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In our latest
employment-specific round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site
Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs
section this week, including positions from SCEA Santa Monica, WB Games and more.
Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's
daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.
It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes
content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and
more.
Some of the notable jobs posted this week include:
Gameloft: 3D Graphics
Programmer
"As a member of our engineering team you will be part of the full development cycle of 3D video
games for iPhone from start to finish, primarily focusing on 3D graphics. Duties could include:
Analyze existing 3D functions in the engine and adapt them so they are compatible with current
conventions; Support 3D functions and systems conceived for the production; Work with Game
Developers, as well as Design teams to determine the different constraints of the game and put
all the elements together."
Guerrilla Games: Senior Game
Designer
"Guerrilla Games is looking to add a battle-hardened Senior Game Designer to its ranks for an
upcoming project. If you're recruited, you will play a pivotal role in formulating the game
design and guarding the game's vision. You will also act as a mentor, problem solver and source
of bravery and inspiration for your fellow troops."
Rockstar North: Graphics
Programmer
"Rockstar North, one of the world's leading video game developers, is a community of creative
individuals from a variety of backgrounds. We are based in Scotland out of modern, spacious,
purpose-built studios at the heart of Edinburgh. We develop original game titles and are proud to
be the developer of the phenomenally successful Grand Theft Auto series. Rockstar North has been
part of the Rockstar family since 1999."
Sony Computer Entertainment America Santa Monica: Senior Combat
Designer
"Join the God of War team! Be a part of the most exciting and innovating computer entertainment
in North America. Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) markets the PlayStationÂ@
family of products and develops, publishes, markets, and distributes software for the PS
oneâ„¢ console, the PlayStationÂ@2 and PlayStationÂ@3 computer
entertainment systems and the PlayStation Portable (PSPâ„¢)."
WB Games: Art
Development Director
"The Art Development Director develops art content staffing plans and monitors resource load and
schedule for the external outsource teams as well as the insourced teams. In addition, he or she
monitors content creation tasks in collaboration with production staff and art leads handling
communication and feedback between the external partners and the internal game teams."
To browse hundreds of similar jobs, and for more information on searching, responding to, or
posting game industry-relevant jobs to the top source for jobs in the business, please visit Gamasutra's job board now.
The key issue at the heart of Viacom's case against Google and YouTube, filed in March 2007,
concerns whether an Internet service that probably knows that files are traded or shown
illicitly or without license there, deserves the "safe harbor" provisions of the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act that protect ISPs from liability for their customers' actions. In a
summary judgment motion filed yesterday with US District Court in New York and unsealed this
morning, Viacom is bidding to have the judge wrap up the case -- an obvious signal that it
believes its case is already strong enough.
As US law stands now, a service such as Grokster or the original Napster (not the Best Buy
division that today uses that name) is liable when it intentionally establishes its service for
the express purpose of trading in illicit files. It's especially liable when it finds some way to
advertise itself for that purpose. An Internet Service Provider such as Comcast or Cox is not
liable when its service is used for accessing one of these sites, when it doesn't advertise or
offer these services explicitly, and when a customer can access them without direct intervention
from the ISP. And a video site such as Veoh
is not liable when any measure it might take to stop customers from sharing illicit files may
also conceivably infringe upon the free speech rights of other customers who may not be trading
such files.
Google, the current owner of YouTube, has been arguing the Veoh case in its own defense. But
Viacom's argument -- which courts have been wrestling with for over two-and-a-half years and
which we now know today -- is that YouTube is a different, special case. It's more like Grokster,
it argues, in that it was founded on the principle of gathering an audience around illicit files.
"Defendants are liable under Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster Ltd., because
they operated YouTube with the unlawful objective of profiting from (to use their phrase)
'truckloads' of infringing videos that flooded the site," reads the opening passage of YouTube's
founders single-mindedly focused on geometrically increasing the number of YouTube users to
maximize its commercial value. They recognized they could achieve that goal only if they cast a
blind eye to and did not block the huge number of unauthorized copyrighted works posted on the
site. The founders' deliberate decision to build a business based on piracy enabled them to sell
their start-up business to Google after 16 months for $1.8 billion. The Supreme Court in Grokster
found no legal or societal justification for such intentional copyright infringement."
In a talking points document released today (PDF available
here), Viacom cites various e-mails from various YouTube and Google executives, including
YouTube founders Chad Hurley (CEO) and Steve Chen (CTO). Assuming these excerpts were not taken
out of context, which is possible, they indicate that YouTube's founders were clearly building up
a high-audience business with illicit files at their core, with the intention of selling out to
somebody as soon as possible.
One excerpt has Chen suggesting that YouTube, apparently during its startup phase,
"...concentrate all our efforts in building up our numbers as aggressively as we can through
whatever tactics, however evil." Another suggestion, by an unnamed YouTube exec in response to an
non-excerpted suggestion -- apparently asking, where should be get all this content -- reads,
"Steal it! . . . We have to keep in mind that we need to attract traffic. How much traffic will
we get from personal videos?"
And one excerpt attributed to Chen suggests that the whole legal process of handling DMCA
takedown notices is so long and dragged on, that by the time YouTube should ever comply with one,
it would be too late anyway: "But we should just keep that stuff on the site. I really don't see
what will happen. What? Someone from CNN sees it? He happens to be someone with power? He happens
to want to take it down right away. He get in touch with cnn legal. 2 weeks later, we get a cease
& desist letter. We take the video down."
Viacom's argument that Google knows what kind of trafficking goes on via YouTube is substantiated
by evidence in the form of e-mails, evidently sent prior to its acquisition of YouTube, from
executives objecting to elements of what they perceived to be its business model. One message
from Google's then-VP of Content Partnerships David Eun (now with AOL) to CEO Eric Schmidt
cautioned, "I think we should beat YouTube . . . but not at all costs. [They are] a video
Grokster." And in another excerpt, an unnamed Google executive asks, "Is changing policy [to]
profit from illegal downloads how we want to conduct business? Is this Googley?"
