green from honeysuckle and rose but the woods are really leafless.

"Rooks are only building their nests now. The bluebells this year will be very late, perhaps not in full flower until mid-May," he adds.

Oates's predictions were echoed by Steve Marsh, a conservationist with the Woodland Trust, which has up to 40,000 people recording the arrival of the seasons and posting sightings on the web. He said: "This has been an exceptional season. We've only had one blackthorn in blossom so far, yet usually we would have 1,000 or more sightings by now. There have been only 10 recordings of coltsfoot when we would have expected hundreds. And it's the same with celandines. Normally we would see them now right across the UK, but this year there has been sparse coverage in the south and midlands and almost none reported in northern England and Scotland". But he adds that even this year's "late" spring is early compared to 1970s. "

Among those celebrating, say conservationists, are galanthophiles - snowdrop lovers - and those cherishing bats, who can expect a bumper year because the baby mammals thrive in a hard winter with its deep, refreshing hibernation. Equally, Jack Frost may have stopped some pests in their tracks, including the parasitical sturmia bella fly which has nearly wiped out tortoiseshell butterflies and the midge that can spread the bluetongue virus among livestock.

But pity the very small birds, says Paul Stancliffe, of the British Trust for Ornithology. "We don't know for certain yet what effect this winter has had on bird populations, but other bad winters, like in the 1940s and 1960s, really hit small ones like the goldcrest and the wren very hard. This winter will almost certainly have had an [adverse] effect on them. Frozen water and plummeting temperatures may have also severely reduced populations of birds like the kingfisher and heron, who have had less water open water to feed from."

But the growing British habit of feeding garden birds will certainly have helped, he says. "We spend £200m-300m a year on bird food. That will have seen many birds through the harshest months."

On the wing, there are further signs of winter easing its grip. Scientists in Ghana this week reported great flocks of swifts heading north and the first swallows and wheatears have just arrived in southern England from equatorial Africa after one of nature's greatest annual journeys.

"The migration is well under way," says Stancliffe, whose records suggest we can expect great numbers of swallows, swifts, willow warblers, ring ouzel and housemartins to arrive in the next few weeks.

"The early birds are taking a gamble. If we have had an early spring they get the best choice of nest sites and mates. But in a bad winter, like this, they could be in trouble. Next week we should get a rush of migrants. If this milder weather persists then they will have timed it right. All they need now is a rush of insects."

"It's all about to explode," says Oakes. "It could come with a bang and be one of the most spectacular springs in years. We've all – humans and wildlife – suffered a lot. We all need the sunshine now".

Spring 2010

What's thriving

· Snowdrops

· Crocuses

· Bats

What's not

· Daffodils

· Bluebells

· Bumblebees

· Kingfishers

• Wildlife
• Insects
• Birds
• Weather
• Plants

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A murderer from south London who used his dog as a weapon on a 16-year-old boy before stabbing him is jailed for life.

An operatic version of the book is on the way, making me wonder which other novels would lend themselves to orchestral arrangements?

Ian McEwan has history when it comes to musical interpretations – back in 1982, he collaborated with composer Michael Berkeley on the anti-nuclear weapons oratorio Or Shall We Die? In 2008, he worked (with Berkeley again) on the opera For You, a story of sexual obsession for which he wrote the libretto while working on his Booker-shortlisted On Chesil Beach, itself full of music.

Now the pair are at it again, telling the Times this morning that an operatic adaptation of Atonement is in the works. This time, McEwan isn't writing the libretto himself – he'll hand it over to poet Craig Raine after helping to shape it; Berkeley is writing the music. The project grew out of interest from a German opera house, we learn, and a co-production with New York and London houses is pencilled in for 2013.

And the author is thinking big. "It's not a chamber piece, that's for sure," he told the Times. "You can do some very big dramatic things with this. If you were thinking of a large-scale opera then what springs to mind is 380,000 troops on the beaches of Dunkirk. That would be quite a choir."

Berkeley, meanwhile, is keen to develop the romance between Robbie and Cecilia, which in the book plays out "at a distance, in letters and the mind". "That's something that music can do that no other art form can. You can have them on stage together singing a duet while he's in France (fighting in the second world war) and she's in a hospital in England (working as a nurse)," he said. And Raine is keen to tell the story from the perspective of Briony – the younger sister of Cecilia whose jealous mistake aged 13 echoes through the years.

I'm not much of an opera fan (although I was mesmerised by this), but I have to say that I love the idea of a huge choir belting out tunes from the French beaches, and Briony is such a compelling (whoops, no, can't say that – cliché alert) character that I think she'd be brilliant in any setting: book, film, opera – or even musical, a genre that McEwan and Berkeley also have designs on ...

Here on the books desk there's high praise from some quarters for the operatic version of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale – but then when did Peggy ever put a foot wrong?. The Turn of the Screw, Billy Budd, Eugene Onegin, David Almond's Skellig have all already undergone the operatic treatment, and it's got us thinking about which other books we'd like to see opera-tised: I'm very keen on the space opera opera, for example. A version of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy could be wonderful, although perhaps that's thinking too big. Someone else suggests that Me Cheetah might be entertaining, and that Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man should provide a brilliant score. Let us know what your operatic preferences would be.

• Ian McEwan
• Opera

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Robert Andrews is puzzled. Why Are Russians Spending Like Mad To Save Journalism? | paidContent:UK

He writes:

The latest - after last year buying France-Soir, the country’s smallest daily, for €50 million, shipbuilder’s son Alexander Pugachyov is now spending a further €20 million on a marketing campaign to take it mainstream. He’s upping the print run by 20 times, has halved the cover price and has more than doubled newsroom staff from 40 to 100.

Jealous? There’s no part of this that makes immediate sense. In fact, contrasted with the cutbacks, climbdowns and contraction many parts of the industry are seeing, it looks like madness.

...

The Pugachyov scenario in France mirrors that of Alexander Lebedev in the UK ... The former KGB agent took the London Evening Standard, whose circulation was falling, off DMGT’s hands for just a nominal fee, forewent cover-price income in favour of free distribution on a higher print run, and pledged a £25 million investment over three years.

“£25 million investment??” That’s unheard of in today’s news publishing economy... Now Lebedev’s set to repeat the act by buying The Independent.

I think I can help Mr Andrews understand what's going on. It has nothing to do with "saving journalism."

These are prominent publications in their country. They are being bought not to make money but as vehicles to influence politics and society.

It's not the first time this has happened. Hearst used his newspapers for political influence, and many others have done the same.

Investing in propaganda...

The Russians, in particular, understand the power of media. At the heart of the Bolshevik party was its newspaper, Pravda.

