centerimg title="Atek OnBoard Travel Keyboard" style="MARGIN: 0px" alt="Atek OnBoard Travel Keyboard" src="http://www.ubergizmo.com/photos/2008/12/atek-kb.jpg" border="0" //centerbr / pAtek is offering its a href="http://www.atek.com/onboard-travel-keyboard.html"OnBoard Travel Keyboard/a that comes in a pretty interesting form factor - it boasts 99 keys complete with numeric functionality, with a protective sliding cover to prevent dust and any other unwanted riff-raff from getting in when traveling. Nearly as heavy as the lightest of netbooks, the Atek OnBoard Travel Keyboard tips the scales at 1.4 pounds and won't take up too much space in your luggage with its 14.75" length that is able to fit snugly into most laptop cases. You will miss out on the Print Screen, Scroll Lock, Pause Break, and right side Ctrl and Windows keys though, so do think again whether you need these in your line of work before forking out A href="http://www.atek.com/onboard-travel-keyboard.html"$30/A for it./P pPermalink: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/12/atek_onboard_travel_keyboard.html"Atek OnBoard Travel Keyboard/a from Ubergizmo (a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com"US/a, a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/fr"FR/a) | a href="http://www.uberbargain.com/"Good deals/a | Hot: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/blackberry_storm_review.html"Storm Review/a/p pmap name="google_ad_map_081204193712" area shape="rect" href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/081204193712?pos=0" coords="1,2,367,28"/ area shape="rect" href="http://services.google.com/feedback/abg" coords="384,10,453,23"//map img usemap="#google_ad_map_081204193712" border="0" src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_imgamp;client=ca-pub-7335032025195922amp;channel=9684588219amp;output=pngamp;cuid=081204193712amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ubergizmo.com%2F15%2Farchives%2F2008%2F12%2Fatek_onboard_travel_keyboard.html"//p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/sOSns8a139WXx96hB4PBBEzJ2Xk/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/sOSns8a139WXx96hB4PBBEzJ2Xk/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=4UScf9QB"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=6KCu9HaG"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=6KCu9HaG" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=NoHM6Gw8"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=jgBEdlP3"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=jgBEdlP3" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=HzQF39Ra"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=HzQF39Ra" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ubergizmo/~4/LrmVinAopkk" height="1" width="1"/

Metisse est un projet développé par des chercheurs français qui vise à révolutionner les interfaces de bureau. Le but est de pouvoir interagir autrement avec son bureau, en ajoutant de la profondeur, des effets de perspectives etc ... Vous avez certainement déjà vu ce projet en action, voici quelques vidéos qui parleront d’elles mêmes.

Le principe de base est similaire à compiz : les fenêtres sont transformées par le gestionnaire pour obtenir des effets, ou des transformations. La principale force de Metisse par rapport à compiz est qu’il est possible d’interagir avec ces fenêtres transformées. Quand vous êtes sous compiz, impossible d’appuyer sur le bouton pause de la vidéo quand le scale, le coverflow ou le cube sont activés. C’est ce qu’on appelle l’Input redirection (IR), longtemps attendu pour compiz mais qui n’existe actuellement qu’à l’état de patches expérimentaux. Sous Metisse, on peut manipuler à volonté des fenêtres transformés, les tourner dans tous les sens, les réduire, les augmenter etc ...

Un désavantage de Metisse est que pour arriver à faire de l’IR, un 2e serveur X (modifié) doit être lancé. C’est à l’intérieur de ce serveur que Metisse est exécuté. Si vous avez connus XGL, c’est un peu la même problématique.

Autre problème, ce serveur X modifié n’est pas synchronisé avec le développement actuel de X, donc certaines options récentes peuvent être absentes.

Malgré cela, l’utilisation reste possible dans de bonnes conditions, soit en lançant Metisse au démarrage (au changement de session), soit en le lançant dans une session existante et Metisse sera une simple fenêtre dans votre environnement.

Au niveau de sa disponibilité, Metisse a été énormément poussé par Mandriva qui l’a intégré depuis pas mal de temps à sa distribution. Mandriva participe également au développement de par ses remontés de bugs, mais aussi parce que le mainteneur de Metisse dans Mandriva fournit pas mal de patches en retour. Je ne l’ai pas vu sur Fedora, mais il existe des paquets pour des distributions moins connues comme Zenwalk.