Evidence cited in Viacom's motion for summary judgment tells the story of how Google Video failed
to be competitive against YouTube, even though its engineers persisted with efforts to filter out
illicit content. One memo cited says Google Video may have been throwing out 90% of its uploads,
for containing suspected copyrighted material or for being generally indecent.
"But Google's good intentions and compliance with the law were not paying off," Viacom argues.
"YouTube was way ahead of Google Video in the race to build up a user base. Google executives
understood that YouTube's success was largely due to what they euphemistically labeled its
'liberal copyright policy' of freely allowing infringing material. Losing the user race to
YouTube because of the latter's copyright infringement, Google Video executives engaged in a
'heated debate' in 2006 'about whether we should relax enforcement of our copyright policies in
an effort to stimulate traffic growth.' A top senior executive, Peter Chane, Google Video's
Business Product Manager, argued point blank that Google Video should 'beat YouTube' by 'calling
quits on our copyright compliance standards.' Chane specifically advocated switching Google Video
to YouTube's 'reactive DMCA only' policy because 'YouTube gets content when it's hot
([Saturday Night Live's] Lazy Sunday, Stephen Colbert, Lakers wins at the buzzer)' and
it '[takes us too long to acquire content directly from the [legitimate] rights holder.'"
It is that statement which Viacom appears to present as a smoking gun: a suggestion from a Google
Video executive that it should acquire its competitor solely because its allegedly illegitimate
business model is more successful than its own, legally compliant one.
In Google's memorandum in support of summary judgment in its favor, filed after Viacom, its
attorneys do not take the tack or rebutting Viacom's scorching citations -- which, if
substantiated, could theoretically become the basis for future criminal complaints.
Instead, Google reiterates the argument that it's a service provider which, like Veoh, is
entitled to safe harbor since it looks the other way, and does not actively seek infringing
uploads.
Citing the Veoh finding, Google's attorneys argue, "What matters is that Veoh 'established a
system whereby software automatically processes user-submitted content and recasts it in a format
that is readily accessible to its users...Inasmuch as this is a means of facilitating user access
to material on its Web site,' Veoh did not lose the safe harbor 'through the automated creation
of these files.' YouTube is indistinguishable from Veoh in these respects."
YouTube, Google argues, did not have direct knowledge of the circumstances whereby the specific
content Viacom claimed was infringed upon (much of it from Paramount) was shared with YouTube
users. Since Viacom's arguments must, at some point, focus themselves upon the specific
infringing of the content in question, the DMCA protects YouTube on that count as well, Google
continues. But all that may be moot, Google points on, by virtue of the fact that under current
US law, the alleged infringers must have directly profited from their actions. YouTube gains
revenue through advertising.
Writes Google, "A service provider loses safe harbor eligibility only if the plaintiff can show
both that the service provider had the right and ability to control the alleged
infringements and received a financial benefit directly attributable to those
infringements...As with knowledge, the DMCA's control inquiry is specific, not general. The
analysis focuses on the service provider's legal and practical control over the particular
infringing activity at issue. The statute's text makes that clear: The question is whether
the service provider has the right and ability to control "the infringing activity"
alleged by the plaintiff and to which a financial benefit is directly attributable."
A number of declarations in support of both motions were filed today. One supporting Google was
particularly interesting, because it goes to specifically that last paragraph: It's from the
owner of a marketing firm who promoted the works of recording artists who appear on MTV, a Viacom
property. He claimed that some of the very works Viacom claimed were infringed upon through
unauthorized uploading to YouTube, actually were authorized by none other than MTV
itself, as part of the promotion of the artists under his contract.
If Google's interpretation of the law is affirmed, and if this gentleman's claims are proven,
then this whole case could become history faster than a judge can even say "summary
judgment."
Can't
wait for another Engadget Show to roll around? Well you're in luck, friend. It's happening tomorrow
at 5:00pm ET. We'll be doing giveaways at the show taping only,
so brave the glorious sunshine and join us in person for a chance to win great prizes!
Josh will be sitting down with Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab and the
OLPC project to discuss the upcoming XO PC and pontificate about the future of technology.
Sony will also be on hand to demo PlayStation Move motion controller and the
company's senior researcher Dr. Richard Marks will be there to give us the
behind-the-scenes story. We'll have live demos of stuff never-before-seen on Move, including some
hands-on audience demos! Much to our excitement, the usual crew will be joined by Joystiq's very
own Christ Grant for the roundtable. You'll also be meeting our new investigative
correspondent Rick Karr and we'll have plenty of amazing giveaways at the show.
Also expect an out-of-this-world performance from minusbaby
complete with stunning visuals from notendo, as well as
some other big surprises...
As you may have heard, livestreaming is back by popular demand and so is live Twitter commenting!
You will now be able to tweet your comments directly to the livestream! During the
show, just include the hashtag "#engadgetshow" and look for your tweet to show up
on the ticker at the bottom of the stream. One thing to note, The Engadget Show is a family
program, so any single instance of swearing or trolling will force us to turn off
the ticker... and it won't come back on. So, keep it clean and have fun!
The Engadget Show is sponsored by Sprint, and will take place at the Times Center, part of The New York Times Building in the heart of
New York City at 41st St. between 7th and 8th Avenues (see map after the break). Tickets are -- as
always -- free to anyone who would like to attend, but seating is limited, and tickets will be
first come, first served... so get there early! Here's all the info you need:
There is no admission fee -- tickets are completely free
The event is all ages
Ticketing will begin at the Times Center at 2:30PM on Saturday, doors will open for seating
at 4:30PM, and the show begins at 5PM
You cannot collect tickets for friends or family -- anyone who would like to come must be
present to get a ticket
Seating capacity in the Times Center is about 340, and once we're full, we're full
If you're a member of the media who wishes to attend, please contact us at: engadgetshowmedia
[at] engadget [dot] com, and we'll try to accommodate you. All other non-media questions can be
sent to: engadgetshow [at] engadget [dot] com.