The Bolshevik party wasn't investing in journalism when it funded and published Pravda -- it was investing in having its ideas discussed in society, and in the political realm.

These are ultra-rich individuals, they aren't buying the publications as investments in that business, but as an investment that will aid their other businesses.

Mr Andrews notes that Alexander Pugachyov is the son of a Russian shipbuilder and that the French government may place an order for four battleships. I think that's a pretty big clue that the investment isn't about "saving journalism."

Media businesses are often loss-leaders that help drive other businesses. You see this today a lot. Most online media sites, especially blogs, don't make money from online advertising but from selling other things, such as services, or research reports, hosting events, etc. You don't make money directly from the traffic.

- - -

I already have a loss leader, I just need to add services and products that I can sell to help support my journalism. That's why I've started to do some consulting for companies such as Intel, Pearltrees, SAP, and others.

Let me know if you need some help on media/business strategies - 415 336 7547.

SAN FRANCISCO/LONDON (Reuters) - Google Inc could win a widely expected victory next week in Europe's top court and still face many more battles over keyword advertising, the backbone of its Internet business model.

When we were driving out of town I said, "I hate the corpses of empires, they stink as nothing else. They stink so badly that I cannot believe that even in life they were healthy." "I do not think you can convince mankind," said my husband, "that there is not a certain magnificence about a great empire in being." "Of course there is," I admitted, "but the hideousness outweighs the beauty. You are not, I hope, going to tell me that they impose law on lawless people. Empires live by the violation of law." (Rebecca West, from Black Lamb and Grey Falcon)

Strange week this week. All Marvel and Vertigo. And lots of sex. Weird. And yes, I'm aware the fourth issue of Daytripper came out last week. I didn't get it, for some reason. I should have it this weekend. Dang. Let's move on!

Avengers vs. Atlas #3 (of 4) ("Hulk Smash!"/"Hey, Venus!") by Jeff Parker (writer, "Hulk"), Paul Cornell (writer, "Venus"), Gabriel Hardman (artist, "Hulk"), Leonard Kirk (artist, "Venus"), Elizabeth Breitweiser (colorist, "Hulk"), Brad Anderson (colorist, "Venus"), Tom Orzechowski (letterer, "Hulk"), and Joe Sabino (letterer, "Venus"). $3.99, 30 pgs, FC, Marvel.

Everyone reading this should know what I'm going to rant about. When Thor transports the Avengers and the agents of Atlas to Norway, he says, "But I know of one place on Midgard I can bring us all to!" Sorry, Thor - it's TAKE!!!!! Seriously, poor "take." No one loves it. So sad.

I love how Parker casually makes Hank Pym a dick even when he's not really trying. When the old-school Avengers find out that Bruce Banner is the Hulk (because Venus sang to him and calmed him down, turning him back to Banner), Pym says, "That's Dr. Bruce Banner! He's maybe the top physicist in the world -- well, besides me ..." Ha! And Parker makes Tony Stark a bit of a wuss, too - Marvel Boy telepathically informs Pym about what's happening, and Stark says, "He could have put the knowledge in me ... I would have gotten it." If that's not enough, in the next panel, Stark looks down at himself and says to no one in particular, "I built this suit ..." Whenever a writer is clever enough to drop stuff like that into his fairly standard superhero team-up (which this is), I appreciate it, because it just humanizes them and makes it easier to deal with the wackiness of a team from the 1960s (or a decade ago, according to Pym) joining up with a team from the present thanks to some time anomaly. They all fight the Hulk, Bob figures out what's up, and everything is set up for the final showdown. It's good, clean fun!

In the back-up story, Cornell and Kirk bring us Venus, love advice columnist. It's pretty hilarious (see the panel of awesome below), as she answers questions from Hercules, Deadpool (which is particularly hilarious), I assume Jocasta, the Hulk, Norman Osborn (more hilarity!), Kitty Pryde, and Clint Barton. It's very dependent on knowing Marvel continuity (unsurprisingly), and the only one I didn't get was the letter from Miss Dean. Help me out, more knowledgeable readers! It's a fun little tale.

Sex in this comic? Hoo-boy, you bet. It stars Venus in both stories, for crying out loud! In the first, Venus has to sing to calm Bruce down, and two superheroes get caught in the sound wave. Macking commences! And in the second, well, Deadpool's letter is the highlight, and I won't spoil it.

One panel of awesome:

Oh, Hulk, no one understands you!

Fables #93 ("The Little Murder Part Two of Two") by Bill Willingham (writer), David Lapham (artist), Lee Loughridge (colorist), and Todd Klein (letterer). $2.99, 22 pgs, FC, DC/Vertigo.

It's been two months since the last issue of Fables. Strange. Anyway, I always dig the short stories of this series because they seem to contain standalone stories, but Willingham always makes sure that things get tied into the main story later. In other words, I doubt we've seen the last of the some of these characters. The story itself is not great but not bad, as Ambrose needs to figure out a way to deal with the serious transgression from last issue in a way that doesn't rip his kingdom apart. He does it, of course, but there's still some restlessness among the subjects, and that can't be good. I do like the only witness for the defense - at first, I thought it was absolutely idiotic, but once John started expanding on his story, it made better sense. And hey - those people who wish to read political intent into writers' books can kind of have a field day here, as Willingham tackles the death penalty and the idea of culture leading to what some would call crime. I honestly don't care when writers inject their political beliefs into comics (if, indeed, that's what Willingham is doing here), because this issue, while not superb, does show how much difficulty Ambrose is going to have moving forward. That's what makes this such a neat series.

Sex in this comic? Definitely. Off-panel and after the issue ends, but oh yeah, someone's getting lucky!

One panel of awesome:

Won't someone think of the ... squirrel children!

Hercules: Fall of an Avenger #1 (of 2) (Hercules main story/"Greek Tragedy") by Greg Pak (writer, "Hercules"), Fred van Lente (writer, "Hercules"), Paul Tobin (writer, "Tragedy"), Ariel Olivetti (artist, "Hercules"), Reilly Brown (penciler, "Tragedy"), Jason Paz (inker, "Tragedy"), Wil Quintana (colorist, "Tragedy"), Simon Bowland (letterer, "Hercules"), and Joe Sabino (letterer, "Tragedy"). $3.99, 30 pgs, FC, Marvel.