Sous Ubuntu et Debian, aucun paquet n’existe encore dans les dépôts officiels. Mais vous allez maintenant pouvoir servir de béta-testeurs Des paquets sont disponibles dans mon PPA. Pour Debian, il faut télécharger les sources dans le PPA (les fichiers *.tar.gz) de nucleo et metisse et les reconstruire sous Debian.

2 possibilités pour tester : le raccourci dans le menu Accessoires pour lancer une “fenêtre” indépendante, soit au démarrage choisissez Metisse. Assurez vous d’avoir l’accélération 3D activée (cad compiz qui peut marcher sur votre machine).

Metisse est configuré de façon assez standard dans ces paquets. Il existe des options d’optimisation possibles, mais il faudra lancer Metisse manuellement (voir la doc) mais cela n’a rien de sorcier. Les nombreux raccourcis claviers sont présent sur cette page.

Je n’ai pas pu tout tester, je suis donc très intéressé par vos retours et vos commentaires

Amusez vous bien !

Liens :

• Site officiel : http://insitu.lri.fr/metisse/

   Tagged: Debian, Metisse, Packages, planet-libre, Ubuntu   

Billet original de Gilir.Votez pour cet article sur le Planet Libre.

Face à une équipe russe déjà qualifiée et annoncée démobilisée, l'AS Nancy Lorraine n'est pourtant pas à la fête ce jeudi, à l'occasion de la 4e journée de la Coupe de l'UEFA, sur une pelouse de Marcel-Picot détrempée, où le CSKA Moscou mène à la pause

(Football) A la pause, le CSKA Moscou mène sur la pelouse de l'AS Nancy-Lorraine qui avait pourtant ouvert le score par Monsef Zerka. Les Russes dominent largement les débats. (6 articles connexes)

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/12/headphones_8.jpg" width="800" height="490" style="display:block;float:none;" /strongThe Gadget:/strong Not to be confused with the a href="http://www.amazon.com/Apple-In%252dEar-Headphones-%252d-M9394G%252fC/dp/B000VRU4JE/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8s=electronicsqid=1228421805sr=8-1"original In-Ear Headphones/a, Apple's a href="http://gizmodo.com/5047355/new-apple-premium-in+ear-headphones-with-dual-drivers-only-79"new In-Ear Headphones/a have been redesigned from the ground up with balanced audio powered by two drivers in each ear. It also comes with a remote and microphone that's compatible with the iPod Nano 4G, iPod touch 2G, iPod Classic and iPhone 3G (kinda).br script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" galleryPost('inearapple', 3, ''); /script/p pstrongPrice:/strong $80/p pstrongThe Verdict:/strong After a history of offering lackluster earbuds, Apple has come through with a product that sounds really good and is reasonably priced, all things considered. The balanced sound and dual drivers makes all the difference in the quality factor. While not necessarily thumpy, the bass has a nice resonance without drowning out many of the high end intricacies found in jazz or electronic music. The midrange audio is relatively flat and doesn't overpower your ears, which is nice because it allows the high end noises to really stand out, letting you hear things you don't get from your car or computer speakers./p pTo see how they stacked up in the headphone scheme of things, I tested them against a pair of standard iPod headphones, the premium Zune headphones, and the a href="http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/shure-nuf/shure-busts-out-99-se110-earphones-secretly-makes-them-iphone-friendly-295572.php"Shure SE110s/a, the winner of our a href="http://gizmodo.com/5033455/ultimate-cut+the+crap-in+ear-headphone-battlemodo"earphone battlemodo/a./p pbull; Unsurprisingly, the Apple In-Ears outclassed the normal iPod earphones in every category, providing superior sound and comfort./p pbull; The Zune Premium Headphones v2, which are very good for only costing $30-$40, had bass that was a bit punchier, but could not compete against the mids and highs of the Apple In-Ears. If you really like bass or a lower price, you might favor the Zune headphones, which more than get the job done. But on sound quality alone, the Apple In-Ear headphones are superior./p pbull; Compared to the Shure SE110s, the Apple In-Ear headphones don't quite match up. It's not a stark difference between the two, but the SE110s are superior in almost every category, from bass, to high end clarity. Part of that is because the Apple In-Ears don't have the noise isolation capability, and partly because they're just not quite as good. And though theyre $40 cheaper than the SE110s MSRP, you can find the SE110s at some online outlets as low as $75./p pAs far as remote capabilities go, I tested the Apple In-ear headphones with an iPhone 3G and a first gen iPod touch (neither of which are officially supported. As Apple claims, the audio works fine with both devices. Neither the remote or the mic work with the iPod touch 1G at all, merely reducing it to a pair of headphones. On the iPhone 3G, you can't use the volume, or track changing controls. The remote can only play/pause a song, answer/end a call and make use of the microphone. But all of those work perfectly fine on the iPhone./p pOverall, the Apple In-Ear Headphones are a quality product at a fairly reasonable price. They sound great, and work as expected. That said, unless you really need a remote on your headphones (or just want to show the world you're a card-carrying member of the Cult of Apple), there are still a couple of better values out there. Still, Apple's latest headphone offering is not a bad choice. [a href="http://www.apple.com/ipod/inearheadphones/"Apple/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=03e4041ce7fd038a1a850df04010aec3p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=03e4041ce7fd038a1a850df04010aec3p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=03e4041ce7fd038a1a850df04010aec3" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=LXoqe0YF"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=3TqoY2Gw"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=PIfKXUkk"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=PIfKXUkk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=fkm6gjMb"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=fkm6gjMb" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/hjJ4D2TXwZo" height="1" width="1"/