Subscribe to the Show:
[iTunes]
Subscribe to the Show directly in iTunes (M4V).
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Subscribe to the Show directly in the Zune Marketplace (M4V).
[RSS M4V] Add the Engadget Show feed (M4V)
to your RSS aggregator and have it delivered automatically.
Fox News reportedly draws a distinction between its "news hours," which it claims are objective,
and its "editorial" programming. But on May 19, purported "news hour" anchor Megyn Kelly
constructed an entire segment around "editorial" host Glenn Beck's criticism of New York's
proposed restaurant salt ban, airing clips from his show and asking her guest to respond to
Beck's arguments.
Fox's "news" anchor uses Beck criticism as basis for segment
Kelly introduces segment by airing Beck clip. Kelly began her segment by airing
a clip of Beck on the March 10 edition of his Fox News program in which he stated:
BECK: The government cannot make people healthy. If I want to stuff my face, I'm going to stuff
my face. If I'm going to have a heart attack in 15 minutes because I stuff my face, it's my
fault. If the firemen have to come to my house and cut a huge hole in the side of my wall because
I'm stuck to my couch because I'm a big fat fatty just eating marshmallows all day and the
firemen have to come in with a crane and pull me out and put me on a flatbed truck to take me to
the hospital, you know what? I should have to pay the bill!
Kelly then said of the proposed ban, "It's got Glenn Beck all fired up."
Kelly repeatedly demands NY Assemblyman Ortiz respond to Beck's criticism.
Kelly's first question to her guest, New York State Assemblyman Felix Ortiz --
who has
introduced legislation banning salt in New York restaurants --
was: "Glenn Beck is all upset with you, Assemblyman. What do you have to say to
him?" She later asked, "Ok, salt's not great for you, certainly not in large amounts in any
event, but why isn't it up to us? As Glenn said, if I want to become a fatty fat fat, what
business is it of yours?"
Kelly to Ortiz: "You wanted Glenn Beck to start talking about you." After Ortiz
stated that he introduced his legislation in part because doing so focuses media attention on the
issue of the health risks of excessive salt, Kelly stated: "So it's a media stunt. I'm on to you,
Assemblyman. Ok. So you just wanted to get on America Live, you wanted Glenn Beck to
start talking about you."
Fox has drawn distinction between supposedly objective "news hours" and "editorial"
hours
In response to criticism, Fox News claims its news hours are objective.The
New York Times
reported on October 11 that in response to White House criticism, Fox News claimed that its
news hours -- which it reportedly defined as "9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. on weekdays" are
objective:
In an interview, Mr. [senior vice president for news Michael] Clemente suggested that there was
an element of "shoot the messenger" in the back and forth. "Sometimes it's actually helpful to
have an organization or a person that you can go up against for whatever reason," he said.
Fox argues that its news hours -- 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. on weekdays -- are objective.
The channel has taken pains recently to highlight its news programs, including the two hours led
by Shepard Smith, its chief news anchor. And its daytime newscasts draw more viewers than CNN or
MSNBC's prime-time programs.
"The average consumer certainly knows the difference between the A section of the newspaper and
the editorial page," Mr. Clemente said.
America Live replaced Live Desk in early 2010.
In a
written statement provided to media outlets, Clemente compared Fox News' purportedly separate
"news" and "opinion" programming to "the A-section of the newspaper and the editorial page":
An increasing number of viewers are relying on FOX News for both news and opinion. And the
average news consumer can certainly distinguish between the A-section of the newspaper and the
editorial page, which is what our programming represents. So, with all due respect to anyone who
might still be confused about the difference between news reporting and vibrant opinion, my
suggestion would be to talk about the stories and the facts, rather than attack the
messenger...which over time, has never worked.
"News" hours nonetheless takes cues from Beck, features same smears and GOP talking
points as "opinion" programs
Fox's "news" division routinely promotes and echoes Beck. Fox News' reporters
and "news" programs have routinely promoted and echoed Beck on stories such as
the 9-12 Project, tea party protests, ACORN and former White House officials Van Jones and Anita
Dunn.
Fox's news programs echo its "opinion" shows. Fox News' purportedly straight
news programs echo its "editorial"
programs, featuring smears, falsehoods, doctored and deceptive editing, and GOP talking points.
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan rejected on Friday a suggestion from the former head of the U.N.
mission in Afghanistan that the arrest of senior Afghan Taliban members in Pakistan may have
disrupted talks with U.N. representatives.
· Mitchell's trip to region back on after concession
· Blair expects resumption of indirect negotiations
The US special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, is due to fly to the region on Sunday
to try to secure a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian talks amid optimism about a breakthrough.
Mitchell had been due to visit Israel on Tuesday but his trip was cancelled –
a victim of US-Israeli tensions. It was reinstated after Israel's prime minister, Binyamin
Netanyahu, bowing to US pressure, phoned the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, last night to
offer concessions.
Mitchell is scheduled to see Netanyahu in Israel and the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, in
Ramallah.
Tony Blair, envoy of the Middle East Quartet group, made up of the US, the UN, the EU and Russia,
predicted that talks between Israel and the Palestinians could start soon. Blair, who was in
Moscow today, told Reuters he expected a resumption of proximity talks, indirect negotiations
between the Israelis and Palestinians, with the US as a broker.
"I hope very much that in the next few days we will have a package that gives people the sense
that, yes, despite all the difficulties of the past few days, it is worth having proximity talks
and then those leading to direct negotiations," he said.
The Quartet issued a statement reiterating its hope that the talks between Israelis and
Palestinians would lead to a settlement within 24 months and condemning the plan to build 1,600
Jewish homes at Ramat Shlomo in East Jerusalem.
US-Israeli relations deteriorated quickly after Israel's surprise announcement last week about
the homes.