There are a few writers that I simply will not read. I've read their stuff, disliked it enough to know it's kind of a pattern with them and not an anomaly, and won't try it again. There are some writers who I dislike so much that even if they hook up with a fantastic artist, it's not enough to get me to buy it. However, if I like the writer, usually I can take lousy art, because I'm much more interested in the writing in comics than the art. If the art doesn't make my eyes bleed and tells the story serviceably, I can deal with it. Very rarely will the art on a book I want to read by a writer I like keep me from buying it. Let me tell you, I had one of those moments on Wednesday, when I looked at this book and Ariel Olivetti's art.

I can't really put my finger on why I don't like Olivetti's art. I didn't always dislike it. A decade ago, when he was still drawing using heavy lines rather than whatever the hell he's doing now, it wasn't great art but it had a kind of mad energy to it. Then he started doing more and more delicate line work, it appears he's given up on inking, and I don't know what's going on with the coloring (an Irene Y. Lee is credited with "production" on this book; does she do the coloring or does Olivetti?). It's that faux-"realistic" look that, to me, is ridiculously static and, at times, downright creepy. It's kind of the same thing that Salvador Larocca has done in the past five years or so, with color washes that drains everything heavy from the page but makes the art far too ephemeral. It's not a good look. Olivetti is fine telling a story, but the art just repels me. But I bought this anyway, because I knew that Pak and Van Lente wouldn't let me down. And, heck, they didn't. Well, except for one brief exchange. I'll 'splain.

The premise of the book is that Amadues Cho and a bunch of heroes congregate at the Parthenon to honor Hercules. Amadeus is peeved at Athena and wants her to show up, but instead the heroes do. So they all tell stories about how groovy Hercules was. Thor talks about the time he and Herc had to outdrink a bunch of giants, while Namor tells them of the time Herc beat on him to get him out of a funk. (I wonder why Namor is wearing his new, "I'm so cool" outfit in his flashback when he's wearing his old-school, "I'm so cool I can look UNcool" underpants in the original comic. I mean, will people reading this comic be that confused that he ... changed his clothes?!?!?!?) These are not bad stories, and Thor's is quite funny. Then the babes show up, talking about how hot Herc was (it's true - they all say it!). Snowbird says that they all "lay" with him, then continues: "I know there are others in the crowd who should join us ... don't be shy." At which Northstar says, "Is that the time? Gotta go!" while Namor looks on, a question mark above his head. Ha ha, Jean-Paul had sex with Herc and he's embarrassed about it! Now, this bugged me. First of all, Herc is a god. And he's, you know, Greek. I always assumed he was kind of pansexual, so the idea of him having sex with men isn't that strange. Second, Northstar is (wait for it) gay. And everyone knows he's gay! Who cares if he had sex with Herc? It felt, to me, that Van Lente and Pak were saying that a gay man would be embarrassed that he had sex with a man, while the women aren't. This would have, actually, been a perfect opportunity for another Marvel hero to come out of the closet - the joke would have been funnier if Snowbird had said that and someone like Warren or Logan had shrugged and said, "Hey, it weren't no big thing." But it's weird that Northstar is embarrassed about it. This weird feeling continues on the next page, when Alflyse starts talking about her time with Herc (see the panel of awesome below). Wolverine and Fandral looked shocked. After she's done talking, Namor too looks shocked (and Thor looks like he's fondly remembering his own experiences with the Elven Tickler, which isn't too surprising, given that he's, you know, Thor). Logan is older than a century, and he knows how to get with the ladies. Fandral is a freakin' god. Namor, I suppose, is the most stuck-up of them, so him I can forgive. But the idea in mainstream comics, it seems, is that men like the sex as long as it's not too weird, while the women kind of tolerate the sex but certainly don't do anything wacky. Pak and Van Lente are subverting the second assumption, but reinforcing the first. Are you telling me Logan never got really weird with any of the seriously crazy women he hooked up with? Are you saying Fandral never did anything bizarre to mix things up after a thousand years of the missionary position? I've seen this attitude before in Marvel and DC comics, and it's a bit strange. If someone who looks like Alflyse starts talking about how much she enjoyed Herc's mastery of the Elven Tickler, I wouldn't looked shocked, I'd be breaking out the instruction manual to figure it out!

And then Athena shows up and tells Amadeus that he's the new leader of the Olympus group, which leads into next issue. And the back-up story has Venus and Namora going around telling people that Herc is dead. It's a clever idea by Tobin - apparently Herc invested money in stuff and then forgot about it, so he has all sorts of weird holdings all over the world, some of which have done very well for him (he was an early investor in Stark Industries, for instance). It's a nice little story that features a hydra. Which is never a bad thing to see.

Sex in this comic? See above. Plus, Venus get naked in a totally non-sexual situation (one of Herc's holdings was a nudist colony), and all the people who lived in homes that Herc owned happened to be women. I wonder why?

One panel of awesome:

I love Wolverine's expression!

Joe the Barbarian #3 (of ВосемБ) ("The Dying Boy") by Grant "Yes, this is just propaganda to get you to keep rats as pets, why do you ask?" Morrison (writer), Sean Murphy (artist), Dave Stewart (colorist), and Todd Klein (letterer). $2.99, 22 pgs, FC, DC/Vertigo.

Morrison unveils a few more secrets in this issue, as Joe is shown something that makes his journey through the strange world of more import than it already was, and a new adventurer joins the team. And of course, because it's a Grant Morrison comic, the very odd bad guys (well, I'm just going to assume they're bad guys; they could be kindly monks for all I know) are revealed at the end. There are typical Morrisonisms sprinkled throughout the dialogue, and it all moves along at a nice clip. Murphy remains the absolutely stunning star of the comic, though. The chase at the beginning of the issue is terrifically exciting, and when Joe and Jack arrive in Draka's town, Murphy gives us a full-page drawing that is simply gorgeous. When Joe collapses near the end of the issue, Murphy looks downward through his house, almost giving us vertigo. The book itself continues to get better, writing-wise, but Murphy's art is so staggering you almost don't need to read the text. That's so rare with a Morrison comic that it's almost unbelievable. But there it is!

Sex in this comic? It's about a boy in a fantasy land. Let's hope not!

One panel of awesome:

So portentous!!!!!

Marvel Boy: The Uranian #3 (of 3) ("Man of Two Worlds") by Jeff Parker (writer), Felix Ruiz (artist/letterer), and Val Staples (colorist). $3.99, 22 pgs + 18 pgs of 3 back-up stories, FC, Marvel.