News/release from megab


After three very long months my project is finally complete. For my senior seminar class I chose to make a game for the game boy advance. After going through a few excellent tutorials I was well on my way to making a great game. Gravity Ball Advance is a game where you fight gravity and avoid objects such as walls. There are a total of 9 levels with different environments such as reverse gravity, space, fans, and switches and three difficulty levels to choose from. At the end of every third level there is a boss you must defeat.
Controls:
Up/A - Move up
Down/B - Move down
Start - Pause game
Left/Right - Move left/rightDownload and Give Feedback Via Comments

thanks to pdroms for news info
Attached Files GravityBallAdvance.rar (1.95 MB)

iJournal of cell science (25 November 2008)/ibr /br /MOR1, the Arabidopsis thaliana homologue of the Xenopus microtubule-associated protein MAP215, is required for spatial organization of the acentrosomal microtubule arrays of plant cells. To determine how loss of MOR1 function affects microtubule dynamics, we compared various parameters of microtubule dynamics in the temperature-sensitive mor1-1 mutant at its permissive and restrictive temperatures, 21 degrees C and 31 degrees C, respectively. Dynamic events were tracked in live cells expressing either GFP-tagged beta-tubulin or the plus end tracking EB1. Microtubule growth and shrinkage velocities were both dramatically reduced in mor1-1 at 31 degrees C and the incidence and duration of pause events increased. Interestingly, the association of EB1 with microtubule plus ends was reduced in mor1-1 whereas side wall binding increased, suggesting that MOR1 influences the association of EB1 with microtubules either by modulating microtubule plus end structure or by interacting with EB1. Although mor1-1 microtubules grew and shrank more slowly than wild-type microtubules at 21 degrees C, the incidence of pause was not altered, suggesting that pause events, which occur more frequently at 31 degrees C, have a major detrimental role in the spatial organization of cortical microtubules. Extensive increases in microtubule dynamics in wild-type cells when shifted from 21 degrees C to 31 degrees C underline the importance of careful temperature control in live cell imaging.br /iEiko Kawamura, Geoffrey O Wasteneys/i

Face à une équipe russe déjà qualifiée et annoncée démobilisée, l'AS Nancy Lorraine n'est pourtant pas à la fête ce jeudi, à l'occasion de la 4e journée de la Coupe de l'UEFA, sur une pelouse de Marcel-Picot détrempée, où le CSKA Moscou mène à la pause (1-2). Capables d'ouvrir la marque par Zerka, les hommes de Correa ont cédé par la suite face à la technique des Brésiliens Love et Ramon.