Clinton phoned Netanyahu and set out demands including confidence-building measures that could be
put in place by Israel. These could include withdrawing roadblocks on the West Bank, releasing
Palestinian prisoners and removing soldiers from parts of the West Bank. She also demanded a
freeze on new Jewish settlements on Palestinian territory such as that planned for Ramat Shlomo.
Today she told a press conference in Moscow, where she had been attending the Quartet group
meeting: "What I heard from the prime minister in response to the requests we made was useful and
productive and we are continuing our discussions with him and his government."
Netanyahu's office and the US state department would only say publicly that he had agreed to
confidence-building measures, and made no reference to a moratorium on settlements. But diplomats
and analysts said that there would also have been private undertakings for such a moratorium,
sufficient to allow the Palestinians to agree to resume talks.
Clinton will try to get Netanyahu to commit himself to specific details when the two meet next
week in Washington. The White House today declined to confirm whether Barack Obama would meet
Netanyahu too.
Daniel Levy, a former Israeli government peace negotiator and now an analyst based in Washington,
said he believed Netanyahu would have promised Clinton not to undermine US peace efforts with any
more surprise announcements of settlement building. "I think there will almost certainly have
been private undertakings by Bibi [Netanyahu] to adhere more rigorously to the embarrassment
test, meaning no settlement announcements or developments, evictions or demolitions in both
Jerusalem and the West Bank," Levy said.
Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at Washington's American Task Force on Palestine, thought
Netanyahu would have given enough ground to allow the Palestinians back into the talks. "The
Obama administration has made its point and extracted pretty significant assurances," Ibish said.
"I think it will be enough for the Palestinians to go into the proximity talks. Netanyahu tried
to defy Obama and did not get away with it."
Aaron David Miller, an adviser to six secretaries of state on Middle East negotiations, said the
call between Clinton and Netanyahu was "an effort to walk the cat back from the heat and fire of
the last week". He expected a resumption of indirect talks but was pessimistic about the chances
of peace in the long term. "It is hard to see a way to an outcome. They could agree on borders
but not Jerusalem and refugees ... the gaps are too long for this Israeli government and I
suspect too for the Palestinians," he said.
David Makovsky, director of the Washington Institute for the Near East Project on the Middle East
Peace Process, said the peak of the crisis was "clearly behind us". But he suggested there could
be more drama on Monday when Clinton is due to address the Israeli lobby group Aipac in
Washington. "When you get a crowd of 7,500 people, it is hard to predict that all 7,500 will
behave appropriately. The organisation is trying to make it clear she should be received
respectfully. The question is whether they can get 100% compliance," Makovsky said.
· Kauto Star falls four out after a ragged ride
· Denman battles on to take second place
The miracle of this Gold Cup was that two great champions were dethroned and yet it still felt
like a day of wonder for National Hunt racing. Ruby Walsh rode the fallen odds-on favourite,
Kauto Star, back to the unsaddling enclosure from the scene of their tumble upright in the
saddle, like a defiant cavalry officer, and Denman reached into his deepest store of energy to
finish runner-up to Imperial Commander, who was cheered by an exultant crowd despite spoiling the
romantic two‑horse script.
The Festival rose a level with Imperial Commander's seven-length victory at 7-1. So relentlessly
dramatic was this 3¼-mile trial of the spirit that tens of thousands of spectators
became part of the contest out on the track. Cheltenham crowds are often giddy and always
appreciative but nobody could remember them being so consumed by the action with every jump. They
gasped as Denman soared over fences and howled when Kauto Star crashed through the eighth and
knocked the light out of himself before coming down four fences out.
In other sports Imperial Commander would have been greeted as an impostor who had ruined the
decider between the winners of the last three Gold Cups. Instead there was a realisation that
jump racing had erred by turning this occasion into a private duel between the two Paul
Nicholls-trained big shots.
In the build-up the rest of the field had assumed the role of bit-part players. Imperial
Commander was not the only contender to interject. Third home was last year's Grand National
winner, Mon Mome, who rated barely a mention in the preamble. Plenty of shrewd punters were
immune to this ballyhoo. As Imperial Commander passed the line under Paddy Brennan, damp copies
of the Racing Post were tossed and hats flew like Frisbees. Some had noticed that the winner had
been beaten by only a nose by Kauto Star in the Betfair Chase in November and was decent value at
7-1.
There is the theatre out on the track and then there is the betting, in which most punters were
wiped out over the four days. If hope could take human form, it would have been driven away from
the Cotswolds in an ambulance. The defeats of Master Minded in Wednesday's Queen Mother Champion
Chase and Kauto Star and Denman were the biggest triumphs for bookmakers in a week when gamblers
squealed for mercy.
So this was not a two-creature pageant but a test for the best of the National Hunt breed. For
seven fences it was a masterclass of steeplechasing. But then Kauto Star exhibited the first
signs of mental frailty since the bad old days when he would try to walk straight through fences
late in races. Just as Walsh was doubtless starting to sniff his third Gold Cup win on Desert
Orchid's successor as the nation's official horse, Kauto Star turned him into a rodeo rider,
belting the top of the fence and almost jolting Ireland's champion out of the plate.
L'Extraterrestrial, as he was known in France, ploughed on but his confidence had
evaporated. Denman, the darling of traditionalists, took up the stable's cause, jumping
audaciously and barrelling into open country. The audience was entranced. Four fences out Kauto
Star self-detonated, stepping in to the foot of the obstacle and sending himself over the birch
in a somersaulting heap. As Walsh landed like a fly-half diving in for a try, he turned
straightaway to check his partner was unharmed. Later, as Imperial Commander took the ovation,
Walsh could be seen standing up in the saddle as Kauto Star's white noseband approached through
the gloom.