This isn't a bad comic, and it looks great, but it does feel more like Parker is filling in the gaps of the characters from Agents of Atlas (or, I guess, Atlas) than telling a standalone story. He fleshed out some crucial points about Bob's past, namely his connection to Uranus and what his overlords really want (and if I call them "overlords," they can't be too benign, can they?), but this feels a bit trifling, as if it could have been told in a flashback in the regular series over the course of an issue or possibly two. Three issues is a bit much. I mean, we get to see a giant 1950s Marvel monster (see below), some nice parts about Bob's life, and a groovy mad scientist, but it still feels a bit too slight. Oh well. The art is fantastic, Parker's writing is fine as ever (even if the book itself is slight), and we get to see a bunch of reprints drawn by Bill Everett. If you're a fan of Jimmy Woo's team or Parker's writing, it's a fun book. For four bucks a pop, though, it's a bit steep.

Sex in this comic? Bob gets busy in a rocket with Violet. There's nothing better than zero-gravity sex! (Or, you know, so I'm told. By my astronaut friends. Of which I have many.)

One panel of awesome:

Jeff Parker + Felix Ruiz = awesome!

Spider-Woman #7 by Brian Michael Bendis (writer), Alex Maleev (artist), and Cory Petit (letterer). $3.99, 35 pgs, FC, Marvel.

Bendis writes at the end of this book that it's over, because it's way too much work for Maleev to do it, motion-comic style. Why they specifically had to do it motion-comic style isn't addressed, but apparently putting together a motion comic takes a lot more time and effort by the artist, and it was killing Maleev. KILLING HIM!!!!!! So they pulled the plug. Oh well.

I'm not that put out by it, because I was probably going to drop the book anyway after the first arc. I will defend the Bendis/Maleev Daredevil to anyone who tries to put it down (which, to be honest, isn't many people), but this just never got good. It had a nifty hook but Bendis simply didn't do anything with it, and in the end, he had to bring in the Avengers to bail Jessica out. This issue is just a big ol' dumb superhero fight with a few clever Bendisisms, but mostly, it's dumb. And Jessica is a total bitch. She's not a bitch in a charming, fucked-up way that Jessica Jones was in Alias, she's a bitch in a "Gosh, I really hope that Skrull kills her" way. She keeps calling the Asian girl "dumb" because she claims that her Skrull boyfriend is Spider-Man. Now, the way Maleev draws her, it seems like she's blind. Second, the Skrull is, you know, a shape-shifter, so even if she's not blind, he could look like Spider-Man. Jessica points out that Spider-Man "famously" lives in New York, but she's only been dating him three weeks, meaning he could be on vacation or something. So, um, Jessica? Shut the fuck up. As Abigail points out, your track record so far in this comic isn't great in the intelligence department, so if the girl from Madripoor believes she was dating Spider-Man, you're the last person in the world to call her dumb. And then, later, the Skrull tells her that the queen chose her form because "of all the people in the world ... we discovered that no one on this entire planet cares enough about you to notice you at all." Really, Skrull? Okay, from the way Jessica behaves in this comic, I see Skrull dude's point, but that's a bit extreme, isn't it? I mean, she has plenty of friends, after all. It's one of those things that sounds cool the first time you read it but then, once you think about it for more than a second, makes absolutely no sense. And then Wolverine tries to stab a shape-shifter to death. You'd think he'd know better.

So I would have ditched the book anyway, but now I don't have to. If you've been thinking about getting the trade, I'd skip it. Spend it on something, you know, good.

Sex in this comic? Not a bit. Jessica finds the Skrull in a strip club, though.

One panel of "awesome":

Really?

Vengeance of the Moon Knight #6 ("Shock and Awe Chapter 6") by Gregg Hurwitz (writer), Jerome Opeña (penciler), Jay Leisten (inker), Paul Mounts (colorist), and Joe Caramagna (letterer). $2.99, 23 pgs, FC, Marvel.

And now, Moon Knight And Me: A Love Story.

I have never made my love of Moon Knight a secret. I dig him. I love the whole multiple personalities thing, I love the whole weird network of operatives, I love the Doug Moench/Bill Sienkiewicz run with a love that is probably a little unhealthy, I love the Doug Moench/Kevin Nowlan run that followed it, I love the "Fist of Khonshu" series that followed that only lasted six issues and wasn't very good, I liked the 1990s series that also wasn't very good but lasted longer than any Moon Knight series ever, I loved the James Fry issues in the latter part of that run that were really bizarre eye candy, I loved the Stephen Platt issues that ended the run ... okay, that's a lie. I hated those issues. They're AWFUL. I loved the late 1990s mini-series that brought the character back from limbo, with Mark Texeira and then Tommy Lee Edwards on art. I loved the new series that launched a few years ago, which made our hero truly insane for, really, the first time (as much as Moench explored the idea of multiple personalities, you never got the sense that Moonie was all that crazy). And I loved the first few issues of this series, which returned Moon Knight to New York and brought back Bushman (okay, that wasn't too great an idea) and featured out of this world art by Opeña. I bought the first Moon Knight Essential volume because I didn't have the early appearances of the character. I'm going to buy the new hardcover of the Moench/Sienkiewicz collaborations before the first series launched even though I own some of them, because I love the character so much. I think that the first series is wildly underrated, as it was one of the first (if not the first) series to be released through the Direct Market, bypassing newstands and therefore allowing Moench and Sienkiewicz to tell more mature stories than mainstream comics before it. I think the character has a ton of potential that has been tapped a bit, but not enough. But that's just me.

So why am I explaining this? Well, as much as I dug what Hurwitz did in these first few issues (even though I didn't agree with bringing Bushman back and turning him into Bane), I thought this was a terrible way to end this arc and it makes me wonder if I will even buy the next arc. It makes me sad, but that's the way it is. In the first issue, it seemed as if Hurwitz was poking fun at the silliness of superheroes, but doing it subtly. I can deal with Moon Knight as satire, because it's an interesting take, especially as he's a bit, you know, out there. But as we got further into the arc, Hurwitz stopped doing that and this became much more of a straight-forward superhero comic. And I'm just not that interested in that anymore. I mean, Hurwitz brought Bushman back. So what? What happens to him? He ends up in an insane asylum. So what? Bushman's death was interesting because it pushed Moon Knight even further over the brink and set the stage for the previous series, which was excellent. Now he's back, and he's just another boring villain. Even in the mediocre 1990s series, he ruled a country, which added a bit of tension to his dealings with our hero. Now, he's dull. And we get another joke about Crawley getting hit on the head and changing his personality, back to what it was. This wasn't funny when it happened to Guy Gardner twenty years ago, and it's still not funny. I realize that I'm too close to the situation and I should be able to laugh at head injuries just like those uptight [insert ethnic group here] should be able to laugh at jokes at their expense, but it's not the fact that Crawley sustained a head injury and it changed his personality. It's that this book isn't a comedy, so tonally it was all wrong, and it's also that nobody seems to care. That's what bugged me when it happened to Guy - wouldn't someone think, "Hey, maybe we should check him out?" even if they liked his new personality more? Shouldn't Moon Knight have suggested that Crawley ought to get an MRI? It's too fraught with potential pitfalls to make it really funny, and Hurwitz didn't do(...)