Créé par AamirM (Regen, Nugen...), il s'agit d'un émulateur de PC-Engine/TurboGraFX-16/SuperGrafx. Tout comme Regen, son but est de se focaliser un maximum sur la précision de l'émulation (c'est à dire être le plus proche possible de la réalité). Il s'agit d'une refonte total de l'émulateur, peut-être légèrement plus lente que la précédente mais beaucoup plus complète, en voici les améliorations: - CPU emulator rewritten. - Completely new PSG with more accurate noise emulation. - Completely new VDC/VCE core. More accurate. Everything is implemented now. - Cycle accurate sample generation support. - New High Quality sound mode. Will result in more accurate sound. This can slow down the emulation speed quite considerably so only turn it on if you have a fast enough PC. - SuperGrafx support. All SGX games run perfectly. - Street Fighter 2 banking support. - Almost all glitches should now be gone. - Configuration file containg emulator related settings is now created. Some setting, righ now, can only be changed by modifiying it. - Save state support. By default, the quick save states will be saved in the Saves subfolder. It can be changed by changing StatePath in TurboEngine.ini. - Turbo Engine now remembers recently loaded ROMs. File History will contain recently loaded ROMs along with its full path. - Setting ShortHistoryNames in TurboEngine.ini to 1 will only display ROM names instead of its full path in File History. - Support for changing Window sizes. - Fullscreen support. It is a bit buggy at the moment. But will work out most of the time. - VSync support. This will remove tearing in the video. Depending on your monitor or video card, it can also cause stuttering in video or sound. - Kega Fusion plugin system support. Only 2x scalers supported at the moment. - Turbo Mode support. - Brighten option added. This will take out the differences between the TV and monitor brightness. It is recommended to turn it on. - Various overscan options added. - Many aspect ratio correction options added. Note that Correct aspect ration will only work in fullscreen mode. For correcting aspect in windowed mode, use Window Ratio option. - Window aspect ratio correction option added. - Option to disable sound. - Lowpass filter option added. - Loud option added to make PSG a bit more heavy and effective :) . Though it can result in sound getting clipped. - Option to Save/Load BRAM. If turned on, BRAM will be saved or loaded otherwise it will be discarded. - Cheat file support added. - DirectInput support added. This means joypads, gamepads, joysticks etc.. are now supported. - Option to redefine input settings. Note that 6-button option, though listed, will not work. - Option to revert key settings back to default. - Option to make window top most. - Autopasue option added which will pause the emulator whenever it loses focus. - High priority option added. - Option to disable screen savers while emulator is running. - Option to show FPS. - About box added ;)

A la pause, le CSKA Moscou mène sur la pelouse de l'AS Nancy-Lorraine qui avait pourtant ouvert le score par Monsef Zerka. Les Russes dominent largement les débats.

img src="http://media.sporever.fr/sport365/images/resized/block1/144x66_39300.jpg" alt="C3 : Nancy-CSKA Moscou (1-2, mt)" align="left" style="margin: 5px;" /A la pause, le CSKA Moscou mène sur la pelouse de l'AS Nancy-Lorraine qui avait pourtant ouvert le score par Monsef Zerka. Les Russes dominent largement les débats.img width='1' height='1' src='http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/356/f/4939/s/2801636/mf.gif' border='0'/div class='mf-viral'table border='0'trtd valign='middle'a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/sendemail2_fr.html?title=Foot - C3 : Nancy-CSKA Moscou (1-2, mt)link=http://www.football365.fr/la-une/article_280722_C3-Nancy-CSKA-Moscou-1-2-mt.shtml" target="_blank"img src="http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/partagez.gif" border="0" //a/tdtd valign='middle'a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark_fr.cfm?title=Foot - C3 : Nancy-CSKA Moscou (1-2, mt)link=http://www.football365.fr/la-une/article_280722_C3-Nancy-CSKA-Moscou-1-2-mt.shtml" target="_blank"img src="http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif" border="0" //a/td/tr/table/divbr/br/a href="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/25853591441/u/89/f/4939/c/356/s/41948726/a2.htm"img src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/25853591441/u/89/f/4939/c/356/s/41948726/a2.img" border="0"//a

Nach den Niederlagen von Schalke und Berlin wollen es Hamburg und Wolfsburg heute besser machen. Während der HSV in Prag gewinnen muss, um sicher in die nächste Uefa-Cup-Runde einzuziehen, reicht den Wolfsburgern gegen Portsmouth ein Unentschieden. Verfolgen Sie die Spiele im Live-Ticker, dazu die aktuellsten Bilder.