This was how to come home vanquished: upright, proud. Kauto Star cantered back to the exit chute
"as fresh as a daisy" in Walsh's plucky phrase. He was hardly that. But National Hunt racing folk
do not make a tragedy out of a setback. Kauto Star had passed from invincibility to fallibility
inside 10 minutes. His romping wins in last year's Gold Cup and December's King George VI Chase
seemed an age ago. Like boxers steeplechasers never warn you the end is nigh. It was not the
mistake at the eighth fence that pointed to his mortality so much as his inability to recover
from it.
Denman, who could be trained for next year's Grand National, was transcending doubt and showing
himself to be a great equine warrior from the old school. To achieve immortality here a horse
needs more than one Gold Cup victory (he crushed Kauto Star to win two years ago) yet Denman has
twice distinguished himself in defeat. This course jolts him back to life. His acolytes would say
it is because he was bred for days like these. The heavy, saturnine mood that seems to afflict
him at the Nicholls yard lifts and he attacks the Prestbury fences with joie de vivre. "That
Denman, he never goes away, does he?" Brennan said.
Under Tony McCoy he was asked to make the final assault swinging for home but the sprightly,
super-fit Imperial Commander was skipping along with him and accelerated up the hill to register
a distinctly local triumph. Motor to a Cotswolds village called Guiting Power 12 miles away and
you will find a pub called the Hollow Bottom, which feels like an extension of Cheltenham
racecourse. It is also a shrine to Nigel Twiston-Davies, Imperial Commander's trainer, who has a
share in the business and who said as he approached the winner's enclosure here: "This was a home
win. We are where we belong."
Half an hour later Twiston-Davies's 18-year-old son Sam won the Foxhunter Chase on the stable's
Baby Run, then their Pigeon Island took the last under Brennan. All leave would have been
cancelled at the Hollow Bottom. "Paul Nicholls has done a wonderful job with his two horses but
we need new ones coming through and ours is the best now," Twiston-Davies senior said of his
champion. "I loved all the Kauto Star-Denman thing but I always thought we could beat them."
From a theoretically anticlimactic day the Racing For Change initiative had the perfect
promotional DVD. This beat media training, decimal odds, simpler racecourse announcements and all
the other ploys to get people to the track. It was the action speaking for itself. It was the
purest sport.
One of Yahoo’s key chief technologists, Sam Pullara, is leaving the company to become
an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at Benchmark Capital. Pullara was the technologist how headed
up the development of the the Yahoo! Open Application Platform,
the Yahoo! Query Language and Yahoo! Pipes. His departure follows
that of veteran Yahoo senior executive
Ash Patel earlier this week.
Back in 2008, Yahoo was making a big push to open
itself up to developers, and Pullara was one of the champions of that strategy. He was also
Yahoo’s representative on the OpenSocial Foundation, which sought to create a counterweight
to Facebook.
Pullara has been an EIR before. In 2004, he held that position at Accel Venture Partners and
created a startup called Gauntlet Systems, which he sold to Borland in 2006. At Benchmark, he
will be looking for new startup opportunities. He will also be working again with Benchmark
partner Peter Fenton, who was at Accel when Pullara was there. Pullara’s last day at Yahoo
will be on April 1. Yahoo has no plans to hire a replacement.
La reconstitution du drame qui a coûté
la vie, jeudi, à quatre cyclistes seniors a débuté vendredi après-midi,
peu après 16h00, sur le Brogelerweg à Bocholt. La presse était tenue à
bonne distance.
La reconstitution du drame qui a coûté
la vie, jeudi, à quatre cyclistes seniors a débuté vendredi après-midi,
peu après 16h00, sur le Brogelerweg à Bocholt. La...lire la suite
A story you’ll find in Newsquest’s Streatham Guardian, but not in its rival, the
Tindle-owned South London Press – an extract: A journalist from our rival newspaper the South
London Press has admitted assaulting a senior Lambeth councillor at a glittering charity
fundraiser. Chief reporter Greg Truscott pushed Councillor Mark Bennett at the Mayor
[...]
Rich Farrely, le senior creative director du prochain Medal of Honor, nous raconte en deux minutes
et des bananes dans ce carnet de développeur comment lui et son équipe ont
conçu ce nouvel épisode. Promis pour l'été prochain par Electronic
Arts, ce futur challenger de Call of Duty : Modern Warfare...
The United Football League has been actively trying to convince the NFL
to invest in the junior league in hopes of gaining a valuable senior partner, as well as other
investors, according to sources.
The UK Government continues to push forward the Digital Economy Bill (DEB) that aims to protect
copyright holders from online pirates. On 15th March the House of Lords approved the bill and
handed it over to the House of Commons.
To the absolute dismay of most outside the music and movie industries, some of the most
controversial elements of the Bill are unlikely to receive any major scrutiny and will be dealt
with quickly under the so-called “wash-up”, a short period between the announcement
of an election and parliament being closed down.
“It’s a deeply unsatisfactory and very worrying development,” a senior
executive from an ISP told
The Guardian. “The fear is that no one will know what is being cooked-up before it becomes
law. It’s legislation on the hoof.”
But this situation suits the BPI just fine. This week a leaked memo from the BPI fell into the
hands of Cory Doctorow which showed that the “LibDem amendment” – a proposal
under the DEB which would allow for websites to be blocked if, essentially, the BPI didn’t
like their activities – was in fact written by the BPI. Very cosy.
But the controversies don’t end there. Doctorow also received an internal document prepared
by the BPI’s Director of Public Affairs and prospective Labour parliamentary candidate,
Richard Mollet. In the document he admitted that the only reason the DEB had a chance of passing
is because MP’s are resigned to voting on it without debate.
“Translation: if MPs got to debate the Bill, they would tear it to unrecognizable pieces as
they realized what terrible rubbish it really is,” wrote Doctorow. The scandals go on and
on, but we have to stop somewhere.
Nevertheless, UK Music head Feargal Sharkey
says that he is confident that the DEB will be passed before the general election, although
others are not so sure.
“It will still be nip and tuck to get the Digital Economy Bill onto the statute book before
the election so the battle is not won yet,” wrote Shadow Culture Minister, Jeremy Hunt,
on his blog this week.