Girl who likes the Shopping in Paris, London or Big Apple... but who hates the " Male Collections " and looks for the "Prototype"!


PS1: No. pic... No. answer... Sorry!!!
PS2: The Sadomasochists, the Collectors and the married Men.... Don't stop by... Thank you!!!

Officials from both countries have discussed a deterrent-sharing scheme but Britain has so far opposed the idea

France has offered to create a joint UK-French nuclear deterrent by sharing submarine patrols, the Guardian has learned.

Officials from both countries have discussed how a deterrence-sharing scheme might work but Britain has so far opposed the idea on the grounds that such pooling of sovereignty would be politically unacceptable.

Britain and France each maintain "continuous at-sea deterrence", which involves running at least one nuclear-armed submarine submerged and undetected at any given time. It is a hugely expensive undertaking, and its usefulness in a post-cold war world has long been questioned by disarmament campaigners.

Britain's independent deterrent, based on Trident missiles carried by submarines, could cost the country up to £100bn, according to some estimates, once planned modernisation to the fleet has been completed.

France also maintains a four-submarine Strategic Oceanic Force, with each submarine armed with 16 missiles.

Last September the prime minister said Britain's submarine fleet could be reduced from four to three as a gesture towards disarmament, but the total financial savings were reported as relatively small.

"We have talked about the idea of sharing continuity at sea as part of a larger discussion about sharing defence burdens," a French official said.

A British official confirmed that the French government had raised the idea of shared "continuous at-sea deterrence", but added that any such scheme would cause "outrage" in the midst of an election campaign.

Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown discussed the idea when the French president visited London in March 2008. The joint declaration afterwards simply said the two countries would "foster our bilateral dialogue on nuclear deterrence".

The same month, Sarkozy hinted at the potential for shared deterrence in a speech at Cherbourg. "Together with the United Kingdom, we have taken a major decision: it is our assessment that there can be no situation in which the vital interests of either of our two nations could be threatened without the vital interests of the other also being threatened," he said.

Sarkozy and Brown met again in Downing Street last Friday and "discussed some issues on the nuclear agenda", according to Downing Street, but he would not say whether the idea of joint UK-French deterrence had been explored further.

Following an underwater collision between French and British nuclear-armed submarines last February, France's defence minister, Herve Morin, said the two navies would consider co-ordinating patrols. "Between France and Britain, there are things we can do together ... one of the solutions would be to think about the patrol zones," he said.

It is unclear whether Morin's offer was taken up by the Royal Navy. The Sarkozy proposal would go much further – Britain and France would take turns to maintain an underwater vigil.

Proposals for closer UK-French defence co-operation have been driven by Paris, British defence officials emphasised yesterday, though Brown may raise the issue in remarks today to the Foreign Press Association in London.

Britain and France could synchronise nuclear deterrent patrols and co-operate in the deployment of surface fleet task forces, sources say. However, British officials played down the possibility of formal agreements on the nuclear deterrent – or on sharing each other's aircraft carriers.

"We could not make a full commitment," a defence source said, referring to the deployment of carriers. He referred to the British intervention in Sierra Leone 10 years ago and Iraq. France did not "want to have anything to do with" either operation, the source said.

However, both governments say they recognise the potential scope for much closer co-operation both in terms of strategy and in procuring new weapons systems.

Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, has spelled out the possibilities of closer co-operation on a number of occasions recently.

"Our most important bilateral relationship in Europe is with France," he said in a keynote speech. "Most importantly, we are Europe's only two nuclear powers and we contribute greatly to Nato's security because of this. A future Conservative government will continue and strengthen this relationship."

He added that if the Conservatives formed the next government, the Ministry of Defence would invite France to make a formal submission to the promised Strategic Defence and Security Review "stating what they expect from their relationship with the United Kingdom".

Fox told the Commons earlier this week: "We will need to be able to project power on a strategic level alongside the US and France."

He is expected today to point to the advantages of closer defence procurement co-operation with France – on a bilateral basis, he will emphasise.

Successive British governments have been committed to a policy of "continuous at-sea deterrence", with one nuclear-armed submarine on patrol at any time. Naval commanders in the past have argued that to ensure this would require four Trident submarines – one on patrol, one preparing to go out on patrol, with two others being refitted, perhaps one needing an unexpected and long period in dock.

Those in favour of maintaining four submarines also argue that producing three would be almost as expensive, because many of the costs go on initial research and development, building the infrastructure and training the workforce.

France has three nuclear-armed submarines plus a new sub yet to be deployed. Unlike Britain it also has aircraft capable of carrying nuclear bombs.

• Nuclear weapons
• Trident
• France
• Military
• Defence policy

Julian BorgerRichard Norton-Taylorguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

· 'It is not going to get better than this'
· Hodgson hails astonishing comeback

Roy Hodgson could savour the completion of a remarkable journey, as Fulham staged perhaps the finest comeback of their history to advance themselves as a 21st century European force.

The manager had recalled, on the eve of this Europa League last-16 second-leg fixture, how his team had been "as doomed as doomed could be" towards the end of the 2007-08 season. Yet their progress since they dodged relegation into the Championship has been eye-catching. Established in the Premier League's top 10, they will also have a shot at Wembley in their FA Cup quarter-final replay against Tottenham next Wednesday.

But here, on a pulsating night down by the Thames, Hodgson's players etched their names into folklore. "We should just do a Rocky Marciano and retire now because it's not going to get any better than this," said Hodgson. "This must come close to the greatest night of the club's history. On a personal note, I am not sure I can recall such a recovery. I am on top of the world."

Juventus, in their blinging gold away number, had brought their inimitable swagger to west London. Their starting line-up boasted four World Cup winners while there were two more on the substitutes' bench. You can bet that Mohamed al-Fayed would not have prevented them from shopping at Harrods, as his security people had done to Shakhtar Donetsk's players for the previous round.

The sense of anticipation was palpable yet the main event surpassed all expectations. As Fulham burrowed even deeper into uncharted European territory, Juventus simply melted. It is hard to describe the Craven Cottage atmosphere as white hot. Or intimidating. Visiting supporters from West Ham United, for example, like to taunt their hosts with chants like "You only drink white wine" and "Does your butler know you're here?" But the famous old stadium rocked to a raucous beat as Fulham shrugged off the early setback of David Trezeguet's goal to run their visitors ragged.