strongTurbo Engine 16/strong émule la strongPC-Engine/strong aussi nommé Core-GrafX ou Turbo GrafX 16 selon les pays. Cet émulateur a été développé par AamirM pour la RetroEmu Summer Coding Competition. Maintenant, il émule également la SuperGrafx avec l'excellent a href="http://www.emunova.net/veda/test/48.htm"Ghouls Ghosts/a.br / br / p class="center"img src="http://www.emunova.net/img/actu/44aa8f6dfb41488475455c8c8ae0eef8.png" alt="" border="1" //pbr / blockquote- Réécriture complète de l'émulateur.br / - PSG complètement nouveau avec une émulation plus précise.br / - Noyau VDC/VCE complètement nouveau. Plus précis. Tout est maintenant implémenté.br / - Support de la génération d'échantillon avec "cycle exact".br / - Nouveau mode sonore "Haute Qualité". Il en résultera un son plus précis. Il peut ralentir considérablement la vitesse d'émulation, donc activez le seulement si vous avez un PC assez rapide.br / - Support de la SuperGrafx. Tous les jeux SuperGrafx tournent parfaitement.br / - Support de la segmentation mémoire de Street Fighter II.br / - Presque tous les problèmes devraient avoir disparus.br / - Création d'un fichier de configuration contenant les réglages de l'émulateur. Maintenant, certains réglages ne peuvent être modifiés qu'en modifiant ce fichier.br / - Support des sauvegardes d'état. Par défaut, les sauvegardes rapides seront enregistrées dans le sous-dossier "Saves". Cela peut être changé en modifiant "StatePath" dans le fichier TurboEngine.ini.br / - Turbo Engine se souvient maintenant des roms récemment chargées. "File History" contiendra les roms précédemment chargées ainsi que leur chemin complet.br / - Le paramètre "ShortHistoryNames" dans TurboEngine.ini réglé à 1 affichera seulement les noms des roms au lieu de leur chemin complet dans "File History".br / - Support du changement de taille de la fenêtre.br / - Support du plein écran. Il contient encore quelques problèmes. Mais il fonctionne la plupart du temps.br / - Support de la Vsync. Cela supprimera les déchirures de la vidéo. Selon votre moniteur ou votre carte graphique, il peut également provoquer des bégaiements du son ou de la vidéo.br / - Support du système de plugin de Kega Fusion. Actuellement supporte seulement des filtres scalers x2.br / - Support du mode Turbo.br / - Ajout de l'option "luminosité". Il est recommandé de l'activer.br / - Diverses options de sur-balayage ajoutées.br / - Ajout de beaucoup d'options pour corriger l'aspect ratio. A noter que "Correct aspect ration" fonctionnera seulement en mode plein écran. Pour corriger l'aspect en mode fenêtre, utilisez l'option "Window Ratio".br / - Option pour désactiver le son.br / - Ajout d'une option filtre passe-bas.br / - Ajout de l'option "Loud" pour rendre le son PSG un peu plus lourd et efficace.br / - Option pour Sauvegarder/Charger la BRAM. Si elle est activée, la BRAM sera enregistrée et chargée.br / - Support des codes triche.br / - Support de DirectInput. Cela signifie que les manettes sont supportées.br / - Option pour redéfinir les réglages des entrées. A noter que l'option 6-boutons est listée, mais elle ne fonctionne pas.br / - Option pour revenir aux réglages des touches par défaut.br / - Option pour mettre la fenêtre en avant.br / - Ajout de l'option Autopause qui mettra en pause l'émulateur à chaque fois que le focus de la fenêtre est perdu.br / - Ajout de l'option "Priorité Haute".br / - Ajout d'une option pour désactiver l'écran de veille que l'émulateur tourne.br / - Ajout d'une option pour montrer le taux d'image par seconde.br / - Ajout de la fenêtre "Au Sujet de"./blockquote pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/emunovaNews?a=ndlSal"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/emunovaNews?i=ndlSal" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/emunovaNews?a=W3MfO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/emunovaNews?i=W3MfO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/emunovaNews?a=XQztO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/emunovaNews?i=XQztO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/emunovaNews?a=Kc9tO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/emunovaNews?i=Kc9tO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/emunovaNews?a=OPabO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/emunovaNews?i=OPabO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/emunovaNews?a=i7nlo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/emunovaNews?i=i7nlo" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/emunovaNews/~4/474907913" height="1" width="1"/

Jeudi, au cours d’une conférence de presse tenue à Tenerife, aux Canaries (Espagne), l’Américain Lance Armstrong (Astana), de retour dans les pelotons en 2009 après trois ans de pause, a dévoilé tout le bien qu'il pense de son coéquipier espagnol Alberto Contador.