According to Jim Killock at the Open Rights Group, UK citizens aren’t leaving anything to
chance with 10,000 of them having written to their MPs in the last three days to demand a debate
on the Digital Economy Bill.
“It is outrageous for corporate lobbyists including the BPI, FAST and UK Music to demand
that MPs curtail democracy and ram this Bill through Parliament without debate,”
says Killock, adding: “The British people did not elect UK Music and the BPI to write
our laws.”
Killock says that what is making the 10,000 so angry is the pushing through of the DEB without
debate, an act he describes as “undemocratic and dangerous”.
The fact that many people love games isn’t really that new. Retailers and even our own
governments have used our love of games to sell us products and hook us on lotteries and whatever
else they can think of to boost revenue. But the rise of online games such as World of Warcraft
and the social and “casual” games popularized by Zynga and other companies on
Facebook, such as Mafia Wars and Happy Aquarium, has arguably made gaming a far bigger part of
our culture than it has ever been — not to mention location-based apps such as Foursquare
and Gowalla, which have explicit game-like features built in. Online payment giant PayPal said
that Zynga was its
second-largest merchant last year, and PayPal does business with some of the largest
companies in the world. And get ready for even more games: Flurry Analytics says that its
research shows almost
half of the apps that are being developed for the upcoming Apple iPad are games.
What is the impact of all that gaming on our society? One academic, Lee Sheldon of Indiana
University, says the generation that has grown up with ubiquitous online gaming is bringing that
culture with it into the educational system, and ultimately into the workforce. “As the
gamer generation moves into the mainstream workforce, they are willing and eager to apply the
culture and learning-techniques they bring with them from games,” Sheldon, an assistant
professor at the university’s department of telecommunications, told
ITNews. He said older managers will have to “figure out how to educate themselves to
the gamer culture, and how to speak to it most effectively.”
Sheldon is already experimenting with that: over the last year, he started grading two of his
classes (both involved with game design) using a system based on “experience points”
or XP, similar to the way gamers in World of Warcraft and other massively-multiplayer games award
points for various tasks. Students started the year at level one, with zero XP and then gained
points — and higher grades — by completing “quests” and
“crafting,” which corresponded to giving presentations and doing exams and quizzes.
Students also formed “guilds” similar to the gaming groups that rule WoW and other
multiplayer games, and Sheldon says that his students seemed far more engaged than they had been
before.
A similar phenomenon was the topic of a panel at the
recent SXSW conference in Austin, where Christopher Poole, the founder of the controversial
discussion forum known as 4chan, and Web historian Jason Scott discussed the site and its culture
— which in some cases consists of offensive material, but also involves public advocacy
through offshoots such as the Anonymous group. According to
a description from Austin360, Scott compared the behavior at 4chan to a game, but one in
which the objective was to come up with something more shocking and/or hilarious than your
competitors.
Scott noted that another site behaves in almost the exact same way: Wikipedia. And he’s got a point — the
“crowdsourced” encyclopedia relies in many cases on unknown and unpaid editors and
writers to produce and structure and verify its content, people who to some extent compete for
the recognition of their peers on the site, and in some cases wind up “levelling up”
to become senior editors and members of the internal Wikipedia “cabal” of site
managers. Although Wikipedia doesn’t explicitly award experience points, the concept is the
same, and it motivates people in similar ways.
The moderation of comments at Slashdot is based on a very similar system: users are able to
gain “karma points” through
positive actions such as posting sensible comments, voting on other comments and flagging abusive
comments. When they get enough points, they are selected by the site’s algorithm to be
official moderators, and can then “spend” the points they have removing comments. In
such a system, it doesn’t ultimately matter whether someone is anonymous or not, because
there is an incentive for them to follow the rules and behave properly (although there are always
users who don’t care about the rewards and try to “troll” or disrupt any site).
The bottom line is that good games take advantage of people’s innate desire to compete with
each other, but balance that with their need to receive rewards, including the approval of their
peers — rewards that in some cases can be used to modify their behavior in certain ways.
Those are principles that don’t just apply to games. Jesse Schell, a former creative
director at Disney Imagineering Virtual Reality Studio, had a great presentation at the DICE 2010
conference last month in which he talked about the rise of social gaming and
what we can learn from it, which is embedded below.
Hugh Pickens sends in a Washington Post story about how US military cyber-warriors attacked and
shut down a CIA-backed intelligence gathering site. "US military computer specialists, over the
objections of the CIA, mounted a cyberattack that dismantled an online 'honey pot' monitored by US
and Saudi intelligence agencies to identify extremists before they could strike, after military
commanders said that the site was putting Americans at risk. The CIA argued that dismantling the
site would lead to a significant loss of intelligence, while the military (in the form of the NSA)
countered that taking it down was a legitimate operation in defense of US troops. 'The CIA didn't
endorse the idea of crippling Web sites,' said one US counterterrorism official. The agency
'understood that intelligence would be lost, and it was; that relationships with cooperating
intelligence services would be damaged, and they were; and that the terrorists would migrate to
other sites, and they did.' Four former senior US officials, speaking on the condition of
anonymity, said the creation and shutting down of the site illustrates the need for clearer
policies governing cyberwar."
Hugh Pickens sends in a Washington Post story about how US military cyber-warriors attacked and
shut down a CIA-backed intelligence gathering site. "US military computer specialists, over the
objections of the CIA, mounted a cyberattack that dismantled an online 'honey pot' monitored by US
and Saudi intelligence agencies to identify extremists before they could strike, after military
commanders said that the site was putting Americans at risk. The CIA argued that dismantling the
site would lead to a significant loss of intelligence, while the military (in the form of the NSA)
countered that taking it down was a legitimate operation in defense of US troops. 'The CIA didn't
endorse the idea of crippling Web sites,' said one US counterterrorism official. The agency
'understood that intelligence would be lost, and it was; that relationships with cooperating
intelligence services would be damaged, and they were; and that the terrorists would migrate to
other sites, and they did.' Four former senior US officials, speaking on the condition of
anonymity, said the creation and shutting down of the site illustrates the need for clearer
policies governing cyberwar."