"The atmosphere was electric," said Hodgson. "We could not have had a worse start and an uphill task became even more uphill. But I was fully aware that there were 89 minutes to go. By half-time, I thought we were looking good to win." The sight of the great Fabio Cannavaro grasping desperately at Zoltan Gera to collect his 27th-minute red card summed up Juventus's toils. Cannavaro, also badly at fault for Bobby Zamora's goal, laughed when he saw the card's colour.

Rather like Internazionale at Chelsea on Tuesday night, Juventus pushed their licence to grapple to the limit: Fulham corners came to resemble WWE rumbles. But Cannavaro did not escape censure and nor did Jonathan Zebina in injury time, although his dismissal was the result of a more primal expression of frustration, a hack at Damien Duff.

Zebina gave a single-fingered gesture to the Juventus fans as he walked off. "The referee was too strict," said the Juventus manager Alberto Zaccheroni. "The Cannavaro sending-off played a part. Eleven versus eleven, I would not have expected us to be eliminated."

There was stardust up in the stands, not least in the shape of the actor Hugh Grant. He could enjoy four goals for his team and a funeral into the bargain. Gianluca Vialli, the ex-Juventus striker, numbered among the Italians present while Fabio Capello, who played and managed La Vecchia Signora, was there, too. The England manager cannot have failed to be impressed by Zamora who, with 16 goals and counting, has to be considered a wild card for inclusion in his World Cup squad.

"Bob has played well enough this season to at least merit a mention," said Hodgson. Fulham's winner had been advertised as they peppered Antonio Chimenti's goal but, when it came, it was worthy of beating any opposition. Clint Dempsey might never score a better one, a celebration of touch and vision. It provided the fitting finale to a night that Fulham will never forget. "Nine out of 10 times, a shot like that would not have made it," Dempsey said. "But sometimes, you have to go for it. We've gone from relegation contenders to quarter-finalists in Europe. That's life. Everything changes."

• Uefa Europa League
• Fulham
• Juventus

David Hytnerguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

LONDON (Reuters) - Sony is teaming up with European movie-rental firm Lovefilm to offer TV viewers in Britain instant access to films from the Web, as a land grab for space on Internet-connected televisions gets under way.

That's the official title. Blame DC!

So, in order to celebrate John Constantine's first appearance (in Swamp Thing #37, which came out in 1985), DC has produced this original graphic novel, written by Jamie Delano, who was the writer on Hellblazer when it was launched in 1988, and drawn by Mark Simpson, who like Frank Quitely works under a pseudonym, in this case Jock. Clem Robins goes along for the ride as the letterer. It's 25 dollars, and given that it's Jock, it's a really handsome comic book.

This is a strange book, because it's tough to review. I mean, it's a John Constantine story, written by the man who had more to do with creating the John Constantine we know today than even his creator. So Delano knows how to write a John Constantine story, and there's nothing really more to it than that. So on the one hand, it's a pleasant enough comic. On the other hand, Delano doesn't really do much more with it. He does a nice thing by taking John out of his comfort zone (London) and sending him to Iraq, where his trenchcoat kind of clashes with the setting (especially when the soldiers make him wear a bulletproof vest), but overall, the story is a fairly standard story. John sees a woman on the tube wearing the full, black burqa, and he's intrigued by her. He follows her to the British Museum, and when a bomb goes off in their vicinity, he gets her out of there and back to her flat. There, she drugs him and sets him to take the fall for the bomb. It turns out it's a grand scheme by British Intelligence to get John to work for them. In Iraq, a prisoner has ... done some strange things. Weird, mystical things that drive men mad. They want John to help, and the only way they can do that, as they can't appeal to his patriotic nature, is to blackmail him. So John goes along, even though he tells them flat out that they can expect a "hefty bill" for it.

There's a lot more to the plot, as John figures out what the deal is with the prisoner, gets closer to the woman who drugged him (she's an agent for the Brits), and gets involved with the usual stuff - demons and the like. That's why the book isn't great - Delano relies too much on the standard supernatural stuff, and there's nothing here that's terribly fresh. Delano relies a bit too much on gambling, which isn't visually exciting and therefore robs the climax, as well drawn it is, of some tension, and he doesn't get too much into John's psychological issues, so there's no interest there. It's mostly a puzzle box of a book, and while there's nothing wrong with that, it's not that clever, so even as a mental exercise, it falls a bit short.

The best part of the book is John's relationship with Aseera, the woman, because Delano keeps peeling back layers of her personality, and John has to adjust to them and move on. She's an interesting character, full of contradictions and hidden depth, and it would have been nice to see more of their relationship. Really, the best thing about Constantine, usually, is how he relates to the women in his life, because he simply doesn't know how to do it right. So the parts with Aseera are very well done, and while the rest of the book isn't bad, it stands in stark contrast to the parts with Aseera.

Jock is good, as usual. Unlike a lot of artists who work in the "Vertigo" milieu, he seems much more comfortable with wide-open spaces than dark, enclosed spaces, so the scenes in the desert look tremendous, even though the rest of the book looks good as well. His unfortunate coloring choice for Hell - lots of red - robs that part of the book of some of its power, as the linework is drenched in the colors. I don't mind the red, but it's somewhat overwhelming. Perhaps that's the point, but it doesn't work too well. The rest of the book, however, is very nice.

Delano actually ties some plot points in with his original run on the book, but the nice thing is that if you've never read those issues, it doesn't really matter - it's more of a fun Easter egg for long-time fans of the character. It reminds us how long John has been around, carrying his own series (22 years and counting!). Delano knows John very well, and there's a lot about the book that works. For 25 bucks, it's a bit expensive, mainly because it doesn't do anything new with John. It's just a good, solid John Constantine book that looks great. I hoped for a bit more, but if you're just looking for a decent supernatural tale starring Mr. Constantine, you might want to give this a look.

Do developers allow social background and personal philosophies to creep into their games?

In or near London next Thursday (25th) and looking for a slice of gaming discussion mixed with hands-on play? Then you'll probably be interested in the event ex-gamesblogger Aleks Krotoski is running at the Science Museum. Titled "What are games *really* teaching us?" the event includes a panel discussion that looks at the cultural ideologies of gaming – think capitalism, communism and feminism – as well as hand-on play with relevant games such as Harvest Moon, Job Island: Hard Working People and Civilisation. Or, as the blurb says:

Commercial computer games are built by designers whose personal philosophies and social backgrounds creep into their products. They're at times explicit (e.g., war games portrayal of enemy soldiers), and at other times implicit (.e.g., 'God Sims' reinforcing various political and financial ideologies). Why is Lara Croft attractive? What does the hippy ideology of Northern California have to do with virtual world Second Life? This lively discussion looks at what the underlying ideologies of games are teaching us when we play them.