Alors que l'Angleterre joue au football pendant les fêtes de Noël, l'Allemagne avait l'habitude d'observer une longue pause pendant l'hiver.

L'Etat entend ainsi résoudre par voie administrative tout litige qui pourrait naître de ses relations avec ces personnels. Après la pause observée à la suite de l'adoption de la loi de finances 2009, les députés ont repris du service hier au palais de

I bought Fieldrunners (I'll write FR in this post) yesterday since lots of people recommend it and Tap Defense (TD) wet my appetite for Tower defense strategy gaming.

But for me Fieldrunners was a disappointment. Yes, it has nice graphics and it's an OK game. But it doesn't come close to the fun provided by Tap Defense. TD has more and much more interesting Tower types and its system with interest on your spare gold is brilliant. Further, in FR your enemies sometimes look like small kids and they also sound like that when they die. It doesn't feel good at all. Killing creatures from Hell is an excellent alternative.

TD lets the enemies run along a path. In FR they move freely. Since FR isn't fun enough I'll probably not spend enough time with it to decide which type of field is more fun. I think I would have liked a combination. Or a path that divides at some points. Choking one branch might make the enemies to choose the other.

I also like that TD makes a pause between the rounds and also gives some info on what's coming and sometimes some advice. It gives me a much better feeling of that I'm in control than FR's constant flow of enemies.

FR has a more polished user interface. I'll give it that. But then it's a simpler game so maybe it's easier to make a slick interface then.

If you're playing TD and haven't gotten enough of it yet, save your $4.99 a while before buying FR. I think the developers behind TD can be trusted to make more really good games. They seem to have what it takes to figure out what makes a game fun. Now, if they could hire the graphics designer from the FR team it would make a perfect match!

If you do much business travel overseas, last week's three days of terror attacks in Mumbai, India's financial capital, had to give you pause -- especially since the deadly attacks struck two luxury hotels popular with foreigners, and a restaurant, the Leopold Cafe, that was a gathering place for visitors from abroad.img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/rss/money_latest/~4/oFDVCFYnFzE" height="1" width="1"/

- L'indice Nikkei de la Bourse de Tokyo progressait de 0,62% jeudi à la mi-séance, imitant Wall Street qui s'est redressé mercredi pour le deuxième jour de suite, selon les opérateurs.A la pause de 11H00 (02H00 GMT), l'indice Nikkei 225 , moyenne non