The Numbers Behind the World’s Fastest-growing Web Site: YouTube’s Finances
Revealed; Viacom releases YouTube’s finances from before the Google acquisition.
(MediaMemo)
Hulu’s Ad Sales Team Is Undercutting Its Parent Companies; Hulu’s
sales team is “actively subverting” the ad sales of its parent companies, which are
also trying to sell ads for their shows, according to a source. (The
Business Insider)
ITV Goes Cold on YouTube, Hulu; a senior ITV executive says that the broadcaster
has “no plans” to do output deals to put its programming on video-on-demand
aggregation services such as Hulu, YouTube, SeeSaw or MSN Video Player. (paidContent)
Madison Avenue Finds Old and New Media Can Coexist; more marketers are turning
to web video, but many are increasingly doing so along with — rather than in
place of — television. (NY
Times)
Indie Web Producers Try to Overturn BBC’s Online Cull; Pact (the Producers
Alliance for Cinema and Television), which represents independent online multimedia producers
that have work commissioned from the BBC and others, urges the BBC not to cut its investment in
digital media. (paidContent:UK)
The Guardian Finds Video Success With the Contextualization of Content; the
newspaper has been innovating with online video since 2006, has invested heavily in video
operations in its new headquarters and is finding traction with its own brand of journalistic
video. (Beet.TV)
HOUSTON, March 19 /PRNewswire/ -- David J. Levy, JD, CCE, is slated to join the official Board of
Directors of the Senior Citizens Bureau (SCB). Levy, who has been a member of the Senior Citizens
Bureau's Advisory Board for 2 years, will join the Board of Directors at their April 2010 meeting.
Levy
Still well below most people’s radar, the company raised $24 million in venture capital and recently released
its first app for the iPhone after nearly a
year of development.
But that doesn’t mean the startup has a lack of ambition: they’ve just hired Gummi Hafsteinsson, who has led several of Google’s
most successful mobile product initiatives as Senior Product Manager for the past 5 years, as
their new VP of Product. Hafsteinsson originally joined Google’s mobile group in July 2005
and first managed the Google Maps for Mobile product.
More recently, he led development of Google’s voice-powered search
app for all the major mobile platforms – iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Symbian. He
reported directly to Vic Gundotra,
Google’s VP of Engineering.
Prior to joining Google, Gummi founded and ran a company called Dimon Software that produced
mobile enterprise connectivity software designed to enable enterprises to access corporate IT
systems from any mobile device.
His experience in developing scalable applications for multiple platforms tells us Siri is
working on making its virtual personal assistant product cross-platform. Its proposition was
compelling enough to bring home the award for
most innovative Web service at the Microsoft BizSpark
Accelerator at SXSW, by the way.
In other news, Siri is now available for
iPod touch devices, integrated Twitter into
the service last week and is closing in on a quarter million early users.
La dixième journée du sommeil, c'est aujourd'hui. Initiée par le
Ministère de la Santé et des Sports elle, est placée sous le haut-patronage du
Ministère du Travail, des Relations Sociales, de la Famille, de la Solidarité et de
la Ville. Le fil rouge de cette édition est consacrée au sommeil des plus de 50 ans.
Une enquête menée auprès des seniors par l'Institut National du Sommeil et de
la Vigilance (Insv) montre que c'est à partir de la cinquantaine que les (...) - Actu en bref
La dixième journée du sommeil, c'est aujourd'hui. Initiée par le
Ministère de la Santé et des Sports elle, est placée sous le haut-patronage du
Ministère du Travail, des Relations Sociales, de la Famille, de la Solidarité et de
la Ville. Le fil rouge de cette édition est consacrée au sommeil des plus de 50 ans.
Une enquête menée auprès des seniors par l'Institut National du Sommeil et de
la Vigilance (Insv) montre que c'est à partir de la cinquantaine que les (...) - Actu en bref
Well, when I listened to the podcast, I thought: “Financing open source projects, but this
is what many companies are doing, without giving projects money but paying their employees who
are working ’silently’ on open source software, because they try to imrpove their
working environment”.
“WTF you are saying, what do you mean?” someone will say, so I’m trying to
explain this.
Let’s take three examples where I’m involved.
Zend Framework in Ubuntu
When I started in 2008 to work for my old employer Webzooms AG (which was acquired 2009 by
Netviewer AG), I had the luck to work on my favorite area “System Administration”.
What I found was hand deployed open source software, without any real structure.
One part of the game was the famous PHP Framework  ”Zend Framework”
(there were several other software stacks, and some of them are also now in Ubuntu or Debian,
done by me or others). After two deployment nights of our software systems I was tired to do
“manual” installations of this library, and finally sat down and preparing a Debian
source package. First, I only packaged it for our infrastructure, but then I was thinking:
“Hell, I’m responsible for this package now for a long time, so why don’t I
push it back to Ubuntu where it really belongs”.
Therefore I pushed my work back to Ubuntu and therefore Ubuntu presented this software to the
world. Zend was proud of it (at least Andi Gutmans said so) and several (also well known and
respected ) PHP developer were proud too.
It took me couple of days (regarding my other work tasks) to finalize the first package to be
ready for Ubuntu. At least I spend net 48 hours  on that.
Now I don’t want to tell you how much 48 hours of my worktime is worth in money, but those
48 hours were “sponsored” from Webzooms AG to the Ubuntu project. Without the company
I wouldn’t have even imagined to package this piece of source.
Now I’m trying to always bring the latest Zend Framework package into Ubuntu, so that
everyone can develop with it without even thinking about it.
FAI (Fully Automatic Installation)
This Debian project haunts me even longer. I worked at Lycos Europe and this was the first time I
was introduced to FAI. I never had the possibility to install or to do some configuration on
this, but the idea behind it was something I admired.