The panel includes Pat Kane, author of Play Ethic and – for those of 80s kids reading – a member of popsters Hue & Cry, and games researcher and consultant John Kirriemuir.

What Are Games Really Teaching Us? takes place at the Dana Centre at the Science Museum on Thursday 25 March between 7-9pm and is free to enter.

What do you think then? Do games designers really allow their "personal philosophies and social backgrounds" to influence the games they make? Personally I would argue that – for example - Blade Runner has been more of an influence on gaming than political ideology. But what do you think?

• Events
• Games

Greg Howsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

A London hospital has begun treating Internet-addicted teens.

Read More: AFP

Read the comments on this post

Aegis Group has announced a $268 million bond issue to raise money for acquisitions in the U.S. and China, and also promoted Jerry Buhlmann, CEO of Aegis Media EMEA (the region covering Europe, the Middle East and Africa), to CEO of Aegis Group, starting May 1. At its annual results meeting this morning, London-based Aegis announced a 9.7% fall in organic revenue, which excludes currency fluctuations, acquisitions and sales, to $2.06 billion in 2009.

LONDON (Reuters) - Europe's online security would best be served by developing global cyber regulation, ending current "ad hoc" international efforts, British lawmakers said on Wednesday, echoing industry calls for worldwide rules.

LONDON (Reuters) - Young people in Britain turn to the internet to look for help with personal problems rather than seek advice from their parents or friends, according to a survey released on Thursday.

One of the concerns expressed by both users and experts attending Cloud Computing Congress in London this week was the risk of data being exposed to third parties in a multi-tenant environment. There seems to be a lot of confusion on the matter, so I thought it would be useful to blog a quick overview that may be helpful for people evaluating whether to go multi-tenant.

Intuitively, we feel that if our data is physically on the same computer system — or, in a fully multi-tenant stack, actually in the same database — then there has to be a higher risk of data being exposed. Either inadvertently, when for example a software bug or system mulfunction gives access to a user of another system on the same shared infrastructure. Or maliciously, when someone exploits some weakness in the architecture to gain illicit access to data.

In theory, there is some truth in this intuition. But in practice, it depends what level of multi-tenancy we’re talking about and how rigorously it has been architected. The theoretical comparison assumes the same security regime in both cases, whereas in real life, the provider of a multi-tenant service is going to put a lot of expertise and resource into making sure its infrastructure is as secure as possible against this kind of data exposure, which would be very bad for its reputation. Most multi-tenant systems are operated to much higher security standards than standalone systems. Look at it this way: in theory, a single house with a fence around it is much more secure than an apartment in a block shared with many other households. In practice, the householders in the apartment block will pool the cost of having a porter on duty 24×7 to control access to the building and monitor security.

There are two main risks to be aware of, depending on what type of infrastructure you’re looking at. The first risk applies to a virtualized infrastructure, where a single physical machine hosts many separate virtual machines. There is a theoretical risk that one of the machines in this kind of setup could monitor what its neighbours are doing, burrowing into the underlying infrastructure to bypass security implemented at the software layer. I’m not aware that anyone has shown they’ve been able to do this in a commercial cloud provider environment, but in theory the risk applies to anything from an infrastructure-as-a-service provider such as Amazon EC2, all the way up to a SaaS provider who is keeping customer data in separate virtual databases.

Some Gartner research that’s been publicized this week will fuel the anxieties of those who aren’t yet ready to trust multi-tenant clouds, but in fact the detail of the findings bears out what I’ve said about security measures. Gartner found that 60 percent of virtualized servers will be less secure than the physical servers they replace. But this is not because virtualization is inherently insecure, says Gartner’s Neil MacDonald. It’s because the people implementing this new, unfamiliar, technology aren’t doing it right. “Most virtualized workloads are being deployed insecurely. The latter is a result of the immaturity of tools and processes and the limited training of staff, resellers and consultants,” he explains.

Gartner provides a list of six risk factors that it says should be addressed. I’m sure that most cloud providers will already be on the right side of all these risk factors. It is internal enterprise virtualization projects that are neglecting them (some of which, please note, apply to projects that host virtualized servers on cloud infrastructure, but are still about user best practice rather than the provider’s infrastructure itself).

Risk number two is the risk that your data will inadvertently get exposed to other users, due to poor implementation of the access management process or some kind of software bug. People are most conscious of this risk in a multi-tenant database, where every customer’s data is stored in the same tables, but it also applies where only the application code is shared, since a simple slip could result in redirection to the wrong database. If there’s a vulnerability, it could be maliciously exploited, but most of these episodes are cases when a user logs into their system as normal and discovers they’re looking at someone else’s data. The best known cases of this have been in the online banking world (which hasn’t stopped people using online banking, by the way).

The fact that, in theory, there’s a greater inherent risk of this happening means that, in practice, providers go to great lengths to ensure that it never does. It is a very simple matter to flag data as belonging to a specific customer and then make sure that flag is always respected when reading data. Providers build and test their software to design out the risk of these data leakages.

It comes down to trust and confidence. Knowing these risks, do you believe your provider will have done what’s necessary to prevent them occurring? It’s also important to weigh up the risks your data is exposed to if you don’t use a cloud provider. How secure is it kept on-premise or in a third-party hosting center under your own control? There’s a tendency to distrust multi-tenancy simply because it’s new and less well understood (and requires us to trust a third-party provider), but we too readily forget the shortcomings of more familiar environments.

One final consideration to bear in mind is the law. There may be types of regulated data that, because the law was drafted before virtualization became commonplace, forbid the hosting of data on a shared infrastructure. Unfortunately, the only way to get round this — even though the unintended effect of following the law may be, paradoxically, to make the data less secure — is to get the law changed.

Ad serving technology firm Videoplaza announced today that it has raised a €3.5 million ($5 million) financing round led by Nordic venture capital firms Creandum and Northzone. The company, which focuses on helping major media companies in Europe to monetize content on their web sites with video ads, has developed a platform called Monetizer, enabling publishers to manage, track, and set rules around how ads are served across different media properties.

Videoplaza already claims customers in eight European countries, having just brought on a publisher in Russia to expand into that market. Its business is particularly strong in the Nordic states, where the company serves ads for five of the top eight broadcasters, CEO Sorosh Tavakoli said in a phone interview. It also has a presence in the U.K. and France, and is looking to expand further into Western Europe, including Germany, Spain and Italy.