!-- pageType= magazinesmall slug= st_kia section= techbiz subsection= people headline= Mr. Know-It-All: Call-Center Etiquette, Offensive Podcasts, Awkward Transactions authorName= Brendan I. Koerner creditType= illustration credit= Christoph Niemann -- p strong Dear Mr. Know-It-All, is it cool to ask call-center operators what country they're in? I'm not a bigot or opposed to outsourcing, but I like to know who I'm dealing with./strong /p pFire away with the geolocation query, but be wary of how you broach the topic. Call-center operators deal with countless xenophobic jerks, who typically follow the "Where are you located?" question with a stream of invective. An operator may thus turn defensive in anticipation of the same treatment from youmdash;unless you're careful with your tone and timing. "If the very first thing out of your mouth is, 'Hey, what country are you in,' I think that's rude," says a href="http://www.kathleenpeterson.com/"Kathleen Peterson/a, founder of PowerHouse Consulting, which advises call-center operations. Resolve your business first, then feel free to ask about location when there's a natural lull in the conversation. At that point, make sure your voice exudes affability, as if you were simply inquiring about the weather in Omaha./p pAnd, should you learn you're on the horn with someone on the planet's flip side, go easy on the inane chitchat. "A call-center agent has a job to do and probably doesn't want to answer questions about the population of Bangalore," says a href="http://www.globaltelesourcing.com/exper-colton.htm"Bill Colton/a, president of Global Telesourcing, a call-center service provider./p pThe operator may decline to answer your question or try to convince you that he's in Kansas even though his accent screams Ukraine. Such deception indicates that a company either wants to hide the fact that it's outsourcing or doesn't think too highly of its customersmdash;make a mental note of it./p pstrongI've been helping my nongeek friend build a Flash-intensive Web site. It's gotten to the point where I'm spending a dozen hours a week on it. How should I ask for compensation?/strong/p pYour pal surely didn't intend to exploit you. Odds are he doesn't know how much work goes into codingmdash;an impression you encouraged by not demanding dough up front./p pAssuming you want this relationship to survive, bring up the problem without making your friend feel like a total heel. a href="http://www.negotiatingwithgiants.com/introduction.html"Peter D. Johnston/a, the author of emNegotiating with Giants/em, recommends telling him that a sudden influx of paying gigs precludes you from doing more work, but you'd be happy to point him to a replacement. "That approach can get the issue of time and payment out on the table in a nonthreatening way," Johnston says. Presuming he's hesitant to switch horses midstream, your pal should offer to make his project worth your while./p pRefrain from pressing for back pay, however, or you're likely to look like a greedy ass. Those hours you've already spent slaving away in the digital mines? Consider them a lesson in the veracity of an age-old maxim: "Never mix business with pleasure."/p p div id="embed" div id="pic"img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/st_kia2_f.jpg" alt="" / div id="caption"emIllustration: Christoph Niemann/em/div /div /div strongEveryone in my office has sharing enabled on iTunes. One of my coworker's libraries contains several podcasts of sermons I find highly offensivemdash;they contain lots of antigay blather. Should I confront her?/strong/p pIt depends on how you gleaned those sermons' content. If you couldn't help noticing incendiary titles along the lines of "Fags Go to Hell," then a little indirect confrontation is in ordermdash;tell a manager, pronto./p pBut if the titles were innocuous, and you thus had to listen to the podcasts in order to be offended, pause a moment before taking action. You may have a valid case, but you'll have to decide whether this fight can ever yield anything more than a Pyrrhic victory./p pIt would be one thing if your colleague was blasting these sermons through her speakers for all to hearmdash;or, for that matter, telling everyone around the watercooler about the Lord's contempt for sodomites. But a shared iTunes environment such as yours is strictly opt-inmdash;you can easily avoid listening to the offensive content./p pThe best meatspace parallel is a coworker who keeps a small stack of religious pamphlets in plain view, which you can just ignore. True, there have been cases in which employers have been successfully sued for writing Bible verses on paychecks or broadcasting prayers over public address systems. But those situations were a lot more in-your-face than what's going on heremdash;in part because they involved bosses rather than colleagues, but also because the employees couldn't escape the proselytizing./p pAn aggressive lawyer could still argue that the mere presence of those tracks on the network creates a hostile workplace. But that strikes Mr. Know-It-All as making a sermon on the mount out of a sermon on a molehill, especially considering that the suit could very well be a losermdash;you might be hard-pressed to prove that the screeds, tucked away in an iTunes library, are severe or pervasive enough to constitute harassment./p pAs odious as you might find your coworker's views, it's probably best to give her a pass. Look on the bright sidemdash;now you know who to avoid at the office holiday party./p pemNeed help navigating life in the 21st century? Email us at /ema href="mailto:mrknowitall@wiredmag.com"mrknowitall@wiredmag.com/a./pbr style="clear: both;"/ a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:20d0f30c717b55767a97d16ab4484e9d:g1tf9adfc25jpXgkH8uKhMR%2BngoXs%2BDFLKAaS7SFOP%2FLsmDz%2BdZ%2F6fQrx2gCko%2FwpvWvkl9QfvTDow%3D%3D'img border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/facebook.gif'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:f0a383436fbc6fa75c537e470d5de6dc:bFugwmegC8RftsXvM3wKBIF5b9LsYeK6cuDyo3RWg0hgPOsFGY%2B8JjdAtvTrVLTKC%2FVJddTgKHOM'img border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:c162596b45dd2aaf4f1644ef15064491:jxJd6gkLweGPjQ7tNdPUOWCP%2F2ZdfPQ6SO9V2ASSUZdHik%2FrWfaAfshSTEVebcxTQ36rF1lguDCm'img border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:02ff51d0d029db5fc136e971b6cd6b84:rcQ6Cotybfh21x45NhbpE%2BXMhW0EYpHhwkXIVs87B7yA%2BVfjzP4jvUE6g5CDDOwgoWK94X7Lmgct'img border='0' title='Add to Google' alt='Add to Google' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/google.png'//a br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=b2cecfe46439f19c1186d417c1984534p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=b2cecfe46439f19c1186d417c1984534p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=b2cecfe46439f19c1186d417c1984534" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/ pa href="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?a=2ZiwRz"img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?i=2ZiwRz" border="0"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~4/474334199" height="1" width="1"/