In 2006 someone called me and asked me if I’m interested to build up an automatic OS
deployment with SuSE Linux Enterprise, and I thought: “Hell yes, I could do that with
FAI”. So I signed the contract with ComBOTS AG and began to work on FAI.
There were several new things to implement and to test, but actually I solved all the magic and
we were able to deploy SLES9 on hundreds of servers in less time and with higher quality then any
other deployment system we tested before.
Many of the improvements and changes I made to FAI were pushed back to the FAI project, therefore
we can use smart or yum as package manager in FAI without big changes to the underlaying
framework.
When ComBOTS AG were closed, as mentioned above, I started to work for Webzooms AG and during the
last quarter of 2008 it was set that we will be acquired by Netviewer AG.
Since then I’m working not only as Senior System Administrator for Netviewer AG, but since
then I’m back in the FAI business.
We planned a new product and therefore we needed a complete new server infrastructure. We
discussed which OS we want to use and I came up with Ubuntu, because it’s Debian based and
(good for management) it has a corporate sponsor backing it, with the possibility to buy support
contracts.
Now we needed a system to deploy this OS automatically on the newly build server farm. Again, I
came up with FAI and since then I’m working again on FAI to be integrated into Ubuntu.
What we actually do is also to test new FAI versions to work with Ubuntu and Debian, we have a
ESX VMWare test environment to do the testing.
All this cost time and money for the company, many, if not all, changes and improvements are
pushed back to the FAI project.
Again, this work is done during my company work time, so the company actually pays an amount of
money to give us the possibility to have a good operations environment.
The Ubuntu Project
Forgetting the fact that I’m working on Ubuntu since 2005 in my sparetime, I actually do
most of my Ubuntu work during my company work time.
This work involves “bug finding”, “bug reporting”, “ranting to
people about strange decisions”, “bug fixing”, “packaging”,
“merging”, “helping others”, “pushing Ubuntu on Servers and
Desktops”
This work is as well backed by the company I work for, because it helps us admins to have a
working OS which we rely on. But this work binds business time, and business time is money. This
money is not much, regarding other corporate sponsors, but it’s also not too little to not
mention it.
Now, everything what we do here will be pushed back to the Ubuntu Project and other upstream
projects.
Funny, that this work is flawlessly integrated in my normal work time. I even proposed to my
management that we need to attend the next Ubuntu Developer Summit, so that we can try to bring
up some ideas and improvements to the project (especially to the Server part), and that we
dedicate some more work time into this (hopefully it will be approved ;)).
It’s important for us that we have a close relationship between the company we work for and
the software project we are using. It helps the company to provide a good service infrastructure
for our customers but also to give back improvements, bug fixes and new ideas how to do things
better to the software project and its community.
Anyways, there are other companies or institutions who are doing exactly this. They actually
don’t pay “real money” to OpenSource Projects, but they are investing
“human resources” (you don’t know how I hate this word actually) to work on
some of the projects, without even mentioning it. It just happens.
I think we have more companies and institutions world wide who are actually doing this, and in my
humble opinion, all together those companies and institutions do spend more time and money in
total then any other direct sponsor.
This is also “financing one or more OpenSource Projects”, but I think this point of
view is not in many heads today.
I don’t know how you see all this, but this is my point of view, comments are welcome, no
trolls, pls :)
Rumours suggest that Microsoft may be planning a new firmware update that would allow external
USB hard drives to be used with the Xbox 360.
The rumours began with website Joystiq, which claims to have received Microsoft documentation
describing the new feature, having subsequently confirmed the details with other unnamed sources.
The document purports to have been authored by a senior software development engineer at
Microsoft and states that due to "increased market penetration of high-capacity, high throughput
USB mass storage devices, a 2010 Xbox 360 system update" will allow users to use USB devices for
storage via an update due in spring 2010.
TechnologyOne has been chosen as the sole software vendor to be included in the New South Wales
Government’s new ‘Sustainability Tool Selector: A Guide for Local
Government’, which was launched yesterday to a workshop of around 100 NSW councillors and
senior managers.
Belkin International has embarked on a program to boost brand awareness and product preference in
the Asia Pacific region with the appointment of a new senior executive for the region.
Information exchange solutions vendor, IntraLinks, is boosting its Australian and New Zealand
management team with the appointment of a senior executive responsible for all of the
company’s business in the region.
New Hat has completed work on a million-dollar Digital Intermediate (DI) Theater, equipped with
Baselight 4 color grading system, 14' Stewart Screen, Barco 2k projector, and Blue Sky 5.1 audio,
promising a state-of-the-art experience both technically and in terms of client services. Feature
DI Colorist Michael Mintz, a veteran of more than 40 feature films, has joined the company to
oversee DI operations; he is joined by Senior Producer Wyatt Valentine and Producer Stuart
Heising. The first project under way in the New Hat DI Theater is the indie feature "Lucky,"
directed by Gil Cates, Jr., starring Jeffrey Tambor, Colin Hanks, and Ann-Margret. (PRWeb Mar 19,
2010)
Wireless handset maker Pantech is bolstering the senior ranks of its U.S. division to help it win
more business from AT&T, the No. 2 U.S. mobile phone service provider. South Korea-based
Pantech named David Ronis as its chief marketing officer, a newly created position, the company
plans to ...
C'est lors de la présentation parisienne de Medal of Honor à laquelle nous avons
récemment assisté (lire notre aperçu), que notre hôte de luxe Richard
Farrelly, le directeur de création senior du jeu s'est prêté au jeu des
questions-réponses de la communauté. Voici donc cette interview orchestrée
p...
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In our latest
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La reconstitution du drame qui a coûté
la vie, jeudi, à quatre cyclistes seniors a débuté vendredi après-midi,
peu après 16h00, sur le Brogelerweg à Bocholt. La presse était tenue à
bonne distance.
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