Videoplaza is allowing its customers to set rules for different video properties so that they can serve the maximum number of ads without turning users off. “We help their in-house sales staff sell more effectively,” Tavakoli said. “We do that by helping publishers to achieve a balance between the user experience and the value that their advertisers get, so that they can show as many ads as possible and charge as much as possible for every ad.”

Videoplaza, which was founded about two and a half years ago in Sweden, now has about 20 employees, with its headquarters and R&D center in Stockholm and additional sales offices in London and Paris. The latest funding comes on top of a €420,000 ($667,802) round of financing from Creandum and angel investors that Videoplaza raised in mid-2008. With the latest round, Tavakoli says the company expects to double its headcount by the end of the year, adding more sales people throughout Europe and continuing to invest in its ad serving technology.

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Fox News' Marc Siegel said he believed the findings of a 3-month-old email survey which found that 46 percent of primary care physicians would consider leaving their profession if health care reform passes despite the survey's questionable methodology because its findings were similar to a September 2009 Investor's Business Daily/TIPP poll. However, Fox News previously acknowledged that the IDB/TIPP poll was also "not scientific," and statistician Nate Silver stated that the poll was "simply not credible."

Siegel uses "not scientific" IBD/TIPP poll to prop up unscientific Medicus Firm survey

From the March 17 edition of Fox News' America Live:

MEGYN KELLY (ANCHOR): Well, the health care survey conducted back in December is getting some new attention today. It shed some light on how some medical professionals feel about the president's plan to reform the health care system. According to the survey which was conducted by The Medicus Firm, which is a national physician search firm, almost half of doctors who participated say they will either be forced to leave or will want to quit the medical profession if this bill actually passes. Joining us now for a fair debate, Dr. Kathleen London, a family practician, and Dr. Marc Siegel, a member of our Fox news medical a-team. Good afternoon, doctors.

[...]

So this, we're just being told that actually the New England Journal of Medicine, which was originally responsible for posting, not publishing, not conducting the survey, but for posting it on its web site later removed it. It's not a scientific poll, it's a survey, but does it bear any truth in your experience?

[...]

KELLY: Dr. Siegel, do you accept -- do you agree that this survey probably doesn't represent how most doctors feel about this overhaul?

DR. MARC SIEGEL: No, Megyn I don't agree. First of all, there were 1,200 physicians that were surveyed here, and it also reflected what was found in an IBS/TIPP poll that was done back in September where Investors Business Daily also surveyed over a thousand physicians.

Siegel was referring to a September 2009 IBD/TIPP poll which found that 45 percent of practicing physicians would consider leaving their practice if health care reform were passed.

But IBD/TIPP poll's credibility previously refuted by Fox News, Silver

Nate Silver: Poll is "simply not credible." In a September 16 post to his blog FiveThirtyEight.com, Silver listed five reasons why the IBD poll should be "completely ignore[d]":

1. The survey was conducted by mail, which is unusual. The only other mail-based poll that I'm aware of is that conducted by the Columbus Dispatch, which was associated with an average error of about 7 percentage points -- the highest of any pollster that we tested.

2. At least one of the questions is blatantly biased: "Do you believe the government can cover 47 million more people and it will cost less money and th quality of care will be better?". Holy run-on-sentence, Batman? A pollster who asks a question like this one is not intending to be objective.

3. As we learned during the Presidntial campaign -- when, among other things, they had John McCain winning the youth vote 74-22 -- the IBD/TIPP polling operation has literally no idea what they're doing. I mean, literally none. For example, I don't trust IBD/TIPP to have competently selected anything resembling a random panel, which is harder to do than you'd think.

4. They say, somewhat ambiguously: "Responses are still coming in." This is also highly unorthodox. Professional pollsters generally do not report results before the survey period is compete.

5. There is virtually no disclosure about methodology. For example, IBD doesn't bother to define the term "practicing physician", which could mean almost anything. Nor do they explain how their randomization procedure worked, provide the entire question battery, or anything like that.

Silver added: "There are pollsters out there that have an agenda but are highly competent, and there are pollsters that are nonpartisan but not particularly skilled. Rarely, however, do you find the whole package: that special pollster which is both biased and inept. IBD/TIPP is one of the few exceptions."

Fox News itself acknowledged that the poll is "not scientific." During Neil Cavuto's discussion of the IBD/TIPP poll on the September 16 edition of Fox News' Your World, the on-screen graphic indicated that the poll was "not scientific":

The Medicus Firm's survey was a promotional document for firm, used unscientific methodology

The Medicus Firm - a medical recruiting firm -- conducted the survey in December 2009. The Medicus Firm, a Dallas- and Atlanta-based firm that recruits and places physicians in jobs, was responsible for conducting the survey. It issued a press release about the results on December 17, 2009. A report written by the Medicus Firm subsequently appeared in Recruiting Physicians Today, an employment newsletter produced by Massachusetts Medical Society, "the publishers of the New England Journal of Medicine." The report also appeared on the NEJM "CareerCenter" website, but was taken down on March 17.

Methodology consisted of emailing doctors in the Medicus Firm's database. The NEJM CareerCenter article indicated that "[t]he survey sample was randomly selected from a physician database of thousands. The database has been built over the past eight years by The Medicus Firm (formerly Medicus Partners and The MD Firm) from a variety of sources including, but not limited to, public directories, purchased lists, practice inquiries, training programs, and direct mail responses. The survey was conducted via emails sent directly to physicians."

Survey write-up was essentially a promotional document for the firm. After discussing the results of its survey, Medicus touted the importance of physician recruitment firms "[a]fter health reform is passed and implemented":

What does this mean for physician recruiting? It's difficult to predict with absolute certainty, but one consequence is inevitable. After health reform is passed and implemented, physicians will be more in demand than ever before. Shortages could be exacerbated further beyond the predictions of industry analysts. Therefore, the strongest physician recruiters and firms will be in demand. Additionally, hospitals and practices may be forced to rely on unprecedented recruitment methods to attract and retain physicians. "Health reform, even if it's passed in a most diluted form, could be a game-changer for physician recruitment," said Bob Collins, managing partner of The Medicus Firm in Texas. "As competitive as the market is now, we may not even be able to comprehend how challenging it will become after health reform takes effect."

Fox News pushed both dubious survey and poll

Fox pushed Medicus survey, falsely attributed it to New England Journal of Medicine. Several Fox News personalities highlighted the dubious survey and falsely attributed it to the credible New England Journal of Medicine. 

Fox ran wild with "not scientific" IBD poll.  Numerous Fox News media figures highlighted the IBD/TIPP poll, even after Fox News had described it as "not scientific."